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I do love a sitting gig at my age. Lovely little jazz club in SW France near where we used to live. Went down great. Percussionist couldn't make tonights gig but still worked well. Well paid, but I would have done tonights and last nights shows for nothing as the sax/keys player is gravely ill and it was simply an honour to have been asked to provide the low end on what may well be one of his last gigs.

Just got this! I'm impressed! It's from 2010 I'm into metallic colours right now!

Last Friday’s gig took an unexpected turn when a drunk came on stage between sets—someone none of the band knew. I later found out that he had almost certainly stepped on my Peterson pedal tuner, cracking the plastic screen. Thankfully, the LCD beneath wasn’t damaged. I reached out to Peterson’s customer service, and they were excellent—sending me a replacement screen free of charge. It’s a reminder that for every bad experience, there’s often a good one right around the corner. Peterson gear may be pricier, but their quality and customer service make it worth every penny.

The P bass has landed. First impression are very good. Fit and finish seem to be spot on, out of the box it was setup better than a lot of the Fenders I have bought. Weight is ok. Tone and volume pots fully function. Everything seems good so far on this.

I went to see Alice Cooper last night. Never seen him before, not an enormous fan but always wanted to go. The Meffs were on first but we missed them due to traffic, can't say I'm bothered as I've seen them before and tbh I don't understand the attraction of them. Primal Scream were next... just garbage. The singer(dunno or care about his name) acted and sounded like he was off his head, kept introducing the wrong song next and messed up the words a few times. I was glad when they went off but a few others seemed to really enjoy them...I love this about music. Alice came on and owned the place. He was real good, strutting around and ordering people to sing. Hardly any recognition that the audience was there, sorry if reminded me of how The Ramones were, just song after song, no talky bits in between. I didn't know a few of the songs but the sound was so good that I could hear every word. Id go see him again.

I'm actually now in a reasonable state with the six string. Body is done. It's only 34mm thick. As it's so thin, this presents other problems, such as the wiring channels are very narrow as the Voronoi shapes are thin, well that's the way I designed it so I can only blame myself. I designed the parts of the body to split in the thinnest sections to reduce the join lines. There are dowels in these joins to ensure that the parts align. The switch abnd control panels are now printed in situ and it looks a lot cleaner. Aluminium backbone is done. Previously I had screwed two aluminium plates together to form a T shaped. This is the "chassis" of the guitar and the body attached to the wings of the T. That's the holes on the side. I've now bonded the aluminium together using an adhesive for ships. If it can stand salt water and last up to 10 years, it'll keep a guitar together (I hope). This has the advantage of making this piece a lot simpler as no tapping and dieing and no countersunk drilling, contrary to what the diagram below shows. It also keeps the back of the guitar super clean with only four holes for the neck. The aluminium now has a matt brushed look on the back, it still shows some finger prints but I'll do another polishing round when the guitar comes to pieces yet again.... The wiring is all done, I tried very hard to keep the strands of the Voronoi as thin as possible and as the channels are printed in with no access slots, this makes copper tape cladding impossible, so I use a copper braided tube to encompass the wires as the wiring goes from the switch through the body of the guitar to the control panel. Of course, did I allow enough space for the wires AND the copper braid? No. Another lesson learnt and as I had glued the whole guitar up, it had to be thrown away and another body printed. That's around 30 hours and a roll of filament down the drain. Bridge is in and is as low as I can get it. The guitar body is 34mm thick which is 8mm of aluminium backbone, 3mm of aluminium plate on top and 22mm on top of body which is about the height of the pickups. The neck is around 26mm. That's it, I can't make it much lower unless I get or make very thin pickups I managed to find a low level BBOT and that seems to be OK. Pickups are Tesla P90's which are great. They are wired into a pair of volume/tone pots a la Telecaster Deluxe. I only have on string on at the moment to test the height of everything. Plugged it into a Phil Jones Bighead Pro amp and it sounded great (with only one string). I seem to recall playing Smoke on the Water. Seasick Steve eat your heart out Pickguards are a challenge. I have designed them but none of the 10 or so versions I've printed look like anything but sh1t. Currently it's sporting a Prusament Orange pickguard as that's the last one I tried and it doesn't look good. However being orange will force me to think of a better solution. Work to be done: Take it all to pieces to fix a 1mm excess bit of aluminium around the neck joint. Purely for aesthetic reasons but got be done otherwise I won't sleep. Find the three way switch washer and nut which I appear to have lost and could be anywhere in the debacle that is my desk. Buy a chunk of pick-guard material, probably white pearl, and work out how to shape it into a pickguard. If anybody has any good suggestions on how to learn to do this, I'm all ears. I have this guitar to do, another copy of this guitar as I'm making two of them. The second version is a solid body version which I'm making as yet another experiment. I also will be remaking my Fender Jazz copy, I need decent pick-guard for my current headless (which is a really, really nice bass to play). I'm also planning (in my head) a headless Thunderbird bass. I have all the parts but am stressing over cutting the neck down. So that's five pick-guards to make. I'd be happy to buy one, but if its five, I should learn how to make them. If anybody has any pointers to how they have done it, I'd be grateful. Check if I can get rid of the ferrules on the back of the neck. I have some smaller domed screws which I'm hoping are short enough. That would clean the back of the guitar up a lot. Replace the silver screws on the back for the access panels. Black M2 countersunk screws on order.

