Leaderboard

Well.. finally managed to snag a 4003 for a reasonable price. I feel like the 2nd hand market priced have finally begun to reach the bottom in the UK and I couldn't let another one slip through my fingers! I believe it's a 4003CB in Autumnglo, 2022. Best bass I've ever had the privilege of playing, no less owning. Super happy. Couldn't help but to also post it with a pic of my other modified Squier Classic Vibe 60's Mustang (DIY refinish from cream poly, and white pickguard) since it's my first post here. Cheers!

The first song I played on stage was Spoonful by Howlin Wolf. The gig came to a crashing halt as we announced the last song. All the lights came on and the caretaker of the youth club was walking up the middle of the the empty hall, saying, "I wouldn't bother. They've all gone home!"

Santana's version of Peter Green's Black Magic Woman. Here's the very gig in June 1977

Hello! It's been a while since I've been on here but I thought it would be rude not to share a NBD update with the community! I bought it second-hand from PMT in Cardiff a few weeks ago. I was in town celebrating a birthday when some down time arose (Fiancée had gone Xmas shopping...) so I thought why not pop in and have a browse. I played a few basses, including some new Fender jazz basses and also an Ibanez six string, none of which were particularly inspiring... but THIS THING! Good lord. It's from 2004 I believe. It's nicely weighty, so feels proper sturdy in on the strap. Great balance too, doesn't hang low or suffer from any neck dive. The wood grain underneath the "honeyburst" finish is absolutely gorgeous, and the maple neck and finger board are a dream to play. It's got a great B string, despite not being a 35" scale, and sounds monstrous. Different from a Stingray with the one humbucker at the bridge, I can't quite put my finger on it but there is a difference in sound between the HH and H models. Super versatile of course with the five way selector and two humbuckers, though I naturally find myself playing from above the bridge H pickup. I love how it looks - although part of me does want to replace the black pickup covers for white ones to match the pearly pickguard... Dunno, TBC. Just enjoying playing it for the moment! Here's a video I did of un-boxing it, it was fun to make! https://www.facebook.com/100003195770658/videos/3061739417322633/ I love Stingrays, and have played a four string teal green Stingray since my mid-teens so it's a natural progression! I've only played it at a few casual things - open mics and jams etc, but taking out with the band tonight to hear it in action for real. Can't wait! Thanks, Jack

I know my mate's first song was probably Spirit of the Age. For me something off this list (which was after we'd done a fair few gigs) but probably c 'mon everybody. The photo is the actual first gig.

1968. 16 years old. First song I ever rehearsed with a band was Sunshine of Your Love. This was round at the drummers house, he had weird parents who were hoarders, they never opened the curtains and the whole place smelt of wee. I was 'playing' a Watkins Rapier 33 guitar, we used to hire an AC30 from the local music shop on a Saturday morning, lug it down the High St and back to his house, and then plug in two guitars, bass, and three mikes. Well, it had six input sockets, didn't it ? One morning, an older guy from another local band came round to see us, and showed us how to play a 12 bar sequence. I was very impressed, and then realised that every single track on the John Mayalls Bluesbreakers album that I was playing constantly at home was simply yet another 12 bar. 😳

I decided to mix it up, and I had a lot of pedals on the shelf I missed as I could only fit around 4 with the QC. I'm now using the QC as my interface, and it has a semi-permanent place on the desk while I'm not doing any projects. I slapped all the favourites back on my board, which is all hooked up to the fx loops of the QC. The Model Fet and Mother in one loop and everything else in the other. It's probably gonna stay like this for a while, makes it way easier to get captures etc and let's meet fiddle.

First song I played at a gig on bass was "Back in the USSR". I'm pretty sure we then did an original instrumental called "I love you so much I can't shit".

Well being a punk band - The Squatters - we’d not actually rehearsed, and only met the drummer that evening. I was using the headliners guitar and had never played a Gibson Les Paul type guitar before, having tinkered on Strats, plus really being a bassist I wasn’t that great on guitar, especially one I’d not played before. I was on lead vox but never having really sung before I had a habit of walking around whilst playing so was often away from the mic - probably a good thing thinking about it, Vicious Sidney certainly had me beat on that song! My mate who was on bass - and had agreed to do it with a few run throughs over a couple of weeks - got lost at one point so he played all the notes he’d missed extra extra fast to catch up rather than just play the part where he actually was. Ironically our next number, I Wanna Be Me by The Sex Pistols went ok.

