Leaderboard

I did another dep last night at a local rock’n’roll club. Just a 3 piece band, quite a large room and an audience who all want to dance. Played a lot of standards, but also some not so obvious stuff which still went down well. These included a Big Joe Turner medley of ‘Flip flop and fly’ / ‘Lipstick, powder and paint’ and a couple of Elvis tunes - ‘Fool such as I’ and ‘Mess of blues’ which certainly got my walking bass lines moving. I sang Springsteen’s ‘From small things Mama…’ and we finished the night with one of my favourite ever tunes ‘I’m losing you’ by Brenda Lee ( and more recently Paul Carrack.) Used my Dano Longhorn into a Fender Rumble 500 combo, simple but very effective! The regular bassist is unfortunately having some health issues, so I’m expecting some more deps here. It’s a really enjoyable gig and a nice change for me, as well as being just 10 mins away - was home by 11.40pm.

Tuesday night we played the Crauford Arms in Milton Keynes supporting Theatre Of Hate again. We packed the van so exceptionally well I had to take a photo. We usually have another couple of big plastic boxes full of merch, so maybe that's why it went in easier. It felt like it took forever to get there, but the venue is very cool. There were plenty of people in for us, and we went down really well. I'm not sure I like the music of Theatre Of Hate but they're good players. Either way I had to wait until the end of their set before we could pack the merch up and get on the road. I got to bed at 3AM and had my alarm set for 6:30AM to get up for an important meeting on Wednesday morning. I'm still tired now!

So I met with Chris today (from the Wyefret Guitar Shop in Wales), he came to London and gave me the bass in-person at a cafe at Acton Town. Lovely chap. It needs a setup and some new strings…but the Wal MK2 is awesome!!! It’s a bit like a Musicman Stringray but on steroids with clearer upper notes ! Really punchy, Big sound and filter is fun to play with. A happy customer indeed… 🤩🎸

Inspired by chat about current gear prices here and elsewhere, I thought I'd share this advert, which I recently stumbled across while digging through some newspaper archives for work-related research. This appeared in the 15 September 1963 edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The fact that Leonards (a local department store) was putting these prices up-front in big writing suggests to me that they regarded these as competitive – they wouldn't have been simply stating RRP here. To put these figures in context, here are the CPI-inflation-adjusted conversions of those prices. They're surprisingly close to the current RRP for top-of-the-line (non-custom-shop) American-made Fenders, higher in most cases. BASSES Jazz Bass $279.50 = $2,854.61 (£2,271.66) Precision Bass $229.50 = $2,343.95 (£1,865.28) Plus another $59.50 ($607.69; £483.59) if you're a fancypants who wants a case. GUITARS Stratocaster $259.50 = $2,650.35 (£2,109.11) Jazzmaster $349.50 = $3,569.54 (£2,840.59) Jaguar $379.50 = $3,875.94 (£3,084.42) Cases from $49.50 ($505.56; £402.31) AMPS Piggyback Bassman $399.50 = $4,080.21 (£3,246.97) Princeton $99.50 = $1,016.22 (£808.69) I've had a look through contemporary used car listings from the same area, and while you couldn't get a nice car for these sorts of prices, you could get a car. Instead of a Jazz Bass you could have picked up a (ahem, stick-shift) 1955 Mercury Montclair, and instead of the misbegotten beast that is the Fender Jaguar (with case), you could be cruising around in the misbegotten beast that is the Ford Edsel. Ask yourself, what are the ladies going to go wild for – a Fender Jaguar or this fly whip?

This probably doesn’t count… I’ve got a classical style, nylon string guitar that my dad bought from the Kay catalogue in the early 80s. I have no idea why he bought it, he never intended to try to learn how to play it, and he never encouraged my brothers nor me to learn it either. Many years later he came to me asking to borrow £22. The trouble with him was that he would guilt trip me into lending him money and then, when I’d ask for the money back, I’d get a lecture about how I owe him thousands of pounds for the cost of raising me… He NEVER returned anything he borrowed from me. So, this time, instead of lending him the money, I offered to buy the guitar from him. It was/is rather battered and wasn’t really worth £22. But it plays well enough, sounds quite nice and I play it quite often. I’ve had it for about twenty five years, I think.

Mine is pretty simple now: wireless > compressor > preamp (with overdrive in the loop) > desk. Powered by two rechargeable batteries.

I've posted these before. They'd cost a smidge more now.

