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Just back from our monthly outing at The Anlaby Park Hotel ( just outside Hull ), with the acoustic duo. Usual full lounge of punters, with stacks of requests. Tunes played included ‘Highway to Hell’, ’Enjoy yourself’, ‘No matter what’ x2 ( Badfinger tune and the Boyzone one after some confusion) ’Harvest Moon’ and ‘Everlasting love’ which was a bit fast for playing fingerstyle! A good night and a small increase in our fee so happy days. Home before midnight too. 😁

Played an afternoon show today at Warners hotel in Bembridge, Isle Of Wight with Duran/Spandau tribute 'From Gold To Rio'. Nice big room and stage and a great sound in the IEMs and out front 👍

The war could have ended at anytime in the past three years, all that was required was an abject surrender by Ukraine, which is what Trump was trying to force them to do a few days ago. People are vilifying Trump with good reason. Appeasement is rarely the best way to secure a lasting peace, as this country found out nearly seventy years ago.

There were a couple of models. Peavey signed up Brian Bromberg for a signature bass and allowed him to go to town. Called the B-Quad, they came with Modulus CF necks. This is my one . Few years later, 1998, they revisited CF necks but this time it was a under-sized maple neck with a carbon wrap. There was the 4 string model, G-Bass, 5 string G-V. Mistaken identity/crossed wires/wishful thinking have led to an urban myth the G-Bass/G-V also had Modulus necks, total BS 🤣 My old pal recalled the raw necks were shipped out to a gun factory, Bell & Carlson, for wrapping. Never found a G-V but did snag a G-Bass.

Agreed Dave, they did some great stuff. It was quite funny last night - a punter requested ‘No matter what’ which I thought was the Badfinger classic so we played it. As we finished it the guy shouted out that he enjoyed it but had actually wanted to hear ‘No matter what’ by Boyzone ( which I’d forgotten existed) so we did that straight after! Made us think of doing nights where we only play songs which exist in this way, although unsure about whether it’s feasible - maybe just do a featured song title each gig or something till we run out of ideas!

A massive turnout for Nicks funeral yesterday, Peterborough Cathedral was full, it showed how respected Nick was, a great fun loving guy sadly missed.

Had a couple of those. Left is the Dyna-Unity, centre a standard DynaBass, right is a Unity. On the right my, now sold, Dyna-Unity Koa.

Some phone footage of our performance on Saturday...plenty of room for improvement, most obvious being lead vox too low in mix. Psychosapien.mp4

Nipped into Merchant City music today for a wander. Decided to try some of the Reverends. The colours are always so good in that range! Tried the Thundergun, Mercalli and Decision P. All basses very similar fit and finish wise. Really nice necks. Mercalli and Thundergun very similar to me, found the tone good, but the tone became quite treble heavy with not too much turning of the tone knob. Not bad but not quite for me. Decision P just felt better for me, pickup placement for my anchor points and just liked the tone. If one or two more things sell I might be tempted... Venetian gold Thundergun pic attached

I`m no fan of the orange one, however if the below can be secured: Russia stop their war against Ukraine, with Putin walking away saying he did no negotiating with Zelensky/Ukraine Ukraine no longer have Russia waging war against them, they concede land which had been taken some time ago, and provide minerals to the US Trump states it couldn`t have happened without his intervention Then take it. Better than more people dying and losing homes/businesses/loved ones. It`s not necessarily ideal but imo preferable to war.

I bought my first guitar, first amp and far too much other stuff from Pete Hamm's brother, John, who had a music shop in Swansea for years. Very friendly bloke and never made a deal out of his more famous brother. But when I asked, he did say that he had all of Pete's guitars and other kit in storage above the shop. The shop is long gone now.

As I countered above. You say that you (a buyer) is protected, you say no difference from the seller's POV but I've personally posted items and had chargeback claims which favoured the buyer... and the buyer sent back to me a broken item with an alternative serial number! ...and I have an awful lot of people (inc many of the admins) who would vouch that I'm not dodgy! I'm not saying trust every seller but I likewise wouldn't trust every buyer.