It is the FOH that counts, though there's not many PAs in small to medium venues that will accurately reproduce 30Hz at any volume. You'll get hints of it, but as Dan says you'll get far more in the way of overtones which just point at it. The problem is that PA systems are designed to be efficient so they go very loud, unlike some hifi systems which can be just the opposite. I've got 2 pairs of Hifi speakers that will produce 30Hz at volume - Leema Xaviers which have an F3 point of 28Hz and Ditton 66/series 2s which have an F6 of 18Hz. However, I need to use a Bryston power amp which produces 968w RMS/channel to do that. And both speakers are around 86dB/w efficient, so they soak up the power! However, if your 4x10 cab is a Mesa Subway 4x10 has an efficiency of 100.4dB/w, which of course means they have far less extension that my hifi speaks (but will go a lot louder!) - the actual F3 figure (i.e. where output is 3dB below the mid frequency level) is 59.4 Hz, with an F10 figure(which equates to being half as loud as F3) of 41.3Hz. So if you're lucky, the output at 30Hz is likely to be 1/4 as loud as the F3! So you're actually not going to be reproducing much at 30Hz either FOH or from speaker monitoring. Your IEMs may reproduce it, but that doesn't help the audience, and the electronics are largely irrelevant as most have at least a range of 20-20000Hz. If you want to get nearer to a magical 30Hz at volume, the Mesa Subway 2x15 will do F10 @ 37Hz... But a Trace 1818, if you've got the back for it, will give an F6 of 28Hz...

21st March 1992, Xaverian College Band Night with No Fat on a Turkey. We opened with Red Berry Joy Town by the Wonderstuff, we also did She Bangs the Drums (Roses), Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen) and three of our own. There's video evidence which shall remain encased in lead, buried under a volcano for all time.

1978, Deni Deni by Blondie in a dark and dingy basement night club on the Isle of Wight. Im 17 and incredibly nervous. Our girl lead singer didnt help either in stockings, heels, and wearing an unbuttoned blokes shirt. She really did think she was Debby Harry! We'd gone straight from the guitarists bedroom to that mush pit and my abiding memory of that night is not being able to hear a thing as I was using the main acts pair of Orange bass bins and had never been on a stage before. Guitarist was to low, vocals and drums to loud and the keys player and myself got horribly lost. What a car crash. Ive never seen a dance floor empty so fast! ...haha. But I think back now of all the different musical experiences I've enjoyed since that first, crazy terrifying night and feel blessed to have a had a life playing bass....Still loving it now.

Can’t remember exactly what song but it was a Bob Marley one, Exodus or waiting in vain in a pub in Leytonstone high road, they didn’t ask us back 😁

First song I played live was The Specials, "Nite Klub", 2008 (September, I think), The Tunnels, Aberdeen. It was a one-off band my wife put together for a birthday party. I played a Squier Bronco.

A not-very-good original called "This Beast". I was on guitar (never good) and my main job was to chug away in drop D for a bit before ripping out the most pretentious and unskilled lead break, which involved phaser, tremolo and delay pedals, and was "performed" with a bottleneck. In order to complete the cringe-fest I wore a voluminous white shirt over a black sleeveless t-shirt, army boots, a cowboy hat and mirrored shades. The guitar was a Goldtop, so I must have looked and sounded like Eric Sardinas's favourite stalker. I was 23, properly old enough to know better.

I spent a bit more time with mine past night and I’m more than happy. Only negative so far is the treble control which gets noisy when it’s turned up more than about halfway. I’ve got a VTC arriving today which’ll sort that in passive mode. Not sure if the new pots will improve it in active mode. The noise seems dependent on the position of the instrument, so shielding might help. The pickups sound great to me with plenty of mods to cut through. It’s nice and light at 8.4lb and the fit and finish is pretty much flawless. The neck is slim with a bit of depth to it, quite comfy for me, and I’ve got the action to a smidge below 2mm on the E at the 12th which is probably a bit low for my hamfisted technique. For £251 this was a bargain, well happy!

Masters of the universe by Hawkwind at the Lambourne Room, Ilford Town Hall with ‘Three Minute Warning’ around 83/84

30Hz pff.. talk to the bats, I make sure I have a double octaver on mine, if it is above 7.5Hz I don't want to know

First song I ever played live on stage was C’mon Everybody, the Sex Pistols version of Eddie Cochran song. I was 16, on lead vocals and lead guitar. It was a disaster.

I was chatting to the guitarist from the first band I ever played in recently. He reminded me of the first number we ever played, live on stage, when we were 17 years old. Badge, by Cream. What's yours?

Some things are retained longer than others. I remember very clearly that, at the age of two, I blew into the top of a pepper pot, to unblock it. I've not done that since..! (At my next birthday I'll be seventy-five...).