Tonight's

Regarding value, I'm reminded of an article about the new eye-wateringly expensive iPad Pro's I read earlier today on Medium "No matter how I put it, cost is about value for money and anyone finding the new iPad Pro too expensive perhaps isn’t getting enough value out of it, and therefore should opt for a cheaper model. Pro devices are intended for professionals who use them to deliver work and projects, things they can bill for and easily make that money back. Good, top-of-the-line tools cost serious money, regardless of what industry you work in."

There's some expensive basses that have a unique sound -Alembic and Wal for instance - and if you want that sound you have to spend that kind of money. There's also lots of expensive basses that, to my ears,don't have a particularly distinctive or unique tone. That's a whole other discussion/Basschat argument. Expensive Fender-style bass can be the most perplexing sub-category in so much as, strictly in terms of tone, a decent inexpensive model can be hard to distinguish from a boutique example, or indeed a genuine vintage bass. I think it's a mistake though, to assume that all people get from buying a bass is something they need to perform a practical task with. Throughout history musical instruments have been regarded as beautiful objects, imbued with magical properties in many ancient cultures. Not aspiring to the best quality basses for practical reasons doesn't justify dismissing the aesthetic dimension of high-end basses. Also, one of the defining characteristics of modern society is that the things we buy or want to buy are symptomatic of our wider aspirations and how we want to imagine ourselves. If you identify yourself as a bass player then buying basses is very much part of that psychology.

I swear Sam Wilkes head is going to come off one day. I worry for the guy. Louis Cole arranged all the parts for this as well. Just a shame it looks like it was filmed on or by a potato.

Been away, doing stuff. Big life changes, got uninspired, left the instruments in a cupboard. And then i remembered i'm a frikin' bass player baby! Ging 5 strings a go, i blame Nightwish!

That’s a lovely bass. I wonder though, if any of the people who walked past when the photo was taken thought “ah, shame he can’t afford a Fender, maybe one day”.

Let’s just help the fella out… I’ve emailed, you can message me back and I’ll do what I can to help you. If you want a bureaucracy free sale then you can call up BassBros or if it’s vintage stuff, then try Andy Baxter.

My rule is one beer ahead of first set. Well beliw limit but even so after about three hours that's more or less metabolised regardless.

While it is correct that a P bass is essentially a tool, there is a certain type of functional beauty about them! On Saturday, I went to the 60th birthday party of my old housemate, a former pro bass player and music shop manager who now unfortunately has MS. As you might imagine, the place was full of musos (including quite a few pros), with a band of mates playing and a jam session afterwards. The house bass player for the night brought along a couple of 70s P basses that he had just acquired for around £2k each. Everybody who got up wanted to play the Fenders and there was a bit of talk about the various old Fender basses that we all own or have owned. I don't think that anyone there has an out and out boutique bass, but we all own Fenders (or FSO type basses) and there is a lot of affection for that type of instrument.

I got stopped back in say 2012, got the usual where have you been, have you been drinking, when did you last have an alcoholic drink etc, I replied “not being a smartass, Sep 14 2007”. Thank you sir, on your way, have a pleasant evening.

Had the first rehearsal/jam for a brand new originals blues/rock band with the old guitarist from my other band... Weirdly, it was in a church (drummer is the vicar's hubby!) which sounded great as we weren't even loud enough for me to use earplugs. And it shows promise, some good groovy improvisations ranging from almost harmolodic jazz through straight-ahead blues to funk slap-bass rock. Looks like there's some potential!

My 1984 Spoiler bass. Amazing pickups - even Serek is making amazing basses with Activators now but a bit too rich for me.

If you've ever been into a recording studio you probably have tried it, sort of. The drummer may have been in a booth of course but when recording almost all engineers are going to want a clean recording of each instrument/voice as a starting point so it tends to be headphones all round. If the engineer is good and takes time over your monitoring then that's the sound you'll get on stage. In-ears are just headphones, but little. If you want to try it without hassling the rest of the band you can simply try some cheap in ears like the KZ ZS10's plugged into a recorder like the Zoom H1 Using the recorder just as a convenient mic and headphone amp. If you choose the tips for the headphones carefully they should block out most of the band sound (like ear plugs) and then you can feed in the normal band sound but at lower levels. You'll instantly find everything is a lot clearer just because you have reduced the volume.

