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Hi everybody, my name is Brad Lang and I'm a bass player. Thank you for welcoming me to Bassaholics anonymous. My attention has been drawn to a few contributors unaware of any work I've done apart from ABC's 'Lexicon of Love' album. Some suggesting that I only played the fretless parts on said album, and the fretted parts were either Mark Lickley or Trevor Horn. Let me set the record straight. I played both fretless and fretted parts on ALL of the album apart from 'Tears are not enough' 'Poison Arrow' and 'Look of Love'(synth bass) I must thank you for all the nice comments regarding my bass playing on that and further ABC albums. It definitely was a game changer for my career, I was aged 22 at the time. I had played on Philip Jap's single 'Save Us' (and other album tracks) which led me to work with Trevor Horn (with ABC, Dollar and Buggles notably) Natasha's 'Iko Iko' is another track I remember from around that time and of course Wham!'s 'Young Guns'. I also remember from the 80's recording with Jody Watley (Shalamar), Haddaway, Samantha Fox , Adrian Gurvitz, Alvin Stardust, Jermaine Jackson, Elkie Brooks, Gilbert O'Sullivan to name a few, some I can't recall... it was 40 years ago! Chris Tsangarides, Martin Rushent, Gus Dudgeon and Nigel Gray were producers I often worked with. Nigel Gray at 'Surrey Sound Studios' in Leatherhead I remember particularly fondly. Later I recorded albums with Black, Toyah, John Parr, Judy Tzuke , Ray Charles, Wishbone Ash, Gilbert Montagne, Ute Lemper, Barbara Dickson, and tracks with Brian May, Bonnie Tyler, Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams (my first double bass session) I also worked regularly with Simon Brint who wrote the music for many TV shows in the UK. In case anybody is remotely interested... Thanks for listening to my story.

Bristol Bandeoke, Blue Lagoon. It was of course the 31st so lots of crazy costumes and comic turns. Elvis was particularly hilarious. Me and the BL....

51 this year 👍

Also: £ 5,000 now reached! Yay! Well done, folks!

Kick his head in and give him a pair of bongos to play. No microphone either. And if he doesn't like it, shoot him. It's the only way forward.

I couldn’t resist this one! I’ve got a collection of Peavey T-40’s, and owned a T-45 (and T-15 and T-60 guitars…) but never tried the T-20 so I figured I’d give it a go. Surprise surprise, I love it! Sadly the case foam is disintegrating and making a mess all over the bass. I’ve dismantled it for cleaning (to be fair I do this with each new instrument I get anyway) and need to replace the comically oversized odd tuner and old/gross/dead strings. Not looking forward to sorting the case but, I’ve done it before so at least I know what to expect! I like the fact that the case is brown (all my T-40 cases are black) - I clearly never paid much attention as I didn’t know they were any love for the humble T-20?! And anyone else pretty much immediately dismantle a guitar as soon as they get it?!?

1966, 1971, 1970:

Hello all, first time poster but I thought that this was something worth sharing, not just because I'm proud and happy with the bass, I've "recently" moved to the UK so wanted to be more part of the community but also because I want to plug the builder as well. I've been a massive Pearl Jam/Jeff Ament fan since I started playing bass and I've always, always, always had an infatuation with his Silvertone 1443 replica that he used to play in the early 2000's/very late 90s. I always thought that it would be possible to get one built, but - Living in Australia meant there was a very limited amount of luthiers, and a lot wouldn't attempt something like this. If I do something, I do it right, and part of building a bass like this means finding a Modulus neck with the Fender shape headstock on it and they're HARD to find. One day while browsing Reverb, I found a 'bitsa' parts bass from Japan that had the Modulus graphite neck on it with the original Fender shape headstock, I paid a ludicrous amount of money for it, but I didn't question it, it was never going to come up again for potentially years. Keep in mind, Modulus Jazz Basses come up all the time, but not with the Fender headstock shapes. It was in Japan, so I had to pay to get it shipped all the way from there to the UK. Secondly, I had to find the period correct Bartolini pickups from that time, I assumed the bridge and neck pickup was a Bartolini 9S set, as it was the original model that Bartolini released, but the neck humbucker was the mystery. I already have another Jeff Ament style bass that Mike Lull built for me about 10+ years ago, that had that humbucker in the same neck position. I emailed Spencer and asked about the model, unfortunately they lost a whole heap of data years ago due to some cyberattack, which meant they didn't have my build sheet for my bass anymore, so he didn't know the model. He suggested I take the pickup out and check for any markings, no luck. Absolutely nothing on the bottom of the pickup. Next step was emailing Bartolini - I emailed Bartolini who at first were a little dismissive at just suggested that the pickup was just a 1CB/1CBC model, I responded with dimensions and said I was confident that it wasn't a 1CB/1CBC model, there was some other email back and forth between me and them, and them also going back to Spencer at Mike Lull and eventually came back to me with this - I'm not going to say how much it was, but it was a bit. but I got 2 out of it, so I have a spare/option to put one into another bass. Once I had the pickup in my hands, I purchased all the hardware and bits and pieces for the build, and the next stop was trying to find a builder in the UK/Europe who could custom CAD/CNC machine design. I did some Googling and digging and emailing, and for the most part there was a lot of builders that weren't interested, didn't get back to me, or only wanted to sell their designs (which is fair enough). I fortunately came across Neil Haynes from Guitar & Bass Build/Haynes Guitars in (https://guitarandbassbuilds.com / Haynes Guitars) in Shenington. Neil was extremely helpful right from the start, he was open to working on the project, he was up front about pricing and more importantly showed interest and was keen in the project. Communication was a little bit slow/tedious at times over email, and I had to send a few follow ups to make sure my message was received and acknowledged but overall it was good, considering he's essentially a solo operator. I was travelling for work, and when I got back I actually went to visit him and we both sat down in front of his computer and painstakingly went through all the measurements and was very tolerant of my "1mm here, 1mm there, actually no back again". It was a great process and it meant it was EXACTLY what I wanted, and if it wasn't, I only had myself to blame. Neil was an absolute pleasure, and I feel for him only being a solo operator. Final result is attached at the bottom, it's pretty spot on, unfortunately the red sunburst head stock I couldn't do, and the dimensions of how the body comes up around the neck are a tiny little bit off, but its' damn close. For some reason, the phone has made the colour seem less 'red' and more 'sunburst', but it's definitely more 'red' in person. I love it, I'm so happy with it, and it's a good addition to the existing stock. Sorry for the essay, but I thought some people and fellow Pearl Jam/Jeff Ament fans might find it interesting.

