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Had our nearest gig to home last night, at the Assembly Rooms in Ludlow with Kidderminster's finest, Humdrum Express... Sound was good, we were above average - nobody even threatened us! It was our drummer's last gig so we were out to have some fun - this was helped by a large Jim Beam on mounting the stage. We also did our longest set for a while, a whole 55 minutes including two covers (our Magazine tinged version of Dead Kennedy's "Moon Over Marin" and the Cameo mash=up of Penetration's classic "Don't Dictate) - there were a few OG punks singing along raucously to these as advancing years had stopped the stage diving... I even did a whole 2 minute reverby bass solo as intro to our first song (mainly cos Mr Guitar had gone for a piddle so had to cover!). gear was ACG Recurve, Helix, BBEPre/DBX compressor, Crown power and Markbass 4x10. Boots were MotoMartin bike boots, trousers by Indian Project, home-time dram was a rather fine Machrie Moor cask strength.

Not a bad gig. We had a respectable crowd. A little over 50 people. I think that's pretty good considering we're really not a "pay at the door" band. Nice room, however the sound and lighting looked vintage 1979. But we made it work. The band was sounding good tonight. I couldn't get any decent pics. I did see that Peter Asher and Alvin Lee played there not to long ago. So we were in very good company. Daryl Daryl

Well last night we had Nearly Steely play at the club and it was totally rammed. It was a decent attendance 45 minutes befor the start, normally it starts filling with 5-10 minutes to go. We expected to lose people to the Six Nations but that didn't happen. Indeed by half time the lounge where the match was on was virtually empty. I wonder why... Our usual band night is Saturday so this was a big bonus for the club, things are so tight these days but we are doing our best - seven live band nights in February, one with fourboriginals bands) plus four open mics and a jam night. It's interesting and a bit demoralising to be on both sides of the local live music challenge. And frustrating to know things the club could do better...

I have recently welcomed a brace of medium scale basses back into the fold - having owned and sold both and tracked them down again. An Aria pro II CSB 'Black n Gold'. These are beautifully made, top end basses with an aggressive tone that is all about the mids. I've had two before but they were both too heavy to keep, usually coming in over 4kg. This one must be made of different wood as it is 3.4kg. Neck dives as a result but a wide grippy strap offsets that. lso non-original tuners and knobs but I can live with that! The other one I am massively chuffed about. A few years ago I took a punt on a Yamaha SB-35 - very little online about these - and absolutely loved it. Then I, ahem, changed to playing 5 string basses exclusively, ahem. And sold it. Biggest sellers remorse I have ever had. The 5 string only policy decision lasted less than a year, of course. Unbelievably another one came up just before the new year, think I flagged it up on here, and as it stood was too heavy at 4.1kg. Luckily no-one bought it so I did, largely for old times sake, and presented it to the guy who does all my tech stuff to see what he could do to lose weight. He routed out 400g of wood from under the scratch plate - voila, no longer too heavy. I 'could' change the tuners to Hipshots or similar but these are superb and it would be a shame to take them off. Anyway, seems OK now at 3.7kg and a wide strap. No neck dive, either, despite the weight loss. This is a special bass and I am not going to sell it, ever.

Just a few of the designs I've done on my PEAVEY FOUNDATION 5 , if I was playing a show every week I would do a new graphic for each show I'm always a Bassist 1st An artist 2nd my art has been described as visually musical . I think that's a great way to describe it. I still have a few abstract works I like the detail I did.

Off to 'ull next week.

Just had confirmation that us punkyfunky band is playing Rebellion!

Let’s be right… pic #2 is bass stance, bass face AND dusty end! Good work fella

I’m thinking of moving on my 79 Ibanez Musician. What would you say would be a fair price to ask?

A reason. I've been buying music since I was a kid, I've no need to rent it again from those greedy barstwards.

You mate have see my post about whether to sell or fix up my old Musima bass. After a few weeks with @tommyjamesallen it’s now better than ever. New bridge, endpin, set up and sound post adjustment. It sounds fantastic and the work was very reasonable. And he’s a nice guy. Thoroughly recommended.

