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Nice review from the Dreadnought's resident band critic Alex Hastings. Unfortunately no pics or vids have surfaced yet. Dave "A packed Dreadnought Rock was the place to be on Saturday for lovers of music with an 'early 70's' vibe... Namely Glam Rock.!! Blockbustarz were back in the place that rocks to follow up their fabulous Christmas party gig of last year.... Mike, Colin, David, Lynn and Barry 'Bazza' Haywood were glammed up to the max, in their sparkly, shiny and very colourful costumes, not forgetting platform shoes akin to small step ladders.. ... For nigh on 3 hours, they blasted out hit after hit, leading to a few 'missed buses home'... That's rock n roll.. ..... It just happened to be Brian Chizzmeister Chisholm's 58th Birthday and Bruce Henderson's big 6-oh..! And they both had the happiest of Birthdays.. .... Bazza on drums was wearing a glittery pork pie hat, and silver shoulder pads an NFL quarter back would be proud of... It didn't stop him from rattling the skins though... Lynn didn't need to cheat in the 'long haired wig department' as she blasted out shared vocals with Micky Blitz. . The anti hooligan safety fence was in operation tonight following Lynns unfortunate black eye incident of last year... . Just as well going by the frantic, frolicking, footwork of the group of Glamtastic lasses in front of me... ......... . We had Sweet, Mud, Alvin Stardust, The Rollers ,Bryan Ferry and many more. The crowd were into it big time. "Ballroom Blitz" they roared as I looked behind me for any 'Attack from the back..'.... ... "That's neat, that's neat" they yelled as all and sundry tried the 'Mud' dance.....The fence was being tested as they swayed along to the Rollers and rocked along to Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting from Elton... "Schools Out" sang Micky Blitz as the crowd chanted with him. Chizzy was in the zone now and I wasn't far behind him... .... T-Rex, Sailor, Showaddywaddy, Bowie, the tunes kept coming, and the fence huggers were still 'Giving it laldy' as George Thom would've said.."'Under the moon of Love! " sang the faithful... Another favourite from Mud, The Cat Crept in, Crept Out Again ( lyrics of genius!) led to more step over your feet dancing. Brilliant.... Sometime during the mayhem my name was heard being shouted by Lynn followed by the words" Tell Him! "... Cue some lunacy from yours truly ably assisted by the Birthday boy himself, Chizzy, as we bounced around to" Tell Him' from Hello... What a song, a song I've been jumping around to since 1984 in the Twig (Eh Billy Haggarty ?)....... The chaos kept being chaotic as the band gave us Hell Raiser, Elected, Waterloo, the Jean Genie, Virginia Plain, Can the Can and yet more...... Magnificent effort.. (I'm feeling burnt out just reading this )... I'm sure the Time Warp was in there somewhere.. It was now getting a bit hazy as the Belhaven Best was starting to kick in... .... The punters were having a ball, as expected and Micky Blitz and the band cranked it up some more for the final push. A rousing Loch Lomond came up as a mid song medley to the delight of the crowd. Teenage Rampage, Devil Gate Drive, and the song the band take their name from, Blockbuster were all played for the punters, who by now must have been on their last legs.. None more so than a 'doon the fronter' who'd just came home from Benidorm in the afternoon.. Respect.. ... As the time approached 11.30pm or thereabouts, the band took their well deserved leave from the stage. What a gig, what a night and what a crowd. Another top night in the Dreadnought had been had. Once again top marks to all concerned.... Big Hastie over and out from the Goth , Armadale... (I just made it home in time for one last beer)..... Elton got his song wrong, Saturday Night's All Right For Drinking...... If you see him, "Tell Him".....

