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Bedford Esquires on Saturday with For The Hornets: Venue: We’ve played there about 6 years ago. I arrived early and started setting up on the exact spot as 6 years ago near-ish the bar. Barman: “Whoa, what do you think you are you doing?” Me (paraphrased): “I’m setting up. Now look here son, I’m not sure if this is your first day, but I’ve played here before, and this is where I set up” Barman: “Mate, this is the bar. You’re playing here….” He opens a door to a bustling live venue, already filling with punters. Turns out we hadn’t played there before… we’d played the BAR of the venue!!! Wow, that was embarrassing. Sound: Sound was incredible. As were the lights. Easy peasy sound check. Gear: I borrowed a Mesa Boogie Subway 4x10 cab – 1000w 4ohm. About £2ks worth. I want one. Promotor: ADK. Amazing promotor, they spam everywhere before the show. It was a great crowd. Additionally they have 4 GoPros set up around the stage and transfer you all of the footage, and the sound desk recording in the morning. Excellent touch. Last pic is a screenshot from the GoPro on my side of the stage!

Two dep gigs this weekend with the Lee Aaron Band and a couple more chances to put the LFSys Monaco cab through its paces...😎 First gig was on Friday at the lovely Login Lounge in Camberley... great venue and people, but the PA subs under the stage provided just a bit too much onstage low-end for my liking. Sounded great out front though apparently! Saturday night was at the cosier Frimley Green Club where the lack of PA support for the backline allowed the Spector/GK/LFSys combination to really shine! Probably one of the best bass tones I've ever had onstage with the LFSys cab really emphasising with crystal clarity the tight, punchy, piano tones that the Spector and GK really excel in...! The dispersion was excellent too... with my Son, who was sidestage on the other side of the loud drumkit and guitarist, saying he could hear me clearly! Check these cabs out if you get the chance! Contact our very own @steviewho makes them.... 👍

Last nights ‘gig’ was an appearance at the Black Horse Sunday Sessions - a buskers night in Boldon Colliery that features guess artists and last night it was us! Lovely old pub that was packed with music lovers and performers, and really well run by two stalwarts of the local music scene up here in the north east, Paul ‘Big Red’ Randall & Paul ‘Chumsy’ Chambers. This is the second of such nights we’ve had the pleasure of playing and I’ve got to say I love them. For the gear heads I was playing my Boosey Hawkes Excelsior ‘Lilly’ through the rather marvellous EBS Stanley Clarke preamp and SushiBoxFX ‘Finally’ valve DI straight into the house PA. Sound was run by fellow bass man Paul Chambers who got me a great natural tone.

Some video from yesterday's gig... you can see I was having a lot of fun from about 1/3 of the way through! AQP05IXz-P74jtaQNnMx7cmbBMTK8Je-gpmm6FLmot0YeGxQhH9b9ChaicpHN82BWZfoy8w8tOWJ9LEqck62juxmlcuJfDDjdFLuu_nLJJm_SKkyOA.mp4

Great gig at the Earl Haig with Bluesfire. Numbers a bit down but somewhere north of sixty, not bad for a £3 cover charge on a really foul day (westher warning - wind and yellow rain 🤣). The big room with a proper stage and lights, but the lighting and smoke meant we could hardly see the audience (they could see us). We had a good time, played Spoonful - it was in a film I watched on Friday night, under the influence of jack Daniels and hobgoblin, I suggested it. we hadn't ever played it before, but we managed to nail all the stops and it was nearer to Cream than Howlin' Wolf. Some dancing (we aren't dancy) and at the end one woman assured us we were the best blues band she's ever seen 😎 Plenty of compliments for Al's guitar playing. Nice to see a friend who's a pro level musician there... and he was telling my SO how important it is I buy a real Bongo not a Sterling one 🤣 Used the Sire P10 for the first set and AVII Precision for the second. Took a while to get a good sound with the sire. The P... just plug it in. Video screenshot 280 views already!

Just finished a run of five gigs on the bounce. Given my diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome a few years back I've had to manage my rest carefully this week but I managed it, and thoroughly enjoyed them all.

Played the venue part several years ago supporting Balaam and the Angel who had a rather Spinal Tap moment when after setting up their drum riser and drums the road crew realised that it was now too close to the venue's ceiling for there to be enough room for the cymbals!

