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First post, but I've been enjoying vicariously living through your gig reports for a while now so thought I'd start to contribute. We played the Old Market Tavern in Altrincham last Friday. We were down to one singer due to a fixture clash and had been asked to go as light as possible as Saturdays are the heavier night there. This led to less metal and more grunge and hard rock going in the setlist, although we did save Toxicity and Bodies for the encore. Got a pretty good response, a few dancers and great feedback from the landlady so we're booked in again for next year. We're all on IEM so the soundcheck invoked making sure our mixes worked as well as the PA, after last gig where a change in PA position meant the IEM sounded awful. My basd sounded rumbly through the PA but also didn't cut through at all. A few mix tweaks did nothing until we moved the sub off the wooden floor onto the carpet, then it all sounded good. Fine margins etc. Rig was my usual Dingwall NG3-5 and D-Roc-4 bases into a knock-off Harmonic Booster, Zoom B1X4 and Darkglass Infinity board straight DI to the mixer. I didn't make too many mistakes, but being a local non-driving gig the freedom to have a few beers did mean I felt a little uncoordinated later in set 2! Added a few clips for context but I had a good time and looking forward to our next gig in December. VID-20241116-WA0046.mp4 VID-20241116-WA0029.mp4

This is quite a long post, so do feel free to skip to the pictures below… So, as I’m sure we often tell ourselves, I really didn’t mean to buy this. No, really. But I’m very pleased I did. I was on the Ishibashi Music website (looking for something completely different) and this presented itself at a very reasonable price. I’ve never bought an instrument from so far flung a seller (I’m in Ireland), so was a bit trepidatious. But I knew many on here had been down this route before, so I pressed ahead and of course it wasn’t really any more complicated than buying from a local seller. A couple of days later I got a shipping notification, and a couple of days after that a text message from An Post asking me to pay the import duty (really just 23% VAT plus a small processing fee). So I paid that and sat back to wait for delivery. And then An Post did a strange thing - they sent the bass back to Japan. We still don’t know why they did that. The best explanation I have had from them is that there must have been something wrong with the import paperwork (in which case, why ask me for the import duties?), but they haven’t said what that was, and neither Ishibashi nor Japan Post (who did investigate on Ishibashi’s behalf) have been able to get to the bottom of it. To their credit, Ishibashi were wonderful, and readily agreed to try sending the bass again (they could just have refunded me and left it at that). They were understandably reluctant to re-send the bass via Japan Post/An Post when we were no wiser about why it had been returned, so this time they sent it by DHL, a more expensive option for them, at no extra charge to me over what I’d already paid. This time it got through (albeit I had to pay a second set of import duties, though I’m still hopeful of getting the first lot back), and it turned up yesterday. And what a great instrument it is. Ishibashi reckon it’s a 2003 model. I know the early Excesses had a pick guard, which obviously this doesn’t, but it does have the single 9v preamp, so I’m wondering if it’s some sort of transition model between the first Excesses and the later 18v models. It’s got some light scratches as you’d expect on a bass of its age, the recess round the jack socket is a bit of a mess (which I guess is just inherent in the design and the result of years of trying to locate the socket with a jack plug) and some of the chrome is looking a bit tired, but no major dings and from a few feet away it looks mint. There was an odd buzz (really more of a ‘zinging’) on the open E and G strings when I first tuned it up which caused a few nervous moments (have I bought a lemon? Is it going back to Japan - again?). I eventually traced it to these strings sitting too high in the nut/string guide and buzzing gently against the zero fret - a couple of minutes work with a file on the slots sorted it out. Never come across that before, and Ishibashi say they put EXL165s on it, which aren’t madly heavy strings, so all a bit odd. All of the grub screws which lock in the intonation on the bridge were also completely backed off, so I guess maybe there was a bit of a rattle from them too. Anyway, all quiet now! I’m not convinced the preamp is the original (I’ll do a thread in technical to ask about that), but the sounds that come out of it are fantastic in their range and quality, and the playability is, of course excellent. The neck is noticeably chunkier than that on my Passion III (to be fair, every other bass I have has a chunkier neck than the Passion…), but very easy to get around. I’d like the action a little lower but the A saddle is bottomed out, so will look at shimming at some point I expect. When I find the luggage scales I’ll tell you what it weighs - somewhere just north of 4kg I’d guess. Anyway, I’m delighted. Some pictures:

This is my daughters band (she plays bass) playing one of their original songs at a young bands competition they played last year. There's no single winner in this event but a group of promoters pick their favourite band in the finals to play their festival. They ended up getting three gigs out of it.

I love rhetorical questions.

After being unceremoniously fired from my nascent pop rock band it was nice to play a no-pressure, little gig for an old friend. Slightly awkward as the rhythm guitarist from this band is still in the pop rock band that fired me, but there's not too many hard feelings between us as it's the singer who's the problem. Well, he'll tell you that I'm the problem, so fair enough. The guitarist in my old hard rock band (that still gigs very occasionally) was turning 50 and he had assembled pretty much every musician he'd ever been in a band with to play a couple of songs each at his birthday party. Guitarists, eh? "What should I do for may party? Make everybody watch me play, because I'm GREAT!" The hard rock band did 5 or 6 numbers, but we were joined by said birthday boy's 15 year old son on drums as our old drummer is incommunicado these days. I also played with another band of his where the singer couldn't make it so the bass player stepped on to lead vocals, only to find that some songs were tricky to play and sing at the same time, so I filled in on bass for 3 songs there too. Good fun, nice to play a show again as I currently don't have a band, although one is in the works. Rig was a Warwick Thumb, into my HX Stomp and we used my QSC wedge as backline as it was also the keys and edrums 'amp' for stage volume. Weird to play a gig where not everyone has in ears these days, but the keyboardist hadn't played in 20 years and the drummer is a literal child, so I guess sometimes you have to do things the old fashioned way! Videos from soundcheck/messing around. I don't know why they're so bad, my wife has a great phone and does social media for a living, but it really struggled with the lights for some reason.

A couple of months ago, my eldest son was just starting his BTEC music course at high school, but didn't at that point play an instrument, so he needed to choose something..... Being a super cool kid, he obviously chose bass! 😅👌🥳❤️ He's just turned 15, what a great age to start! (I was 14) I was going to sell this cool little Ibanez GAXB150, but I gifted it to him instead. 😉 Some of his best pals are on the course too, and they've got a band going already, and have been super committed, and working hard to get where they want to be. They've even got their first performance at school next week! He's loving old school thrash metal, so we're off to see Anthrax this week too! 🤘😎 Happy times!

In the nicest possible way, I think most of the people following this thread are probably wishing you'd follow your own advice ^^^^

Well, thanks to a Black Friday deal, I bit the bullet and ordered a Boss Waza Air Bass set. It arrived yesterday afternoon to the office, so needless to say I was looking forward to getting home and trying it out. I charged up the transmitter for a couple of hours, dug out the massive instructions sheet, downloaded the app and fetched my 60th Ann Road Word Jazz... First impressions: Waza Midi (via the app) App is great in terms of content, but the layout could be better. Took me a few mins to work out the FX banks but I got there lol. Drum machines/metronomes and tuner are all great. Sound was crystal clear, i liked the amp voicings too. Had a play with a few of these for a bit too. Then I went looking for how to connect an external bluetooth audio source for jamming along. I hadn't realised there is a separate bluetooth function outside of the app for this but once I figured that out (about 5 mins), it was a piece of Fosters. Cut to 5 mins later and I'm happily plonked on the sofa, jamming along to some disco-ey Electric Six goodness, with a big, warm, round Jazz tone belting out of an invisible stack behind me, grinning from ear to ear - all without disrupting the better half's Shortland Street viewing and the young master's sleep. One very happy chappy!!! Will definitely be using these DAILY! So hopefully will master all aspects of the app shortly. Now to buy the little case for them!