Hi all, So this is a happy post that is tinged with sadness. During lockdown my father passed away. He was my inspiration for learning to play guitar and I have got to the stage of being pretty competent at both guitar and bass and have thousands of gigs under my belt, the gift of music was literally the best gift he could ever give! Fast forward to today and I am delighted to be very soon reunited with his bass, all the way from South Africa. I will post pictures when it arrives, but it truly is a special instrument as I was there when it was measured up for him, in the basement of The Music Department, St Albans, by its maker, Patrick Eggle! I still very clearly remember Patrick getting out of the tape measure and measuring my dad‘s stomach so he could get the belly carve just right (cue many jokes about beer guts and late night post-gig takeaways!). A good few months after that and the bass was ready, going on to gig hundreds of times with me on guitar alongside for many shows. So now I have it in my possession (or at least I will soon) I need to set myself to the task of learning how to play again… Left-handed! It is going to be a really interesting challenge but one that I’m really looking forward to. Has anyone else ever had to do this and if so does anyone have any particular tips? apologies for the long post and thanks for reading! James

Wild Hogs played The Cave in Paisley last night, not a bad wee gig, great venue. Bit of a trek as most of us are based over the east and there's horrible roadworks. Our sound was a bit off, not much time to get set up after the previous band (who were excellent) and guitarists being too loud as usual. Bit rusty in the first set, managed to absolutely mangle Poison somehow. The had a comedy of errors - my bass strap snapping halfway thru a song, drummer losing a drumstick mid-song, drunk dancing guy accidentally kicking over the singers water and almost frying the mixer and a pedalboard. All that aside, crowd got right into it, so all good. Until...not for the first time recently, I made a slight wee error. Had parked the car in a nearby multi-storey...not realising it shut at 9pm! Ooops. Logistics meant a couple of us were stuck, so ended up shelling out for a hotel and racing to get there before check-in closed. I'm such an idiot, I'll never hear the end of this one. Venue staff let me leave the PA and my gear there overnight, so picked it all up today and got home eventually, about 14 hours later than expected.

Absolutely do not send a deposit because the seller is busy for a couple of days. This is a very common marketplace scam these days - advertise something ridiculously cheap then take multiple deposits before scarpering.

40th birthday party for a friend last night. Said friend runs a livery yard and decided to have the party in the school. It’s a very sandy outside school a good 500m+ from any power, so thankfully her partner had two 3kW generators. We only used one, the second as a backup, as we never went beyond a load of about 0.7kW. I have to say I was dubious about the plans but we got by without a hitch pretty much. The guitarist’s pedal board was being dicky and I’m not sure how much of that was power-related vs just having a few soft connections. I’d spent the morning putting down the “staging” and building a gazebo to cover the band, then the afternoon dismantling my music room and transporting it over there. Why? Because our normal roster of drummers were all unavailable and so we came up with the novel solution of using both my son (15) and the keyboard player’s son (also 15). Therefore not only did I need my basses and HX Effects but all of Theo’s kit, which is normally planted in the music room. Both boys did brilliantly and it’s fair to say I had a bit of a proud dad moment going on throughout the parts of the sets my son played. Feedback from the crowd was that, if we’d not said anything about it, no-one would have noticed. Can’t get better than that. MiniMert now gets to say he earned some of his money for a school Ecuador trip next summer by playing drums for money. I hope it spurs him on to do more! 9e5deeec-ffa0-46f5-831d-796653746465.mov

Tonight's gig was brought to you by Lemsip, Ibuprofen and high strength Vitamin C, washed down with Shipyard Low Tide Pale Ale. I seriously had to dig deep tonight. New venue for us, The Pub on China St in Lancaster, a legendary venue locally. The setup was complicated by the fact that we haven't been there before and they have a house Bose PA system, or rather powered speakers (subs and tops) and we ran our desk into them and brought our own monitors. Once we were setup I could relax a bit and concentrate on actually being able to play and sing. Well, we managed it. Great crowd, very appreciative, some dancing, some singing along. The stage area was tight and Covid appears to have robbed me of any spatial awareness I may have had before, so I must have bumped my mic stand or the guitarists mic stand half a dozen times with my bass! Lots of positive comments after, so I think we'll be back there in the future. Two weeks until the next gig, so that's a blessed relief, I may be starting to feel human again by then. I used my new to me '70 P bass for the first time tonight, through the Bergantino Forte D and the Barefaced 3x10. It sounded just right, I cannot think how it could sound better. Rob