Lighting can make a band look bigger than they are. See the pic below. There were probably 5 people in the room. Daryl

I'll be blunt, my opinion of Jon Willis has plummeted over the years. I've known of him for a number of years since the Facebook Yamaha attitude owners group before the helix came along. He's somewhat crowned himself as the helix bass guru without credentials and most of his presets are variations of the same thing, mid-rangey, Sheehan-esque p bass type stuff. All dialled in with an RTA and headphones. Fine for Sheehan style rock stuff, but not a lot else. I tried his synth pack and didn't find it useful at all tbh. I've been using the helix for at least 6 years and like you, I'm loathed to pay money for presets. I've dialled in my own and was generally happy, although synths are my Achilles heel. But over the last year I've been enamoured with Ian Alison's tones so I bit the bullet and bought his vintage synth pack. Oh my! These are the real deal - they sound extraordinary. Genuinely useful, especially the mini moon preset. I enjoyed it so much I bought his signature pack too to see if I could learn anything and he improve my own. Needless to say a modified version of his signature amp preset forms the basis of my core tones. Organic, gritty, gooey goodness and very versatile. A while ago Jon and Ian had a rather public spat of social media where Jon "bought Ian's presets to review so you don't have to" and heavily criticised them for having round numbers in the settings. As if that's proof they haven't been dialled in and finessed over hundreds of gigs. He accused Ian of being nothing more than a used care salesman and then proceeded to tweak Ian's presets by 0.1 in each block and give them away for free. the community did not approve. I lost all respect for him at that point. honestly, IMA's presets appear costly, but they are the real deal and sound great, and dead easy to tweak if you need to shape to your taste and requirements.

As discussed in another thread, I have discovered another band had been using the same name as my recording project's band name, and although that other band has little digital footprint, they were using the name first, so I have decided to come up with a new name for my project. Thinking up good band names on demand is not easy, good ones tend to come in a flash of inspiration out of the blue when you're least expecting it. I have found a few existing band name generators online, but I have not been successful in finding a name that I like using any of them. I have now built my own band name generator, which I hope will work better. This generates two word, three syllable names — which is my preference at the moment as this format tends to give many of the best sounding names, - eg Aphex Twin, BadFinger, Black Sabbath, Bon Iver, Cocteau Twins, Deep Purple, Depeche Mode, Dirty Three, Fearless Flyers, Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Funk Brothers, Gentle Giant, GrinderMan, Honey Cone, Human League, Judas Priest, Killing Joke, King Harvest, Led Zeppelin, Low Anthem, Mars Volta, Matching Mole, Mazzy Star, Mink DeVille, Mountain Goats, New Order, NewYork Dolls, Nitzer Ebb, NineInch Nails, Primal Scream, SandPebbles, Sex Pistols, Shocking Blue, Small Faces, Soft Machine, Status Quo, SugarCubes, Taj Mahal, Thin Lizzy, Tin Machine, UK Subs, UnderTones, Van Halen, WaterBoys etc... The link to my generator is at the bottom of this post. Click the red button to generate a list of twenty-four suggestions for a band name and click the icon next to any name you like to copy to it the clipboard so you can paste it into your own document. I've just finished coding this and already have a few possible band names copied into a pages document just from testing it. If you are interested in how it works, you can view the page source to see the code and word lists. Everything is self-contained on the single page with zero external resources used. If anyone wants to contribute additional words I have left out, or finds any 'inappropriate' words please let me know and I'll make any changes needed when I update it. This has been designed to work on every modern device including phones and tablets, however I have only tested it on my apple kit so far. Link to the band name generator -> https://names.bandrocks.co.uk/

Bought this German Metroline as just couldn't see past it. Absolutely wonderful instrument in every respect, it's a pure joy to play and is at the very least the equal of the Japanese Metro Modern 24 five string I owned previously. One thing is the fretboard doesn't seem as wide further up the neck as on the Metro and also the Metro Expresses which is something I like.

I had joined a local band just before Xmas. Well when I say band, we had a good drummer, a very good singer and then me. I moved back to the skinny strings as it didn't really work with just bass, drums and a singer, but that was fine. I just wanted to have fun. We'd agreed a couple of up tempo jazz and blues covers to get going. Two sessions later, singer pulled out citing too much stuff in her life and somethings had to go. These things happen. So the drummer and myself had a session to try and work out what to do. She can sing, I didn't try as my voice dropped eight octaves when I was about 12 and hair appeared in odd places. We messed around with some covers, didn't really work, so I suggested she choose a beat/tempo she likes on the drums and I'll jam something, anything but it'll probably be blusey in nature 😊 Well 45 mins later, I put the guitar down, she put the sticks down and we smiled. We actually played properly as a duo. We clicked on timing and it just worked. I wouldn't quite say it was Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall but I thought it sounded great. We were tight and just knew when to start and finish. I suspect most other people who play in a band think I'm wittering on, but I was over the moon. It's been a loooong time since I've played with anybody and this felt great. I'm going to try and write something original so we have 3-4 songs that we can sing or more likely she can. AI technology has not moved fast enough to make my voice sound good, perhaps another ten years or so. I know many of you play gigs all the time but for me, this was a big step forward. Rob