I am a bit mystified why anyone would seek out this chap to build a bass for them. Even if he actually made and delivered the basses as agreed. I can only surmise from his support for Reform UK that, in some way only he knows, it's overweight workshy transgender violent criminals on benefits who arrived illegally in this country by boat that are retarding his progress in building basses and fulfilling his obligations. I'd value one of his instruments at about £200. And that's £200 of someone else's money, it certainly wouldn't be mine.

Just got the DCX Bass. Can't wait to try it out after my work. Building an all analog nano board so it's the nth iteration lol. These 3 pedals will be my core tone for my Precision Bass Will now be using the HX Stomp as a standalone rig in times I'm lazy to bring a board.

Three weeks ago, a friend from another band messaged me to say "how do you fancy learning 35 songs for a gig in 3wks?" Sure, why not, I thought. Perhaps I will make it harder for myself by doing some on my upright bass! Here we are - live on Saturday to a private function in North Hampshire. As Hannibal from the A-Team said, "I love it when a plan comes together".

I'll never understand why people still 5h!t on the Chinese manufacturing process. Most of the electronics you use are now Chinese made. Sure, this is borderline copyright infringement but if you're a player just starting out or someone put off by vastly inflated prices, this is the 'Tone Hammer' for you. Look at the BDI21 - it has plenty of fans and is still being produced.

New Settee, probably got enough space to add to the family now.

Let me explain. I have... well...9 basses. The current stable started with a Jazz and exploded from there. Out of all of these instruments only one. Has never been modified. Other than strings. All my instruments have had pickup changes. Except one. This thing was born with perfect tone. With my favorite strings installed it plays like a dream and the tone is amazing. Behold my magic bass! Does anyone else have a magic bass?

+1. Only following out of utter disbelief and curiosity.

Our man joined the army and was sent into the armoured cavalry, until they realised that you couldn't close the hatch of the tank over his head. So he was shipped off to the horse guards to look impressive for the tourists. Being 202cm got him out of going to Afghanistan, so there's that.

Passive. I like the sound of active basses but I`m one of those people that the more tone functions available the more I fiddle with them, concentrating on this rather than the playing. Passive bass with one pickup and one tone control both on full is what suits me best.

It looks like someone thought they'd make it a 34" without considering the frets. D'oh! 😁

It's white and gold! Or was it blue/black?

0750 this morning in my garden... Just stopped now.

I'm hoping my boy will have a passion for music too. Whatever he chooses to be passionate about, I'll support him. But obviously music would be great! He's already got his own little drum kit that he loves, fairly competent using the pedal and sticks... not bad for a 20 month old!

Yes, had it a week and only just got round to posting, but I have reasons... I first tried a Monique 9 years ago when I was buying my Demeter head from Bass Gear (I miss that place, even if my wallet doesn't). Barrie (@molan) had one there (might have been Dave Swift's), a birdcage-style preamp with a separate 700W Class D power amp. I never really fancied that form factor but to my ears it was the one amp that sounded even better than the Demeter. The Sensitivity knob is basically a more/better control - the higher you turn it, the richer the harmonic content. They didn't have one in stock, and it would have cost a fair chunk more than I was paying for the Demeter, but always hoped I might be able to get one some time. That time was last week after a used example of the rack version came up on here. I've spent some time with it, trying it through my BF One 10, BF Super Twin, and using the preamp for recording. My conclusion is that it's bloody lovely, and just as good as I remembered. I came home today after a rather disappointing day out, plugged my NG2 into the rig you see below, and played along to a Bowie compilation - instant happy place. You'll see that there are two power switches. The first (with big blue jewel light) is for the valve preamp. This runs two 6SL7 valves (like an old Ampeg B15) and a 12A_7 (lettering had worn off). The valve on the left is an EZ81 rectifier. The second switch (with small blue LED) is for the Hypex 700W Class D module. So for recording, just switch on the preamp - perfect. The head came housed in a wooden sleeve with two handles on the top. That wasn't going to work for me so I removed them and installed one on the left 'cheek' of the sleeve and fitted four rubber feet on the right to allow it to be stood on its end. The previous owner is a pro player and has had plenty of use out of the amp so there were a few scuffs to the Tolex, which I have disguised with a black paint pen. It now looks jolly smart, and I'm finding I can live with the tiny overhang above the Super Twin! Sadly I have all lead guitar gigs for the rest of the year, so unless I get some dep jobs in I'll have to wait till mid January to use this in anger. I've now got 'too many' bass heads again (recently bough a Fender TB600) but screw it, I'm keeping them all!

