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Gig at The Donkey in Leicester (or The Donkeh in Lestah in the local vernacular) yesterday. An afternoon gig in lovely sunshine in the beer garden with a nice stage and sound man etc. Decent crowd in who listened appreciatively and did some dancing on some songs, although as Mrs Ricksterphil pointed out, a concrete floor isn't great to dance on. We had the resident air guitar specialist at the side of the stage - he's a lovely old fella who uses his walking stick as his axe and 'plays' along at the side with a big grin on his face ☺ We did two sets and they both went down really well and we threw in 2 or 3 of our originals for good measure. Ended the set on that old chestnut 'Sweet Home Alabama' as it was requested. I'd never played this live before joining this band last year, but it really is a great song with a decent bass lines....and a bit of dirt in the chain doesn't go amiss. Here's a vid of one of our originals 'End of the Line' Yee-Haw https://www.facebook.com/100009594104526/videos/1598251874288550/

First gig since shoulder surgery (cant use a strap for months!!!) with the bass on a stand. Looks weird but worked & very easy.

My favourite bass is my 2003 Warwick Corvette Standard. I’ve owned it for 17 years, and I’m sure it’s got some magic in it. I’ve had other Corvette Standards, and I’ve got other ‘nicer’ and ‘fancier’ Corvettes, but this one is special. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia of being my first ‘Wick, but I love it. It didn’t have the most careful first owner, and it’s not exactly been a garage queen with me, and it had picked up plenty of scratches and dents along the way. I decided that I wanted it to look as good as it feels, so I started cooking up a plan. First of all, I stripped it down. Without any hardware, the Swamp Ash body and neck felt astonishingly light - I was tempted to see if I could throw it over the roof of the house! (Even with hardware, it’s only around 3.6kg/8lbs.) Then I set about making a scratchplate. Having never done this before, my favourite bass seemed like the right place to start. Now I know that Warwick sell pickguards for Streamers, and I like the idea but I’ve always felt that they weren’t quite the right shape, so I drew out my own on a piece of cereal box. I then photocopied it, glued the piece of paper to a piece of 6mm ply and rough cut it out with a jigsaw. I did lots of drilling and hand filing to get the neck pocket and pickup hole right… …and then did the same for the outer edge. Then I borrowed a router from a friend, and had my first ever go at routing cutting the scratchplate out of 4-ply pearloid, and putting the 45 degree bevel on. It didn’t come out exactly perfect, but it’s not far off. (This picture is before further refinement with sandpaper, and although it’s still not perfect, it’s a bit better). After then, I took it to Rob at Manton Customs who added pearloid blocks and refretted it. There’s a lovely YouTube video about it, which I found slightly disturbing to watch - it’s not every day you get to see someone taking a chisel to one of your favourite possessions! He does beautiful work, and he’s a lovely chap to boot. Then I took it to Dave Wilson for paint, and it turned out beautifully (as expected!). I also went for a matching headstock, and took the opportunity to swap my broken Just-A-Nut II for a shiny brass JAN III. Then it was just a case of reassembly (most of which Dave did) to see what it all looked like! And a bonus pic with my ‘05 Ltd Ed. I know it won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I’m happy!

I had a three hour (3 x 50) gig yesterday afternoon with the Checkmate Kings (blues band) at the Cock in Dereham. It was in the beer garden, which is a courtyard and it was hot! I nearly melted during the load in. As you can see there was not much space, so we only used one monitor and just put vox and drum mics into the PA. It was one of those gigs where I felt we were ragged a lot of the time but the punters seemed to like it. For various reasons we have had very few rehearsals over the last 3 or 4 months and I realised we hadn’t played some of the songs this year. Without the usual DIs and monitors, it was hard to hear what the guitarist was doing on the other side of the stage, despite the drummer saying he was deafening! Also, I think we were affected by the fact that Marc, our vocalist/guitarist (the bearded fellow), is having to leave because of family commitments after our July gigs. I have no idea what my backing vocals were like as I couldn’t hear the monitor: probably like a cat being strangled! Anyway, it was good to get out and run through the material before two festival gigs in early July. The set lists for those is going to be the songs that worked well yesterday. My rig was a Blackstar U700 head into a LFSys Monza. I just use the amp voices, drive options and built in compressor for “effects” but I do use a Mooer Bass Sweeper on our funked up version of Black Cat Bone. Basses were a Maruszczyk Elwood 4a medium scale and a bitsa medium scale P bass I just finished putting together (the one in the pics). The Blackstar/Monza combination was plenty loud enough to fill the beer garden and I could hear myself without any problems. It was the first time I had gigged the Monza and it really lived up to its reputation. Just amazing for a 10” cab. I have to make a shout out for the Cock. They are really dedicated to putting on live music. A lot of pubs are giving up because of the economics and it is great that venues like the Cock keep going. Always a great audience too and no idiots! We always enjoy playing there.