I knew this would be nice to play and would look lovely, but I wasn't prepared for the monstrous sound to come out of it! I have various instruments, each of which has some good qualities but also some failings. This is just huge. Everything's there. I'm lost for words. It's a DiMarzio Billy Sheehan pickup. A Relentless, I think. I went to see The Raven of this parish, hoping to buy his Shuker PJ. I played it, liked it (though I was really looking for a passive P but of course it also works passive and it's not obligatory to use the J pickup) and was about to hand over the cash when, being a nosey sod, I said -what's in that other case? -oh, that's another Shuker, here, have a look. -I'll take it. -Done. Pleasure doing business with you. Might still have to go back for the PJ, mind.

Hi @Hellzero..Tony if I remember correctly. Electrics and pickups on the Arpège 1982 fretless already changed when I purchased. I am not overly sure what too..I feel it was an EMG preamp..with the pickups changed to the 2nd generation benedetti from early 86 onwards I believe..well they are original on my passion 11 from March 86 It is an Aiguilar OP3 preamp on the fretted Arpège with passive/active switch..works fantastically with this old bass.. All the best.. Alan👍😀

While a Precision is ideal for use as a mallet to drive in tent pegs, the slightly more sophisticated Jazz is better used as a mallet with which to strike chisels to cut out holes in Precisions to accommodate a Jazz pickup in the bridge position.

I’m neither an accountant or lawyer but I am a big fender fan, I know there’s lots here that aren’t, if you can afford it then CS fenders are pretty much the best you can get if you can find the right one for you , I’d have another tomorrow if one caught my eye but I’d be a bit more selective now rather than just jumping in and buying them , there’s nothing wrong with wanting the best you can buy, whether it’s worth the price doesn’t matter to me if it’s something you want and it makes you happy every time you pick it up

My current board for my fretless and I'm super happy with it now. Pedals are as follows, Zoom MS-60B - Tuner and TC Electronic Corona Chorus Ampeg Opto - Compressor Boss OC-5 - Octave MXR Envelop Filter - Used in conjunction with the Octave pedal for a slight tonal variation for certain songs Walrus Audio Slo Reverb - Used to create rising swirls, pads and to replicate a cello. Mooer A7 Ambient Reverb - Used as either a stand alone reverb or with the strings pad option. Sonicake Boost - Used to boost harmonics Sansamp Bass Driver DI - Pre-Amp My ideal set up would be a separate tuner, mini TC Electronic Corona chorus and possibly replace the Walrus Audio Slo reverb with a Strymon Cloudburst. Sadly I don't have the space and I don't want to go bigger on the pedalboard.

First gig for my first originals band, been a year in the making after losing a couple of drummer on the way. Turned up expecting to play 45 minutes but were asked if we could do an hour as the other support couldn't play due to sickness. Bolstered the set with four covers, Psycho Killer, The Specials Concrete Jungle, Another Brick in the Wall part 2 and Tracks of my Tears. I'd describe us as a shouty punkish garageband so we caught a few out with Tracks but I loved it when Big Country used to do it live so we gave it a go. A good crowd and very responsive. I used Barefaced One10 stack with Markbass LM3 playing a Squier pj contemporary I bought from here last year. Everything sounded great from where I was and we had plenty of favourable comments after. Landlord wants us back even after we explained don't have a following.....which was nice.

Good acoustic gig. Good crowd. There was a huge bike expo event in town. Good interaction with the crowd. I was home with my comped entree by 10. Daryl

I had my first classical lesson on the DB today (having had 3 lessons on the EUB pre-Covid) from a young DB student from the Royal Conseratoire of Scotland. Thanks to a couple of Discover Double Bass courses, Simamdl, and hints/tips on here, she was very encouraging and said that I was definitely on the right lines. As ever, room for improvement but I’m so looking forwards to the next lesson. She played my Zeller bass, suggested that perhaps the string height was more suited to jazz rather than classical, but apart from that said it was ok. And I got to try her 150 year old bass too. It was a beast! No need to comment unless you really want to, I am just so pleased and re-energised by the whole experience. And yes, homework for this week is the “vomit” exercise 🤣🤣

This is my current pedal board.

I certainly left negative feedback after my encounter with that individual.