It's finished! Mug for scale. It's 42 cm high, 30 cm wide and 34 cm deep. Weight is 11 kg, though I think about a kilo of that is the weight of the (removable) luggage handle and the heavy-duty flightcase wheels. I don't drive, so my aim was to make a speaker cab that's small enough to be wheeled around like a carry-on suitcase on public transit, and light enough to not cause me grief when going up stairs. I've covered it with some luxurious brown faux-leather (left over from reupholstering some dining chairs), but I'll probably make a weatherproof cover once I've had more practice with my wife's sewing machine. The main speaker is a Faital Pro 10PR320 (300 watts RMS), while the mid-ish tweeter is a Faital Pro 4FE42. It's got a hand-wired 4th order crossover that splits the signal at about 1.8 khz. It sounds really great to my ears, though I admit I'm not the most experienced judge of these things. The response seems pretty even, sounding like a DI'ed bass when everything's set flat on the amp, but it responds well to any adjustments to the eq or pickup balance changes. It's also noticeably louder than my old cab, and reaches "shaking the walls and annoying the neighbors" levels with my amp's gain and volume at about 3 out of 10. Considering I only use a Little Mark 250, and this is an 8 ohm cab, that's impressive, I think. Many thanks to @Bill Fitzmaurice and @Phil Starr for answering questions about the elements of the design I got stuck on, and for generally dispensing wisdom essential to this build in various threads.

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.

Seen at a beer festival this afternoon ...

Just a small tip, it the hole is a tad tight when fitting the port, put the port in the freezer overnight. The temperature coefficient of the PVC mean the port will shrink but gradually expand into the hole as it warms.

Our Mexican band played in my favourite old dive last night , not a huge crowd , but a great night. We had an opening band and it was a good thing I arrived early as their bassist just assumed there would be a bass amp there. It did make the transition much easier. I used the big orange Gretsch all night , gorgeous big deep woody thump.

This was mine last night, depping with a five-piece in the New Forest. Don’t think I moved a muscle all night… Somewhere in the background is two Barefaced One10s and an Elf. Flea Jazz in front. Thankfully they turned the Olympics off!

We don't do many gigs compared to some here, and don't do prestigious ones, just plain pub gigs, so I rarely bother to relate the experience. This was a bit different to the normal though. We had a rather last minute booking on Friday night at the Bridge In in Worcester - I think number 2 guitarist found the request on Tuesday and arranged it (after checking with us). He sent a rather panicked message to us saying he thought he'd blown it as he had two windows open on his computer and sent a message saying he was going to chase them as he hadn't had a reply and hoped they weren't screwing us, only he sent it to them and not to us. Anyroadup, they still booked us in. Apparently the pub had a reputation as somewhat rough, so I decided to take replaceable instruments. No car park so we parked on the double yellows outside to unload. Accosted by one elderly pissed up female who wanted to know what I did and was disappointed to find out I wasn't the drummer. Then a couple of the pub denizens offered to help carrying stuff in, so (slightly reluctantly) we gave them things to carry and everything was brought in. The pub has a section with a pool table in and the main bar, which have quite a big opening between them, and we were in the pool table bit. At the other end of the room was the gaffer doing a disco and karaoke and bingo (not simultaneously). Acoustics were rather dodgy but I just leave stuff set up the same everywhere and simply adjust monitor and FOH levels. Although it was, let us say, a somewhat rough-looking crowd, they were all really friendly and the music (assorted classic rock from late 60s to early part of this century) went down well. It was a rather strange hybrid evening, disco going when we did the load in and setting up, then some karaoke, then some bingo, then our first half, a tad more disco and bingo, and our second half. The only minor glitch (other than the normal getting lost somewhere in songs which we always managed to recover from) was that (a) I'd forgotten my Helix and the Lekato WS70 but that's more for my desire to have certain sounds than being essential, (b) though I checked the batteries on my backup Zoom MS60B that I always carry, they ran out partway through the first set, and (c) I'd only got a switched jack lead with me to run from the effects to the amp and it packed up when the batteries ran flat so I finished up with the backup Lekato WS50 wireless plugged straight in to the amp. And they want us back.

