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It was pretty cool! 2nd largest crowd I've performed for (22k) Music festival in Belfast, 45 minute headline slot. Used G&L L2000 into HX Stomp and JH Audio phones. Sounded great! Had a near miss with the pyro tho like an idiot! VID_23720430_022045_154.mp4

Hurtsfall opened the second day of the BlaqkhOlesun Festival at the Alhabra in Morecambe on Saturday. Nice big venue with a massive backstage area complete with a maze of Spinal Tap-esque passageways leading between the dressing rooms and the stage. Luckily we managed to avoid the Hairy Bikers procession on the way there and arrived with plenty of time to soundcheck. Method Cell who are also from Nottingham set off slightly later than us, got caught up in it all and arrived just minutes before the doors opened. Great PA and foldback system so there was no problem going straight from my Helix into the PA and we had an excellent on-stage sound (and according to everyone we spoke to sounded great FoH too). In fact not a single band used any backline, and it was definitely noticeable in terms of getting good balanced FoH mixes for all the bands. Also used my Nux Wireless system for the first time at a gig and it seemed to perform flawlessly. Only downside with playing first is that we were on-stage at 4.20 when the venue wasn't as full then as it was later in the day. However most of those who had managed to get there early were down the front dancing and several people mentioned to us afterwards that they were glad they had made the effort to be there from the beginning and had caught our set because they really liked us. The new intro music worked well although we were on stage too soon IMO. More practice needed there. There were people singing along with the songs. The current set has both our slow numbers in it which is something that always worries me as it has the potential to ruin the flow, but both were especially well received. Sold a decent amount of merch and made a lot of new fans. I have to say that I enjoyed the whole afternoon/evening, with all the bands being excellent, something that rarely happens at these sorts of gigs. Discovered two new to me bands that I'll want to see again, and Novus who I'd seen before and wasn't that impressed with, have undergone a line up change and presented a new and (IMO) improved more electronic sound. Auger, who headlined were as usual absolutely brilliant. Completely shattered at the end of the day so it was a good thing that we;'d booked a Hotel to stay over and took a leisurely drive back on the Sunday. And we're doing it all again tonight, only this time it's a local gig at The Bodega in Nottingham supporting US band Spotlights. Obligatory band photos:

1:40 Sunday afternoon slot at Home Farm Fest was a bit weird. Most of the other acts were nice n chilled for a post lunch snooze. But we went down well, some peeps got up and danced even though they wouldn’t know our songs. The PsychoDahlias 3rd gig so far but were well rehearsed and getting gig fit. A few more festivals and headliners over the summer and autumn. I’m beginning to enjoy gigging again.

Played in Ipswich Saturday night 10am-1am, started off quiet but soon filled up, apparently punters were very complimentary on the whole. Highlight of the night for me though was we play "Hate to Say I Told You So" cuts to the bass break, singer says on bass introduces me, guy in the crowd opposite shouts "S**t name!" 🤣 Add to that the A14 being closed on the way home fell into bed at 2:30.