Sorry to hear that. Given the seller had such good feedback, did you leave feedback detailing your experience? While fraud and even disagreement are VERY rare in sales here compared to eBay/Reverb/Facebook, one problem here compared with other sites does seem to be the general reluctance of people to leave negative feedback....

Looks like a decent venue there. Nice one. Dave

But they're really not. The last time I came across one was owned by a 20 something pro musician, who is classically trained and plays in orchestras, but also does lots of freelance electric bass gigs and plays the blues circuit with a couple of his friends (all pros, ex music school ). He wanted a simple bass that is 100% reliable and would always be suitable for the gigs he does. So, he paid quite a lot for a bog standard CS P bass, which he seems to use pretty much exclusively. I've played it - it's a really nice P bass, does exactly what you would expect it to do, well built, plays nicely and looks cool in an understated way. He is really happy with it and uses it just about every bass gig he does.

Love the fact that you still have a trusty Zoom B3 alongside an HX Stomp! Out of interest what sort of fx do you find yourself using the Zoom in preference over the Stomp for?

18 years ago we wanted to call ourselves The Junkyard Dogs but careful searches revealed that there was already a Junkyard Dogs playing in the NorthEast so we ditched the idea. Two years later following some changes in personnel we wanted a new name and - to my complete astonishment - the Junkyard Dogs near Newcastle at that moment posted that the band was folding, it had been a great xxx years, thanks to everybody who had come to their shows, blah blah blah. Righty-ho then, we'll have that thank you very much and The Junkyard Dogs we immediately became. Around the same time a band in the West Country started calling themselves Hobo Jones & The Junkyard Dogs but we never noticed a problem. On a couple of occasions pubs in Devizes and Marlborough tried to book us, presumably Hobo Jones received enquiries from pubs in Ealing, who knows? Fast forward 12 years and - lo and behold - the original band near Newcastle decided to reform, still using the same name. By this time of course we were so well established on social media that we were the first hit on any search for a band called The Junkyard Dogs in Britain, so within a year or so they changed their name to The Junkyard Dogz. But still we weren't in the clear, because quite recently Hobo Jones has presumably decided his band's name is too much of a mouthful, and they seem to have started calling themselves ... wait for it ... wait for it ... The Junkyard Dogs. So where's all this going, I pretend to hear you ask? Well, we were booked (by phone, through someone I've met face to face) for a West London gig at a new venue last week. The booker said he'd do his own poster, which was nice. Then he sent us the poster. The band details were all for Hobo Jones' band down in the West Country while the photo of the band showed the original Newcastle band. I'm still trying to work out if this is wind-up or just an example of Irish humour.

I tried, but I´m too young to do it without a digital unit, which gives me COMP, EQ, DELAY, MODULATION, NOISE GATE & COMP again... 👾

Caress Of Steel was my first Rush LP. I had heard a live gig on The Friday Rock Show and had recorded it on a C90 cassette. Wore it out eventually. I remember getting Permanent Waves 'hot off the press' and loved that and Moving Pictures but Grace Under Pressure and Signals were a bit of a challenge. They lost me at Power Windows but I still have all of their catalogue except Clockwork Angels. There are highs and lows throughout. Their videos, including the stuff on the back screen at gigs, was always ropey as fcuk. I always thought it was in jokes that nobody laughed at except the band. Their MTV style videos were generally terrible. I loved the sense of camaraderie the projected but they will probably go down as the coolest uncool people in the World. Neil Peart is not even close to being the best drummer and Gary Weinrib is not the greatest bass player by a country mile. Nevertheless, the three of them were undoubtedly greater than the sum of their parts and I loved them until I didn't.

Apple said that they would consider moving their foxcon plants from Mexico to the US - that isn't where the build the phones. There is no way that anyone would be able to afford the cost of a phone made in the US, especially as the only place the processors are made is in taiwan, which means that the chips for the phone would have to be imported from there, which means they would still face a 25% tarrif.

Liking your plucking technique there @Stub Mandrel. At first i thought you were using a pick. Some nice playing going on there. Enjoyed that a lot. Dave

Sad news. Beautiful voice. She launched the careers of Luther Vandross and Marcus Miller by firing them from her band. She told them they should be running their own bands and being successful in their own right.

Loving that bass tone at the start, @Stub Mandrel, it even manages to hold its own when the guitar gets a bit more lairy.

I didn’t; a crime was committed, the police were involved and he was subsequently removed from here anyway.

Apparently there's a US band called the Junkyard Doges...

Hold my beer...