I think in this case events have just conspired against us when playing at this venue. On the previous occasion the weather was atrocious. At least one of the band who had been booked to play the night before our gig had been unable to get there due to being snowed in. This time around our gig coincided with THE main goth/post-punk event the month - Carpe Noctum in Leeds at the Lending Room, and while there is a healthy audience for our music in the North of England, and I know that as a punter if I had to choose between 3 or 4 reasonably well-known bands at an excellent venue in Leeds complete with a great club night after the live music, or 2 bands (only one I'd heard of) in the back room of a pub in Gateshead, I know which gig I'd be favouring. If I was a promoter I wouldn't be putting on a goth gig the same night as Carpe Noctum unless it was for some really well-known band at a venue in London.

EBay for £95. I already had the Hi Mass bridge and EMG pickups so I put them on it. It sounds really great. It weights a tonne

Reviving an old thread, as one of these arrived for me this week. My old octaver broke. I'd heard great things about the tracking in the Okto, so here we are. Octave side does not disappoint. Goes from dubby to OC-2esque, and tracks really low. Probably justifies the price alone. Genuinely as solid and versatile as any octave I've tried, including the 3 Leaf stuff. Fuzz side is synth city. I won't have much need for that live, but it makes for some proper fun. Low gain sounds very much like demos of the 3 Leaf Doom (though I've never played one). Really unique. High gain is chaos. Not a big fan of the sub-octave distortion, but there's more than enough going on with the synth-fuzz and octave. Love it! For 170 quid delivered from Bass Direct, this seems one of the better bargains out there. Surprised there's not a little more hype, as it ticks many boxes for bassists. Someone had said above they wondered whether they would set it as a single octave fuzz, or like 2 separate pedals. I'm thinking of it as a standalone fuzz alongside a standalone octaver, both of which sound great into an envelope filter. Using it live on Saturday, and can't wait!

The Eagle has landed. It will come as no surprise to anyone that it is all good.

Hey. Wanna share with you my last creation. Pure assembly with a few components found on the second hand market.0 A bit of wood work for sanding the body and the neck, a bit of work in the neck pocket (was a mm larger than the neck so I used a maple veneer on the internal sides of the neck poscket to fill the gap). Plus some oiling of the neck and the body after finishing the sanding. - cedar body (or at least I think it is since is soft and light) - maple + maple neck - added stickers on the inlays to conceal the original black dots - no brands P bass pickups + rosswell jazz bridge pickup (thanks to @orangepeelneil) - cream control knobs (thanks to @orangepeelneil, again!) - adagio string - musiclily tuners and bridge Notes: Nice low action throughout the whole fretboard A bit of neck dive there, unfortunately ... how to fix it? Thanks for lookin!

Hi all, looking for a bit advice. I don't have a bass as yet, and have never played one, but at the age of 58 thought I would give it a go. Just for in the house use, I've got no aspirations of anything beyond that. I'm looking to buy used, and going to have a look at a used Squire p bass (affinity) and Fender rumble 25 on Friday. He's looking for £130, is that a decent price? The price is about what I want to pay tbh. They both look in excellent condition, and says very little use. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

I wouldn’t change a thing till you have worked out if you like it or not

I’ve got the Bell catalog from 77 , here’s the fender page

In 1973 a brand new Fender Precision in natural ash with a maple board was £252 (I know - I lusted over it!!!). It was more than a quarter of my annual salary. If I was now on 40 hrs a week (under 21 yrs old) at minimum wage (£8-60 per hour), I would be earning £16,512 per annum - so on that basis an 18 yr old me could afford a £4,100 bass guitar - thus team built Fender CS (or the far superior Musicman, which would be even less). Bah - the youngsters of today don’t know they’re born lol!!! And before a series of excruciatingly stupid political decisions, following which the exchange rate crashed (thanks Nigel et al) you’d have got these basses for an even smaller proportion of your salary (although the Musicman would have not been as good as offered these days - they’ve upped their product in line with price increases - the Fender’s still the same, just pricier). And please don’t use those CPI calculators - as everyone (should) know, they only work on certain average products and most certainly not luxury goods (high quality musical instruments fit into that category). Just try putting the price at say 1996 of a two bedroomed terraced house in the south and see what the calculator claims it’s worth, based on inflation and then compare with reality…….. in the immortal words of Fleetwood Mac “you might not get the answer that you wanted to” 😀 (Post script - CPI doesn’t include housing costs I think - do the same with RPI - similar outcome I think!!)