Nothing like as glamorous as some of the gigs you folks have been doing over your weekend: I did two dep gigs with a covers band (Backtracking). It was at a local fete (worse than death); both days playing two one hour sets 12-13:00, 14-15:00. We had one end of a massive marquee, so much more space than I am used to but directly on the grass (except for the drummer, who got a little platform made of pallets). Gates opened to the public at 10:00, so we had to unload before then and couldn’t get out until about 15:30, which made it a longish day for me with a 40 minute drive each way. Pics show set up on first day (still waiting for action shots). Day 2 I brought a ground sheet and a sheet of ply to keep the damp and grass mulch off my gear. We originally set up to stand just out side the tent but British summer weather intervened and we had to drag everything inside just before the first set. We were running off a very noisy generator (located just the other side of the tent from me), which struggled a bit: every so often my amp started to fade. Gear: Blackstar U700 head (recently acquired from BC), back up Warwick Gnome iPro, Barefaced Two10S, Boss wireless, Maruszczyk Elwood 4a medium scale and Nordstrand Acinonyx V1 (back-up). DI into the desk. I was really pleased with the Blackstar /Two10 combination for this kind of 60s-80s cover work. The ability to change the amp voices at a flick of a switch, or press of a button on the pedal, is fantastic. The drive settings are useful as well: overdrive/distortion/fuzz. I don’t know how accurate the voicing is but it sounds really good to my ears and the band’s sound man as well. I can’t wait to use it on a gig with my LFSys Monza. Despite the weather we had a group of people watching us and got a lot of positive comments afterwards. Some brave souls even danced for a while. The band picked up about a dozen potential bookings. The sax player had to cry off because of a lurgie, so there was some hasty rearranging of songs and some had to be dropped. They also brought one in that I hadn’t played before but I think I did OK given only one rehearsal before the gig. I had chord sheets on my iPad on a stand to compensate for my aging memory. Weirdly we were tighter on day one, then on day two but it was only about 13C most of the time on Sunday. I was glad I didn’t get the memo about wearing Hawaiian shirts: four of them freezing and me in a sweatshirt and padded jacket, and I was still cold! Lol.

We played in Beverley yesterday at the wonderful Sun Inn, which is now a monthly gig for our acoustic duo ‘Milestone’. Arrived at 4.30 pm to set up, and it was already busy. The gig runs from 5.30 till 8pm, with us doing 3x40 minute sets of 100% audience requested songs. We had the most ever number of requests, and managed to play most of them, although we were pleased the lady who’d asked for Britney’s ‘Hit me baby one more time’ had to leave before we attempted it. Other songs requested included Springsteen’s ‘I’m on fire’, ‘Broken stones’ and James Taylor’s version of ‘How sweet it is’ which doubled as a request for some JT and Motown. This is one of those special gigs where everything is just spot on - a great audience, brilliant staff etc, and fantastic landlords Paul and Del who really care about music. ( Del even said we should get there a bit earlier next time and he’ll serve us one of his legendary Sunday lunches, or Yorkshire Tapas!) Looking forward to our July gig.

There doesn't seem to be a thread for this particular combo, so let's see 'em. Either black bodies with gold hardware etc, or gold bodies with black hardware etc. Wait, that's not my bass! Except I couldn't leave it alone, now it has full gold pickup covers and a brass nut. Short of replacing the frets with gold ones, and using gold coloured strings, I think I'm done. Over to you...

After seeing the name on a zillion tour itineraries, I finally got to play at Dingwalls in London on Saturday with Roxy Magic. It's not a venue I associate with tribute bands and I was worried that we'd battled our way into the dark and twisted heart of the metropolis for the obligatory micro-crowd. Not so. A buzzing room, stuffed full of Roxy Music diehards, it seemed. To add a little bit of WTF-ness, the sound engineer turned out to be Phil Manzanera's guitar tech, so our poor old guitarist was nervous, to say the least. It was loads of fun, soured ever so slightly by the epic trek back to The Black Country. A cup of tea and a couple of slices of toast and marmalade and I was more than ready for bed, tired but happy.

