Leaderboard

I was home by 6 00. It was -3°. Sunday afternoon bar gig. Dep drummer, a good amount of dancing and lots of mistakes and sketchy endings. Good pay and good tips. My gear was functioning properly. I sat down at a table and spoke to some nice folks. I pretended I was famous.Sad 😔 Daryl

Fourth gig of January so far Satdy night, pretty busy pub (thank Buddha that virtue-signalling nonsense Dry January has faded away; all it does is shut pubs), the punters enjoyed it and danced in between the tables, and I got to watch the American Football on a big screen right in my eyeline over the bar (we really must change the setlist up a bit; I play it 90% on muscle memory these days). No nutters, for a nice change...sorry... On the point earlier, we've put the money up to £300 for 2 x 45s for a trio, no-one's complaining and the diary's filling up... As always, cheapo lightweight P, Stomp, inears. Still unidentified trainers (I'll look at them properly for next time, promise..)

In truth my fave gig for many years, not the most competent or accomplished but extremely satisfying. First outing for BandKamp, a bunch of friends getting together to rehearse an iconic album for 2-3 months, and then gig it live once and once only before moving on to the next iconic album. First was yesterday when we did Dylan's Blonde on Blonde (tying it in with the Chalomet movie) at The Ballroom in Canterbury, which is a lovely venue. We were expecting an audience of about 10 but to our amazement had around 120. We played the set our way and had a ball doing so, and had people dancing; to Dylan! A few folks said the same thing afterwards; I don't really like Dylan but really like your set. Job done 👍 Hard to let the album go as over 3-months we've come to love it, but as we've all agreed, we're not in a relationship with it, we've simply had a brief flirtation. Time to move on

First gig of the year this afternoon and it was a dep for some old band mates. 4pm-7pm Sunday afternoon type easy going blues/jazz event at Baker Street in Stirling. Band going by the name Blues Delux this time. The name seems to change every gig at the moment for these guys as does the lineup. Drums/bass/guitar/saxophone/vocals and harp. Very enjoyable three hour gig and for the most part a bluesy jazzy jam with good friends. Only downside was not having a huge amount of room to set up. The new LFSYS cab was a godsend size wise and there wasn't really any room for anything bigger. New Mighty Mat carpet square is my latest gigging accessory and its job is to keep cabs and stuff off dirty pub floors. Works perfectly! Over-did the amp side of things but well I just had to hear for myself if Trace Elliot watts are different from all other watts😉 Good feedback from quite a few punters asking the name of the band, and surprisingly good feedback about the bass sound from several band mates. The cab was phenomenally good and it takes some getting used to hearing everything so clearly. It's easy to assume the amp is up far too loud, but it wasn't. Saw some folks taking video footage but nothing available yet. Home by 8pm, got paid, and relaxing with a nice Bowmore malt to see out Sunday evening. Lovely.

Saturday night was our second gig of this year at Hogarths in Bolton. A decent sized venue and usually quite busy. It was fairly packed while we were playing and our two spots went down really well. They even went a bit mad when we played one of our own songs off our album. Back in September.

Stub, what was interesting, the couple I sat down with knew me, but I had no clue who they were. They had seen me at our New Years Eve 2023 gig at The Precinct. They had met my girlfriend and was asking about her and made comments about how nice she was. This was the night my girlfriend had too much to drink and flashed our bandleaders father. Yes, I'm "internationally renowned." Lol Daryl

It’s good that people get passionate about this stuff. I know Tony only wants to protect people from spending lots of money on something that may not be as original as it seems. I think we’ve all seen vintage dealers use duplicitous tactics and falsely advertise items they should know aren’t right. Sadly, this genuine lack of clarity about dates and so on enables people to present items that may be fakes and claim they were production anomalies or all original when parts have been swapped. I see the expertise here a way to counteract that and prevent it happening. To anyone outside, the idea we’d argue about the originality of a heavily distressed paint job or the dates on a $1 pot that was designed to be replaced when it inevitably fails may sound mad. But we’re all a bit mad.

