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I did my regular Wednesday Bandeoke this week. Usually I take a small, light rig, for convenience as much as anything. However I watched Bass The World's review of the new Orange valve head yesterday, and it gave me a hankering to enjoy a proper amp. So tonight I used this set up and it was an unforgettable experience. A bass you can feel as much as hear, a tone to die for, it was worth every ounce.

NBD Fender SS Kingman V2 So a new casual project as a Duo with a Local singer/ guitarist required a new member to join the herd. It's a very nice Fender SS Kingman V2. I previously owned a long scale Kingman with a great Jazz neck and huge body but moved it on due to the arthritis. This short scale is a dream to play, lovely roasted maple, satin block inlaid neck with a 38mm nut wideth. Plenty of volume for settee noodling and a great range of tones from the Fishman PreSys+. Sounds fantastic through my DIY Fender(?) IMP. A nice size body but the fret board is a little dry.

Really need to stop buying preamps now!

I don't really consider myself a lefty any more (sorry) but I can't see what's happening in the US in any other way than the consequence of extreme wealth inequality. Capitalism was great when it worked for most people (it never worked for all, of course - I'm talking about the historic "middle class"). A good job or advanced trade was a route to a decent standard of living, a home, etc. Now that kind of security is getting further and further out of reach for almost everyone. Very easy to take that vanishing security, and the general fear and anxiety that rise up from it, and point it in any direction you want. That goes for Democrats or Republicans. I also feel I should speak up for the many sensible, intelligent, talented, kind, good people in the US. They're not in the news much these days, but they're my friends, colleagues and family. I'm genuinely frightened for them.

100% when i saw them on that tour in Glasgow i just couldn't believe how 3 guys could produce that level of complexity. Just 3 cool looking guys having great fun doing what they do best. I really liked the idea of their concept albums. I just got lost in their world while listening. Probably reading more into it than i should but at 18yrs old your imagination runs wild. 🤩 Dave

We have some cracking pieces on their way, both USA and Skyline!

We love Lakland here too, watch this space

so a few years ago I just had a HX stomp, sold it and went into the individual pedals world, finding out what suits, what doesn't ... and then maybe admitting some kind of defeat by buying a HX stomp again, but finding out I've learned so much along the process that I'm using it completely differently .... So big changes with and the plan is not to fiddle too much bar a few wee things I need to sort ... it also is I think the first time I've spent ages working out a layout that works well for ergonomically. Complete overkill too - but fun. And sometimes thats the point. Signal chain. Sonic Research - Turbo Tuner - Christmas present from my daughters fancier than I need, but does let me do fairly good setups so there's that. The iron man - My version of the SS/BS mini - it's fantastic clear sounding JFet drive. It's my kind of sound. It has a C1M pot for bass so a bit more low end than the schematic you see online, and the J201 ldss values you would use in a Barbershop... Valeton - OC-10 - It's a tiny OC2 clone, with the mod of disconnecting the -2 portion for more gain. It sounds like a smooth OC2 and tracks down to low D. The first octave I've tried that made me 'get' octaves. Broughton Omnicomp - You can keep your cali76's and whatever... my thing was always going to be optical compression, and this is one of the best. (IMO, @jimbobothy may disagree... ) It sounds better than good and just works. Normally always on. HX Stomp - I caved and went back. I had had a L4 preamp doing amp sounds in analogue world - but the bottom end was a bit uncontrolled. This gives me control. And scratches the itch of "ooh but I'ld like to try a rat with a clean blend and a flanger on the clean"or whatever. Set to change patches on the H9 via midi if I want and accepts Expression CC and tap tempo. LOOP 1.1 - Aoteaora Intermodulator - my tiny version of a prunes and custard - it's amazing. Quite often with distortions I find they take over your sound in a big fuzzy or velcoy mess, this wave folder is so touch responsive and just sounds musical and synth. I need to finish the others I'm making , sorry @lee650, this made it on my board before I posted you yours! You can see why I kinda needed a small pedal! I'm not allowed a bigger board. It was going to be before the stomp - till I realised the fun of sticking tremolo into it. LOOP 1.2 - PastFX PF-101 a moog MF101 clone. Turns out I like a moogerfooger envelope way more than a mutron style. And I like this, like the Aoteaora it feels musical to me, and usable in subtle ways. LOOP 2.1 - Providence Anadime Bass Chorus - I've got a few digital versions for chorus here, both sound good. None touch the Anadime. Bought off @admiralchew I think so I could shoot it out against the Tech21 bass boost chorus. There was only one winner - again sweet and musical sounding. LOOP 2.2 - Eventide H9 - It does a lot, the things it does well it does very well, and interfaces with the HX better than it did on it's own. The hot switch will be in an enclosure bottom right once I get around to it. Theres a wee home made patchbay underneath to patch out the expression and hotswitch. JHS colourbox v2 - Always on and the reason I ended up trying the individual pedals thing, sound great, transformer sound, Janek, @krispn and I can't all be wrong right? I use it as a low gain warm DI thing. It does fuzzy, which is normally pretty rubbish but can be nice clipping the tops of signal. The HPF is set a bit high for bass which means it gets a lot of Talkbass hate from the kinda folk who judge pedals based on printed specs, but dont let it put you off, but I'm probably never going to use Metal guitar amps on the stomp either but that doesn't mean it isn't a good tool for bass players... Now to learn to use this all together. At the moment I'm enjoying the ease of getting sounds -the stuff that's easier analogue is analogue, and the control is digital - it seems a simpler workflow. Challenge is to not change it again. Bar the hot switch and... I think the HX needs more current. So either a Cioks crux or 4 thingy or I daisy chain more other the individual pedals together.