We were at the Corners Inn, Kingsland, Herefordshire with the 5 piece line up. New dep keyboards tonight who was still getting up to spec with the tech, so the first half he struggled with the in-ears mix but it was an easy fix at the interval. Crowd were a 70th birthday party so we took it easy on the volume and got them dancing (Sex on Fire was a sight…) New toy for me, finally got around to getting a hx stomp. Need to learn more about it and tweak some of my programming but on the whole a good laugh using it.

Well, the pub that didn’t want us to play anything too heavy….. We ended up playing Rage against the machine, Limp Bizkit and others, because the punters loved it. The landlady told us that it’s not her cup of tea, but we went down a storm and she wants us back. There was also a chap who hosts a podcast, who wants to have us on to talk about the band and the local scene. One of those nights where the money is a nice bonus. Handshakes all round, and lots of compliments. Pretty stoked right now! The only complaint was that it was a *very* tight squeeze!

Barring an avalanche of cash falling on my head and a 10lbs Ken Smith turning up, I think my six string search is over. I've increasingly become a "Yamaha Man" of late with an FG180 (acoustic guitar), TX802 (synth) and a selection of Broad Basses passing through my hands. I've also owned a TRB6P and a TRBJP (MkI). I've always regretted moving on those sixers. They were both so playable and they sounded great but they were both too heavy to be 100% fun. The TRB6P was too close to 11lbs for comfort and the JP MkI was a bit chunky as well (and a weird orange colour). Anyway, I came across this MIJ 1994 TRB6 in a gorgeous cherry burst recently; it's in the Goldilocks zone for weight at about 9.75 lbs and has all the good things that the TRBJPI had without the unwanted bling. I'm pretty sure it's the 'version II' so brilliantly detailed elsewhere on the forum as it has a dyed blue laminate layer in the very pretty headstock. The key thing, of course, is that it's also an incredibly good bass. It has that wide TRB neck that's thin and perfectly carved to be very playable, great balance and a growly tone from the preamp that I'm pretty sure it shares with the JP1... sooooo (drumroll) it might well be 'the one'. It's the only bass I own at the moment and it's just asking to be played day in, day out which is a really good sign. It also has that special something that makes me play 10% better than usual. It's awesome. It's also near mint; I'm usually suss about minty 30yr old basses as they either sound weird, have horrible balance or are boat anchors. None of these apply to this one so I can only assume the previous owner took care of it and used it sparingly. Even the case is unmarked....it looks new. Anyway - no sound or movies as yet but the pics are testament to a seriously well made, simply beautiful instrument. It's killer! Anyway....PICS

https://medium.com/@Vinylmint/history-of-the-record-industry-1920-1950s-6d491d7cb606 20 years before

Motorhead - No sleep till hammersmith 2 disc expanded edition

That's the one FWIW it was strung with flats as far as I could tell when I saw them in Blackheath last night and, yes, I am pleased as punch that I managed to bag a spot right at the front 🙂

err. . . . more like 60 years.

If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me - Jimmy Buffett

I think we're talking about "Croydon's own": Feline Guitars' lefty series called Southpaw: https://felineguitars.com/pages/southpaw-felines-left-handed-guitars Some of those have that logo and those mirrored decals.

This one has been with me since November 1988 & is my most prized possession. So as we have been together for 36 years and counting, I guess this is my dream bass.