That’s a global thing that will improve tracking across the board. In a nutshell, a neural network will be fed real-world audio clips. Anything that causes mistriggers will be analysed and the code modified to eliminate these. No idea of timeframe.

It's probably already been taken...

I have this lovely thing, to compliment i'm also looking for an elusive 2eq Natural/maple, there must be one somewhere........Anyone

I came across this video of Danny Sapko covering a few bass players’ amp settings. JJ is the third one in at around 24s. These are the amp settings he used: -

Not a USA made Peavey but I do like my Millennium BXP

For a while now, I’ve been having fun at home removing bass parts from my favorite songs to jam along with them in a real playback setting. It allowed me to lay down my own bassline, work on my groove, and sometimes even improvise. Over time, I built up a collection of stems with the bass removed, and I figured—why not share them? I know there are already plenty of bass tab videos on YouTube, but most of them have the YouTuber playing over the track, which doesn’t really leave room for you to play freely. What I wanted was a real playback experience—no bass, just the track, so I could jam as if I were in the band. That’s why I started https://www.youtube.com/@playbass31 No ego, no personal showcase—just pure sharing between bassists. I’m not trying to make money (everything is under copyright anyway). The only goal here is to help other bassists have fun and groove on their favorite tracks. If that sounds cool, search for PLAYBASS - Bass Playback n' Tabs on YouTube and check it out. Let me know which songs you’d like in a bass-free version, and I’d love to add them! 🎸🔥 💥 Let’s groove! See you there! 💥

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 🤣🤣

Although I'm not currently active, I studied bass guitar at Salford University on their Popular Music & Recording degree and played a lot of bas in bands during my late teens/ early 20's. Mainly in the Sonic Youth, Big Black, Butthole Surfers vein. After this I moved over to music production and had various record deals during the 90's/ early 2000's - releasing records on PWL and Robert Miles' S:alt Records, before becoming a teacher, a technician, and subsequently running a eurorack modular synthesiser store.

It's funny you mentioned this. It can also be the unintended consequences of tech. I am a subscriber to a history newsletter and they literally just sent their email out a few minutes ago and discussed ChatGPT: "I recently came across a post (on Facebook? I couldn’t find it again just now), where a teacher was lamenting about a student who’d argued some pretty radical ideas in a paper but hadn’t cited any sources. (And by radical, I mean totally untrue.) The teacher wasn’t immediately convinced that the student had made things up or plagiarized anything, merely that she needed some secondary sources for verification. So, the student and teacher sat down together to search for the information he’d included in the paper. Instead of going to Google, the student went straight to ChatGPT, where—lo and behold—the A.I. chatbot regurgitated that same falsehoods the student had put in his paper. When the teacher tried to gently point out that these “facts” were not, in fact, facts, the student refused to believe her. Who was she, a fallible human, to argue that ChatGPT—privy to the entire sum of human knowledge—would be lying? But ChatGPT lies so much that there’s even a name for it—hallucinating...Here’s the thing about generative A.I.—it doesn’t want to do research; as the name suggests, it wants to generate something. ”

Transformer based Boost (up to 35dB) pedal:

I keep reading comments that point to a direct correlation between 1938/9. These are not comments from hysterical individuals but rational people ranging from diplomats, senior military leaders, ex prime ministers, intellectuals. A long list of people saying wake up. Peace is so easy to take for granted.

A recent one from Roberto Sanchez I’m liking

Rosewood or maple fretboard? Which tonewood? 😁

"The Yew-tree Operators?"

MB-200 is pretty much all I use these days.

Yeah the JJ one is fairly weak, if he weren`t playing a Stranglers bassline possible not many would think it was meant to be JJ. For me as well as the blown speaker it`s valves, I`ve always found it much easier to get near the JJ sound through a valve amp, there seems to be a chunky but smooth aspect in mids in valve amps. Many years ago I had a Dave Hall DH1 and it did that nicely. Of course a lot of it will be down to how he was playing at the time, angry young man playing angry new music.

