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Say hello to Blondie boys. My first Ric and absolutely loving it. Got from Andy Baxter’s showroom today. Wow has he got some good stuff. I bought a 66 Mustang off him some years back, so you know it’s quality gear. After reading all the bad stuff as well as the good stuff, seems like there’s 2 camps - lovers and haters. Well mama put me in the former- ok the E sting intonation is slightly out but set up at Andy’s with TI flats for me and it’s superb. What a neck. I was going to go for the new 4003 but hard to find stock and for similar money got this one. much mojo, much to love - I like all the sounds so far and needs mute replacing, which I have on order with Ricky Sounds and pal is going to help me fit it. He’s got 2 Ric’s, and he convinced me to get an old one with lower output- just as well got the extra cab for my cmd121 Markbass then -he’s got one of Paul Gray’s old Rics, an awesome Autumnglo satin finish rehearsal on Friday - woof

Played the Cathouse in Glasgow with my acdc mob last night. It`s a bugger of a place right in the city centre. You can`t drive down the street due to a bus gate and if you could there is sod all parking. Oh and there is a rather steep set of steps leading up to the main venue. Because of this we used the venue`s backline. I arrived at 4 pm and asked the guy where the Marshall heads were to go with the cabs that were there. He got the heads out but no speaker cables! Luckily enough Kenny`s music is just down the road so jumped down and got a couple. Then we discovered that the bass drum had only 1 leg and there was no drum seat, cue drummer boy rushing home to get the missing gear. The good thing was there was a Rumble 500 for me which is what I use anyway. Not to self: never trust what it says on the venue`s list of gear! Only played for 1 hour due to Bon DC being on after us but we had a blast and went down really well, maybe a little to well for the other mob but it was a great night with lots of nice comments. But gigs in city centres are getting harder all the time.

I would add to that the social benefits of being in a band. Most of my friends are people I’ve met through through music, and playing in a band has given me with much of my travel and life experiences. Also a lot of what I’ve learned about the world, people and about myself has been via the “musician” part of my life, which has been the only stable thread running thru a lot of it. Definitely agree on the cognitive side of it as well. I don’t read music so the mental imagery I use to map out what I’m learning is quite elaborate. And I reckon that years of picking out basslines and vocal harmonies from all the other music is quite a skill of concentration and selection. So yeah. Basically being a musician is a superpower yay.

Just found a photo from our guitarist's other band's last gig... Capital Radio's firework night. I'm not jealous...

Being bassists makes us chick magnets, apparently. Yay!! 🤓

Few adults play musical instruments, and even fewer do so in a group, Caroline Mimbs Nyce writes. What health benefits might they be giving up? https://theatln.tc/oglkQfzJ “Kids receive plenty of music education, but as people get older, they fall out of practice. Many stop picking up their instrument,” Nyce writes. “This is unfortunate, in part because plenty of research shows that adults could benefit from playing music.” Playing music helps build larger brain networks and new pathways. “Musicians tend to have better attention than nonmusicians,” Nyce continues. “Banging on a drum or tooting a horn can also relieve stress, reduce burnout, and help with anxiety and depression. For older people specifically, research has shown potential cognitive benefits along with a possible decrease in dementia risk.” Adults may be skipping out in part because music education is associated with childhood and coursework. And after people grow out of music education in their childhood, they tend to think that music is a special talent, Nyce writes, not something that just anybody can learn. “Of course, people are busy; they simply may not have the luxury of sitting down to study Bach once a week, much less the money to pay for an instrument or private lessons,” Nyce writes. Playing music in groups has additional benefits, such as allowing adults to feel more trusting of and connected to one another, and to the world in general. But while it’s easy to go to a park or gym and pull together a game of pickup basketball, “piecing together people at the same skill level to play a concerto or even just jam in a garage is another matter.” Nyce herself recently began to play the recorder. “I plan to keep learning,” she writes, “not because it strengthens my neuropathways per se (though I certainly don’t mind that), but because making music, even when it’s silly—perhaps especially when it’s silly—is just a whole lot of fun.”

