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The best advise is to never by anything music-orientated for a musician, because unless you know them extremely well you are likely to get it wrong. I've been given no end of useless musically related tat by family members because I play "guitar".

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 😆

Swapped the Fender Classic 50s neck for a 62RI one as I felt the rosewood fitted the colour scheme better than the maple. I've got a mint green pickguard from BC favourite earlpilanz on it just now but ideally I'd like a tortoiseshell one; I just haven't been able to find one that matches the image I have in my head.

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!

It was too early this morning to do an unboxing type of video . It was 8.15am and I was just about to have a shower., and this turned up via DHL! Times are tough , but on 5th of November I had to make a somewhat rash decision while in bed . 🛏️ . I couldn't see UK currency , so had to ask Rhino 🦏what the chances of this being available in the UK. This was after trawling the internet with no success . I didn't have to pay import duties or anything like that thankfully . It's now sold out as it's ltd edition of 3,000 copies . Tbh it shouldn't really be unavailable in this country , and I don't know why it isn't . I feel sorry for those who didn't get one. That may change . Who knows ? Anyway thought I'd share 🙂

Certainly more wood involved.

Remember me? I'm back and I've made some progress. I was planning on using a set of Entwistle JBXN pickups but not in the usual Jazz bass positions. I found this picture which shows how Rickenbacker do it so: I've put the neck onto this mock up to test the idea. The result is just what I wanted, fat but focused and great throughout the whole range. I haven't begun to experiment with control settings much , it's vvtt so should be versatile too. I was holding off on the body until I'd had a chance to test to theory but I'm giving it the green light now. Shouldn't be too long now.

Whenever I see a @0175westwood29 post in this thread, I look at it like a Spot the Difference puzzle 😅 meant in the most positive way possible!

A bass mug https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/335021825055

The power of Basschat - always someone!

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.

How about something for the bassist's other half? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/371058353975

I've looked at it. We run a laptop (MacBook Pro) that is also our drummer and second synth player, so it seemed like a logical step. However we found that the additional loading time for Helix Native which would replace the Helix Floor that I am currently using, made the gaps between songs potentially too long for me to be comfortable with i.e. more than 5 seconds. I don't want to be waiting on stage for the next song to load. It's not a good look. If you're not also running sequenced parts then it might be workable with a few caveats. 1. I wouldn't consider anything other than a computer that runs Mac OS for this. You need it to be 100% reliable all the time. For home practice and recording the occasional glitch is OK. Live it's not and AFAIK only Mac OS has audio and MIDI priority built-in at OS level. 2. I also would want to use a computer that is only used for this purpose and doesn't double as the family internet machine. Mine is occasionally used for remote working for my business, but that and the music side are run as two completely separate log-ins so they interfere as little as possible. 3. You'll probably have to check that all your plug-ins will respond to MIDI program changes that will at the very least allow them to be turned off and on. Personally I would want to be able to load user settings too, as most of the advantages of this sort of system will be lost if you can't. You may find that you'll need you'll need a proper MIDI interface rather than a USB dongle to make it work properly. 4. Also check that 8ms latency is for a round-trip and not just one way. The reason you see some many people using systems like this for keyboards, is that the latency for MIDI and audio output is significantly lower than for live-stream audio processing. Remember also that each plug-in in your audio path will probably add a little additional latency on top of the round-trip AD/DA conversion. 5. Make sure that none of your software needs to "phone home" for authorisation or other requirements. No matter how careful you are it will happen at the most inconvenient time. One of the reasons why I'm still doing everything from Logic and not the supposedly superior Show Page of PreSonus Studio One is exactly this. The app wanted to connect to the internet in a location where we had no mobile phone signal let alone an internet connection. Luckily all it meant was a delay to the rehearsal start for about 45 minutes while we found a location in the building where we had a mobile signal and could tether the laptop for long enough to get the required authorisation. 6. Make sure that you can turn off automatic software updates, prompts and notifications for everything. See points 1, 2 and 5. The last thing you want to do is to be dismissing half a dozen dialog boxes before you can use your computer for its intended application, or even worse have them pop up in the middle of a performance. Also turn off WiFi and Bluetooth unless you specifically need them for your live set up (and personally I would look at other solutions first). 7. make sure that everything is gig-proof. Ideally that means no exposed consumer grade connections like USB/Thunderbolt etc. Our laptop is permanently housed in a flight case along with everything required to allow it to connect to the outside world which is done with gig worthy connections like XLRs. By the time you've done all this you find that's it's cheaper and more convenient to use a dedicated multi-effects pedal.

Firmly agree with @BigRedX and that doesn't happen often! 😆 Unless you 100% know they want something specific, don't get a 'bass related' present for a bass player! (IMHO) Nothing I hate more than getting a mug or a t-shirt with some loosely 'bass' related pun on it. Can't stand it! But that's just me... HUMBUG!

Ha, yes, I was responding to a question along the lines of 'is this a stealth Joe Dart but better!' This one is for sure! 😂

They apparently had parts lying around so guess they could have made the neck a few years earlier and stuck the decals on when they actually completed the bass.

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