Leaderboard

After many years of thinking ( without trying ) that short scale basses were just not right for a 6' 4" bass player I have suddenly found the light. A few weeks ago I tried a fellow Basschatters Acinonyx bass and loved it so much I went out and bought one. Immediately I fell in love with the light weight and easy to navigate small neck. I sold my 34" scale bass and a spare amp to fund another shortie. Say hello to the Serek "the grand". I've now gigged both basses and both have a place and unique sound.

Much better last night but even hotter than the first night. This time we tried using one mic (not sure of make and model) as suggested by the sound crew for all vocals and instruments except my bass ( bass to amp to PA) and no monitors, just what we could hear on stage and it was great! The bass was loud and clear on stage and we just moved in and out for vocals and instrumental breaks. We had seen other bluegrass bands using this system but this was our first try with it and we love it, we hope we can use a similar system next week at another festival. It's an old school way of doing sound but with today's advanced mics it is better than ever. I'm mainly a jazz guy but I have to admit playing and singing bluegrass is a lot of fun. 😊

Think this is my 12th musicman. My first Sterling. well worn, pearl blue 1999 faded to an almost ocean turquoise/bottle green. Sounds and plays well enough to explain and justify the “road worn” state - It’s cleaned up well - trying some new Hyper Slinkies (40-100) on it.

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Playing in part of a power trio, we had a show up in Newcastle. Making the trek from mine is 5hrs but as my Mum's family were all from up that way, it's one of my favourite parts of the UK. I stopped off in York the day before for a day of sightseeing, which was fun. I met the drummer in Hartlepool and he showed me the old parts of Hartlepool (I love history and travel). We had an emergency rehearsal where we snapped the pic below for the last ditch social media plug and went on to Trillians. I was using my 2014 Gibson Thunderbird with my Blackstar U700 head into the oldest looking Fender Bassman cab I have seen. I had to borrow a speakon to jack cable from the sound guy who was very insistent that I return it. I explained that I was not drinking and experienced so returning it would not be an option. He replied to say I looked young but (for the win) it turns out that I was actually a year older than him! Apparently, it must be something in the water down here! The show was fun. I felt I played well to a small but enthusiastic crowd. The band was on form and the sound / lights were amazing. My last show until a little flurry in September. Sadly, nobody seems to have taken any pics of the show but who doesn't love a three guys stood up against an old van cliché band shot, right?! I'm on the right.

Have to confess it's not ours either, but they're very good, and very passionate about what they do. They're playing at a festival in France (Bluegrass in La Roche) this weekend for the second year running, seems to be quite a thriving scene.

That's the system my Better Half's banjoist daughter's band (Blue Lass) use, seems to work well for them. 😀

Not quite the same situation but I use my iPad to record our gigs straight off the mixer (XR18) in to Logic. it has no issues with 16 tracks at once for 2 /12 hours (most of the time). The cool thing is Logic on iPad will then automatically upload the recording to the cloud, where I can then download it directly in to Logic on my Mac.

They do suffer from the same shortcomings. If you must have that driver arrangement AFAIK the only manufacturer that does it the right way is Barefaced. The purpose of any bass cab arrangement is to provide a desired low frequency output with wide midrange dispersion. A pair of quality 2x10 or 2x12 vertically stacked will beat an 8x8 in both those regards.

Finished both of mine!! Now time to start on the other 2…….👍🏻

Pearl blue Sterling - actually faded off to a bit of a bottle green shade, but it looked a bit more blue last night

Had a rehearsal / run through with the punk band I have a dep for next week. Was (tongue in cheek) accused of being professional because I’d listened to the songs and had a rough idea how they went 🤣 All good clean fun and ran through two sets. Man alive it was loud 😱 I should use my earplugs more often but regularly forego as levels are manageable with most that I work with, but I was glad I had them this time and wished I could find my original stronger plugs at times!!!

First day of Rebellion Festival done. We watched Spunk volcano and the Eruptions The Meffs 18 Fevers Subhumans UK Subs Bar Stool Preachers Sham 69 SV a t E were the standout today.

I had some Rotosounds bought online, they sounded terrible, felt horrible and lost what top end they had after one gig, definitely genuine 😜

This popped up on YouTube yesterday and is well worth a watch. The interviewer, Mason Marangella, is the owner of a company called Vertex Effects, and the channel does a really interesting blend of effect demos and also carries some really good/interesting interviews with musicians - this Freddie Washington one is great! Freddie talks about (and plays along to) tracks from various points in his career - amongst others; Herbie Hancock, Phil Collins, his time with Michael Jackson, Anita Baker, and of course, Patrice Rushen. There’s also a really nice reminiscing section at the end! Amongst many high points, for me, is the play-through of Sweet Love, by Anita Baker. His line, and playing, are a masterclass in note choice, feel and (quite often overlooked) note length… Enjoy!

Great night tonight at the Vulcan Restoration Trust beer and music festival. We headlined night 1, and had a solid set despite the sound on stage being a bit iffy (I could only hear myself and the drummist for most of the set). The hangar was one of the more unique stages I’ve played on, with a pretty iconic piece of furniture out front!!!