About last night: The other day I was approached by Jimi Crutchley (ex-Quireboys, Dead Sea Skulls) regarding the Brooks Fenderbird I had built. He is on a world tour as tour manager with Glenn Hughes. And yesterday the caravan visited De Boerderij in Zoetermeer for Glenn's Deep Purple show. Which is only an hours drive from where I live. Jimi invited me to the soundcheck to put the Brooks Fenderbird through its paces, over Glenn's bass rig. Jimi turns out to be a huge John Entwistle fanatic. And for years he had been looking for a good Fenderbird like the one Peter Cook built for John Entwistle. He had previously bought one from another builder, but that one was very disappointing. And he is very happy that he has finally found a proper Fenderbird!

Tests for drug-driving are becoming as frequent as drink-driving in the UK now if all the Channel 5 cop shows are to be believed. I’m sure some regular drug users remain unaware of how long after using them you can be prosecuted for DUI.

They're Germans.

The Gallis do look interesting, particularly as a quick look at Thomann pricing suggests they are good value for money too.

Both pickups on. Low action and dig in hard with fingers or plectrum. You'd need a Sansamp or similar to get the growl though.

Going through some Bunny Wailer today, this hits the spot

Those tools that try and calculate the cost of an item historically in today's currency are really basic and flawed. A better way to relate it to lived experience would be the proportion of the sale price relative to income. For example, in the early 1960s an imported US Strat would cost about £200. The average weekly take home wage was £16 – so that's about 12 weeks work. Today, through the magic of manufacturing, we can get one for about a month's wage.

When we used to go on tour I was amazed that the guy who did the driving was as much use as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition when it came to packing the van. I suppose it`s like anything, some have skill-sets in certain areas and some don`t, but you`d think that when it`s your day job even if at the start you struggled you`d learn a bit along the way.

There’s often a weird relationship where people with hugely expensive instruments can barely play. I’ve witnessed this many times in vintage guitar shops, or at bass shows. Manufacturing and production in 2924 is so good. The basses you can get for £100 we would have paid almost 5 times as much in the 90s. The £1500 bass I use now is head and shoulders above any vintage instrument I’ve ever played.

We don't do the little dance thing - you get the breathalyzer and if you fail that, you are going to get a free visit to the police station!

L2 Steinberger iirc purchased 1990/1 made me play better because it’s fairly unforgiving

I heartily applaud the modern fashion for writing everything in C and making every deviation from the major scale an accidental.

I managed to steal a few moments for some playing this morning between meetings, and I'm very pleased. Size isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, not much bigger than 1/2 my pedalboard, so that worry has totally gone. Build quality, as with all Boss stuff I guess, is very solid and workmanlike. I only played around in manual mode so far, there's obviously a load of pre programmed stuff in there, but I wanted to see what this will be like in real life for me. The natural tone of the unit is lovely flat, I assume it's not doing much, if anything, but it sounds nice. The amp sims are good, a good range of options which all seem to be quite different. The myriad of effects all seem to be very useable, the range of some is limited a little compared to separates, by the limits of the physical controls, but there is plenty there and it's all useable. Everything I use for my regular tone is there, plus all the extras I use when nobody is looking, like Delays and Reverbs, the Slicer is well cool, and the Synths are really musical, and again, thanks to the limits to some of the settings, it's hard to find a Synth that's unusable, which in my experience is very easy with the likes of an EHX Microsynth. The regular Octaver is VERY OC-2-like, the Polyphonic has a similar vibe too, but tracks properly, which was cool as often the polyphonic ones sound a bit pants. The compressors all sounds different, which was a surprise, but lots to explore for someone that rarely gets on with compressors, unless it's in the studio with someone who knows how to operate an expensive one. The filters, autowah etcs, all very nice, and easier to set up than my MXR, plus there's 4 different core options, unlike the single one on that pedal. I was worried about the ability to stack drives, but as the core tone is so nice, I can achieve that by setting an amp sim to be overdriven and then use the drive section for more drive. Perfect. The different drives and distortions are cool too, will need a proper play to really dial those in. Of course, there is more you can do under the hood to make all the above more cleverer, but from just using the physical controls I can do everything I need and want to do. I'm impressed, very impressed. Does anyone want to buy some pedals?...

Let me guess, in about 5 years time the old version will be highly sought after 2nd hand, with people waxing lyrical about how much better it is than the future current model. I think I'll keep mine and flog it second hand in 2030 for £700.