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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 ...

Founded by Gilles Peterson and James Taylor the record label became a genre. I have always loved it.. please share your favorites. I should add there are lots of Acid Jazz that are not the Acid Jazz label but are still Acid Jazz/modern Jazz Funk. This album is a classic from James imo... Andrew Mckinney on bass.

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.

Interesting story... back in 1997 I was working for a video games company, and we had a motion capture studio that we would rent out to clients when we weren't using it for game stuff. One of the clients we got was Sony, who were making a Minidisc ad that was going to feature a little CG character made of Minidiscs that would morph into Jay Kay doing his funny dancing. So we had to motion-capture him doing the dance. The place was in a warehouse on a sleepy industrial estate in Croydon, and, even when we had big name people there (we did a football game where we got several Premier League players down) it was always quiet. Not on that day - the place was full of Sony people from Japan, they brought a Winnebago down for Jay Kay to use as a changing room (the Premier League footballers were perfectly happy to use the toilets) and then he shows up in a souped-up Mercedes. Stuart and Derrick were with him, and they hung out with us and were very cool, but Jay would only speak to my boss, and very much had that "I'm too important to talk to you" vibe going on. Everyone just thought, "d*ck". Still, we did the job. They made the ad, and I got a Jay Kay anecdote out of it. For what it's worth, this was the ad (or one of them, anyway - apparently they made several, but this was the only one I could find, and it doesn’t have the morphing thing):

I too though the same as above when I saw the image of no scratchplate bass. Mark

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

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.

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.

The X18 (which is what I have) is functionaly identical to the XR18 with a few connector differences (and when i bought it, quite a sizeable price difference). It just has a tray on the front that is presumably meant to hold a tablet but never actually did if you wanted to plug it in. The differences that the X18 has vs XR18 are that the 17-18 sockets are RCA vs Jack, the 6 aux outputs are TRS instead of XLR, and the X18 aerial is internal instead of sticking out. One was designed for the desk, and one for the floor. There was never an X/XR without a wifi

That sucks. Nice to hear the positive outcome though - Peterson seem like great people as well as making superb tuners.

I agree about the headphone jack, it does look clunky. Shame they couldn’t have made the Aux socket on the back of the Spark 40 two way. At least the cable would be hidden then. Andertons have scheduled a handover for Monday. The courier will bring a replacement unit and I give them the duff one. I like that. I don’t have to wait until they have checked the duff unit, they send me a replacement on trust. Fingers crossed that the replacement is quiet 🤞! I really don’t understand why a Class D power amp would be noisy, if functioning to specification but I have discovered more reviews online that complain about it. Looks like a common issue. I can’t say I am confident that the replacement will be better ☹️. As an aside, I discovered that Thomann knock out this little HB power amp for under £70 : https://www.thomann.co.uk/harley_benton_gpa_100.htm. 100 watts @8 ohms, 190 @4 ohms. The reviews I have found are all positive, so I have ordered one to work with my Flyrig 2 into my LFSys Monza, as a low volume rehearsal/intimate gig solution. This covers one of the use cases I had for the Spark Cab, so the replacement unit is going to have to be perfect to justify me keeping it. P.S. The other benefit the Spark Cab has is its multi-instrument capability. I did try it out with both acoustic and electric guitar, and it worked well. You do have to play with the EQ a bit, as the cab tends to be a bit bass heavy (good for bass use obvs) and the twin tweeters can accentuate piezo brittleness. I always found the Spark 40’s default acoustic voice very effective and the Clean guitar setting; not so much the more driven settings. The Spark Cab just gives you them louder but being FRFR it also makes their drawbacks more obvious. Again judicious use of EQ might help.

The twin sister of my USA Joe Osborn is for sale in Germany for a very decent price. Looks in better nick than mine, and I paid more. https://www.bassic.de/kleinanzeigen/lakland-usa-joe-osborn-signature-44-60-bass.55500/

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.

I must admit that having a HXFX which was way more powerful than the ME90B, I explore the 90b more, it is much more immediate, like separate effects without all the faff, but also much more restrictive, which concentrates the mind on what you actually want. I mean I would still like to use my Mod Dwarf if bass direct ever return it (to be fair they have only had it since march), but I think when I get that back I will probably stick with the 90b.

I rejigged my secondary/‘fly-board’ after receiving my Schutone replacements for overdrive and chorus: All on a PT Nano and powered by a Cioks Sol. Just need to get a couple of tall pedal toppers for the Schutone pedals now, ones that fit momentary switches (the Mooer toppers don’t). Si

An update if someone is interested: Lessons are once a week for about 20 minutes. I worked through a first year's beginner book in about a month, which was great for learning the basics (posture, first and half position, ...) and relearning the bass clef. I've been working on how high the moon for the last week or so (melody, arpeggios in different inversions etc). I'm well aware I'm just scratching the surface, but so far I'm very pleased. There's something about the physicality of playing an actual acoustic instrument. So far so good!

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