My band were recently (Saturday) honored to play at the LGGF 25th anniversary ball in Birmingham. For 25 years the LGGF has been fundraising for Marie Curie and Cancer Research and this night was a very special milestone for them and they celebrated in serious style. Such a great night for us and everyone in attendance!

She's Right I'm Left, our acoustic offering is back at The Harley Motor Restaurant tomorrow Saturday 5:30-8:30. Daryl

The Australian Pink Floyd tonight

Wow! Got my z3 today in black sparkle! Its an absolute stunner! Came well set up and ready for action. Sounds great, eq very strong and you can get huge tonal differences. Active and passive works great. Lovely neck and feels quite light (I'd estimate 9lbs). Photos online don't do these justice.

I also had a go at a mk3 clone, but I was more interested in the shape than mimicking the true Wal sound. But saying that, I did use Walbuckers and Lusithand preamp just out of curiosity. It’s a truly powerful bass for sure with lots of tonal variation on tap

That’s fantastic. Stays in the country.

i see his main strat went for $910,000 dollars and was donated to the national museum of Ireland

Whenever I am not gigging, I watch an "act" every Saturday at the Wheeltappers, and invariably the "Solo Singers" use the miniature line array plus sub arrangement. Again, invariably,the bass thumps out in an unpleasant way. IT reminds me of when my mum got her first Colour TV. The Colour ( Saturation) was turn up as high as it goes. I worked in the broadcast industry at the time and tried to explain that it did not look natural, her reply was, " I paid for colour and I will have as much as I can".

Don’t be daft. They might be known by gear nerds, and maybe ‘known of’ by bass players who hang about on internet forums… but I couldn’t tell you why they were good like funkle’s video… but general bass players? Nah last month a bass player asked if I had heard of that obscure make ‘Cort’ that he had just found a bass he was interested in.

And has anyone ever actually bought one?

The carved vs ply discussion really depends what you're doing. If you're playing rootsy pizz or slap styles, there might not be a meaningful upgrade from a well setup, quality laminated bass. The situation is complicated by there being a lot of carved student basses that aren't all that wonderful either. And the laminated bass can be a useful working instrument in situations that would be rough on a carved bass even where it might not be the ultimate instrument for the style you're playing. It's in classical styles and the more articulate end of jazz pizz where great carved basses can bring something that laminated basses rarely have - otherwise, a nicely set up laminate is probably going to be fine.

Musical snobbery (and instrument snobbery) is utterly pointless and entirely against what should be the spirit of music making. I’ve played carved basses badly, ply basses badly and even aluminium basses badly - but I’ve had fun with other people while doing so, which is what music is about. For the vast majority of people and playing situations a ply bass is more than adequate. (The 100% ply David Gage Czech Ease bass I sold is going to be used on a global arena tour playing to more people in one day than many classical orchestras will reach in a year.) Get bass. Play bass. Love bass. If you can afford a fully carved bass then buy one. But many of us started on (and remain fans of) basic beaten up ply basses.

I had an MIJ 66 Jazz in candy apple red with matching headstock and dot and bound neck back in the day, around the time I bought that silver P off you. I don't know if you'd remember it but here's a photo from manic 16 years ago. It had clovers rather than lollipops and the guy I bought it off told me it was a non export model. I Shouldn't have sold it, but I didn't know what I had 😭.

Sorry had to be done ...

Online retailer forgets the internet exists 🤷🏻‍♂️😂

I design training for a living. Say what you're gonna say, say it, and then say that you've said it. If something is worth saying it's worth saying twice. Yeah I reported my own post immediately, sorry guys. 🤫 I know you're poking fun but genuinely I've had (off the top of my head) a Line 6 G10, G30, G55, a Smoothound, some Lekato bugs, and now these. To be honest they're all broadly fine but I do think the Shures are a step above the rest. I have literally had one dropout in 5-6 years, the format is great, the thing is well built, the tuner means I don't have to waste a helix footswitch or have a separate tuner on my analogue board, you can trade latency for stability if you need to, the batteries last forever (and are replaceable when they stop lasting forever), it scans for the best channel automatically, etc etc. I think that at some point soon I'm going to get a Quad Cortex and when I do I will probably upgrade to the new GLX+ as I think the input jack is a great idea and something I've missed in my current setup but I'm in no hurry. I've had these boards for 5 years or so now and I just don't want an 'interesting' rig. I want to just have stuff work and focus on playing, which I find hard enough! £300 used or £500 new is admittedly a lot of money but no they are not overpriced. They are expensive and worth it. The only thing 'above' these are the proper pro units costing thousands.

