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A great Soul Destroyers gig on Saturday at the Phoenix Festival in Cirencester. Small crowd at our stage when we started but by the third song there were loads. Some great pics from the official lensman. And yes, the trombonist really is wearing a lollipop-man jacket. This is because he is, errm, a lollipop man. The stage backline was a TC combo of some sort, think it was a BG250-115... did the job fine. My lovely Shuker 5 sounded glorious, as usual. 🤎🧡

Last weekend was a two-gigger (would've been more but the BL also goes out solo, so he had four), started with the monthly place, where there were no serious assaults and the Polis didn't show up (which was a bonus...tho I do question my musical choices when I'm typing that at this stage in my part-time career), we had a guest singer, a really talented girl who myself and a couple of other guys had tried to get a band off the ground with not so long ago: she's very very good, but ultimately not committed enough for a regular gigging band, but the occasional gig with her is a lot of fun, because it means a different setlist. Surprisingly lively in there (perhaps the reduced threat of being knocked unconscious had boosted the crowd...yeah, I know), and we had the second-choice drummer, who's so loud we don't need to mic his kit (a slight issue with the whole inears hoohah, but I can still hear him, it's just not as defined as through mics), and he and I had some fun with the older bits of the set; near the end, the BL seemed unable or unwilling to end Go Your Own Way, and stuck in a soloing loop, so the drummer and I gradually sped the thing up to about 200bpm until he couldn't keep up, and we ended it... I shot off at the end (one of the joys of bass, Stomp and inears; I was done and on the road in about four minutes) to go and pick the Lad up from Manchester Pride (he'd gone down on his own, didn't want him trying to get a taxi/bus/tram back solo; much of Manchester was faaaabulous, but there's still dickheads everywhere looking for trouble on the fringes), all was well. Satdy was a pub local to my mother-in-law, and my Lad stopped at hers, and he, his Gran and his Gran's bessie mate (the latter two have been going in there for 67 years) came to see us. It was nice to see them there, a 19-year old and two 85-year olds up and dancing for a good chunk of both sets 🙂 Fourth choice drummer, tho, so I spent a lot of the time doing my best Border Collie impression keeping him in time and on the starts, changes and ends. It's draining... This weekend it's the second choice slammer and an additional keys player (no percussionist) who've never played together before; they're both good semi-pros, but one's RHCP and the other's very much Steely Dan, it'll be...interesting...

Hi guys We don't really buy directly from Basschat, we have in the past but usually only if it's something we've had before/know the person and we offer if they have any problems selling. Believe me it's not predatory, as a certain few of you guys seem to think it is 😅 Almost every day we get offered stuff that people are trying to sell on here with no luck. That's what generally happens, people can't sell here so they look at other options which is fair enough and completely up to the seller. As we can offer px deals on lots of stuff, etc so it can make life easier. I hope that clears it up! Will - Bassbros

I'm sure this clears up some of the confusion

My Ibanez UB804

Ok boomer 😉

I've just added this preloved Ibanez TMB35 to my family of shorties (Purchased of course from this very parish). Plan is for some major modding. Sam x

Went for a walk to Greenwich in London today with my son Joe and on the way back visited Greenwich Market and was surprised to see that a guitar shop had opened a few weeks ago. Popped in and they had a few basses including an OLP Stingray and a nice two humbucker Spector in a rather fetching blue sparkle, lots of fantastic electric guitars and acoustic guitars as well. Tom gave us a warm welcome and I hope he has success with it, he's got a website coming but can be found on Instagram 'tomsguitarshop'. It's worth a visit for anyone who lives locally There's a YouTube video featuring his shop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTIoNnmnANE John 😎

Friday 8/30 Maple Road The Old Village Beer Depot Menomonee Falls WI. 6:00-9:00 Daryl

Recently acquired The SR300 are fantastic instruments. The neck, the pickups, the colour🤩

Hey folks, just thought I'd mention here in case any of you Ibanez fans are interested, I'm selling my GAXB150. Pretty rare, only made for a few years, 32" scale and a DX4 humbucker. The quality of these far exceeded their modest price! Beautiful rosewood fretboard.

Well, @skelf pulled it out of the bag and got me my new Custom Recurve before I have to go back to Mexico and even before my *redacted* birthday tomorrow. But it's clearly not a rush job. Arrived about half an hour ago and it's all I could have wished for! Gorgeous, crafted to the highest standards and after just 10 minutes noodling it already feels completely like home. The neck is absurdly playable, as anyone who has played an ACG will know. There's just something about them that feels intuitive and right and fast and confidence inspiring. And this one also happens to look incredible. Recurve 4, 33 inch scale, East pre and combination of PB and RFB pickups. Hybrid Turkish Walnut top, birch accent, alder body, mac ebony board, maple and wenge neck. Looking forward to getting it home and playing around with the sounds with my usual setup and not a shitty 15w practice amp that distorts if you even breathe on it.