I've been one of the chief stirrers on this issue, I want to emphasize that I don't think Markbass are any less reliable than other brands. My amp broke because I dropped it and had previously been 100% I can't blame Markbass for that. The issue are the contractual arrangements between Real Electronics and Markbass. Real have been given a monopoly for after care by Markbass who then take no further responsibility and apparently no further supervision. No circuit diagrams or parts supply are made available to third party repairers so you have to accept the terms that are offered or go to hell. I can see the advantage to Real in having a monopoly and Markbass in being able to forget about any amp past the guarantee period. I imagine Real pay Markbass for the monopoly just as car dealers pay to become main dealers but have no information on this. All the disadvantages pass on to the customers and extra profits go the the companies. Ironically I've hd no trouble in getting parts from Music Tribe (Behringer) or Wharfedale via their UK distributors in the past so poor support from Markbass looks extremely shabby. Our only comeback is not to buy from companies that don't support their products.

I've only ever owned a couple that were on the 'Dream' list. Currently my 04 QMT American Deluxe Jazz in Amber and my Darkray (though I wish it was Starry Night!!!) are at the top end, having been on the wishlist for quite some time (The QMT was a 20yr wait) Still on the Dream list would be: The Jason Newsted Sadowsky I saw the other day A Fiesta Red Fender 83 62 RI Precision as per Kim Deal An Eastwood Rocket Maybe a bullion gold 50th Ann.Thunderbird Oh and maybe another Stingray Special in a cool sparkle finish - something suitably disco! My dreams are a lot less covetous than when I were a nipper... I am in the process of shifting a dream bass I acquired by accident - a 90's Dano DC in Silver Sparkle and my 2011 US Std. Jazz to make way for something that I have been dreaming a lot about lately - An American Professional II Jazz in either Mercury and RW or the FSR Dark Night with RW board

You can get hole saws the right diameter, eg https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/355897211872. Easy to use, just make sure that you've got the wood suspended otherwise you'll put a hole in your workbench. Gives a snug fit, just put some epoxy glue round it to secure it.

Hi James, First of all, sorry for your loss, but that's a lovely story and great memories. I had a small guitar shop for a couple of years and always had some left handed stock available. Sometimes with beginners they wanted the guitars demonstrated. I was amazed at how quickly I became able to put a few chords together. I think with the motivation you have this may be easier than you expect. Good luck, and keep us all posted with your progress. Mike

Not sure this counts as a proper gig but the covers band I’m in played at my partner’s 70th birthday bash. We had 50 plus folks, a pizza van and enough booze to have bought a very decent medium priced bass, plus marquee and gazebo. Well you are only 70 once. I have yet to catch her up on that but some of our band members are well passed that milestone. Anyway, I spent all morning rigging the PA so band members could just turn up, plug amps into the DI lead provided (drummer uses an electronic kit) and connect their mics: job done. Drummer and rhythm guitarist were there at the start of the event (1pm) had tested their set up and were able to enjoy a few drinks, eat some pizza, etc and chill. We had agreed to play from 3-4:30, leaving the lead guitarist enough time to pack up and rush off to a gig with another outfit starting at 7pm. Two o’clock no sign of lead guitarist. Two thirty still no sign. All of us sending WhatsApp messages like: “Get here quick pizzas running out” and “ we left a space for you to park on the drive”. 10 to 3 lead guitarist arrives and has brought an amp without a DI and we can’t connect his monitor (he brought a street cube instead of his normal Laney wedge). I have to frantically search to find a DI box buried at the bottom of some kit box. I get that running but the “monitor” defies all my attempts, so I move mine over. By this time some guests are drifting off. We eventually get going at 3:30. To make up for lost time he seems to be playing everything at about 20 BPM faster than the original. Fortunately, faced with doing the solo in Sultans of Swing he slows down to just 10 BPM faster than the original. I don’t think I have ever done as many songs in an hour before! About half way through his monitor sparks into life: Sod’s Law! Anyway, apparently the guests liked it but then most of them were around our age and probably not used to liberal lunchtime drinking 😀. One or two did say “that was a bit frantic”! Fortunately the birthday girl (actually her birthday was in February but that’s not the greatest time for a garden party) was well pleased. Won’t bore you with the full equipment list but I used my LFSys Monza with Blackstar U700 and custom made P/J shorty from Tony Edwards Guitars who lives round the corner from us. I can’t get over how good the Monza is. It’s not just me: some friends did a spontaneous gig after us at much reduced pace: very chilled. Bob the bassist loved it and his fretless Ibanez Aerium sounded amazing through it.