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt 😂. It was a meal in a posh restaurant with my then-girlfriend's family. Then there was that other time when the drummer had been on a bender all day and we had to send a couple of audience members to his house to wake him up 😂

......but I bought a SR Premium 1355B to fill the gap

New band is at the 'record some stuff to show venues and get gigs' stage. So we did. Go pro in the corner, silent-ish rehearsal with everything into the desk. Run a few takes of each track and pick the best one. The drummer has just finished giving it a bit of a polish and syncing the audio & video up. I think he's done a pretty good job:

At the risk of opening a can of worms about curly cables, I got this. (To be honest, it was at my request; I didn't need a new cable, but I've wanted a curly one for a long time.) It will only get home use, as that is the only place I play. Each to one's own, but I absolutely love it! https://www.designacable.com/van-damme-curly-guitar-cable-neutrik-instrument-lead-studio-grade-70cm-25m.html

Anything that gets the buggers off their phones and communicating in real life as well as being creative can only be a winner! Good on 'im!

I've enjoyed quite a few of Rick Beato's videos over the years, but I think he's totally embarrassed himself with this - either because he's completely missed the point of both the documentary and the original Yacht Rock skit, or because he was deliberately in 'Click Baito' curmudgeonly old git mode. He also omits some information and gets stuff wrong. He is quite happy to play the Donald Fagen phone call, but forgets to mention that Fagen was also quite happy to license six Steely Dan tracks to be used in the documentary, so there's probably an element of him wanting to maintain his 'difficult' persona while being happy to get the exposure he knows the TV show will get. Also, JD Ryznar and Hollywood Steve (two of the original makers of the Yacht Rock skit) were not producers of the dockumentary, they're just guests interviewed on the show. Personally I don't get the negativity of Beato and some here about the term 'Yacht Rock'. Both the documentary and the original skit were very sympathetic towards the music and have only served to spread it to a wider, and younger audience, and anyway, it's no worse than terms like 'Hair Metal' or even K-pop which also lump different artists into one category but noone seems to complain about. The Yacht Rock skit show is hilarious too. It's not cringe, it's both very sympathetic to the music, but also completely ridiculous and quite surreal (Michael McDonald saving Giorgio Moroder's home planet by using the smooth grooves of Sweet Freedom to destroy the black hole that Hall and Oates come from). They are a bit harsh towards Jimmy Buffett however.

Those tuners look a little wonky. Did 'he' work for Gibson in 1974?

Find a new tech. If the guy can't figure out something as basic as this after needlessly replacing parts a number of times, you should bring it to someone who knows what they're doing instead.

I wish people would just stay on topic as regards this thread.

I agree - it's just a lazy, patronising label to deride perfectly legitimate top quality musicians. It also has a slight whiff of racism about it! Quincy Jones produced polished RnB based pop music with strong jazz, soul, fusion and rock influences, which everyone praises to the skies. Toto produced polished rock based pop music with strong jazz, soul, fusion and RnB influences and all the would be hipsters form a queue to sneer. Quincy even used the same players, not to mention that Steely Dan used guys who played on Aretha Franklin hits (as well as QJ records).

The trouble is that you're completely wrong! As a producer, Beato worked with a number of punk and garage rock bands. His big break was co-writing a number one country hit, which led to him working with several big time country songwriters. One of the things I like about RB is that he has a pretty wide background in lots of musical styles - he might love Steely Dan, but he also sees the value in The Clash. He used to be a lecturer in music, so he does come from an academic background, which is probably what you don't like about him. For me, he seems likable and is very enthusiastic / knowledgeable about lots of different types of music and I generally find his content interesting. Each to his own...

Though there are still a few days left I think it vanishingly unlikely I will be buying anything bass or music related. If @neepheid doesn't want to start next year's thread then I'm happy to. As long as we all accept that the idea is to basically be happy with what we have and to play more. However - arguing over ridiculous interpretations of what is a pretty straightforward principle is definitely part of the fun 😁

Decided to stick a little compact board together, annoyingly can't find a single available fig8 power cable in the house to power it… It looks like it'll sound awesome though 👌

That's what my missus used to say, but these days I find it easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. It is a beautiful bass. I did have an initial weird issue with the mono socket (and I did wonder whether this was why it ended up in CC), but once I had used logic and perseverance to troubleshoot and fix it, it has been perfect. I finessed the setup today when I was shielding and swapping the pickguard.

