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As some of you may (or may not) know. I live in deepest darkest rural Bulgaria in a small village with only about 300 people. So imagine my delight when I recently met a guy from the UK who's just bought a house in my village, who is not only a guitarist but also a qualified sound engineer and has his own recording studio in the UK. He's planning on bringing all his gear over soon which comprises of everything you would expect from a good recording studio, including a live state set up. Loads of instruments, several drum kits, mics, and lots of old valvey goodness amps. I think he's going to be my new best friend. 😆

Looking to play King Crimson-ish type music with no expectations, just for fun and to make some noise. Not looking to start a band or even really play out. I got 2 responses, a drummer and a guitarist. We got together today and it was so much fun. Just 2+ hours of improv noise with lots of effects. I really enjoyed it. I think we're gonna do it once a month.

I’m just in from an afternoon slot at a really well attended local multi-band event. Great gig, excellent onstage and FOH sound, and we blooded our new guitarist who played a blinder despite only having three weeks to get up to speed with our set.

Thanks all. A difficult couple of days Sunday to Tuesday, but music is a great healer 🙂

Emergency Exit punk covers band at Wallace Bike Rally in Stirling last night. We were first band on using the other bands PA and drum kit so that was good for us. I took my own bass gear tho. Had dancers on the floor for most songs and lot of applause and whistles after each song which was a bonus. Other band i think were Gun Law but not 100% sure. Great bunch of guys tho and very helpful setting up and making sure we were happy with the PA sound. Their bassist was using a very nice Ric Laredo bass into an Ashdown head and an SWR 610 cab. He also had a Hartke head on top of his cab too but guessing it was a back up. They had driven up from Leeds and have played this gig for past 28 years. WOW. I was using the Godin into Handbox WB-100 and my Mesa SW210/115 cabs. I realised when we started playing that i was getting a bit more distortion than normal and halfway thru Do Anything You Wanna Do i realised i had turned the Gain up at last gig when using my Sandberg bass and the Godin has very hot pick ups. Adjusted for the next song and all was good. Other bands bassist complimented me on my sound and liked the idea of the smaller Mesa cabs compared to his SWR 610. Myself and drummer decided to go in his car (Skoda 4x4 big thing.) My wife also goes to all my gigs except the Blue Angels ones. We finished around 9:45pm which was great and decided a wee Maccy D's was in order and that was a great idea before the drive home which was only an hr. No traffic either way so that was another bonus. Bike Rally audiences are an odd bunch. I think they would rather sit and talk bikes witha beer in hand than watch bands. Always an odd thiing when you are first band on. Not enough booze consumed for guys to dance yet i reckon. Also doing a biker gig in Tomintoul next month with punk band. 4hr drive for me. Fee will just about cover my fuel costs but our singer attends the rally and it was a favour for her. Dave

Great British Tribute Festival at Newcastle Upon Tyne with the Elton John tribute. Proper trek from the midlands but a really good gig. Still currently on the road getting home, waiting for my McDonald’s coffee to arrive…

I previously asked for people’s options on an another thread about Squier Broncos as I was looking for a cheap backup bass to my Vintera Mustang. I was all but ready to order a Bronco and then this little beauty popped up on Bass Bros… for £55 more than a Bronco less shipping. I did something unlike myself and just pulled the trigger almost immediately on the basis that even if it’s not amazing, it’s a backup and will almost always live in its case in the van. I ordered the bass on Tuesday and it was delivered in an incredibly padded box on Friday morning. I gigged it straight away on Friday and Saturday night and I’ve got to say, I’m blown away by this little thing. The finish in particular is beautiful and it’s so easy to play. Possibly the best set up I’ve ever had on a bass, not a single clank or fret buzz, but with a lovely low action. It’s a wider neck than my mustang which took a minute to get used to but otherwise, It was so easy to play out of the box. I think it will likely continue to be my backup as I still think I prefer the Mustang. Strangely, although the Gretsch is a smaller overall length because of the smaller body, It feels bigger than the Mustang and Im finding the Mustang sits more comfortably when playing standing. Again, I find the tone is so nice but, for whatever reason (likely because I’ve been dialling in the Mustang for so long) I find the Mustang just cuts through ever so slightly better with our Amp-less setup. But, I’ll definitely get it out of the van more than I had initially planned! oh, and bonus, my 4 year old had an absolute blast playing with the mountain of bubble wrap whilst I inspected and noodled for 10 mins! Anyway, one happy chappy. These are well worth a punt if a 2nd hand one comes up! Alex