Just for the record you can replace the batteries on the shure units. It's the same one used by most if their wireless mics and very readily available. Go glx, by far the best consumer unit. o

Acid Skiffle!

Hmm needs tort 😛 🍿

@Quatschmacher - soz, only just seen this. I’ve got a mercury, can try tomorrow…

Nux 5.8GHz - Battery Life Test I fully charged the Nux 5.8GHz and set it up so that the transmitter was connected to the output of my Zoom B1-4 with drum machine playing (in place of my bass output), and receiver into the input of a preamp pedal (both pedals loose and powered up) to try to give it a realistic set up, rather than simply switch the transmitter and receiver on next to each other in isolation. The manual suggests "around 4 hours" of battery life. My 2-3 year old ones, which I bought used and have gigged 100+ times over the past 18 months managed pretty much exactly 5 hours before the transmitter gave out (receiver had a little bit of battery life left in still, but was on "red") Actually that's better than I was expecting! So I think I can be pretty relaxed for most gigging situations, other than some function gigs where there's quite a gap between set up / sound check and finishing the second set, where I'll just need to remember to switch the units off. In addition, the storage case doubles up as a battery recharger which gives another back-up, if needed. @Lozz196 @BigRedX - hopefully that ties in with your experience and provides all 3 of us with some reassurance when playing live with the Nux wireless?

Well, an iPad mini fits in the front, as do I am sure, lots of android things too (like the fire), if you wanted to use it for that. If not, it is a great place to put your keys so you remember where you put them.

Loves a bit of Alice, Seen twice at Wembly Arena... Constrictor and Trash Tours Certainly a Show

Yup, you called it - they're going to send a courier to fetch it. They are going to such lengths to repatriate a damaged £180 bass... oh well, up to them I guess.

try the yellow dunlop tortex triangles, same material and thickness but alot bigger.

Former 'Alan Parsons Live Project' guitarist, now respected blues guitarist.... Alastair Greene at Aldershit West End Centre last night. Great player, gig and venue!

Is there a manufacturer that hasn’t made a Frank Bello signature bass?

Hello you, it’s me again! This time with a little repair/upgrade on a Ricky 4003s/5. This is a great bass, but I wanted to make it an amazing bass for me. I play with a low/very low action. Because of that, to setup the intonation the bridge saddles must be closer to the neck. But the “calculation” of the Rickenbacker factory was not very good this time, the screws for the intonation becoming too short. For a medium and high intonation I’m sure the screws are long enough. So, I moved the bridge 10 mm to the neck because I didn’t found longer screws on stores, even Schaller factory has only 24 and 28 mm M 3,5 screws. Yep, unfortunately I made 3 new holes, but the bass will remain forever mine, so it must be not very “marketable”. The second modification that I made was to put a new pickguard with a new shape, to have a pseudo-thumbrest. Even the design was made in such a way to have a parallelism with that oblique pickup edge 🤓. I need to play there (and to rest my thumb for the B string) to have the tone that I want. So, this problem was solved too. In the case the bass looks better with a white pickguard, but on stage it’s too much contrast for me. Yeah, I know, I’m too fastidious (it’s the proper word? ). Now pictures...

Definitely get hooked up to the editor. There are loads more sounds I shared in the cloud. Try patch 86 for a classic MM-type bass sound. You can double-click and hold to quickly scroll down patches. Or click and turn the encoder to scroll through banks, then you’re only a few presses away from whatever preset you want, and can do that using up only. Or hook up a MIDI controller or Panda’s 4Control with a couple of footswitches. Glad you find the manual well-written; I’ve put many hundreds of hours into that since 2019, refining it each time.

just want to say thank you so much, upgraded to to 4,11 via mac yesterday in 10 mins and after a few failed attempts all was good. New presets are a deffo improvement for people looking to plug and play and ditch a keyboard player treading on out territory - particularly the DI presets in, I think bank 3 I got v4 a month ago - not got beyond p40 of the(well written 😁) manual yet or dabbled with editor but very excited about experimenting and learning how to use this and adapt into my set up - currently investigating splitting signal in HX stomp and merging with clean bass tone, which seems to work well for the some of the more extreme sounds. The Di type presets seem better by themselves. My only initial complaint is the inability to easily switch between presets - ok to go up but not easy to go down on the pedal itself? Double click don't work for me = older person, slow! I have a few days off work next week and will be delving into the editor. My only previous synth experience was with a mini moog in the early 90s- I lost a year down a psychedelic rabbit hole. Here I go again...

I had a shot at cloning a Wal. Did a whole series of videos…. Maybe just go to my last one!

Just to echo @AndyTravis's comments above... Saturday was great: afternoon gigs might be the way forward. Fiasco Jam were phenomenal - great songs, great arrangements and everyone locked in. As I've already said to him, Andy might be my favourite bassist: despite his immense technical and sonic range, he always serves the song and never puts a foot wrong. We were a bit rusty in comparison but acquitted ourselves acceptably. Very grateful to FJ for taking us along!