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My 32" scale Zoot Boudica!

16 years apart…

Meant to post this earlier but forgot... A while ago I joined a newly-formed Eagles tribute with a lovely, talented bunch of lads. Months of rehearsals and a handful of gigs later, we're really starting to settle in to it. Here's a couple of clips from a gig in my home village the other weekend. Gear-wise, it's the usual for me. Handbox R-400, TKS 212 cab.... and the Maruszczyk Jake PJ to cover Randy's P tone in the early days, and Tim's Jazz tone from the Kong Run era. Eventually I'll probably switch between an actual P and J. I'm new to this IEM lark, and I'm still getting used to it. We have lots of refining to do. We don't run a silent stage, 'cos we like amps. 🙂

got some sonicakes lying around so why not.. suprisingly good for the price. mounted on a £1 IKEA board. powerbank/usb powered using a Joyo ZGPw

Rumbled! Yeah, I'm still lurking around in here, in case of gig cancellation. IIRC it was a cancellation that allowed me to attend last year. They say lightning doesn't strike twice, but you tell that to the Empire State Building!

hope its ok to post thia in here

This Saturday 7th, Blood Bikes benefit in Pwllheli And the following Friday 13th at Worcester Music Festival

When I joined my first band non of us had the faintest idea of how to play our respective instruments, and never had single lesson, not even from a book. Best way to learn how to play your instrument is playing in a band. You don't learn how to play with other people from sitting alone at home and playing with yourself. Find the right band for you and join it!

With the Torzal bass (no mor wrist pain)

I love the sound of the bass on its own (which makes it great when practising), but the feeling of playing bass in a band or with others is the best feeling even if you’re just locked into playing root notes with the bass drum, that feeling of locking in with a drummer is like a drug I can’t get enough of. I’d say get out and play with others ASAP, especially a drummer if you can. Life is short, grab it by the balls. Jump in and go for it, it’ll make you a much better player in a much shorter time. Plus you get to share the love of music with others into the same thing which is another bonus 😊

I would have assumed that was a poster for when he is playing at the local sports and social club, after the bingo.

I hate it when people post pics of a red C2, I already have a great micro setup but it just makes me want to buy one along with a BAM200 for no other reason than it would look fantastic.

JV: CV:

You're ready already! Just need to find the right people and the right music. Bass is definitely a social instrument that works best playing with others. Luckily, one of my best friends is a drummer, so just doing boozy rhythm section practice/jam sessions was my starting point. Then I joined a 3 piece that just did practice stuff, then onto bands that were a bit more serious and played live, now I also do some Dep stuff so can have very little practice time before playing live. I'm yet to play anything bigger than pubs and small festivals though so there's still hopefully a progression. The gradual progression seemed a good way of doing it.