It's back, and it looks so so much better now that it's been finished:

Yeah, but you're old, man, innit... ...

Seen on Reverb in a Japaneese store... Body: Ziricote/Paulownia Fingerboard: Pale Moon Ebony/Crowns Black Mother of Pearl Pickups: DiMarzio Sixties PJ - Gold Preamp: Spector HAZ 18V

OK, so maybe I've been naive for 30 odd years I assumed precision pickups were for p basses, humbucker for stingrays etc etc.... So when looking for cheap mods for a laugh to my Harley benton M M double humbucker bass I thought I'd check out the roswell pickup site (they're good for the price) I assumed my options were limited to a humbucker that fitted.... But, I never knew they did precision pickups in a rectangular humbucker sized block!! Totally makes sense too - why should a p pickup be a cast in stone split that fits the wood perfectly in that Z shape style? It does exactly the same in a pre made rectangular block. That opens up loads of options now!! A MP, a PM, even a PP if needed. We'll worth a shot for something different.

Don't panic! If you're fancying a try then seriously anything is better than nothing. Even a very basic bow will let you know whether you fancy pursuing it further.

It sounds like the circular saw of musical pedestrianism hitting a nail in the plank of nasality.

Might have done...

Opening a guitar shop is quite a commitment in this day and age for various reasons (rent and other bills, price competition, stock levels etc) but he must have done his homework so the best of luck to him. I guess there is quite a bit of footfall around that area so hopefully he'll be busy, possibly more with repairs, setups etc, as they are something that many people are happy to pay to be done and they can't just buy online. Speaking of the latter, hopefully not too many trying out instruments in the shop then buying elsewhere online cos it's £1 cheaper. Good to hear of a new shop though.

I try and not get into slagging off bands, because I know they mean something to people whether I like them or not. Plus life's too short, I'd rather talk about what I do like. But then, Oasis fans might not make the most convincing case for taking that approach, when the brothers Gallagher will loudly have a go at any music that's not boringly dressed white men with guitars. They get hate because they give it.

Squier 40th Anniversary Precision:

Seems standing tickets are £150. That’s punchy. In fact, that’s more than the cost of flying to Majorca (where I am currently). As much as I enjoy Oasis, I think a holiday might represent better value.

Those genres all mean something to me as I've invested a lot of time and effort in more obscure music - I'm someone who considers if I'm listening to brutal death metal or slam death metal for instance Whilst there is certainly similarities between some of the genres you've named, there is also nuanced differences Doom, stoner and sludge for instance will have elements of their sound that crosses over - in these cases they probably all love Black Sabbath - but there will be differences between a doom band and a sludge band and stoner one will be different still dreampop and shoegaze are very close bedfellows and you wouldn't be wrong to say the same for mid-west emo and indie, however you can make a distinction between them if you want You don't need to sub-divide genres at all if you don't want to, but then some folk will have vigerous debates about for example, what makes a band post-hardcore rather than emo The purpose, as I see it of these categorisations and sub-genres is to aid communication when describing to others what a band sounds like, so I have an idea of what I'm going to hear and how to find similar sounding acts if I like it However, there's no need to make the distinctions if you don't want or need to. Apologies for what is probably a very autistic answer

You don't look much like your avatar...

Indeed. My ACG P bass has something that looks very like a fat humbucker but is in fact a split coil p/up.

Finally put a few minutes aside to learn 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick'. It's always been on my list but never had a reason to do so until joining a band that want to cover it! Got it nailed now, just have to make sure my fingers don't get tied in a knot on the C# riff...!

Charvel launched his signature bass in September 2022, so, I guess, it will be 2 years before he switches again, probably to Warwick next 😉 https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2022/09/30/charvel-custom-shop-introduces-frank-bello-signature-bass/

That's what happened to me, and I wasn't even looking for one. The danger is real!

There’s been a lot of nice NBDs recently… I’m getting twitchy 🤣

What do we reckon, 4 years? 5?

I have two practice spots , home , and the in-laws. We spend much of our time looking after my mother-in-law. My practice nook there , two lovely little rigs. Elf into a One10 , I just picked up the Elf last week. This could easily cover a small gig. And a Darkglass e500 with a PhilJones C2. The Darkglass is a modelling amp that can be made to sound like just about anything. I do have a Darkglass 200 MicroTubes on the way. Two Gretsch basses made the pic , there’s two Gibson short scales just out of the frame. The e500 and C2 are what I normally keep there. I initially picked up a Rumble15 but realized it was not going to work out. For quite a while a GK MB200 into an Ampeg 210AV was the perfect rig. But I’m curious about other things and a bit nerdy so things were bound to shift. My little happy place. and the back view … and the little Aguilar home rig. This might change when the little Darkglass MicroTubes arrives. We’ll see …

Playing the Bottesini is made so much easier with a quality bow... It gets interesting about halfway through... The bow is an extension of your arm and should require no effort to keep it under control. It always has to be in perfect contact with the string to draw out the tone and power the top of the bass to "sing". As I've said before, plucking a bass is only about 10% of what it can really do...