Friday night at The Blue Bell Stoney Stanton in Leicestershire, just up the road from Stoney Cove for all you in the diving fraternity. It's a great little pub and Jade, the landlady is a bone fide Country fan. Went down a storm with the added bonus of my daughter and S-I-L attending as they were up from that London for the w/end. Lots of boogie from the audience and despite our drummer having a gammy leg, we played a blinder. My usual goto gigrig of Mike Lull P4 through the Handbox R400 and matching 1x12. On to Newark next Saturday

This weekend saw me venturing up to Lincoln for the Call of the Wild Festival. I was delighted when I saw the backline because after 20yrs of flitting between Ampeg and Orange, I have recently moved over to Blackstar. I realised that although this was our third gig with the new drummer Andy, it was actually our first rehearsal together. The rehearsal was great which is normally kiss of death. The weather wasn't on our side and with no pride whatsoever, I can confirm that I own absolutely no practical clothes whatsoever. I stopped at a shop and bought an umbrella (colour coordinated with my shoes and car, as you do). The rain came before we went on but we had a fair crowd and it really brightened up quickly during the set. I haven't really used the Thunderbird too much since my Americana days. I like to mix it up and avoid rock style basses for rock groups etc. However, it is a beautiful and lightweight bass that has been with me for nearly 10 years now. I was feeling it, so went with that. Thanks to Jackie Middleton, Mark Ellis and, um, Andy the drummer for these three images.

Third year of the musical "Five, the Dionnes" a show about the famous quintuplets born 90 years ago just a few miles from me. The previous shows were in a large old theatre in North Bay and I posted about them, but this year it was a lower budget fundraiser for the Dionne museum in a smaller hall with seating for about 180 and we had a full house. The seven piece band was squeezed into a corner but since most of us have played the show for all three years we managed very well. Most of the actors were returnees but the two new ones were very good singers and this was the best version we have done, lovely harmonies in many songs. The production is performed the way an old time radio drama would have been done with the actors reading from scripts and into individual mics and playing several characters with sound effects and background music and songs scattered throughout the play. The audience loved it and other than a bit of a bobble in one song I managed OK, two of the numbers start with a few bars of a solo bass riff and I nailed those. The photos were taken during the sound check in the afternoon, I used my Shen SB 100 into my Traynor SB112 and DI into the PA. All in all a good night. 😊

At the George in Doddington. Small pub but really good crowd!

You lucky bulgar you.

Gig without our new keyboard player, first gig in 4 or 5 without him so a good chance to see what he adds / removes from the band. Local pub thats very long and thin so quite a way from the people. I had a nightmare the last gig, the sound was all wrong, couldn't get a sound I liked on the bass, people were complaining about the singers being not loud enough etc, and hated it so I was all for not hating it this time (reminding myself I do this for my own enjoyment). There is a lot of space so setup was easy and I didn't stress anything. Plugged it in and it instantly sounded all good - I had put new strings on the bass, and polished the frets, as well as having the new ME90B, I was in love with the bass sound. The crowd wasn't large but they had a lot of feedback, with responses between songs and dancing once they got drunk enough. Some songs (billie jean etc) really missed the keyboard, and a couple of songs we didn't bother with because they were keyboard heavy, but we also brought some songs back we hadn't played for a while that were keyboard-less and it was nice to do them. It is true to say that noticably in some songs, the keys weren't tramping on the bass, or fighting with the guitar for space, I guess we just have to work out how to arrange those songs. Anyway, very enjoyable gig, and also with 4 instead of 5 on a well paying gig, more money!