OK, so if the same driver is used, and the same box volume and tuning per driver is used, with parallel wiring the 2x10 will be 6dB louder than the 1x10. If the 4x10 is parallel wired it will be 6dB louder than the 2x10. However, chances are the 4x10 can't be parallel wired, because the impedance load would be too low for the amp to handle. It would likely be wired series/parallel. In that case it would be the same as the 2x10. The 4x10 can go 6dB louder than the 2x10, but only by turning up the volume. And all the conditions must be met. If any or all of them aren't then the calculation doesn't work.

1st gig of the year for me (and first in about a month) at The Duke Of Edinburgh in Maidstone. Nice venue and friendly staff etc. we had a decent space to play, it was a bit quite which we put down to the time of year, but those who were there enjoyed it. I am now used to playing my 5 string (after 30 years of playing 4 strings). The landlord booked us for a summer outdoor event, so that was a big positive.

Late-notice stand-in with Dire Streets at Axminster Guildhall, having spent a day and a half getting back up to speed with a 2-hour set that I hadn’t played in a year (although I had done some more gigs with them on rhythm guitar). Excellent venue with great lighting and PA and a good-sounding room, plus nice green room with refreshments. Not a capacity crowd so the seats were set out to leave room for dancing in front of the stage, which plenty of people made good use of - more during Sultans of Swing than Private Investigations it’s fair to say! Got a compliment from the sound guy on my bass sound: '73 Precision > Origin Effects Cali76 Compact > Origin Effects Bassrig '64 Black Panel > DI to PA. I had been suffering some IEM angst over my Sennheiser XSW setup but it worked brilliantly last night. In the close-up pic I must be playing the solo run from after the last verse of Telegraph Road, as none of the other songs take me so high up the fretboard!

FIrst gig of 2025 last night and it was a cracker! Played with Nine Lives at Wilsons in Aberdeen. Was a little worried that it wouldn't be busy, being the middle of January and right enough when we first arrived to load in it didn't look great. But part way through the first set a big group of ladies came into the bar and they were well up for a dance. Plus a few regulars came along to support us, which was lovely. Not wishing to disappoint (and fearing that our enthusiastic dancers would naff off if we stopped) we decided against taking a break and just plowed on through the entire three hours. Plenty of songs in "the box" to plug in. Played some new stuff too which went well. I was a wireless pest as usual. Great to get back in the saddle. Because we didn't take a break, the second bass didn't make it out of its bag! Got a few weeks off, but we'll be back with a double header at the start of February. Gear was the Reverend Triad into the usual Markbass tone cubes. Footwear was a pair of Vans classic slip on in a teatowel/picnic basket cloth type pattern. Got complimented on them as well - bonus!

I found this beauty on eBay a while back, being sold by a fella in Japan. It’s a 2022 masterbuilt, but it had just been sat doing nothing and never bought or owned by anyone. I wasn’t in the market for a new bass (I am picking up a new Shuker any day now), but the opportunity to get this at about 40% of the list price (yes, Warwick list prices are silly) couldn’t be ignored. I have owned other Warwick basses and other high end basses, but this is something else. My iphone pictures won’t do it justice. It feels stunning, the neck is silky and plays like butter and it’s so beautiful to look at. Hope you all like it!

Thanks Dave, it's a funny thing, I initially chose Blonde On Blonde because because we had to start somewhere, we wanted to do something that was classic but a little off the beaten track. Despite early reservations, including my own, we came to love it. It's a funny thing, when you have to play the whole album, in recorded order, the potential for disagreement is significantly reduced. And we were a bit worried, the final song is Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands is very slow and in textbook terms is the worst song you could ever finish a set with (no encores if you're playing the album and only the album) but the vibe in the room was awesome as one by one, bass, then drums, them Hammond, dropped out leaving that beautiful guitar part soloed and then..... silence. Couldn't have ended better. Next album is, to say the least, a contrast Re video, we chose not to record, the whole thing for us is that it's a moment, we'll never do it again, so we don't want or need to analyse. We've done it, we move on. Lovely to see that around 50% of the room were recording so if we get anything nice - and in which the bass part is even vaguely competent - I'll post here. Thanks for your comments mate 👍

De-fretting it might alter it from what you liked about playing it. I've got a Mighty Mite fretless neck and it is mighty fine.