Four and a half gigs in three days for me - famine and feast style! The half-gig was a solo effort at 08:00 last Friday morning. Ever since my wife stopped driving last year I've ferried her to her Rotary club breakfast meeting at 07:30 every Friday in Dorchester. I initially sat in a corner at the meetings and did a crossword, but later realised that looked a bit churlish, so I joined the club - not really my thing at all, but... New members are encouraged to do an introductory presentation about themselves, so mine was entitled 'How I failed to become a Rock Star!', recounting my year on the road in a van with my band ('Sweeney') in 1972 with all the horrors of sequential gigs as far apart as Bath, Lincoln and Deal, breakdowns, band rows, the business side of trying to get gigs and at least break even, how the music business works, etc etc. I finished my story by playing 'One Step Beyond' on my sax to a backing track. The reactions were priceless, ranging from 'thank god for something different' to sheer horror at the sight of me capering around the aging members blasting out the Madness classic. That same Friday evening Mustang Sally had a birthday gig in the posh room at the Mere social club. Our BL had found a 20-something lad to dep on rhythm in place of our suddenly-departed (flounced out) previous lead guitarist - he did OK, bless him. Our KB guy lugged his best instrument along (split 88 note job) which sounded really good when thumping out the bass lines in the three sax numbers that I do, so that was a bonus and a lifesaver setlist-wise, as we couldn't do any lead-guitar-centric numbers, an instant loss of 6-7 songs. On Saturday we had two back-to-back gigs - a beer fest in Gillingham - 2-4pm, followed by a ladies' rugby post-tournament party also in Gillingham, 6.30 - 9.00. Both went very well indeed with the same lad depping on guitar. Nice to see some very fit female rugby players giving it large on the dance-floor! On Sunday we were booked in an afternoon slot (1.15 - 2.30) in the beer tent at the Gillingham & Shaftesbury agricultural show, again appreciative audience, but with a different dep; this guy was a 35 YO music teacher and a proper lead guitarist, who'd been in this band before and knew almost all the numbers. He'd certainly get my vote as a replacement in the unlikely event of a democratic vote... So in summary, 4.5 gigs in three days, 450 miles and 10 hours driving, 8.5 hours playing, three cans of Red Bull, 4 Snickers bars, 1 Asda cheese sandwich and a dozen cheesy numbers sandwiched between some slices of good stuff. Got to keep telling myself that this is an emergency band survival/rebuild situation so I must be grateful that we're still functioning at all!

I found a bunch of old band-related stuff in the loft about a year ago and amongst all the detritus was this set list with a pithy little aide-mémoire attached. I've partially redacted it for the more sensitive members of the forum...

On Saturday night I was out with the covers band, Top Deck, at The Holly Bush, Marehay, Derbyshire. It was only our second gig with Elliott (on Flying-V) as our second guitarist . He’s the third we’ve had in two years. The previous one had to retire through ill-health, the one before that we sacked because of his persistent drink-driving. Fingers crossed we can keep Elliott for a while. It all went well although we were nearly upstaged by the bar manager parading her pet chicken (not sexy slang). I used a Mustang PJ through a Markbass LMIII and Barefaced Midget T.

My USA Sterling, I picked this up from @Happypants September 2022 was a long time search bass for me after I tried one in the early 90’s I preferred the overall feel and tone to the stingray but at the time I was recording with a stingray and didn’t want to upset the apple cart. Got the full works, string mutes, a beautiful Birdseye maple neck and the ceramic pickup. No matter what happens this is my fall back never sell bass. cheers Jason

We played a seven band gig in Gloucester last night at the New Inn... As it's pedestrianised I brought fx and amp on a trolley from car park. We were on early, 2nd band, and I decided to use the supplied rig of Ashdown combo and extension speaker. My slightly overdriven Helix patch sounded most excellent into it - crunchy and satisfying with with enough twang to allow slaps'n'pops to cut through. It was the 2nd gig with our new guitarist, and this time there were no mistakes at all - we all played beautifully, including a once rehearsed Dead Kennedy's cover ("Moon Over Marin") to finish. There were no rotten tomatoes, no hostile crowd, nobody looking to give us a serious kicking for a change which was nice. A couple of people remarked on my bass (Parker) and said I didn't play completely craply! There was, however, a weird tree in the middle of the stage-front which meant only my trousers could be seen from most angles (look carefully!)

Very glad it's not just me that does that! Same here - I'm in charge of printing set lists for everyone, and I do one for them and a separate one for myself with messages about all the stuff I might have forgotten, like "Tone full up", "retune to E", "You play the intro on this one" etc etc. It's not foolproof, though! It seems you're among friends here!

I did that last week - tuned down for 'I Fought the Law' and failed to go back to E for 'Town Like Malice'. What's worse, despite the solo bass intro I didn't notice until the last note of the song. 😃 It may be time for me to move to Ukelele.