Played Victorious Festival in Portsmouth with my rock/indie band WOOED on Saturday just gone. Absolutely bucketed it down from 6am onwards until our set at 3.30pm, and was dreading all my gear getting soaked on stage. 😬 However someone was smiling upon us from above and it started to clear up from 3pm onwards - so much so that I had to wear shades during the set. Felt very sorry for those who played earlier, especially as this fest is right on the seaside - the wind was howling. The festival backline was a lovely 810 powered by a OB1-300, it was very very loud, no problems there at all. Had my trusty anniversary Squier for the event, been with me the last few shows and it sounds absolutely brilliant. I did have the tone knob rolled all the way up by accident and had to turn it down by half during the show, but that's user error...and I've had worse things happen! We clashed with CMAT and Frankie Boyle which meant there weren't too many stragglers, but very grateful to those who did come and see us - and still by far the most amount of people we've played to, on by far the biggest stage! I wish I could do it all again. A few pics from soundcheck...

Threadxit

Well, he finished it…. Waiting on some chrome bits, but he did a good job so my effort of building him a body was not wasted.

I’m cogitating twerps.

Today is the first day of term in the college where I teach. We have a new student who is coming to do a year with us before becoming a full-time welder. He brought his bass in his home made case with him. It must be 30Kg. But he is about 6'6" and built like a mountain. I have never seen anything like it!

Oh very definitely a half. Soft drink, whatever.

Early on I was using a GK MB 200 into an Ampeg 210AV. It was a very nice sounding rig. I picked up the RB cheaply on kijiji , and found the cab in the used section of a local music shop. So I got a good deal there too. It wasn’t too big and could easily carry a band rehearsal or gig that wasn’t too loud. It was a great rig for the money. I just got a little nerdy and kept buying stuff after I got it going …

Thanks Daryl, according to my wife the first set had something not quite right for us but she couldn't say what it was. She goes to every gig. On hearing some other clips from the organiser it sounded like we were too quiet. With the venue filling up a lot more than we expected we more or less set our normal volume. On 2nd set we turned up and it brought the sound to life. The Mesa rig hits a sweet spot at a certain volume and the speakers just seem to sing. More depth, clarity as if they've just come alive. She said this happened at this venue last time we played there. We use their PA for vocals and we got the DJ / SE to raise the vocals for 2nd set too. We had 2nd thoughts about this particular gig as its like a huge marquee and we have no control over the main PA. The holiday park is taken over by Hot Rods in the Borders group with some amazing US cars on show. Dave

Or the Deep Purple version... Intro. Verse. Chorus. ORGAN SOLO!!! Verse. Chorus. GUITAR SOLO!!! Chorus. Chorus. Fade.

Let's see what they'll come up with. Looking forward to it! From BassMagazine: https://bassmagazine.com/spector-welcomes-frank-bello-of-anthrax-to-their-family-of-artists/ "Spector® welcomes Anthrax bass legend, Frank Bello to its artist roster. Anthrax is one of the most influential thrash metal bands of all time and Bello’s brutal bass riffs have been the driving force behind that success for forty years. Spector is currently developing the Frank Bello signature bass and it will be released in 2025. In the meantime, Frank will be exclusively playing Spector basses for rehearsals, recording, and on the upcoming European tour this November during Anthrax’s co-headlining tour with German thrash titans Kreator with Bay Area thrashers, Testament. “I am so psyched to join the Spector family- a place that already feels like home for me! The great people at Spector listened and contributed to every last detail that I was looking for in a bass- and I am truly so excited for everybody to see what we’ve come up with. It was great to have the opportunity to bring some Spector basses on tour to give them a test run, and I can honestly say- they checked all the boxes, and then some… Good times ahead, my friends- Let’s do this!! “Stated Bello. As Taylor McLam, Spector’s Artist Relations says, “We are honored to welcome Frank Bello into the Spector family. Having a NYC thrash metal legend like Frank playing a legendary NYC brand like Spector is truly a match made in heaven—or should I say, hell?” There will be much, much more coming from this monster metal alliance. Spector continues to be the bass that touring musicians love to play. Check out www.spectorbass.com for up-to-the-minute updates on this and all things Spector."

Keanu is a class act 👍