Thwaites are confident that the bass can be recovered, so my Kolstein now resides in Bushey until further notice. Strangely enough, they are far more relaxed about the sunken table than I am. Apparently it looks far worse than it is.

Challenge accepted: How many pieces of pizza can you fit in a trombone?

This is my current board. Quite simple by all accounts. Zoom for tuner and chorus, Boss OC-5 Octave, MXR Envelope Filter, Mooer Reverb, Ampeg Optical Compressor and EBS Microbass II. All used with fretless and EUB. Wish I could lose the power bank but despite being super thin already, it wont fit under the board.

It's the 150 kV forcefield in between them that really helps keep the drunks at bay 😉

A reunion gig with what we call the old Sunday band , one that hosted a jam for about eleven years , and one that is generally ready to try most anything. In the spirit of things we did some requests we’d never done (later period Elvis tunes) , and everything worked out fine. Great Remington Ride , an instrumental take on Goldfinger , some surf , some Dick Dale and a nice mix of blues grooves. We’re in the dead of winter but the weather was mild. Unfortunately a lacrosse game was happening around the corner , parking was a misery. Big appreciative crowd , great night. Big orange Gretsch with Monique , the Forte and Berg cab. Back to the old dive ( well , really the new dive) for the jam tonight. I’ve got a new power amp in the mail that should arrive this week , might be the last run with the Forte for a while. It was an absolute joy hearing the guys play last night.

Definitely going to be filing this one under "strange". Thursday evening on FB and we were tagged in a 7 bands in 7 hours festival as one of the bands had been forced to cancel. Less than 36hrs notice and they needed a band to open a festival in Calne. It was to raise money for a young man who'd been killed leaving a young family. I messaged the organiser and initially had no response. A few people "liked" that we got tagged so I sent a 2nd, more personal message. No response but just as I gave up, he messaged in the morning saying we could open. Very much an electric set but we've only rehearsed the acoustic set recently so in a head vs heart decision, we decided to stick with an acoustic set. I then got added to a bands Messenger group (normally my pet hate in band life but this one had pretty much sorted out the 100s of messages about high hat stands and 4ohm cabs. Everyone seemed cool, which was nice. Pro sound guy, full backline etc, by all accounts. Playing acoustic versions of original gothic songs on folk instruments was going to be a tough sell, especially in what was effectively a working man's club but I was adamant in our self-belief. We had little more than a line check but the plan was I would play my bass parts on the mandocello, before moving on to guitar (a recent addition) and ending on my mandolin. I'd talked Nick into a smaller, more discreet music stand and we now have a band flag that we hung behind us. We go on and it was immediately apparent that we meant business. The (initially) small crowd were actually fairly intent on listening and gave us a warm reception. I noticed the sound on the mandocello kept completely cutting out and coming back in. That was down to the soundman and not the kit. I figured it was purely onstage as nobody batted an eyelid. And like Nigel Tufnel, I am a professional so I rose above it. We were going great guns until when Nick took the mandocello, it completely died. It rather killed our momentum and the soundman was initially clueless. We had a second mandocello (I refer you back to the Nigel Tufnel comparsion) and we bypassed the pedals to get a signal. Initially nothing but then Nick spotted the error (him, not us) and we finished our set. He checked all the kit at home and there was no problem with our gear. Chalk it up as experience. We stayed for a couple of the bands and mingled a bit. All the musicians we spoke to were super friendly but we left as the young teenagers with the Axl Rose style egos showed up. Some of the audience were absolutely wrecked. We saw one woman turn around and offer to smack some bloke in the face. I don't know what he had done but it seemed very OTT. We also made the mistake of momentarily stopping outside the ladies during load out. As the door opened a very mad (in every sense of the word) lady shouted at us for stopping outside a doorway. We'd only stopped momentarily and it was purely coincidence that she'd opened the door as we stood there. She started screaming about it being an entrance (we'd already immediately moved and apologised) before she added very loudly that she only had one eye. I felt the evening was starting to take a surreal turn so we made our excuses and left. We played well, overcame the technical problems, met some great people and encountered one or two characters. Business as usual in a small Wiltshire town.