Ek is a carpetbagging tosser of the highest order. In 2013, Q magazine did an article about streaming and it showed that although (allegedly) Spotify was (possibly) not making a profit, it was however making $73 million a month from the adverts. A month. Now, here we have this guy who is making more from leeching off musicians in a year than Paul McCartney has made in his whole life (by being arguably the most successful songwriter in history) saying things like "if musicians want to be paid more, they should put out more music," "the cost of content is almost zero." Almost comically tone deaf. Now for the fun. This utter melt then brings in the 1000 streams threshold to basically hold on to our cash and get the interest on it, or just not pay you at all. Oh wait, there's more!! He's actively lobbying governments to reduce the payout rate for musicians, yet has 300 million quid to sponsor Barcalona's stadium in a bid to bail them out of their ludicrously over leveraged position that saw Messi have to leave the other year. Wait! There's even more! He's sacking almost 20% of the Spotify staff as a cost saving measure. He can dress it up any way he wants, but the simple facts are there. They're making more than a billion dollars a year and we're the ones who are being taken for chumps by this soulless, snivelling, jumped up, tone deaf tosser. The main problem is that I have no idea how we get rid of him and his ilk. All the artist advantages that people like Peter Grant (who managed Led Zeppelin) fought for in the 50s and 60s are gone after being eroded by massive companies like Live Nation. We're not being paid even remotely fairly and add that to venues taking merch cuts and soon the wheels are properly going to come off the whole industry.

decided to tweak the drive section a bit! Swollen pickle and dba germanium filter out and boss Hm2w and Seamoon grind machine in also simplified the amps I’m using in the kemper using mainly a Hiwatt now with some GK sprinkled in for the cleans oh also added in a boss ps-2 for so weird pitch delay stuff I want to start doing between songs to fill space

Belated post, been waiting for some media from Mrs Scalpy who is also the female singer in the band and essentially band manager, promoter and video editor. Really good fun gig with the Hey Yahs at Lyde Court in Hereford, a room often seen in function band promo material with various agencies. We were able to set up the night before, after we'd mopped up the little owl poop all over the stage, apparently they nest in the eaves! The gig was for a local theatre company raising money for their next show- Footloose, so that was an obvious choice for the set list. Being thespionic they were all out with costumes and dancing, so great fun. The venue has a tremendous FBT in house rig and we had our first choice sound guy on hand- especially useful with a 5 piece horn section. Just one of those red letter gigs, happy days. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02M3NCEgwPchDirAkEQ98dXB3mRZHDmajYQghtPQcuP7cmgKagzdhdW2N63KGtTcAql&id=100009137232962&notif_id=1717962253558692&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif

Played on Friday night. It was ok... We were the opening act for 4 bands at the Red Lion in Bristol. We were told to arrive at 5, but said we couldn't get there till 6 for work reasons. Just as well really. Nothing was set up, and the two bands between us and the headliners didn't arrive till 6:30, with our stage time of 7:15, so they got line checked and we had a bit of a sound check. The available backline for me was a Fender Rumble 100, old style one with what I think was a 12" speaker. Not enough to do anything against the 4x12 one of our guitarists was going through really, so my stage volume was nonexistent. I also rely on my amp's valve drive, so I took the line out from my ABM-600 and put it into the return of the Rumble. I was also a bit squashed at the side. Not quite enough room to manoeuvre, so I was side on for almost all of our set. And we played to all of about 7 people, who did seem to enjoy it, so not terrible. Plus the sound man insisted on an encore. Didn't manage to watch the other bands, they didn't come watch us and the beer garden was nice, so we had a chat. The promoter really likes us and wants to get us on a more fitting bill. Got £50 too, which is better than we were expecting!