Roxy Magic, the UK's leading/only Roxy Music tribute band played a storming gig at The Hare and Hounds in Birmingham on Saturday night. It was a hometown show for half the band, so that made it extra special. It was also our guitarists' birthday, so he threw a few more shapes than usual. The room was packed with sweaty and enthusiastic punters and the band had more fun than is medically recommended. I've peeled a couple of fan-filmed videos from FaceBook to demonstrate how little shame and coordination men of a certain age can have. There's a couple of nice shots of my Squier-Fender bitsa and too many shots of my undignified mugging for the crowd. I've included "Virginia Plain" as it's one of the only tunes where I actually get to deploy the pedalboard - the gnarly fuzz at the top of the tune and the boosted cavernous reverb after the guitar solo. Blink and you'll miss 'em.

I wouldn't haggle on here. If I feel someone is asking a fair price and I like the item, I'll buy it. If the price is a little high for me, someone else can buy it.

This was a gig we maybe should have passed on because of the drummer stuff. However Strawberry Fest is a big event and we have a good relationship with the owner of Weislers who sponsored us. So I guess it was more of a business decision. It was a 3-7 gig. That's very long for me. And our 2 breaks were short. Not a good gig for me. I can't point fingers at the dep drummer. He did the best he could under the circumstances. Daryl

Two for us yesterday. The first was at a beer festival in a local town at 3.45pm, and the venue was the engine shed of a narrow gauge railway. It was approx 6m wide, 7.5m high, 100m long and had a shiny concrete floor. The entirety of the structure was steel. Can anyone see where I'm going with this?! We were about 25m from the back wall, so when the drummer hit a skin you heard it immediately, then again as it came off the back wall and then again what seemed like minutes later as it made its' way back from the far end. We knew the acoustics would be shocking, but what didn't help was that the guys running the PA had the volume set way beyond 'stun' (possibly into 'bludgeon'), so when in full flow none of us could hear much at all. I, for example, could only hear my bass, which for some reason was pumping deafeningly out of the singer's monitor but not mine, and the snare drum. Unfortunately this didn't make for a particularly enjoyable gig; we hung on rather than ripped the venue a new one, if you catch my drift. Mistakes were many and varied, and one member's temper frayed afterwards. However, we went down well and the punters enjoyed us, and we got paid in actual money rather than exposure. The band that were on after us annoyed me a bit as they started bringing their gear on before we'd cleared the stage, which is an absolute no-no in my book. Anyway, here's evidence that we were there, even if I couldn't have stated with any great honesty if we sounded very good: So, after my head had stopped reverberating (think Steve Earle's spoken word bit at the beginning of Snake Oil), it was on to the next one, a private party at the studio we rehearse at (this being also on the farm that I work on when not teaching). Two sets, the first one a bit more staid and the second one much more punchy. We debuted our version of Crazy Horses to general approval, brought the roof down with For Whom The Bell Tolls and finished with an extended Rocking In The Free World. We all played better as we could hear what we were doing, and mistakes were few and far between. Far more enjoyable all round. No money, but we were fed well and it was for friends, so no worries. In the interests of fairness I should say that our rhythm guitarist (stage right) doesn't normally look like Josef Goebbels, it's just an unfortunate picture. At both gigs my gear was my usual; two Precision Basses and a nasty plywood Squier Jazz Bass into the Strobostomp, then the Cali76, Ampeg Scrambler, Bass Clone, Digbeth pre-amp and then into my amp, which was the Eden WTX500 and Eden 2x15. We're next playing on this coming Saturday night, at Bryn Goebbels's birthday party. Cheers, JRK

This little beauty has made its way on to my board and into my heart.

If it got really bad then I’d buy some of his basses off Reverb totalling the value of yours, pay with a credit card, enact a chargeback and see what happens.

My 1970 Jazz was a bit of a lucky shot: when I ought it, it turned out to have bad fretwork, a terrible buzz in the electronics and the neck could use a shim. So I had it refretted and setup by one of my favourite luthiers. I've been using it live extensively for the last few months and it has become my go-to Jazz, together with my USA Lakland. What an incredible bass.

I think it's fine to offer what you'd be willing to pay (often for me that's asking price, but sometimes less), if the seller thinks they can get more then they can just not accept the offer. I'm not really doing it for the 'game' of haggling for the sake of it. It annoys me a bit when sellers take offence at what they see to be low offers, especially if they've had it for sale for ages. Perhaps the offer isn't what they see as 'market value' but it's what someone feels is the amount they would part with at that time and they've made that offer. Take it or leave it.

My pedal board failed last weekend.I went bass to amp. My G&L ASAT has an active pre amp so it wasn't so bad. When I returned home I looked at everything and found the my wireless transmitter and receiver were set to different channels. An easy fix. Lol Daryl

Hi Dave, Maple Road is comprised of 3 divisions. 1. Maple Road ( full electric 4 piece rock& blues) 2. She's Right I'm Left ( acoustic offering) 3. Sound & Lighting Daryl

This is sort of a joke, but I hate to see anyone ripped off by dishonest people like Jon. I recently had my kitchen done and the guys took no payment at all until it was done and we were happy.

Redbull Redbull ～ David Bowie

Had the QC a few days now and had a bit of time to dig in. I'm really impressed with the amp models, so far better than any others I've tried. There are a bunch of excellent captures for stuff like the Nobel pre, too. The drives are great, although they need some more. The modulations and other effects are great, but we need more variety. For me, given that I'm mostly interested in amps and drives though its perfect.