Hi Dave, What I don't get is everyone blamed me for that stunt. I was sober and didn't flash anyone. My good friend and great drummer told me that's all anyone's ever going to remember you from. Daryl

....but apart form that I'd say go for it 😆

Mine as it is at the moment. Loving the Two Notes pre amp. The Boss LS2 speeds up bass changes, I can keep two plugged in and set levels for each.

A pro defret will cost about £200. I’d buy a Fretless VM series Squier instead.

DRill baby drill!

So, having read this through, it seems that: Nobody is denying that there are VVT jazz basses constructed in 1961. But these would have happened later in the year and that anything manufactured in, say, August 1961 should treated with caution. (I'm only getting involved as it's me who posted the link to the guitar that caused all this hassle. Personally, I think enough doubt has been cast on its originality that I would seek a second opinion from someone who can see the instrument in person, but I'd be prepared to do that if I were going to drop £18k on it, given my experience with vintage dealers.)

It's DHL being idiots. There's a black hole in their tracking. You won't get anything out of the tracking until it reaches the UK. It can take a week, maybe more. It's not Thomann's fault, except for them continuing to use these clowns. I hate the tracking black hole too, it's like your package is going round the back of the moon in Apollo 13.

I do think people get too hung up on wanting a bass that sounds like specific other basses though. You can do a lot of clever stuff with pickups and preamps but for a bass to sound like a precision it really speaking I think it will have to have a split-coil pickup in the right place and for a bass to sound like a 'Ray the humbucker needs to be a certain distance from the bridge and the preamp must be just so. What you CAN do though is get a bass to do the job of a P-bass or 'Ray but in its own way. That's just my opinion.

Your question is only easily answered if the cabs have the same drivers, ohm rating, and frequency response. In theory: Double power- add 3dB Double cone area- add 3dB Halve impedance- add 3dB (but only if amp can give double the power. Ten times power- add 10dB. Note: 3dB is typically enough for the untrained ear 'to hear a difference'. 10dB is 'twice as loud' (at mid range frequencies and average volumes). Bass needs about 10dB more to sound louder than just an octave higher (guitar) due to psycho-acoustic effects (loudness curve), which is one reason why bass amps need to be so powerful. The EASIEST way to sound louder is to get a more efficient drivers in a well designed cab, which is why some of the small, light modern cabs sound as loud as old fridge-sized 8x10 cabs.

They already had them when I joined, however I think they were from Temu and £13 each from what they said. They have different colour settings, and powered by USB - C and are very effective, but they are very flimsy and lightweight. We use something similar in my other band, but usually have them round the drum kit, as seen in this picture.

I like my side dots (at fret positions) on fretless, I need them to be sure I'm in the right ballpark.

I like the lights on the stands @markbunney, they provide a nice and subtle boundary line, something other posters on here have mentioned needing.

clockwise from top: Main gigging board, portable battery powered board for short sets and when the main is too big, Pbass home board to play with IR’s.

When I had my HCT 500/1 one of the machine heads broke, & I bought a replacement set and changed all four at the same time. I still have the original 3 machine heads which you are welcome too. that way you could experiment without ruining yours straight off.

Amp I ordered in December arrived today. Also had strings on order. I think I’m good though …

I got GWB1005 and i love it. Great instrument and superstisous one. I play it and love it.

Have I posted this on this thread? It kicked the above off my board…

My very simple board. Powered via a Cioks 4 and an Anker power bank (although the EBS is powered using phantom power when we gig).

Speaking of which (the DIY scene) - I'be been borrowing this funky thing from @LukeFRC It sounds great - with a fixed fast attack it excels at the bubbly funk sound. Build quality is great, I really like the punched lettering.