It was actually Friday night, but close enough. Played with Nine Lives at the Butchers Arms in Inverurie. An odd night - crowd waxed and waned, busy moments, quiet moments. Thankfully it was busy towards the business end of the show (why do people turn up with 5 songs to go at 12.30 and then get all "awww" when you announce it's the last song at like five to one? Why is it a surprise to you that we'd be finishing at 1am when we started at 10pm?) Anyhoo, this gig was significant for my first pub wireless gig and yes, after using it for sensible, constructive reasons (getting out front for the sound check) I got up to no good. When I wasn't wandering across to the guitarist for a bit of a duel during solos, I was off into the crowd. Learned the hazards of this - this guy insisted on putting his arm around my shoulder and in doing so, he knocked my A tuner (how's that for aim? Not the G, not the E, the friggin' A) and the song started sounding fruity. Well luckily he'd somehow managed to knock it about a semitone out so once I figured it out, I had to move everything up a fret on the A string. Thankfully it was "Highway to Hell", so not a taxing song to recalculate on the fly. Anyhoo, it was a lot of fun and things are coming together nicely with the new singer. Gear - G&L Tribute LB-100 then Yamaha BB1200 into Markbass Mini CMD121P IV and New York 121

Lads... I lived in San Francisco in the 90s. It's where i really started playing seriously and collecting. When i moved to london in 2003, i couldn't bring all my basses with me. I sold a bunch, but this fella was one of my first so i left it with a buddy to hold. Well 20+ years later that fella visited me here in Dublin and I asked him if he'd be willing to send this over Im more interested in the bridge than the bass itself. I think it will be perfect for. A project im doing. I bought this at Guitar Centre on the Sunset Strip in LA in the early 90s. Subsequently i got my first fender and put a kahler whammy bridge on this one So please to see it again! Needs a cleaning/oiling and new strings but it does seem to be making bass noises. Possible issue with the High eq pot. Back in the fold...

This is finally out after recording it last year. The video editing is slightly circumspect but I’m pretty pleased with how it sounds. There was some pressure as the engineer is one of the house guys at AIR and the bassist they used previously was John Giblin (RIP) Gear used was a G&L LB100 with chrome flats, Markbass vintage pre, Markbass lmt500 head and Aguilar db112 cabs.

Once the facets were done I then used a spokeshave, and sanding blocks to get the length of the neck more or less to its final shape. Today I started on the transition. I find it easier that way, taking the transition down to the neck, rather than doing the transition first. I can see the curves better for some reason. Here's the development of the headstock transition. I also made a quick start on the heel transition. Here it is unstarted..... One of the last jobs to do on the neck is drilling the holes for the tuners. (I'm pretty pleased with the walnut veneer on the back of the headstock 😁)

It feels like cheating. I feel as though I should be doing it freestyle, with only my keen luthier's eye and maybe a beret..... For some reason I thought most builders just sort of went for it, rather than the slightly over-engineered process that I go through. Either way, it's really a great technique. Not fool-proof, but probably as close as you can get with neck carving.

Hanging Around - The Stranglers (double whammy)

When I play badly our PA guy has been known to mute me. In a loving spirit of fellowship of course 😅

This one? She's on my lap as I'm typing, but is scared of bass maintenance so was NOWHERE NEAR! (She's not scared of basses, unless they're lain flat / being worked on?!) Nor were the other two! (Chocolate is the 'dog voted most likely to eat strings' out of the lot of them tbf).

Dug these out for the thread.

Travis have done a fun version of this with Mark and Lard so it definitely can work in this format.