My vintage modified Jag, further modified by our own @Andyjr1515. It belonged to a close friend of mine, Jack, who won it at a Bash Bash. His daughter generously let me keep it. Andy stripped the original painted finish. He then put a burl veneer and a CF scratch-plate on. It has Duncan Design pups and half-rounds. It makes a wonderful sound. AJR Guitar Modifications - Squier Vintage Modified Jaguar Bass Check his website (above) for before and after photos and for some of his other work. PS: This was owned from new by Andy. He kindly donated it as a raffle prize for the East Mids Bass Bash one year. The previous year he donated an acoustic bass to the raffle. It's worth mentioning because he's such a helpful and friendly chap too.

We recorded a 5 track 1/2 hour mini album, got our mate Jez from the Utah Saints to help us mix it. Then our guitarist's son produced short promo vids which we're doing the drip feed thing with on the various socials... We've set up streaming release dates, have contacted 30+ journos plus 6Music DJs, and may even stoop so low as to play a gig. Anyone got any more ideas to guarantee some form of musical world domination? We've done gigs in daft costumes, and none of us touch weed (or any other drugs barring a sneaky Mezcal), even though we're called Weeds (we're even so trendy we don't have a "The"!) Here's the first promo vid to poke fun at, featuring Pierre, a Belgian performance artist:

Just traced the fault to a loose screw in the speaker lead speakon plug. Just threadlocking all my speaker plugs at the mo as a preventative measure - cheers for the heads up though!

Although I own a number of other basses, they rarely get any playing time these days as my Ritters just ‘work’ for me so well. My poor 60’s Fenders only get played about once every 2-3 months :( I have five of them now and I’ve gigged all of them except my black Victor tribute (built by Jens in honour of my dear friend, and colleague, Vic Davies). I just love everything about them, light weight, lots of tonal variation, slim necks, fractionally shorter scales etc. Simply the most ‘playable’ basses I’ve ever owned. Your Roya looks lovely. I think the Roya body shape works better as a 5 than my usual 4’s. I’ve owned a couple but the upper horn position holds them slightly differently to my others and I kept finding my fingers drifting across 2 frets. Random pic of my Ritter wall in my study:

One down, eleven to go. No problem, nothing to it 😬. I think this is the best I've ever done, certainly better than the year I failed roughly ten minutes after stating I was in. 😂

That's a weapons grade bass stance going on there 😎👍🤘🤘

I was getting a bit paranoid that maybe the band weren't doing as good a show as i thought and folks were maybe not into it now. From what you guys are seeing it looks like its a common theme this year. On one hand i feel better but on the other a bit saddened things are heading this way. Hopefully things will pick up for us all. Dave

That’s Albert Lee with Peter Asher Daryl. Great gig and nice pictures!

I don't often wander on this side of the pond, but I did just now and somehow stumbled upon this thread. In case anyone is still interested, I did just brew a new batch of my onboard one-knob compressor: jtex.ca/products/okc I honestly think it really whips the Llama's arse! Too bad very few people think of a compressor as something to put onboard.