Scraping in at 50 years old.

Being in Aberdeen, I think this is more a case of "look, I'm doing official stuff" more than anything else, but here goes: Tonight - Nine Lives at the Balaclava in Fraserburgh Tomorrow night - The Inevitable Teaspoons at Krakatoa in Aberdeen

Just powered up today since I bought this on FB marketplace for £30. The pre-amp section was near mint, only the little bulbs behind the Trace Elliot logo needed replaced. The amp was sold as no output but it was making a sound, albeit slightly distorted. The problem was easily 'traced' to the ubiquitous PM-4S mosfet output board used in many TE's of the time, and fixed with a few minor component swaps. Weighs a ton right enough, but i can practice my scales and work on my winter tan at the same time 🙂 It also sounds absolutely amazing. It's my third AH250 and the best (and chepeast) one yet.

Generally you won't hear HPF in action until things get well loud or you overdo the frequency selection. For whatever volume you are playing at you can raise the HPF until it sounds thin and then back it off. Some rooms are overly lush down in the low end. I can wind up at 80hz with a bass cut.

A rather special celebration of 50 years of Big Star's Radio City album St John's church in Hackney last night, with quite a stellar collection of names on stage. Jody Stephens (the only living member of Big Star's original line-up) was drumming, while the others in the band swapped about duties on vocals, guitars, bass and keys: Mike Mills (R.E.M.), Chris Stamey (the dB’s), Jon Auer (The Posies) & Pat Sansone (Wilco). I think I have heard this described as the best Big Star covers you could imagine, and I can't disagree! The first set was playing the album from start to finish, then a second set of other Big Star songs. Mike Mills is always a joy to watch play bass, he seems to enjoy himself so much, but that was also true of everyone on stage. I really can't think of a better way to have spent a Thursday evening than this. I was delighted to get a few minutes to talk to Jon Auer after the show, mostly about guitars. Amazed he remembered me from another conversation at a gig Upstairs at the Garage a few years ago. 🙂

As with 95% of sessions, I was given free rein to write and play the part you hear. No artist or producer ever supplied parts to adhere to (not even chord charts for the most part), you'd just get a couple of run throughs to work out the chord sequence and (very importantly) follow the guide vocal and where the drummer was feeling the beat, then they'd press the record button. I'd usually ask to keep the first pass then listen back to see if there was anything worth keeping and build a part from there. Once I'd got the part I would prefer to play the whole song in one take rather than endless drop-ins just for continuity of tone and feel. That's how we did it back in the day. Live recording onto 24 track tape. It seems akin to recording onto wax cylinders compared to the digital recording of today!!

53 years old

My 1968 Fender Precision, bought new by me in March 1969, seriously modded in 1986 and finally put in its case in 1996 when I switched to 5 string basses.

I'll start with my 1972 Kay 20 b. All original, all works, sounds great. Nice finish and feel. Looks lovely. Bits I like: 1. The fact each pickup has an on/off/mix switch, a volume and a tone. 2. The little pointers under the numbered knobs. Makes it super easy to dial in what you want. 3. It has character. Nice finish and feels more handmade than a like a modern cnc'd piece of wood. Edit: the headstock photo was taken before I did some work on it - previous owner had strung it all wrong!!

The podcast is out!

The final countdown, maybe 🤫

Latest development on my board