My custom fretless

Public Service Announcement had a show at the iconic Hope and Anchor in Islington last night. A drive through London in rush hour traffic certainly wasn't something I was looking forward to, but it was actually a surprisingly smooth journey and parking was easy. Hope and Anchor has played host to some amazing bands such as The Damned (where the New Rose video was filmed) and The Stranglers. Ironically, both bands are playing this weekend at the Stone Valley Festival, which meant a fair number of our target market were unavailable. Baring that in mind, it was a decent turn out, including former England footballer Stuart Pearce. The band played very well, were very well received and shifted a good amount of merch. All in all a very enjoyable evening.

After a difficult week when we lost my mother unexpectedly - saw her Saturday and Sunday morning, leaving her with a cheery “see you next week”, to 9 Sunday evening in A&E talking DNR’s with the doctors 😢 - last night it was a blessed relief to get out to a gig with a great crowd singing and dancing. Sound seemed pretty good though one of the guitarist’s boost setting for solos could probably have done with a bit more. Drummer’s stool broke halfway through a song in the set and he had to finish the night on one of the pub’s chairs as the stool was not repairable. I clearly dug in too hard even with the IEM’s as I have a big old blister on my index finger. https://fb.watch/shD9Bhs2So/?

Ok, no sugar coating the gig. We played outside on the patio. We really don't have a draw in Milwaukee and it shows. I'd say we had a poor turn out. Seems like we only have nice crowds at festivals and fairs where there's an embedded crowd. A little sad. Daryl

The next time someone asks you "why Thunderbird?" just show them this picture.

So tonights gig, because I couldn't get the sound I wanted on the last gig and had a not great gig because of it, I thought I might as well take the ME90B with me. I also have new strings and cleaned the frets. Because obviously I only got the 90b on friday and haven't had much time with it, just a play around last night, I didn't want to go to crazy, but noticed that in preset mode, P1 is a straight(ish) sound with a bit of an amp model, P2 is an overdriven valve amp with dirt and P4 is a wah thing, so I figured I could use those basic tones to get most of what I needed. The keyboard player is MIA tonight, so back to the 4 of us. So for most straight songs I used P1, for something with a lot of dirt I used P2, and for things that were just a bit rocky, I used P2, turned preset mode off and turned of the drive section, for a mid drive level. For funky music I used 4, and found that if you engaged the pedal you got to change the frequency of the filter of the wah and that was huge fun. For Whole Lotta Love, I could go for P2, start without the drive, add the drive in the middle and turn the echo section on, adjusting the delay until it was right (that I managed to do in the song gap - I could have used tap tempo but forgot). for Who Knew, back to P1, then off preset and mod on with a chorus, and just turned the dials up, putting the time to the end it is like a CE1 chorus like I had so it sounded familiar. The only think I missed out on what 'are you going my way' when I normally have an octave, but didn't know we were playing that until it started, and I hadn't selected it (forgot I could set the pedal to octave, until half way through the song). I had a great gig, really enjoyed it, and honestly the sound in my IEMs was so great, sounded just like the bass going through a series of different amps and pedals. It didn't sound even slightly digital and at no point did I not know how to get something I wanted. Love this pedal.

I don't have a degree but I can rescue a mean rubber brick from the bottom of a swimming pool whilst wearing pyjama bottoms if needed.

That was what I said after trying the Cort Space out at Bass Direct. One came up on Gumtree for a sum not unadjacent to £400, although I had a 280 mile round trip to pick it up. So today I went on that journey, braving the imbeciles on the M11 and A14, and picked up the black Space. The seller didn't get on with 5-strings, so was selling it after just a month or so. I'll be able to do a proper back to back comparison between the Space and the Ibanez EHB1265MS with added Aguilar pickup goodness.