The Yamaha powered speakers are actually quite good, BUT you are right in your assessment of how power and maximum SPL are derived. I am (mostly) familiar with how these seemingly incredible numbers are derived and as you suggested they are too good to be true in the context of the bigger picture of pro audio (at least the pro audio industry that I grew up designing in). You have to look at the actual specs and it will become more clear: The clarity becomes more obvious when you recognize that some years back, Yamaha shifted from their own in-house solutions (which were pretty good but did suffer from some reliability and support issues) to what I consider the gold standard SMPS/class D solution provided by ICEPower. They are using the 700AS2 power module, which at 4 ohms delivers between 800 and 850 watts RMS with only one channel driver (the LF channel) because the HF channel load is virtually zero for all intensive purposes. Since I have run extensive testing on this family of modules and was actually one of the beta evaluators of the module (back when I developed the original Subway D-800 in 2014). The continuous power rating is 850 watts RMS for the LF and 100 watts RMS for the high frequency (limited within the DSP), for ~950 watts RMS system power. Now, taking the peak power of 950 watts rms (Ppeak - 2x Prms) and you have 1900 watts peak, rounded up for "dynamic" marketing speak modifier) and you have 2000 watts "peak dynamic power" For the SPL calculation, they clearly say maximum PEAK SPL, so doing the calculations backwards using peak metrics and IF Yamaha is using peak for SPL as 4x RMS (customary in passive consumer PA speakers) that yields a speaker of 100dB/1W/1M calculated with no power compression assuming it was an unpowered cabinet. The problem with the above is that we are 3dB too high because program power is a made-up number, peak is really 2x the rms value, the cabinet now must be 103dB/1W/1M PEAK SENSITIVITY for this calculation to work out. I would easily believe 100dB/1W/1M (this really is a pretty good speaker with reasonably premium components) but I wouldn't take 103dB/1W/1M at face value without more investigation. Since we customarily use (in my world) or used to use (the marketing world) RMS metrics for sensitivity and SPL, correcting to RMS metrics yields 100dB/1W/1M average sensitivity which is awfully high but "possible". My better guess would be 98dB/1W/1M real world but I don't have one to test. Therefore the CALCULATED maximum average SPL for this speaker will be somewhere between 133dB/950W/1M (assuming they calculated using the 4x multiplier that the prosumer audio folks tend to favor. My educated hunch is that it's between 130 and 133dB but I don't have all of their spec footnotes. I do these calculations an awful lot, it's pretty easy to see what's going on when you live it.

Thanks for the review - deep, warm, definition, clarity, all good. Mine should be here in a few weeks. I've ordered it without a tweeter, I won't need it. I've also had a few of their 10" offerings and am currently running a Super Compact. I can't wait to have their 10" tone in a bigger cab! Rob

Revision2 ... closer to a flyrig. Much to my amazement (and delight) my M-VAVE MIDI pedal connects over bluetooth to the HX Stomp. Replacing the Morningstar MC6 and removing the MXR Octave (I'm finding the HX pitch shift blocks work well enough for me) means the layout fits on a smaller board (OK, it overhangs ... must find an alternative at some point) and is lighter then Revision 1 (A few posts earlier). The left three M-VAVE switches are tap->select snapshot; the left two are long press -> select next/previous preset; the rightmost M-VAVE switch is tap->tap tempo, long press -> tuner. The VEXPRESS into the M-VAVE sends MIDI to control effects levels. The M-VAVE has its own internal rechargable battery. The 3 HX Stomp switches select effect on/off. I might make something like the Pedalnetics Helauxy Duo Mini to add switches 4&5. Sam x

Me and trousers and bass and Ashdown!!!

A familiar venue for us last night at a working mens club. For some reason the stars aligned with the PA, being way louder than it was in a smaller venue a couple of weeks ago. Also after complaining for a while that he wasn't loud enough for a few weeks, and me pointing out nothing changed, the drummers singing was loud again (ie, peaking on the input meters) confirming my belief that he just wasn't singing as loudly as he had previously. Anyway, sound good, they had redone the stage to be deeper but narrower so it was a tighter fit, but still nice to have an actual stage, and almost everything went well, a few random mistakes and I felt we did too long, it gets sloppy at the end, the idea of adding new songs is to change our set, not extend it! And who knew, getting moondance on track is actually really tricky when the singer removes one bar from it! TBF though, we have only played it about 150 times.