Hello Just thought I'd share my experience from this weekend when I was lucky enough to perform at the World David Bowie Fan Convention in Liverpool and meet two of my musical heroes, George Murray and Carlos Alomar. They also guested on two songs with our band, The Bowie Contingent, with George playing my 71 P bass which was an incredible honour. George is a lovely man and was kind enough to sit with me for an hour and let me ask him anything I wanted about his time with Bowie, and about bass playing in general. A wonderful, gracious human being! Lee

For my taste, Bowie's backing band during the George Murray-era was one of the greatest of all time, never bettered. George Murray was a major influence when I first started playing during that time, and all these years later I now know enough to understand that he's even better than I thought he was! Such a tasty and inventive player. Nowadays my main bass is a black/tort/rosewood Fender-style PJ, a bit of wish-fulfilment from watching George playing with Bowie on TV back in the day. An enigmatic bass guitar icon. Delighted to see he's doing so well.

Good band! I have seen that mic used for bands like this but the one we used was a different model, ideal for groups that often rehearse acoustically in a circle or semi circle. As I have said before, bluegrass is great fun to play and sing and not as easy as it sounds. 😊

Gumtree is for buying/selling when you can transact face to face.

You only need 4-pole for specialist applications. My PA amp needs to be used with 4-pole connectors only when in bi-amp mono mode which uses the built in crossover to send high and low channel output to a sub that then passes the high output on to the tops. A 2-pole will work with any setup unless it is explicitly designed to bi-amp over a single cable. If you buy 4-pole for an ordinary setup the spare conductors are unused and just extra weight to carry around.

Well, you do you. Me personally, when the GAS hits I just decide I want a bass and I don't give a monkey's what any of you think about it. Have courage in your convictions! The Guild looks decent and sounds pretty good from what I've heard. I like that it's got a couple of tonal options with the push pull. I'd be interested but I don't like short scale basses.

Weirdly I've just had my car's windscreen replaced, and the guy who did that was missing half a finger. There's a lot of it about, seemingly!

Now there's an idea for a band name!

Ah. Sorry I've now gone and have to head back to NW Yorkshire in 15 mins. The Revo was very nice though

This is the best place to start understanding Cardiacs, @Dad3353. 10 minutes of analysis and history, and carefully edited. RIP Tim Smith.

That's a very nice couple of basses. Where did you get the Serek?

Unfortunately it was a very difficult room sound-wise, all marble and stone with a massive ceiling, so the noise was echoing around everywhere. The sound engineer asked us to keep the volume on stage as low as possible so there wasn't much coming from the amp. I was off to the side when George was playing so I didn't really get a chance to hear him. The videos I've seen have the bass pretty low in the mix, so it's not easy to make out much of his playing unfortunately. What I will say is that he's not been playing music professionally for over 40 years, the stage sound was not ideal, and he'd only ran through the two songs with Carlos and our band once earlier in the day. I think with all that in mind he did a great job, particularly with Secret Life of Arabia which he's presumably not played since it was originally recorded for Heroes. Bowie never played it live. https://youtu.be/zRjvJgQCWAg?si=kP89G2CJnZjuB4G7

Tell me about it. When it came out I was in a three piece funky outfit sharing vox with the guitarist, tho he did sing the Lions share. We all thgt this would be fun to do but could he play and sing it? Nope. So muggins here spent the next few months torturing anyone who would listen. Thank goodness mobile phones were but a distant futuristic dream.

Coincidentally, I was noodling around yesterday lunchtime, and scrolling through the iPad to see what I could play along to, when I spotted Back Of My Hand...great song...

If there are none closeby that you can try, why don't you just buy one online and decide for yourself? You can always return it if it's not to your liking - and if physical stock is too far away for you to try then it'll be cheaper to courier it back than for you to toddle to where the basses are in person and come back home. Asking for other people's opinion here about something as subjective as sound I suspect is as counterproductive as the conclusions of the reviews you refer to - it's all opinion at the end of the day and ultimately the only person's opinion which matters in this situation is yours. What's your definition of "that vintage semi tone"? What is "that vintage semi tone" anyway? It appears that you know what you want to hear, so I say the most expedient way to figure it out is for you to get listening with your own ears.

If you have a decent folding trolley, your cabs don't need to be the lightest possible. Don't go for cheapies from the likes of Rolson. If you're in the UK, have a look on the Parrs Workplace Equipment website. They do several trollies that fold flat. The one I bought will carry 100kg+, folds to 30"x19"x3" and cost just over £100 delivered. A lot cheaper than a set of GR carbon cabs, albeit not as funky looking (I do love that shiny black woven carbon fibre look). Carbon fibre is fantastic stuff in the right applications. It has great tensile strength, recovers very quickly from flexing/bending and is light and rigid. I'm a golfer and an angler, so I'm a fan and have some nice carbon toys. It's disadvantage is that it doesn't like impacts very much, especially ones concentrated in a small area (such as you might get if you knock your carbon cab into a door handle). You can get around this by adding glass and kevlar to the weave and using specialised resins to bind it, but that adds weight. It's also quite resonant, especially higher modulus carbons. The sections of my Daiwa Tournament fishing pole ring like a bell if you tap them with a finger. That's not a good thing in a speaker cab. Again, varying the mix of fibres and resins, together with bracing can alleviate this, but that will increase weight and negate the main advantage of lightness. You pays yer money and takes yer choice.