Floor pedals are configured to operate with the low voltage output of pickups. The voltage at the effects loop is much higher, at what's called line level, which is what rack mount processors operate at. Using floor pedals at line level can cause distortion.

Wow - I know what I’m gonna be getting soon! I’ll still want to put the VTC on however - is it easy to fit it using the upgrade kit?

BLOCKBUSTARZ Glam covers last night in our fav venue The Dreadnought in Bathgate. Has to be the best run venue i've ever known with the best owner, manager, Sound Engineer and even the bar and door staff are all just really nice, helpful people. Decent audience circa 100+ based on what we got paid at the end of the night so that was good. (ticket deal) Very hot even with the venue's large fans going on the stage. 2 litres of water over the full set. Sound guy Pete said that's the tightest the band have been and we had people dancing from the stage barrier all the way back to the bar area. Audience were brilliant and really into from the first song. We requested the stage barriers this time as last time a rather drunk guy fell onto the stage and damaged the singers wireless unit and knocking her mic stand and giving her a burst nose and black eye. Had 3 new songs added to the set for last night with a little bit of nerves on them when we played. Few minor fluffs that no-one else noticed but the band and were well covered by the band. As guitarist pointed out at the end "you know you are doing well when the front row are all women and girls dancing away all night or hanging over the barrier to watch." Used my Sandberg VM4 thru Shure wireless into Ampeg SVT7 and Mesa SW210/115 rig. On stage sound was a bit odd almost like a touch of bass boom / rumble and i was tweaking for a bit to sort it out only to find it was the guitarist's cab that was booming on stage as i use a gramma pad. Full PA support and FOH was spot on as always in this venue. Home for 2am, bed for 3am. Dave

Double duty today at a Country Music Festival at the Windmill in Peterborough. Kicked off the festivities with Stevie Daniels using my Spectracore fretless, trusty Trace head and the GB 12’s. Then on with The Praries 2hrs later using my Yamaha BNNE2 with the same amp. No provided PA, so each group had to lug that in. I provided the PA for the second group, hard to get right without a sound engineer outdoors, but it worked out ok.

I'm really happy with my current and only bass, 2005 EBMM Stingray Ltd Ed 4H 3eq with a rosewood board. I do wonder sometimes what it would be like to swap for a 78/79 Pre Eb Stingray in black with a maple neck

I managed to get the bass strung at 23:59 last night (still haven't packed). It looks a lot better with strings on, a hell of a lot better. Of course being black makes small features disappear in pictures, but I'm pretty happy. The neck is almost spot on. The action is a bit too low, so around 1.5mm on the 12th fret, but I simply put the headless bridge as low as they could go to get the strings on. It stayed in tune overnight, which is what I expected. A large slab of aluminium has that effect. Weight is 3.9Kg, which is just under the 4Kg I was aiming for, the last one was 4.3Kg, the strings appear to be made of lead and the knobs are heavy and chromed, there is no neck dive (no surprise there). So I suspect I can take off another 100g quite easily. It plays well, I'd prefer a lot thinner strings which will come once I finish it off, but I had an acoustic toodle up and down the neck and there's no neck buzz. Recommendations for decent thing strings welcomed. The only area of concern is the pickguard. It's basically the lid to a hollow box where the pickups sit and if you tap it, it booms. Need to think about that. Neck steps are soldering all the controls up, I'll probably reprint the control panel to move the output socket further down so the knobs can be a bit wider. Need to put strap buttons in, its all prepared but just need to do it. I'll try and get better pics, as the bass is black with tiny glitter like elements. It's not glam rock glitterly, but quite neat and I hate bling. Rob