Two steps forward and one step back.. Control cavity routed without incident But the ball race that guides the router bit came loose while doing the pickup routes and made a mess of the top top right corner and bottom left lug are out of shape. I cut some bits of wood to plug the holes ,covered them in denim and glued them in place, a further hut of resin and hopefully I can re cut them in the morning.

First gig on an actual bass was with Dredd and the Badass Weeds, as we were known then, must have been early 1985 at a party in Chestnut Avenue, Leeds... I borrowed a short scale Gibson off Jez Utah (I didn't own one, taught myself to play on an acoustic guitar!). We had 4 actual "songs" - a punk thing called "Thatcher's Britain", a bit of metalishness ("Loud and Proud" with the chorus Heavy Metal Music, Loud and Proud! Mysterious goblins, Dressed in shrouds), a funky ditty called "That ain't a thing (it's a thang)" and a reggae thing called "Sex Feeling" (it had inadvertently laugh-out-loud lyrics which I won't repeat 😄). But we played for probably 2.5 hours, having rehearsed at most twice and basically improvised some vaguely funky rocky and occasionally reggae stuff. And weirdly we got a gig at the University Tartan Bar a couple of weeks later, then at the Warehouse despite a lack of actual coherence and rehearsal. And in early spring next year, to celebrate 40 years we're releasing our first EP!

Here you go. I actually put them into one playlist to make it easier. Please note that the quality is not great as most are about 15 years old before we had fancy GoPro's or iPhones etc. However, you can here the basslines, especially with headphones. I defy anyone to say Angel of Harlem is not a great fun little bassline as well 😂

After getting rid of most of my pedals a few months back, I'm on the build again. Trying to keep it small with drive, compressor and EQ / Di. Might add a flanger / chorus for an up coming 80s goth product. Any suggestions......................

This is disappointing. This should be 100% a "no wrong answers" type thread, it's personal opinion! Stop effin' bickering about stuff that doesn't affect you in the slightest!

Can we stop this childishness?

I actually played in a very good U2 tribute band. I only came in as a dep but as I know all the bass lines like the back of my hand, I ended up replacing their main bass player who was then moved to keyboards 😂 I took up bass after seeing U2 at Live Aid and after seeing Adam Clayton strutting around stage looking super cool, I thought I want a piece of that 😂 So I have literally learnt to play note for note their entire earlier back catalogue. I was also fortunate enough to be signed at one point and our producer was the super talented Mark Wallis who produced the It Bites album, Travis albums along with U2's Joshua Tree B Sides and who was also the studio engineer on the album. Being a huge U2 fan, I naturally spent a lot of time talking to him about U2. The thing he said about Adam Clayton is that yes, a lot of the song are driving 8's but his timing is impeccable. If you study his playing note for note, every one is spot on in time whereas most other bassist waver out of time playing repeated notes in that way. It makes him an incredibly solid bass player and could literally go into the studio, lay down the bass line perfectly first time. He also knows he can play way more elaborate or complicated bass lines and has in the past, however he very much plays what serves the song and leaves the space for The Edge to do his thing. @police squad That's a great set, pretty much exactly what I played. You might want to suggest the song Stay (Faraway, So Close) to your band mates. Bonus is it's a cracking little bass line in the same style as One and All I Want Is You. Give me a shout if you're struggling with any of them (I very much doubt it), I used to get asked how to play U2 basslines so I've got a bunch of YouTube videos on how to play them or can just record them again. I also might have a nice P- Bass for sale soon lol

1977, aged 16, a school rock opera production of "Far from the madding crowd" which we'd done as a class for English Lit. O level and had grown to heartily detest. First song was "Brown sugar" (Stones) but re-titled "Bathsheba". Though thinking about it now, I was also in the warm-up act, a motley Prog group created mainly from the weirder members of the school orchestra, so technically my ever first song on stage was "A trick of the tail" (Genesis). Never played it since.

For me it was "Since You've Been Gone" by Rainbow, at the school end of year assembly in 1980. I was 14, with Phillipa Grundon on vocals, Nic Ford on guitar and Ric Phillips on drums. We called ourselves Pegasus! I'm sure it would have been awful, but at the time we felt amazing. I played a P bass copy by Satellite with ash body with maple fingerboard, amplified by a Vox head and cab from the 60s that Ric's Dad owned.