im going to remove all the ergonomics and stick this in a giant yellow epoxy oval so it can look like the bat symbol

A pair of 30.5” Salace basses, B - C with no problems. Both have DFMs, but not the MCs. The fretted one (352 on the ACG site) can produce a very convincing Alembic style sound when “popped” on the treble side. The Wal sound is also closely produced by the fretless (552). I am lucky enough to own a Wal mk2 5 so have compared of course. The trick here I find is to tune your filter to a frequency of interest within your rif to feature it. Good luck!

It beggars belief, but there is no reality in MAGA world. The "MAGA faithful" are in total denial, as are all cult members. When they are without medical care and social security, unable to afford the massive sales tax and can't afford to educate their kids or buy food, and Musk has turned the US Government into Musk Inc and put tens of thousands of Americans out of work, everything will still be Biden's fault and Trump will sort it all out!!

Yep. It's the real deal. I have a system for moving it. But I won't lie it is a beast

Just to throw something else out there, and as detailed elsewhere on here, last year I picked up a Squier Sonic P new for £145 on the basis of 'How bad could it actually be?' (oh, and the fact it's very, very light (well under 8lbs)...yeah, I'm a glass-backed owd codger masquerading as a rock star) and it's a very good bass. Some tweaks to make it align more with my requirements (including a DiMarzio pup and one of Fender's own (much better) £35 bridges), and it's my main gigging bass. Now I know at the very bottom end of the model range I may have lucked out with a particularly good one (QC-wise), but it really is a good bass, and a great platform if you, like me, are an inveterate tinkerer, and are old enough not to get hung up on what it says on the headstock...

40 years of listening to music and I have never heard a RUSH record until now. This is just WOW.. I get it.

Powercuts.

Pretty sure when the King of England was in charge. Before the French won it off us.

MAGA... "Again" When was the first time it was great? Was it under a dictatorship/ogliarchy? I really do fear for democracy

I think that nothing we can do (by boycotting) would have any effect at all - aside from the symbolism. These guys are so wealthy that they are entirely immune from the effects of any action we might take collectively.

I think that people are struggling to realise that the world has fundamentally changed. Putin is now an authoritarian far-right dictator, rather than an authoritarian communist dictator. The difference between the far-left and the far-right has always been a lot less than that with centrist political positions. Of course, in the current social media dominated world, when you get accused of doing something bad, you just say that it was all your opponent's fault (no matter how ridiculous that argument may be) and double down every time someone says that you are talking nonsense. Trump is currently tearing down the pillars of American democracy and replacing them with a structure led by an oligarchy that will be sufficiently beholden to him to ensure that he doesn't go to prison. Americans may come to their senses in a few years and vote in a completely different political leadership, but their power will be limited and will be insufficient to reverse Trump's new regime. In the past few days, Trump has undermined NATO to the extent that it is now fatally weakened. America is now, at best, an unreliable ally and at worse, a threat to western democracies. A lot of Americans who voted for Trump will badly lose out, but it's too late for them now - he doesn't need them anymore! Of course, a large percentage of them will keep cheering him on, no matter how much they will suffer.

Is that the all valve 44Kg amp head ? Did you hire a forklift to get it in position atop of those amazing bass cabs. Dave

Quite frankly, I don't think that China is going to do anything at the moment to distract attention from the West tearing itself apart!

I very much doubt that.