Aye I love the Empress, best compressor I’ve had I think, the Lusithand Alma was also decent but the Empress can do an awful lot more and there’s options to add bits of saturation in with a mid scoop and mid bump switch that I think sounds fantastic in certain situations. It pricey but I like it a lot more than I do the Cali76 I’ve never used the little Tonex pedal but the quality of the amp and cab sounds For that money is really good value, however you really need the full fat one to take proper advantage of all the different ones available and Tonex Max with all the Amplitube captures like GK, Ampeg etc which are outstanding. Some very good Noble and Noble + Cab captures available too

Neither of which ARE yacht rock.... so you've missed the point... As for the style of music and the term 'yacht rock' that has been affectionately applied to it, I love it. The Doobies, Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, Ambrosia, Toto etc are some of the finest musicians with the best written, arranged and performed music in popular music history. Yacht Rock has seen a huge resurgence in popularity over the last few years, raising the profile of the classic original artists....and enabling a movement of fantastic new artists like Young Gun Silver Fox, Dawn Patrol, Page99, State Cows, Joel Sarakula, Big Horizon etc I'm loving it.... and Beato is just posting clickbait.

Perhaps we also need a thread on misleading band names, album titles or artwork. Something like Throbbing Gristle's "20 Jazz Funk Greats":

Been meaning to get this all year to replace a little euro-rack mixer - the pedal allows three separate loops (and critically has a phase switch), which means in the rack I can have guitar preamps on #1 & #2 and a bass preamp on #3. Spent a happy afternoon behind the rack wiring it all up.

This is the one I'm asking about...not SC.

Yes, four years in law school totally wasted There was I thinking that by studying a bunch of leftover Norman laws with a desultory garnish of precedent I was feather bedding my future, I should in fact have been examining 1960s plastic

I think that unless they're very lucky many musicians find that if they want to be a musician they need to be on benefits in order to eat!

But only if you pronounce it the English way!

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Does anyone on here posess such a machine? Yes, I have one (in red). It came from Hank's (1993?) at Denmarksteet, London and ha been one of my favourite basses ever (together with my Gibson Thunderbird and a Dan Armstrong see through). Are they as good as I remember? YES, a bit heavy but has a massive sustain ! A picture from it, manny years ago (1994 I believe . . . .)

I went for a jam at an ex bandmates a few days ago. He was the bass player in the band (I played keys). I took my EHB1000S. He loved it - said it was the best bass he’d played.

It depends on the makeup of the band. But my experience is that in larger setups especially, with a modern passive Fender the audience are unlikely to hear much definition in the notes. It tends to be all the low end which can make the sound a bit wooly (nothing wrong with that if it’s what is desired). My experience with boutique instruments is that the electronics are all of significant design and quality that they do not suffer this same issue. I guess this is why they are popular in gospel, musical theatre and big bands. Plus in those musical situations the player is often seated and not throwing the instrument around the stage ala the who.

Who's Mike? I'm Ian.

I don't think that's controversial at all; I think certain basses fall into general sound categories: F bass and Sadowsky are both Jazz sounds; Fodera (personally) sounds fairly uninspiring and generic (not bad by any stretch, but I would never think "aha, that's a Fodera"). I'm surprised at how right you are about the Sadowsky Moderns sounding like Ken Smiths. I've never liked the Modern, and I really like the Smiths, but hearing them next to each other I wouldn't be able to tell you which one was which. It's funny how much visual bias plays into your hearing!

Board I’m running at the mo for festive function stuff - Empress into Capo with Tonex in post FX loop running an Aguilar DB751 and a cab of some description, also getting chorus and extra dirt channel from the Tonex and a clean boost from B side of the Capo. I usually have an octave pedal but it’s on the blink so I’d rather not take it to a gig till it’s sorted/I inevitably bin it and buy another one Also battery charger + rechargeable batteries for IEM pack & wireless 😁 (which I stood on so currently not using) Really very impressed with the Tonex, not sure why I don’t see much Bass love for it but they’re as good as any capture I’ve ever used and much better than Stomp amp/cab sims, and there are tonnes of free user generated captures on Tone.net, also get the full suite and Amplitube to use on your computer/DAW - I’m not selling them or anything 😆 but as far as amp/cab sounds go they’re top of the tree IMO

Making Plans For Nigel - XTC

Nowt wrong with single cuts... if basses which look like can openers is your bag!

I mean the pudgy Mark Jones version!

Turn off your watch history, it won't drench you with anything. You'll just get a blank screen & a fairly unobtrusive but slightly naggy prompt to turn your history back on so it can spam you with more borderline porn. Which you can easily ignore, or scream "F*** YOU YOUTUBE, YOU'RE NOT MY MUM!!!" at, depending on your mood.

90% of YouTube summed up nicely in that one sentence. The other 30% being maths stuff I never watch.

From my son...good lad

WAIT!!!! We are allowed to do that?