Good one last night in Queensferry, great venue. Montitor sound was great until the ****ing drummer complained about too much bass and vocals. The sound man took that as “take all the bass and vocals out of the monitors” and it all went to s***. Anyway, sounded good out front apparently 🤘🏻

Last night's Bendricks Rock gig was right up in the Rhondda at a big social club. Excellent stage and we had a dressing room with enough space for empty cases and still sit down. Even our own loo! Fortunately we decided to bring the bigger PA although the smaller one would probably have managed. We were standing in for another band who cancelled in good time and gave our details to the venue. Thanks! First few songs affected by nerves, but then we settled down. To be honest we need to work on song structure, we play a lot of songs with unusual structures and weren't too tight on a few. Even so, they were really into the music, especially the sabbath/purple/Zeppelin songs. Our setlist is spot on for the rock loving valleys. We played until 11:30. One of the guitarists said 'I get paid to set up and take down. The playing is why I do it and I'm happy to go all night'. This got posted on our Facebook, doesn't do the lights justice.

It was my sister’s 40th birthday party yesterday and naturally she asked my band to play, because we can play songs people know with just enough competence that they recognise them. The keys player has a Behringer XR18 desk but not a clue how to use it, so me, the guitarist and drummer all took turns to get it to work with some very glitchy software, and after an hour of fighting it, gave up. We ended up borrowing an unused Soundcraft desk from my mum’s local church and suddenly within minutes had a functioning PA we could all understand 🤣 Once I’d had a beer and calmed down we managed to play two great sets with a lovely, lively crowd, and I have taken the decision to (try to) permanently liberate the desk from the clutches of the Lord JC…

A charity fundraiser for a local brain tumour charity at Southwold Arts Centre in Suffolk, with Elton Joel. First theatre show in a while after a string of festival dates. Not a huge stage so I opted for my Markbass traveller rig - LM3, 2x10 and 1x12 cabs. After a series of shows using just my Yamaha BB604 I used my 1970 P bass for most of this one and it sounded lovely. I’ve missed that sound! Lovely audience, cool venue and a really enjoyable evening. Three hour drive home aided by late night McDonald’s coffee stop and loud banging house music on Radio 1 to keep me awake.

A 60th BD party at a social club on the outskirts of York last night. Normally I’m not a fan on ‘celebratory’ gigs but it turns out a number of the guests had supported us at bikers rallies around the patch so we had a cracking night. One thing though - why did we have to share the dressing room with a hoard of balloons (that were nothing to do with the event)…?

Little update on mine. Cannot express how GOOD the OC-2 and OS sound going into some Chorus on the Quad Cortex, learning to love bass synth again 😁

I play a couple of songs where i need crib notes for keys. One i drop D (Into the Valley by Skids) and once had it in my head that it was D# rather than D and if you know the song you play the riff between open D and D on A string (5th fret) so that was fun but i honestly don't think anyone even noticed incl the band. Other songs i have the key next to the song in set list as we've done it in different keys over the yrs and can never remember what one we now do. Dave

You are welcome. You might also want to look on Talk Bass, as there are masses of posts on modding Broncos on that forum. However, some of the parts mentioned are hard to find outside the USA. WRT changing the pickups: you don’t have to solder if you keep the original pots etc. You can drop a Stratocaster rail pickup in. To wire it, cut the original lead close to the pots (leave enough length to be able to work with it while avoiding breaking the original solder connections).There should be a white (hot) wire and black (ground) wire. Colours can vary but ground is generally black; it will go to the back of the volume pot normally. Strip a bit of the shielding off the original wires and do the same for the new pickup wires (if not already done). Get a small screw type electrical connector block with two connectors (you normally buy them in a strip and cut off the number of connectors you need). Then just use it to connect white (hot) pickup wire to white original wire and black (ground) pickup wire to black original wire. It should work fine and you can change pickup again without soldering.

Not a pro1. That's a custom ( aka MK1). Looks like a nice one too. £7k isn't far off the mark these days. In fact this is about the cheapest one out there today. From the wear on the knobs, it's Wal & Pete Stevens era not a Paul Herman. Late 80s? There are some silly prices out there eg a fretless custom on reverb for £12k and a nearly new MK2 4 string that sold in Denmark for about £12k ( inc vat).

These two just chatting and jamming. Nuff said.