FYI - you don't have to pop the necks off, someone showed me this a while ago after I complained about chipping a bit of paint off the neck-pocket off mine when doing the set-up (the pocket is incredibly tight). There's a special tool for it, I think it's called a telecaster tool? It's like a half-width flathead screwdriver on a 90 degree angle that you use a bit like a wrench - the slots on the truss rod look like they're for a philips head but that's not why they're in the + shape, it's so that you have regular access with this specific tool. I can't find it now to take a pic but I think StewMac sell them.

Ah, the age old high-cost-Fenders-aren't-worth-it debate! It's the same theory of diminishing returns as most other hobby-commodities; is a £4k bass 10x better than a £400 bass? Probably not. Is there something about it that will bring the buyer happiness? Hopefully yes! That's all there is to it. One of the great things about Fender (that they are ironically also derided for) is that they make their product to a wide variety of price points - set your limit and go buy your bass, it doesn't matter if other people choose to spend a different amount. For what it's worth - I have a CS precision. I had a decent bonus one year from work & decided I wanted to buy myself a precision as I didn't have one & GAS had made it's requirements known. I had a price limit in mind but for the sake of the search I decided to go out and try every P available between Reading & London regardless of price, new/used/vintage Squier/Fender/Custom Shop/Other brands that made a P shape bass, I played a lot of basses. There is no rule as to spending x will get you y performance, they all are what they are at the price that they are, some decent cheapos and some rubbish 10k+ basses - such is the life of a bass player. As it happens, the best bass I'd tried was a Custom Shop - it looked beautiful, played wonderfully & sounded awesome. It was c£5.5k I think, it was out of my self-agreed price range so for a best of cost/benefit bass I decided to go and buy a new Mexican Road Worn (they were actually pretty good basses and were less than a grand), when I was in the shop I saw the glimmer of a different bass that hadn't been there when I was trying out the Road Worns a couple of weeks earlier - a 2nd hand CS, it didn't play quite as nice as the £5.5k one but was easily the 2nd best bass I'd tried so I bought it at twice the price of a road worn but way less than the new CS. I've played that bass on a huge number of gigs, from decent size stages to the grottiest of back-street boozers. Not once has a non-bass playing punter commented on the sound, a single time a nice lady said she liked the colour. Most of the time the bass we're playing make zero difference to the listeners - so just pick the bass you like & is mostly likely for make you play more, so long as you can afford it price is meaningless.

I have upgraded a number of basses with a Hipshot drop-D eXtender. (I do keep the original tuner to put back if needed.)

Thanks. It's just the light, both neck and fretboard are Panga Panga.

Lovely job, lovely bass!

But …but … is it just me misunderstanding but why would someone buy a custom shop instrument, not like it and think they were going to make it ‘better’ by adding a preamp? If they swapped out the pickups I’d understand- it’s not about perfection it’s about making all the parts do what you want. But putting a preamp in is changing the whole nature of the bass. It makes me thing the buyer has no idea what they want.

Our first gig of the year last night at the Coach House in Paignton. A good crowd for us who got into it as the night went on. Towards the end of the first set our guitarist was out front soloing and told me after the song that I was not loud enough out front, so I duly boosted my PA level. Chatted to a couple of appreciative people along the way. My calouses felt like they got a work out as it been a couple of months since I've played live. Got a couple more gigs over the next month, but only 11 booked for this year so far. Using my usual Stingray 2eq, RM500 & BF210. I was also wearing my Sketchers.

‘Wrong’ side of the river for us last night - a gig in Barton upon Humber with the blues trio. Venue was an old pub, occasion being a 70th birthday for a guy who has seen us a few times. Set up in the main bar area, audience comprised birthday party guests and some locals too. We played 2x50 minute sets, to polite applause from the guests, who you could feel were thinking ‘why did you book a blues band?’ but didn’t want to offend the birthday boy. We had a couple of dancers, one of whom walked over to grab my mic - gave her my best look of disapproval and she retreated. Wasn’t sure if she was a party guest so didn’t want to upset things but nobody touches my stuff, ever! (Used my Sire U5 shortie into the usual Fender Rumble 500 combo.) Finished around 11.15pm, got paid and a quick pack away meant I was home by midnight. Not the most enjoyable gig, but not the worst either. No pics I’m afraid, must try harder. 😊

Friday night Otis Jay Blues Band show at the Meeting House, Ringwood. Well-named, we had three ‘ringers’ as vocalist and drummer walked before Christmas. An art exhibition means the band photos are the weirdest ever… have attached a couple! Pulled 37 paying punters on a horrible night plus Sid, who walked in and ordered a bottle of red to go with the half bottle of vodka in his pocket. Our audience is nothing but select. Never before used (on stage) rig of Barefaced Two10, GK MB200 and Sandberg VM4 on Precision pickup. No-one noticed the difference…