For me it isn't tablet that is an issue - I use the tablet most of the time and for most adjustments, but I use the X touch control surface in the gig while playing. As I am singing, playing bass and mixing, a physical control is just easier to hit than a point on the screen when you have a fraction of a second to do it, it just makes it eaiser with not much time to change some levels, which is the 99% job. And it is wired, so worse comes to the worse, if there is a problem with wireless, it is always there.

Insulating tape over the shielding, it’s what I had to do with my P, because the cavity was so tight, there was very little tolerance for any components that had twisted.

Latest developments: I had an appointment at the trauma clinic on Tuesday. They didn't make me talk about my childhood but neither did they remove my stitches, so the earliest date for that to happen in now Tuesday of next week. There's still some uncertainty about the grey bit in the middle, but to my eyes it was smaller than it had been and less grim-looking. I've got a new dressing on and can flex the fingertip without too much difficulty, so that's good. The worst thing about all of this is that I wanted to start my sponsored walk on Saturday but this now can't happen until at the soonest Wednesday, and as I'm anticipating it taking me a week to complete it, time is running out. However, in much more positive news, I've played the bass this afternoon, badly and with three fingers, but I've played. Cheers, JRK

Essex International Scout and Guide Jamboree. Holy moly that was good fun! Most fun I've had with my trousers on for some time. We were looked after incredibly well by the team and treated like VIPs (we even had a young man who took upon himself hold up a couple of umbrellas to shade us from the sun whilst we were eating... bless him). The tech team were equally as helpful and accommodating. Indeed, the monitor engineer said he was so happy when he saw our tech rider, that me and the two guitarists use Helix devices and no backline. It made his day when I said we're all happy to have the same monitor mix as well. The kids were up for a good night from the off. Singing, jumping and dancing as soon as the drums kicked off "Chelsea Dagger". And they kept going for the following 75mins until we finished. There were several video and stills cameras recording and broadcasting to the big screen on either side of the stage (including one at the front of the stage on a sliding gantry that one of our singers relished by gurning into it several times). And they even found time to put an Instagram reel together by the morning. Incredible stuff. Hopefully we'll get a copy of the full recording in good time to use for promo. A proper festival vibe. Felt like rockstars for the evening. Hopefully get to do it again next year. PS There's nothing quite like kicking in an octave effect when you've got all those subwoofers as your disposal. *explosive*. Instagram Reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-Hm6xPI7HN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Post punk (rather than 'classic punk') is a big love of mine; I was in a PP band before going Glam 8 years back. It seems to be a bit more popular around here than it was then....we were always struggling for gigs. The 'Glam' market seems to be becoming more crowded with bands in these parts now; when we started out there were very few in these parts with only one other Glam band routinely playing in Yorkshire.

Sorry to hear that. Bit poor for a band to split because someone raises an issue for discussion. That kind of thing really annoys me. Looks like our punk covers band will be folding soon too as just not enough interest or gigs for that matter but on the plus side the Glam band is fairly busy with bookings already in for Xmas 2025. I might see if i can get another side project from the Glam band just to keep me busy maybe 1-2 gigs / mth kind of thing. Problem i have is that the Glam band are fully booked thru Dec both Fri and Sat with occasional Sun gigs and another band might feel a bit bad about getting no gigs in Dec Dave

Bluegrass festival gig last night. A little bit under rehearsed but no train wrecks, it was made worse by monitors that weren't loud enough. The sound guys at this venue are usually very good so we are expecting a better set tonight as part of a roster of four bands. I used my trusty '70's Czech DB and ran a DI from my amp to the PA. We are in the midst of a heat wave here and it was over 30C in the evening and very humid with no wind on the stage, forecast is for the same thing tonight.

Late to the thread, but as other have said if money is tight reconditioned or EoL is the way to go. IMO unless you get a very good deal (under £400 for a Mac with a 1TB SSD and at least 16GB RAM) I wouldn't buy one that doesn't have an M series processor. I'd also make sure that you buy a Mac that is capable of running the latest version of Logic, because it will probably be needed in order to main compatibility with the systems at the college. Backwards compatibility is a variable. For instance I run Logic 10.4.8 on my MacPro which I use for most of my composition and 10.6.2 on my MacBook Pro which runs Logic for the live backing for my bands. Projects that have been saved on the laptop can be opened on the MacPro, but it complains and keeps telling me to update Logic. Were I to go up to the next version of Logic on the MacBook they would no longer open on the MacPro at all. And pay for Logic. £200 is a complete bargain simply for the number of excellent plug-ins that come with it.

My favourite Fretless 2EQ unlined Stingray

I have it’s Stringray sibling. Nearly identical including mutes. Amazing guitar and similary a keeper.