If the OP decides to go along with this new trend, he'll have to change his handle to 'BassSubtractor'...

There's a huge amount of price experience between us on BC. At the end of the day we all buy and sell things for what we think they're worth to us as well as being guided by what others are buying and selling them for. If something seems to be on at a fair price I won't haggle (as was the case with a pedal I bought 5 mins ago!). But I'm fine with folk making me offers whether here or on eBay and I can decide whether to accept the offer or not; and I don't have any issues doing the same. If folk are fortunate not to be a forced seller then they can afford to be a little patient and hold on until getting their asking price or close to it, or simply decide it's worth more to them than what others are willing to part with and hold on to it - there's often a good reason we bought stuff in the first place?! And let's not get started on seller's regret...😅

I have the exact same model, apart from the fact mines a 97 MIJ model, mine has matching colour headstock, mine has no neck pickup cover, mine has a different fretboard, mine has updated electrics, but apart from that, its the exact same model, actually now I think about it, mine might be a different colour and could be a Precision and not a Jazz but apart from that, twins Love the picture. A working guitar in it's natural element. rob

I don’t haggle over prices on here , if it’s marked up at a reasonable price I’m willing to pay then I’ll just buy it no question , if it’s overpriced then I may politely ask if there’s any movement, but if it’s a no then I respect their decision

Yes I’d offer what I thought was fair. I encourage others to do that and it’s rare I’ve sold things at the price advertised. As long as it’s done in a polite and positive way and the person is interested in a sale, why not?

I'm not keen on the dance of haggling. I prefer to do my research before listing and list at a fair price from the get go. Of course, nobody effin' reads the "no offers" bit...

No, never happened to me......... er.... cough....

Played a cool little outdoor gig for a friends wedding party on Saturday. Another outing for the Fusion 550 and BT2 combo. I can’t ever see me parting with this rig. My Spector Euro LX just sounds sublime through this amp and cab

I thought i was done but I was not. Did some rearranging. Added the One Control Mosquito blender. I need to dial in some clean. Took off the red muck and the paraeq deluxe and was able to squeeze my favourite distortion back on. i think I'll keep the paraeq for recording.

Just catching up with this playlist, some absolutely stellar stuff in there folks. Great work!

There really are worse things that can happen, this outcome was inevitable and preventable

Looks like this one: https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/product/ksm-4-string-bass-bridge/

Delroy Wilson, Better Must Come:

Enjoyed that. Nice to see sax and other wind instruments being used too. We do Virginia Plain in the Glam covers band too but we don't have keys. I play the mid section on the bass using an envelope filter pedal. I do love playing that little bass run down after the guitar solo / chorus. Dave

I fookin' hate that question. What's my best price? A million pounds, that's my best price, that would be awesome, thanks. It's the laziest way to enter a negotiation possible. If you're going to make an offer, make it, otherwise, bog off. I don't see people who enter the chat that way as serious buyers - they're opportunistic tyre kickers at best.

You're probably doing yourself out of sales/purchases with that attitude though. It doesn't have to be a big haggling ordeal, just offer what you think you'd like to pay and they might accept it or might give you another price. I mean, making/accepting offers is pretty much the done thing with anything second-hand: house, car, bike etc.

I absolute despise haggling. If I'm selling something I list it at the price I want. If someone tries to knock down the price I can't be arsed dealing with them. Similarly if I'm buying something and the price is fair I'll pay it no questions asked. If I think something is overpriced I'll just simply ignore it.

Postie came a-knockin' this morn... It's a heavy little bugger One Control Mosquito Blender

I'll make an offer of what I think is a price I'm happy with. Then it's up to the seller to accept, reject, or suggest a new price. I can then accept the outcome or stop the negotiations, any further haggling I would consider rude. In this process everyone has had a chance to name their price point and that's that.

I once received a PM wanting to buy something I hadn't advertised as being for sale. I was happy to let it go, so I said so and gave a price. He haggled.

I know what it reminds me of...

I really liked your vid. Tight guitars, great harmony vocals and a nice looking Mike Lull Bass (?). What's not to like!

Cheers man. That showreel was only February but it's already a bit cringe. You can tell we're trying really hard to remember the songs and not really enjoying ourselves. The mistakes, the fretboard looking, the song choice, my hair! It got us a year of gigs so it served us well, and there'll be a better one soon. I'm a LOT more proud of my video editing skills than I am my bass playing skills, that's for sure.

That’s just the light where it was pictured. They’re both tort guards. Definitely worth messaging them.

Just done my "blues jam" in the local church... We were meant to noodle for 1/2 hour to get other folk to come along and play too but ended up doing 2 hours. A bloke joined in on harmonica too so it all worked quite well despite every "song" being based on a groove I started. We even managed a little blues guitary version of Sylvester's "Do Ya wanna Funk", which is probably one of the only times it's ever been played in a church! Used the ACG into Helix/BBE pre/DBX comp/Crown Power/Markbass 2x10, sounded funky...