Louie, Louie Motörhead version, on bass and lead vocals (for the first and last time), in 1983 for a birthday gig: utter disaster, it was kind of Motörhead meeting Meshuggah, but we didn't even know it, I was still 17 years for a few weeks. 🤦🤪

Yes, in my band with some mates from school. We were all only 15 and playing a warm up set for a jazz fusion outfit made up of 40 to 50 year old jazz guys in a local pub. September 1983. We were still at school and we thought it was brilliant to get An Actual Gig! On the night we only played four original songs before the headliners cut our set short. We'd just recorded an EP in a proper studio and everything, and we were on top form. I can definitely remember us counting in 1-2-3-4 and then blasting the şhït out of the place. And I still play the opening song today. It's in Velvet Underground / Johnny Thunders territory and totally rocks. The jazz fusion crowd didn't know what had hit them, it was a right laugh 👍

Undertones "Teenage Kicks". I was about 16. On stage at a variety show at high school. The rest of the set was Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" and The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".

I picked up this cute H&K Bassmaster (pics not mine, but it's the same device) a couple of weeks ago, mostly as a home practice amp. It came in the original box! The seller was clearing the stock from a long closed bass store in the Netherlands (due to the owner's health issues). The master volume doesn't seem to work, but otherwise it's all fine so I'll just need to have that looked at. The EL84 is mostly there to generate actual power amp saturation for recording situations, but it's very much capable of driving a cab (5 watts output power). I paid €190 and I feel like that was €190 well spent!

Done for a bit I reckon 😅 Si

I tried that, once, but didn't like it, so I stopped. ..

I'd done classical guitar recitals and played with orchestras and choirs, but the first 'band' gig on bass was an originals band, with 3 Pink Floyd covers in the set. I seem to remember the opening song being Floyd's Breathe.

Godspell - in the local theatre pit. I like to scare myself - I don’t think!

Another iteration of my "big board" (by my standards at least) for home practice. I'm trying to keep it simpler by using the Complicator* as a preamp / cabsim only without anything in the loops. It's still doing split processing, I can blend between a clean tone (with LPF) or a preamp tone for some grit. I wonder if I can modify that box to make the blend externally controllable? After that I brought back the Boss MD-200 and added an expression pedal to control effect depth. Out of that in stereo in to the t.mix, where I can add music over Bluetooth and attach headphones. In a live setup I'd probably take DI from the Complicator and use its FX loop with the JHS 3 Series Phaser (which is working again for now). Signal path: Peterson StroboStomp Mini -> Orange Kongpressor -> mxr bass octave deluxe -> T-Rex Diva Drive -> Complicator -> Boss MD-200 -> t.mix Micromix * The LY-ROCK clone of a DSM&H Simplifier, top centre. The board is the Harley Benton Spaceship 40-B, with the built-in battery. It also provides USB power for the mixer and my wireless headphone adapter (not shown). When that's all working, I have only the cable from the bass in to the board and monitor through wireless headphones (TV type, not Bluetooth, so there's no lag).

😂 ah yes, the rubber stringed hand-me-down , that I too had played for cool Mr Quigley in various folky type arrangements of praising songs at assemblies and the like, prior to our kid picking it up. my first live performance however , was at Romford working men’s club. My uncle Dave played Keys in pop covers band back in the 60s and 70s and they would occasionally play afternoons at various social clubs and the like at weekends. On one occasion we were attending and I got thrown up there to massacre Mouldy old Dough when I was about 10 or 11. I don’t know if that still haunts me or I remember it through pride , probably the former, but didn’t seem to put me off 😂

Are you playing only in first position, then? I have more than three octaves on my Spector 4 and am only a semitone short of it on my Fenders. Your instrument may be able to do 30hz, but can your rig? When you get down to those numbers, you are hearing mainly harmonics and little fundamental.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my duo Deadlight Dance recording our live in a Saxon Church movie / album "The Wiltshire Gothic" so we thought we'd mark it with a cheeky few numbers at our friend Joe's Open Mic in Aldbourne, Wiltshire. Just for fun, I worked out a few on the upright and off we went... We opened with The Cure's Fire in Cairo, bravely tackled Sisters of Mercy's This Corrosion (on the upright bass and mandocello) and finished up with joy Division's New Dawn Fades. We got a second set where most of the acts had gone once they played (I always think that is a poor show!) so did a couple of our original songs and then some other deep cuts from the depths of our collections. The crowd seemed to like us but one drunken local coming out the toilet decided to shout about us being "f***ing s**t!" Everyone ignored him. I didn't think it was worthy of acknowledging at the time. I am sure he's brilliant! I don't know if it's a consequence of growing up post punk but I quite like music being divisive at times and not appealing to everyone. I felt we played pretty well. I was also rather taken with the teenagers who did a couple of set. Nice to see the younger generation giving it a go.