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I've wanted one of these for YEARS and I finally got one. It's a 1988 NT5 with a beautiful pommele bubinga body and stock EMGs. It plays great and balances pretty good too. Just needs a fresh coat of wax to bring out the nice wood grain!

The Tivoli in Buckley on Saturday. If you play there and go to the back stage room, you'll notice a little piece of cardboard with the words "Mind your head Tom" written on it perched just above the doorway. That's from last time we played there in November when I walked into the door frame with the top of my skull which sent me to the floor and gave me some dizziness and a lasting headache. Well, I didn't notice, and I did it again, even worse. My head still hurts today! Anyway, I played OK. We were supporting The Men They Couldn't Hang who have a big following, but I reckon there were less than 100 in, which feels pretty empty in "The Tiv" which is a huge room. It was quite reassuring that the crowd for the headline act was basically the same size as for us. Rescue Rooms in Nottingham on Sunday. This is one of my favourite venues to play, just great in every way. It was an early start - doors at 5, we were on at 6, then The Men They Couldn't Hang on at 7, all done for 9pm. The room was packed and we went down really well. Loads of compliments, loads of merch sold etc. so job well done. I thought this photo was cool, even if I do look a bit confused. I'll blame that on the concussion

By general band member agreement on the night, Mustang Sally's gig on Saturday was 'the worst we've done', but paradoxically the punters loved us and the 80-year old birthday boy whose party it was seemed delighted to hand over the wedge at the end. I've been trying to work out what went wrong to make us feel as we did - we're normally very tight. The venue didn't help - a large sports hall with high ceiling and a solid floor - took ages to get the PA right, by which I mean not feeding back randomly - after a generous 2 hour set-up. Maybe the other thing upsetting our vibe was the over-ambitious inclusion of several new numbers which I'm ashamed to say were under-rehearsed but thrown into the mix on the basis that 'the endings and verse/chorus structures will sort themselves out'. That's a recipe for disaster, as we found out. 'Footloose' is a speedy number, but not SR71 Blackbird-on-afterburner fast, leading to a triple- instead of a double-coda then a collapse into a silence that would have gone down a storm in a Trappist monastery. As for 'Money for Nothing' with me on bass+lead vocals, I actually got it all right only to find that after the last verse about banging on the bongos our gitrist had forgotten the need for a final chorus and had gone straight into that riff instead, leaving the rest of us wondering how to stop, but no worries, it just dribbled out like an old guy's piddle in a handy hedge after one too many Mackesons... Perhaps I'm being too hard on us - it was first gig for a month due to cancellations, I was feeling very tired and wobbly due to some meds I'd had to take that day, there's angst about the new PA which some members feel is no improvement on the old one but £4k dearer; in the end I guess it was just another day at the office, to be forgotten as quickly as possible!

Normally the requests I get are physically impossible. Have you seen the size of a double bass scroll? Once when I had a gig with an Elvis tribute, a guy came up to us and asked if we would do a request, and could we please play 'Blossom Ar$ehole' . Blank looks all round. "Sorry, we don't know that one" . "You must do. It was one of his greatest ever hits". "Can you sing us the first few bars?" "Weel Blossom Ar$ehole what's wrong with me, I'm itchin like a man on a fuzzy tree ... "

I made an agreement to buy several guitars once from someone. Agreed a price and a date and time to collect. Someone else phoned up and offered more. Thankfully the seller told me before I’d travelled but I explained how what they’d done is morally wrong and that I was disappointed that they would act this way, as I certainly wouldn’t. Personally, I’d take no joy in doing this to someone else but I know people do. The older I get the more you see karma at work…

🔔🎬 I have nearly recovered from my decades old irrational loathing of this bloke and you post this 😀

You're depping with a band. . . . and you're saying you won't play certain songs? IMO the job we take on when we agree to dep in a band, is to play their set to a level that they don't notice their regular bassist is missing. . . . period. That includes all the songs on the list. Whether we like the numbers or not is irrelevant.

Just logging all my gear and realised I now have 87 basses and 10 guitars. 😲 Should I buy 3 more basses to hit the magic 100 total? Or sell the 10 guitars and concentrate on basses only? 🤔 First world problems and all that jazz.... 🤣

There's another all female Purple tribute, also very good indeed, Diva Purple!

Not a clue who most of these folks are!

Several influences already mentioned but couldn't leave Norman out.

JSB - the father of the bass line

It's all her fault. Watching her perform 'Can The Can' on TOTP in 1973 did something to me.