Yep - sad news... Gone too soon. 😞 Always liked The Jam ; much more than most of Weller's solo output. Buckler was a very good drummer and he formed a great bass/drums unit with Bruce Foxton, and a very powerful musical trio with Weller ... Personally, I can't agree with the sentiment that they carried Weller's songs, many of which are absolute classics and follow down that line of great British songwriters from Ray Davies, to Pete Townshend, right through to Blur etc, etc. The main thing for me is that, together, they were just a great young band that was definitely more than the sum of the parts.. I met him once in the late 80s.. He owned a studio in the Liverpool Road / Angel area of London IIRC, and he showed me and my band mates around the place as we were potentially going to use it. Seemed like a fairly decent bloke too.. RIP.

I put a TurboRAT in a Warhammer Land Raider, just finished it today. Many hours of work and totally worth it!

Moorhen A Feeling - Boston

Alem.ACG352.mp3 Wal.ACG552.mp3 Two sound samples, an Alembic SC Sig bass playing a start of a track, then the Salace in the same position and then the Salace in the correct position that shows more of the Salace range. The Wal one has a noodle on a Wal Mk2 5 and an ACG Salace 6 in Bm. Both have flats on. Hope that helps.

My bands debut single is out tomorrow! You can pre save it here https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/xempa/here-as-i-stand

And here is another Fender from Indonesia SS KIngman V2

I have recently purchased a short scale sterling stingray from this parish and it’s fab. Another one has just appeared: https://bassbros.co.uk/product/sterling-by-music-man-stingray-short-scale-2/

Weren't they overthrown with the covert help of the US and their very bad economies? Over the years bad economies, including hundreds of thousands starving to death in Russia, China and North Korea didn't bring about a tipping point in those countries. Own the military and you're a dictator for ever, and you can guarantee that's at the top of Trump's To Do list. There is no right wing any more only Trump's MAGA Republican party. Why anyone would vote for dictatorship rather than Kamala Harris, beats me. Haven't they heard of tactical voting? Anyway, there is no alternative for the anti-Democratic voters, so they behave like turkeys voting for Christmas.

This was one of the dearer models I'd seen : https://www.thomann.co.uk/ns_design_nxt4a_vn_bk_f_fretted_violin.htm?glp=1&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpcWpsKHSiwMV4pFQBh04Owj5EAQYByABEgI5FPD_BwE Just £2000 more than my budget 😁

About £400. Shows how mad the pedal market is these days when I saw the price and wasn't surprised.

We’re rehearsing this evening, normally I really look forward to rehearsing but it’s the live Eastenders 40th Anniversary episode tonight.

I can only go off the few videos I’ve watched. Not had time to read the manual. The effects in the Meris will likely be better and are stereo. FI4 is still superior as far as oscillator options is concerned. Can’t comment on Enzo X’s tracking as I’ve not played it but guess it won’t be using the FI4’s fast tracking implementation so will be a bit slower. Arpeggiation is a plus (if, unlike me, you’re into that sort of thing). Enzo’s filters were pretty nice as I recall from playing the original version. Don’t think it’s something I’ll buy but I’d certainly like to try it out.

One thing I find puzzling, is that the USA has always been anti 'commie', Reds under the bed, McCathy outting alleged commie sympathisers, etc etc. Yet here we have a man siding with Putin/Russia, and from what I can read on X and American media, no reaction whatsoever. In fact, Ukraine is all Natos/Biden's fault in the first place. Why no comment (from the right anyway) about Trump sucking up to Russia, Americas historical enemies.

Thanks @agedhorse, this is the way I always proceed for recording as the plug-in reverbs you can get nowadays are really excellent, but for the bass duet project I'm playing in, a tiny bit of reverb helps both basses (a fretted and a fretless) for live and rehearsals too, hence the question. That said, I own an FKT Audio The Fretless pedal that includes a reverb, a chorus and a mid booster, so perfect for me, but my pal on the fretted would rather prefer a combo or a head with integrated reverb for "ease" of use.

Fawkes On The Run - Sweet

It feels like a whole new generation of musicians have reached 'that age'. We've seen a lot of 60's and early-mid 70's pass on, but I still see bands like The Jam and their contemporaries as young men because I'm the same age. God bless the human brain and it's denial circuitry. RIP Rick, you were a largely unsung hero of some of the most powerful songs and albums ever recorded. I didn't always like The Jam's music, and I doubt I'm alone. But I doubt anyone who's serious about music and culture could deny its quality, its honesty, its impact, and its importance 🙏

Happy belated NBD I guess! Ebonol is great. Very solid and durable, and it requires very little maintenance. The phenolic resin fingerboards on my Status basses are basically the same material, and they're around €4000 for a new one - so I definitely wouldn't discount it as an "inferior" material to wood. I think it's great for use on a fretless.