Royal Blues at The Glad, that London last night. The evening started with my finding out I wasn't in the band pic on the flyers. A subtle hint maybe? Turns out only 2 pics from the photo shoot we did, were done portrait, and to make them fit the flyer I was cut off as I was at the end. I'm on the Instant Gram and other socials. The venue usually put on acoustic solo or duos, in my band there are 7 of us. So it was cosy in the stage area. I was using my Ibanez UB804 which was DI'd. The stage monitor is usually used for the acoustic gigs, so the bass couldn't be turned up too much, meaning it was another gig where I couldn't really hear myself. The guitarist had the same problem. Despite all that, the place was packed and the punters loved it, and the promoter is going to book us for a bigger venue. One guy said to me after "what you did on that bass was unbelievable". I chose to take it as a compliment 😆

Latest version of my board. The Burger pedal is a custom build by Fuzzrocious. 2 Demon circuits each with a clean blend. HX Stomp doing chorus, reverb and octave, plus pitch transposition for tuning up or down from my regular D standard. this goes into the front of my Bassman 100T, or the HX Bassman model for home practice and demos. Rockboard Tres 3.0 with a Cioks Sol powering everything.

Mine’s a sunburst 1970 with a B width neck which feels very comfortable to me. It’s also been refretted more than once very nicely with larger fret wire than the original, and plays beautifully. Interestingly the neck code suggests it’s possibly from 1968 - in green printed ink it’s 5 16 018 B Can anyone shed any light on what that might refer to? Pots are dated 1966, like many from this era.

I was very sceptical about the Sandy pickups before ordering my Cali ll SL TM 4 SHORT - almost to the point of deciding against buying it. 12 months down the line, I can say that it's the best thing I ever did and I and my band-mates are completely happy with what the pickups bring to our classic rock/pop covers party. Of course, I completely accept the point that others have made about what a subjective thing bass sounds are. I just wanted to speak against the notion that Sandy pickups might not be fit for purpose.

Clearly some people will The phrases that are always there: "Perfect for any..." "Whether you're a beginner...." "Must-have..." "... sure to impress" I sell on eBay and have never used the AI description generator. I put more effort into the description for my Dremel router table (don't laugh) for £20 than this bloke did for a circa £4K bass. Lets see if it sells Rob

The Wal individually sums all the coils of each pickup then filters each pickup then sums the filter outputs using an op-amp mixer. The jazzbass-alike has the east electronics which also buffers and then mixes the two pickups ( it has a total of 8 knobs!). Not sure what the Warwick does, but the pickups are active ( IE there's a buffer amp in each of the three pickups) so still no current drawn from them.

More knobs = more tone. Or not, depending, but I have less than zero use for any passive basses in what passes for my world.

Pipey 👍

I just picked one of these up for $80CAD. It's going to be my first foray into resurrection of a vintage bass. Cream DiMarzio pickups! One snapped tuning key, and missing knows, but everything else is there. Some extra holes past the bridge, but that's an easy fix. Never even seen one in 40 years of playing, but I'm excited now!

Ray Brown creating on the spot during Quincy Jones' production of 'Killer Joe'.

Slightly cheating but within the spirit I feel:

It's always the ones you most expect.