Edit: John Taylor from Duran Duran, my teenage heart throb. Even in 2020ish my bass teacher asked why I play in the style I do and the simple answer is watching John Taylor on TV in the 80s and copying as best I could. I even had a white Aria bass 😍

Depped for a pro Pink tribute band at a great venue in Newcastle. Here’s a little headstock footage of the one “bass solo” esque moment plus a rocking end to the song. FullSizeRender.MOV

I can't see the discussion, but my word, being a gent would be an absolute struggle in response to that if it was me.

Right now, for originals bands the financial entry level to getting your music out to the public has never been lower in every respect. That means the cost of decent instruments as well as making and "releasing" a recording. Of course that means that everyone who can is now doing it, so the signal to noise ratio is now greater than ever. In the past I don't think that not having much money has ever been a real barrier to making music for me. Lack of it might have meant that I couldn't always do things exactly how I wanted, but I always found ways to at least make music and get it out to the public. Some of it might have meant making lifestyle choices that others might not find palatable, but those of us who a truly driven to make music will always find ways of doing so.

Another massive influence from my youth is Robbie

Sometime you can over think things - I am guilty of that and have been the pain-in-the-bottom 'that didn't work and this was too fast and that could be tighter' voice in the van on the way home 😂. Bottom line is they enjoyed, you got paid and the things that didn't work as well are things that can be polished and fixed.

Never Ending Tory - Limahl

From 2 very different musical genres, but both played fretless Ps. Kenny Passarelli and Percy Jones, my teen bass idols. My default ever since has been a fretless P.

Can't believe this guy hasn't featured yet:

OVERSHARE! 😳 Mark

I just picked up an older-model RCF ART 735-A. I've previously owned a 732-A (1x12") and that was too loud... so I imagine this 735-A (1x15") is going to destroy everything 🤘 Size comparison with a QSC CP12:

Tried to start a Motley Crue tribute band up several years ago, we really were trying to replicate them musically and visually, after lots of auditions for the drummer, Tommy Lee, we had to give up as none of them had a really large penis 😄

If anyone here could it would be me, and I don't. The natural response of the electric bass doesn't go low enough to need them. For that matter even when the PA has them the electric bass channel strip should be high passed no lower than 60Hz. Otherwise the gosh awful cacophony that sounds like a teenager with a 5,000 quid system in a 500 quid car driving past can be the result.

I think an appreciation of Jamerson is something that comes later in life. My icons as a weird obsessive teenager were the aforementioned Stuart Zender and Flea; it was a long time before I came to appreciate playing as relatively low-key and subtle as most of Jamerson's stuff, even though I'd been listening to old Motown and Atlantic compilation records since I was wee small.

Not a great pic but it's from last Friday's gig in Northampton.

Barry Adamson from Magazine Norman Watt-Roy Bootsy

Bruce Foxton, I had a real "we`re not worthy" moment when I met him.

Hey @Gwilym, the bass I’ve had 2nd longest is the MTD 535 I bought off you many years ago.

the Meg White of bass

Valve amps have little magic but many components that tend to distort/compress in a musically pleasing way when pushed hard. A valve amp rated at say 100 watts RMS, at 0.1% distortion can only give 141.4 watts RMS when fully driven into distortion (i.e.close to a square wave). Also a bass cabinet should not be driver close to its thermal rating. If you push a speaker so hard that it "colours" the sound, you are probably close to blowing it.

I didn’t buy a bass until I was 20, I started out as a drummer. But even before I started playing bass I always liked the playing of Jean-Jacques Burnel of The Stranglers and Paul Gray from The Damned, and with Eddie & The Hot Rods and always Colin Moulding (XTC / The Dukes Of Stratosphear) Once I started playing I dug more into the great Jamaican players like Aston Barrett or Flabba Holt, and all the Stax and Motown players. Never had any ‘gods’ though. Don’t believe in them!

No, I've only got 7 basses and I'm on dicey ground as it is. I'll choose more wisely next time! 🤣

...or at the very least, a much bigger sofa for the family photo.

I still have the 1985 Stingray fretless I bought in 1987 or 88 from Julia Fordham’s bass player. I’ve been through many different fretted basses but this one has always felt and sounded just right to me.

When I saw them, I did a little bit of jizz.

Has to be James for me. My brother’s love of Motown throughout the 60’s left an indelible impression on my musical journey in my teens, and it was the bass on these records that had me hooked more than anything else. I was the odd kid at secondary school who liked what many thought of then as ‘girl’s music’. Most of my mates were into dreadful prog and rock , whereas I loved soul, r’n’b and rock and roll along with a lot of chart stuff too. Stayed the same for decades, and hearing James ( and his contemporaries like Bob Babbit) still has the same effect on me today.

The mighty Familyman Barrett. Then in my later teens i discovered Stanley Clarke

13 more basses and 90 more guitars. Why restrict yourself?

That and the buyer IMHO. As bad as each other.

This sort of carry on makes me 🤮