Hard to pigeon hole us, it’s a pretty broad mix of country, Americana, a few popular tunes done differently. The main artists we cover are Buddy & Julie Miller, Shawn Colvin, Lucinda Williams, Martina McBride, Thea Gilmore, Kasey Chambers, with a bit of Sheryl Crowe, KT Tunstall, and even Tom Petty thrown in. The NS covers the slower rootsie stuff beatifully.

That has the potential to be great, but maybe you are into reggae and he's into death metal.

A guitar tuned down an octave is a bass, a bass tuned up an octave is a piccolo bass. You hear that guitarists? We will own all the tunings, ALL THE TUNINGS. Mwah ha ha haaa.

Finally got around to creating some bespoke preamp patches for each of my two gigging basses on my B1-4, instead of relying on a generic one size fits all set of preamp patches (clean, motown, presence), which suited one much more than the other. In addition, one of the basses has higher output pups and has benefited from having the Zoom noisegate (ZNR) sim at both the start and end of a patch signal chain. I guess using one of our band PA active speakers (RCF 912A), as my home rig, rather than having a separate practice rig has been a helpful nudge, as I'm getting to hear something a lot closer to my live bass tone but, even so, it's taken far too long for me to get around to making use of this obvious preset capability of a multifx!

We should have been at our favourite venue last night but… our rhythm guitarist had a heart attack two days before. He had a stent fitted and was sent home yesterday and is convinced he will be able to play next Friday.

Just tell people you have a BSc. They won't know it means bronze swimming certificate rather than bachelor of science.

I collected a Nash P bass from @Skin Lewis yesterday lunchtime and thought I’d play it for the first set at yesterday’s gig in Bath. It sounded so good, I carried on til the end and my main bass became my spare. I can’t be the only one to get a new bass and gig it immediately surely?

Sorry to hear about your mum. @WalMan. I lost my Mum suddenly too, she just dropped down dead in the care home one Saturday morning. I console my self that it was instant with no draw out suffering. Good for you for getting out gigging

I think Ampeg have a bit of a reputation problem right now, thanks to their previous generation Class D stuff. That’s why I’m not getting one (yet). Plus, I don’t think it’s a particularly attractive-looking thing. Big, sticky-out knobs, fiddly, fragile-looking little switches, and so on. I can overlook that if the sound is good and it’s going to be reliable, but, a) nobody seems to be able to tell me if they sound any good, and b) they haven’t really been out long enough to have a good measure of their reliability. Additionally, it’s a bit of a harder time to be an amp company. With the rise of modellers, IEMs, etc, less people are buying amps these days in general.

Good point well made! I have yet to find a bass that offers big tonal versatility and also nails that definitive P-bass vibe. My Andy Rogers custom (re-bodied Fender Rascal) comes as close as makes no difference. Closer than my Cali ll SL TM 4 Short but the Sandy brings other stuff to the party. In my experience, unless you're playing stuff that only needs a tonal 'one-trick pony', you're always looking at some kind of compromise. I'm loving what the active Sandy does in my classic rock covers band.

I have these two, both SWR, both very different. The Grand Prix is a relatively simple valve pre. It’s still clean SWR and has the aural enhancer, but it’s warmer than most other SWR gear I’ve owned/tried/used. The Marcus Miller is about a full featured pre as you can get.

Luminlay's for the side dots and why not for the edge markers. Yes, they do make some "lines" for fret marking. Better order directly at Luminlay as you may get some aftermarket badly made copies if not: https://meisterworks.myshopify.com/en-gb/collections/luminlay-products

I knew this thread would be bad for my gas... Is there a rule of thumb for the number of octavers one needs? I'm thinking 1/10 * age + 2.

Acoustic gig tonight. Great venue and staff. TONIGHT! Join us on the patio at MOTOR Bar & Restaurant! 5:30-8:30pm! BBQ & Blues / Music by: She's Right - I'm Left

Indeed. When my old band from uni reformed for the guitarist's 50th we all had, by a strange conincidence, degrees.

I've seen a few over the years and to me it's just a fun gig (If you like the music). I don't care how accurate everything is, it's just the vibe I like. Most punters won't have a clue how close to the originals the music is.