I’ve been on a bit of a pedal buying frenzy this last month and tonight is the first time I’ve put it all together and gigged it, photo is a bit crap.I almost forgot to take one and so I quickly snapped one before packing up 👇 I had a Capo but sold that and I’ve replaced it with a GK Plex which is mint (as long as you like the GK sound - otherwise it’s probably not! 😁) The amp sounds are absolutely top notch and the contour/presence/bass bump n the EQ all sound great, but it’s the preamp sound that really impresses me, it sounds phenomenal. I don’t like the drive or compressor on it and I assume that’s why this pedal hasn’t really taken off like it probably could have, but I don’t really need those, but it sounds massive. The other pedal that’s been a bit of a revelation is the Trickfish Signal Filter - HPF/LPF which can be turned on & off independently with makeup gain for the HPF. First time with that tonight and I was very impressed - tightened the sound right up, took some nasty clank off the top and boom off the other end so I sounded louder whilst not turning up or being overpowering - I just need to finally work out where I actually want to put the bloody thing in my signal chain Empress bass comp is class and Octamizer and TC Chorus doing a solid job. I’ve got a Mojo Mojo on the way and a Fteletronica Sub Octave coming from Italy next week, and I could do a with a fuzz of some sort too. I also quite like the look of the Creation Audio Grizzly Bass, but I’m not massively into drive pedals and may just stick with the Mojo. Also may get a Plethora X1 when they come out properly to cover various modulation effects - I have a TC amp head with toneprint and quite like it. Also the Markbass Mini Boost is great, I’ve got a couple of places where I’m playing slap and needed a boost in volume, but the VPF also gives an EQ boost to low & high end (possibly a mid scoop I dunno, it sounds like it but may be just boosting Low & Hi) but a volume boost and the EQ shaping together run in the FX loop of the Plex is awesome for slap solo type stuff, I’ve never had a bad Markbass pedal TBF they’re always really good My GAS has mostly been bass related but since I got a U.S. Lakland 55/94 my GAS has settled right down… for basses! I decided after new year it was time I properly sorted my pedal board out, but I fear I have got the pedal bug now and fear I’m on a slippery slope, I’m finding myself in the Effects forum more and more…! 😆

Nothing, because I don't have a Spotify account. I don't stream music, I'll buy it if I really like it. There's some stuff I buy on records but mostly I'll by from the iTunes Store and recently I've started to use Bandcamp more. Mark

I found this album in my mum's old record collection. Just WOW..

Anything they like, you won’t hear them!

Di box to the RCF Sound. Daryl

It's not strictly a new bass day but I recently received two basses in quite quick succession and I think they're both very worthy of a new bass day post. I've chatted with a few people on here about them (most because they were wondering what was enough to part me from Cog pedals) and I said I would put this post up when I'd spent time with both basses. I've been lucky enough to play some of the basses I've dreamed about over the last few years but one that's been firmly etched on the list of dream basses and one which I never thought I would actually own is a Ritter Roya 5-string. Owing to some fortunate timing and very optimistic book-keeping I was recently able to welcome this beautiful bass, named by Jens Ritter as The Red Line. It has an alder body, poplar burl top, black flamed maple fingerboard and Ritter's parametric preamp and triplebucker pick-ups. The neck is maple, it's built to a 35-inch scale and it's been given an arresting paint job that gives the bass its name (more photos below). The preamp and pick-up combination is extremely flexible so it's hard to say precisely what the signature tone is (it reminds me of a Pope preamp in terms of flexibility) but I've been having a lot of fun seeing what sounds I can dial in. I've tried to write the details in a matter-of-fact way but the result is absolutely mesmerising. The bass was exhibited at Guitar Summit in Mannheim a couple of months ago and it's one of the most beautiful basses I've seen in person (although I expect I'm horribly biased here). I should say too that Jens Ritter was very patient in answering all of my questions too, particularly as I was mithering him just before Guitar Summit. Here are a few more photos of it: Knowing the Ritter was coming was incredibly exciting but I was just as excited a few weeks later when my lovely wife went above and beyond (and beyond again) and surprised me with the most amazing gift for one my my milestone birthdays: a Dingwall AB II that I had been enamoured with since I first saw it (and which may look familiar to some on here). It's an incredibly generous gift and, frankly, I'm going to have to try much harder for birthdays and have my work cut out at Christmas. It has a chambered walnut body, wenge fretboard and, unusually for a Dingwall, an ovangkol neck. It has three FDV pick-ups and a Glockenklang preamp. It was originally built for NAMM but was instead tweaked and sent to George Baldwin (Hilltide). Here he is using it far better than I could ever hope to: I love the rustic colouring and styling of the bass on the modern-ish body and it sounds magical: it's got a deep growl but is very articulate. It's a wonderful bass all round and it's a nice thought that this will forever be the birthday bass. A few more photos:

and…

Thanks, for some unknown reason I can't edit the name. Daryl

I like that a lot! What you need to do will depend on what you want out of the project. If you are happy with simply lots of people listening to your music and don't need any real financial reward then short-form videos like the one above and streaming is the way to go. You'll need to get your tracks on popular playlists which will probably mean searching out ones where you think your music is a good fit and contacting the people who curate them and ask for a track of yours to be included. It's most effective if they are actively looking for new tracks to add. Otherwise you are going to need to get out there and play gigs and have physical product available to sell at those gigs ideally in vinyl form, although TBH if you just want to make money you'll be better off producing an eye-catching T-shirt and sell those instead. For both approaches, my experience is that unless you are very lucky you need to be doing lots of promotion otherwise it's just vanity publishing and no-one but your friends, family and few people on here will ever get to hear it. Even for bands that in the past have been popular I've found that the moment you stop promoting whether that's through playing live or being interesting and entertaining on-line the number of listeners you have will rapidly decrease. Once The Terrortones stopped gigging our sales of physical product and number of streams dropped off very rapidly. At our most popular we could have been out gigging every Friday and Saturday had the money and logistics been right (as it was we were playing at least 3 times a month) and we were selling serious amounts of T-shirts, CDs and vinyl both at gigs and on-line. These days it's down to a handful of streams each month and nothing else.

I don't think I've ever seen that advanced as a reason before... "The upper body horn has been shortened to prevent neck dive during live performances." Um, what?! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/326418943134?itmmeta=01JJHQ4DGQ4F5NKCCBDEVWN74G&hash=item4c0015cc9e:g:UNUAAOSw13dnljBL&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAAwCodCO1vSDjg2xNOt8By6oCstqPg90z%2FTYt6I5XkaiBKBiYXmC4HbNaYj7FRS1JimcTulcXw6ChWIU%2F15JZJkI4--53qaaMSW%2BJAF8och3TzfdUg01FolKPsTxaXAPd2fZckSHubNP4KTA5rpXuNIQsXX%2BcjoasyWgJHEeJJv5InJ35DhNQiW5plHgSyYLlbLzzxKwEyXrVeaPvCJukDiIU%2BArFQjZDBf2e3xBOeiVLU1xMUAFFbxdoFmeJDlrJVQA%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR77YkbeUZQ

My end is not dusty!

I had the chance to play with one kindly lent to me this week. It's blowing my mind. It's worth the price of admission for the filter, compression and distortion/drives. Everything else is a bonus that I haven't really scratched the surface on. But the filter is fat and juicy. Better than anything I recall on the c4

The funk.

it’s on the right…

My first bash, and the last one before Covid.

I thought I had none in January, but had missed one, then two more pop up at short notice, one quiet (well it was 8pm on a Thursday...), two decent but not as busy as normal. Always hit and miss this time of year, although I didn't gig last Saturday, numbers at two local gigs were good. We've got a very good local Steely Dan tribute at the club tonight - fingers crossed, it is free admission. Tomorrow's band cancelled due to illness, but we got a stnad in (miffied I didn't act quick enough to get it!) I've got 14 or 15 gigs booked in over the rest of 2025, a bit clumped. Not particularly impressive given I played seven in six weeks from the start of november. Would like about 2 a month in an ideal world.

Nothing for me in January this year (I play in three bands to varying degrees). Only got one in Feb as well currently, but it starts to pick up in March.

Sorry to hear some people are struggling with gigs. I’ve had 4 this January, with 5 coming up in February and then 7 in March. Mainly duo stuff plus a few pub gigs for the blues trio. The duo has 3 regular monthly residencies which helps a lot though. People I know in other bands have been saying that pub gigs are getting harder to source, and fees are the same as they’ve been for a long time too.

The last time I had a gig in January was 2019... However this year is looking pretty healthy already with 8 definite gigs between now and July and a few more still be confirmed.

I hardly ever gig in January. Got 16 gigs booked so far before summer though, with more to come in, so that's pretty good...

We are down quitea few bookings this year, although a large amount of that is the singer being signed off for quite a few weekends due to a new child. I think it might be time to find something else to be doing as well