This bass seems to be incredibly under-represented in terms of review, and those I've seen don't fit entirely with my impressions. So I'm going to have a go. I'm not going to compare with other Sire basses. The body First thing you notice is the bookmatched flamed maple to, supposedly AAAAA. The figure is very dependent on the angle light hits it, so sometimes one side will look much more pronounced than the other. It's a veneer (apparently the new DX model has a slab) over maple backing. The main body is alder, and has an almost square edge and the front carve has a longer than usual curve so it's a bit like a precision version of an Aerodyne Jazz. The alder is a rich dark colour and the maple is paler giving the impression of a bound top. IMHO it looks fabulous and is what caught my attention. There's no scratchplate, but an abundance of tasteful black knobs and one switch. It's not a heavy bass IMHO though I haven't weighed it. The Neck This is 'supposed' to be a P-bass, so I'd expect something comfortably above 40mm at the nut. It isn't, it's well into Jazz-bass territory, I measure mine at a smidgin over 37mm. I would say the neck is the best feature of a good bass. It has very 'rolled' edges, more pronounced than my Squier Jaguar; perhaps because the frets are set back, so the roll goes all along the edges, rather than the rolling being just between frets as on the Jag. The profile is supposedly an asymmetric 'C', I think slightly deeper on the bass side. This is genuinely one of the most comfortable necks I have played, feeling instantly at home, very like my Flea Jazz but perhaps 'fitting the hand' a bit more. Neck radius is quite pronounced. Headstock is the tasteful (some will disagree) and distinctive Sire shape with Marcus Miller P10 and a Sire logo in thin, slightly 3D silver writing that appears 'embedded' in thick lacquer. Visually, the neck is stunning. Roast maple with a nice figure and a fingerboard of even darker heavily figured maple with gorgeous abalone inlays. The dark bands along the side of the fingerboard slab oozes 'boutique' Tuners are the open type, chrome, nearer to Squier size than standard Fender, but with cast rather than pressed back plates. They work well with littel backlash. The new DX version has golden hipshot ultralites (but I prefer the more traditional aesthetic). The Nut It's a bone nut, not synthetic. The Bridge This is a 'slightly beefed up' BBOT with 'high-mass' bridge pieces. (DW version has a full hi-mass bridge in gold) String spacing is about 18.5mm and fixed. You can anchor stings on the bridge (this is how what seem to be a new set of decent stainless strings are fitted) or fit them through the body. I quite like the strings and will probably replace with Rotosound 66 Swing Bass through the body when they lose their sparkle. I can't comment on the 'as new' setup, as it was secondhand. It was pretty good, but I made tweaks. Truss rod adjustment is at the butt end, but there's a large recess making this easy. I had to add a 1/6 turn to get my preferred very slight relief. I dropped all four bridge pieces by about two turns of all the adjustment screws, a hefty drop in action. Any more and the g-string started to rattle; I suspect the E, A and D could come down a tad, but action at the 12th fret is about 1.75mm or less on the E, which is fine for me. Lets me dig in and clank if I want but sounds clean most of the time. I had to deepen all the nut slots quite a lot, maybe approaching 0.5mm to get the light action on the upper frets that I like, nowhere near buzzing. Pickup adjustment seems fine since I dropped the action, may adjust them once I have played it a bit more. Pickups and Preamp Pickups are standard PJ arrangement labelled Sire x Marcus Miller. With the switch in passive mode the bass sounds bright and punchy compared to my precision and jazz which have vintage style alnico pickups. You have a stacked passive tone and volume and a blend pot, all of which do what you would expect of them. In active mode you get four more controls (the passive ones still work). These are bass and treble and a parametric middle control. I found I could get a good range of tones by choosing a level for the mids, then adjusting frequency to taste. Repeat for different boost/cut settings. Helpfully, the controls have centre detents (except tone and volume) and if you set the active controls to the middle the sound is very close to passive mode with a touch of volume boost (apparently you can set the volume with an internal pot). This makes it easy to get a good starting position. Others have criticised the Sire preamp; I found it much easier to get useful sounds than my two basses with simple bass+treble active circuits. I have only played through fairly small rigs so far, but ones with a very good bottom end response. Through my brother's Elf/Portaflex 15 setup pushing the bass up gave a huge sound. It certainly excels at harmonically rich, mid-heavy, funky sounds, and you have to work harder to get a good punchy but dark rock tone. It would be a sin to put flats on this bass, it brings the richness of new roundwounds out front and centre. Overall Looks-wise it's a complete contrast to all my other basses, it is very 'boutique' (and the new DX version even more so with gold hardware). It's a very nice, comfortable bass to play. The neck is lovely; utterly different from a precision despite the 'P' designation, although jazz bass afficionados should feel at home. The sounds it produces lean more towards the funkier end of bass playing to my ear, I look forward to seeing what it does in a blue or classic rock context over the nest couple of weeks... Biggest surprise? I'm a pretty meh slapper, but I actually find this bass relatively easy to play slap on, although this may be helped by me using it mostly with my Joyo BadASS with the compression turned on. Some more pics tomorrow, not got the light to get decent ones.

Phwoar! What a sound. Love the amp. Loads of heft and a lot darker than my ABM, but you don't lose detail. It does just what I wanted it to do! It's the best class D amp I've used from that perspective.

A really good watch. I do think Ian Martin Allison is amazing.

I took vocal lessons and found them really useful - they took me from "can I sing?" to performing gigs in about six months. One of the best things was increasing my range - I'd increased my top note 6 semitones after a year's lessons. I find it much easier to sing to octave mandolin which has similar pitch range to my voice. Lately I've been playing mandolin and that's much harder as I have to find my own pitch based an octave down. However, I think it's good practice as otherwise I rely on the octave mando too much. I also found it a great help to have a professional advising as I ended up with laryngitis twice, and a chest infection, and generally since I've been singing I've had to take much more care over my voice & lungs. Not like bass where I can just chuck it in a bag after a gig. Edit: I can't sing and play bass though, I don't seem to be able to carry two rhythms in my head at once. Singing to guitar/mandolin is fine though.

You want loud, light, portable and a great sound with your Ashdown head? Get a 17kg Barefaced Super Twin.

And as if by magic....

We can't even tempt you with the food? Oh, the food.

Warwick 5 String Fortress Flashback made in Germany 1996-98 Passive with the stock MEC pickups this instrument is very well made. I have limited idea what I’m going to use it for but possibly Rock Music Plectrum type stuff. Or even thumping and popping heaven forbid It snaps out bright this bass despite the pick ups being underwhelming strung as it arrived with Daddario Chromes. I’m think I could go smoother with this instrument possibly La Bella or I try DR Legends ( never used them). anyway there you go , a rare instrument, it looks a bit different (bling?) but once I practice enough with its string spacing (a bit narrow for me) it’ll be a keeper

I eventually took a punt and bought a 32” Jazz style neck from China off eBay. It wasn’t as painful as I had imagined. It took over 3 weeks to arrive but when it did, it was in good condition and the import duty had been sorted. It was unfinished but had a nut installed and the frets had been nicely executed. The heel proved to be a little wider than the Fender standard, so I had to ease the neck pocket on a Precision body to fit it. Anyway I’m at risk of straying into build diary territory, so suffice to say I now having a working, lightweight, medium scale P bass with Jazz style neck. It sounds pretty good IMO, if a little bright (full size P body, so pickup is a little close to the bridge). The whole thing, including Tonerider pickup and Schaller machine heads cost me a little more than £200, plus a lot of finishing work. I still think Squier could sell a lot of medium scale P basses if they would only bite the bullet. Here it is in action:

Yes, cool video and Ian is an Empire guy, but I would have preferred a track from Operation Mindcrime. Fortunately, there is this cool headless guy on YT 😁 who delivers a fab cover of one of my fav Queensryche songs, which is perfect for Valentine's Day. BTW, great Kramer era black NS-2 that would go so well with my white Mike Starr bass *wink* *wink* 😜

It’s worth giving him an email. He sometimes works in batches and can at least let you know when the next ones are due.

Gotta say Davie is a brilliant an fantastic bloke. Top notch fella. Not only have I learned a hell of a lot from him about basses and builds in other forums, but have dealt with him on buying and selling. I ordered a Roswell Filtertron from DE but got confused and ordered 2 by mistake. They wouldn't let me cancel the other one, but in steps Davie who bought it straight from me. We agreed a price and I insisted he didn't pay until it came through his door. The cash was in my bank before I posted it FFS! Recently I wanted a template to cut the headstock on my PB to the old tele style, a couple of days later it arrived as an MDF template, I was expecting a bit of paper! I asked him how much he wanted and he told me to put some money into a local charity box. I donated a fiver to breast cancer as his P&P was £1.40 and his time and material must've come to £3 so, yeah he's a good bloke and someone you can trust in any transaction. He don't suffer fools gladly, i.e. folks that just talk **** about their new £2000 guitar but are just badge whores, but will spend any amount of his time, vast experience and knowledge coaxing us newbies not to go down the rabbit hole of spending stupid money for something that won't really matter to how your guitar sounds. Brilliant bloke, glad to know him and thank god for him he lives such a long way from me, otherwise I'd be round his house every day!!! 😁

You do not mention budget. I don't play heavy rock but two modern 12s would surely suffice. I down traded my Monaco to a 10" Monza as the Monaco wasmore than I needed. I would look at either a Barefaced Big Twin or two LFSys Monacos. Two Monacos will be lighter and a £few hundred cheaper. The two LFSys will be about 114cm high stacked but the dispersion means you will not need the stand or box.

Demo was yesterday!

agreed - love mine 🙂

I regularly gig a big baby ii. I used to have two of them but it was overkill. I play in a Classic Rock band doing lots of festivals and big stages. Never ran out of volume.

You can shoot me for harbouring such an opinion, but as far as I'm concerned this is more for placating gear racists than acheiving higher quality.

Jazz bass as received (s/h): And now: Jaguar SS: 40th Anniv:

You have loads of options available but I'll offer a few observations... Don't get hung up on speaker size, particularly that you need 15" speakers for more 'bottom end'! Don't be afraid to raise a cab off the floor to get it nearer your ear. Consider a modular rig, especially one that will get the drivers closer to your ear height (a pair of 2x10 stacked on their ends to create 4x10 in one vertical line). 'Literally' ignore speaker ratings other than ohmage; some companies claimed wattage is a joke and is meaningless. Are you sticking with your amp? The TC is a different amp altogether compared to the Ashdown ABM. No mention of digital (I just mentioned it) but sometimes, claimed power ratings are massaged!

I also have a Joyo MA10B in my partner's lounge (and a Hohner B2). Alternative heads for the C2 cab are an Elf (just loud enough to gig with a quiet drummer) and a wee Hotone mode redundant by the Joyo BadASS.

To the OP do you want to play covers or songs you've written yourself? If you want to do covers go and see some local covers bands and you'll quickly get an idea of which songs you need to know and then you can go away and practice them. If you want to play originals then put out some ads and jump in. IME enthusiasm always trumps ability in the early days of playing originals. Overall I have found the following: 1. You are rarely as bad at playing as you think. Even after 50 years of being in bands my playing ability is probably still well below average, but I've never had any problem finding bands and musicians to play with. 2. The quickest way to improve is to join a band. Playing with other musicians does wonders for your ability especially if they are of a slightly higher standard than you. 3. If you can bring something on top of being a bass player to the band that always improves your chances. Backing vocals are always and asset. Also van ownership or having somewhere for the band to rehearse, or being a decent graphic designer. HTH

"I am a million years away from it" No, you're not, you just think you're not ready. Best to try and get together with 1 or more people and play a couple of songs you've had chance to practice beforehand. You may shock yourself and it works first time.....if not it just gives you areas to brush upon. It is a big step to go from playing in your living room to playing with others but the sooner you do the quicker you will learn and progress. "one of my objectives for playing bass is joining a band." Great that you've got something to work towards, it gives purpose. "How did you know when you were ready to join your first band?" You don't really! You'll probably think your never ready because there some 6yr old on Youtube playing Jaco. 🤣 Forget that and just go for it. Good luck 👍