The original Schecters from late 70's to early 80's are outstanding instruments. Custom shop level and quite innovative for the day (coil tapping, etc). They were USA-made and still command a high price amongst the small group of collectors. The newer stuff pales in comparison and has a 'metal' aesthetic which doesn't appeal to many. It's a shame really as they could probably cash-in on their original heritage, but it's likely a very slim market. I think things such as the "Machine Gun Kelly" signature guitar would probably alienate older, more traditional, players like myself.

That works, as a band name. Simple, familiar, quirky without being weird. And a brilliant band name when it comes to naming your albums! Sock it to me - the funk album. Pop Sock - an album of chart-friendly tunes. Sock for Christmas - the inevitable Christmas album. Lost Sock - the collection of rare B sides, demo tracks and live versions.

After indulging this G&L flavoured sidebar, back on topic - Schecter. A vendor I'm well aware of but not much of their stuff matches up with my taste radar. The FSOs they do seem competent enough, with fancy woods and an extra fret or two. When it comes to their own designs, I always thought the Stilletto was a handsome bass, but always admired from afar. There is one (sadly discontinued) bass of theirs I would love to make the acquaintance of at some point - the 4 string Hellcat... I'm a sucker for a triple pickup bass, can't help it

I might start a band called "The Unique Names"...

Makes me wonder if we should have more discussion of 'tone' on here. I don't see much useful discussion of how to get particular types of sound, beyond comments like 'use flats' or 'use pedal x'. It would be interesting to see what settings people are using for their JJ sound.

Gotta love this line: “It is a type of guitar specifically designed for playing bass notes in music.”. Ya don’t say! 😂

Just want to leave this here for anyone who is interested: this is a great FREE set of bass IRs by Shift Line. (Their B15 is the stock can sim in the Ampeg SGT-DI.) https://shift-line.com/irpackbass

I'll be at the Focusrite stand working on Saturday, so if you pop by say hello. Looking forward to checking out all the bass related stands when I get a chance. 🙂

I don't have any pre cut but I could probably look at laser cutting something at work. Does it have to be foam? I wonder if black acrylic would look better?

Fretless players: do you ever have one of those days when you start playing and your intonation is just bleugh? And then find yourself wondering, "Are my hands having a bad day, or are my ears having an unusually good one?"

Pop a Haz Labs pre in there and with the active EMGs you'll get exactly what a Spector is supposed to sound like. I replaced a TP with one recently and it's like coming home. It's meant to be. I'll be buying another after April 6th. https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/product/lhz-03-hazlabs-preamp-clone/ You can buy them at Bass Direct. And just to clarify, I'm not a Bassdirect.co.uk fanboy. There's some stuff that BD sells that isn't available through other channels.

Orange OBC112 with a TC Electronics BAM200. This works very nicely for jazz DB and isn't a hassle to transport.

Achieved....just for the number of CD's alone! 🤣

My left hand, which I damaged in a horse accident in 2023, has regained a decent amount of mobility in the past year and my main issue nowadays is a degenerative neck condition (which could also have been hastened by aforementioned accident). So a long scale bass is now more comfortable for me (I have been using short scales almost exclusively) ... but it has to be super light. I spotted this Fender Traditional 60s P bass at FenderFever and it stated an amazing weight of 7.6 pounds. I asked them to double check and they confirmed. So I snaffled it and installed a DiMarzio DP122 creme pickup for the full Martyn P Casey of the Bad Seeds look. Very happy with it. No band at present but, when I get back in the saddle (obvs not a horse one), it should be very gig friendly.

I wish to apply for Nerd of the Month please. 🤣

Well, just to say, this was all about me getting one of my bucket list basses, the other was a Wal Pro11e or a Wal Pro 1 - without a lottery win, they won't happen 😆 So, just want to make this clear 😉 this refurb was purely for me, I have a few basses that will stay with me till my dying day, and this was always going to join them. Absolute keeper 😎 Huge thanks to Gary Bell at Sylva Guitars for transforming my bass, superb work 👌🏼 https://www.sylvaguitars.co.uk/ Lovely bloke, and another first class luthier up here in the North East 👍🏼 We rehearsed last night for first time with it, I'll need to get used to the shorter neck compared to the Thumb which is now getting too heavy for me - the Vigier is a lightweight in comparison. Band mates loved it, I love it 👌🏼