Leaderboard

Well, a new venue has opened up recently in our town, it is under a resteraunt, quite low ceilings, low lighting, little groups of chairs, very tastefully decorated, the sort of place you would go to meet someone for having an affair or something - looks like a little jazz club, very cute. I can imagine a sultry singer in the corner, with a guy on a double bass and a drummer, with a bass, snare and tom playing with brushes some gentle music. Only they didn't get that, they got us! I was a bit worried about this one as it really didn't seem like a good fit, but a gig is a gig and they booked us. Turned up earlier than others, started loading in, at least there is room out the front to go straight in (can't park there, but there is a car park round the corner, but loading is fine). We had the whole of the window area, so had to wait for the drummer to set up to see how much room we had, had a couple of feet between a monstera and the cymbals, enough for me. The only hard part of the setup was getting in each others way and the fact there were already people there who wanted to chat. But the place filled up with quite a few people we knew, and some people who came specifically to hear us, including one woman who plays bowling in the room below where we practiced on thursday night so though we sounded good! Started off quite quiet and went down well. The drummer got louder and faster through the gig but not much you can do about that. After much discussion we didn't really change the set list that much, brought back some older ones, couldn't do the newer ones as a lack of practice over the last few months. But all in all, a good gig, people seemed to enjoy it, the staff liked it, and after years of declining venues in town, its nice to see one come back.

Very first gig for my new band last night at the Shed & Garden in Chorley. Great little place with a postage stamp of a stage, if you look carefully in the clips, you might just spot the keys player sat off the stage on the right behind the speaker. As first gigs go, it was absolutely excellent. Three setter 9-midnight. It's always nerve racking taking the car out of the garage for the first time. Will everything work? Will I remember the songs with all the extra distractions of a live show? Will they like the song choice (I was worried about this as the set isn't your usual weekend evening stuff, and very different from anything I've done before)? Where do I park? How many sockets are there? Will any of the others have a complete personality change when they get onstage? It was as good as first gigs get IME. Everything nice and pretty tight, no tech gremlins. We played well and the crowd got into it . Some quality dancing and an increasingly enthusiastic response. The keys player ended up with someone almost in his lap a couple of times, and the door staff went and stood in front of the singer for the last set to prevent deliberate or accidental crowd encroachment. We came off stage absolutely buzzing with lots of ideas about how to take things forward. My setup was my new Fender Japanese 5 string into a GR 350 class D head and then FOH. Wired IEMs through a Behringer P2. No cab, which was lucky as there wouldn't have been room for it anyway. The drummer took up almost all the stage, but his sparkly red kit did look lovely under the lights. If you're eagle eyed, you might spot that I've got a glove on my left hand. No, it's not an SBL tribute. This is down to pretty severe eczema which means that the skin on my fingers is paper thin and rips wide open very easily. To prevent bleeding all over my lovely new bass I took a chance on a glove from Amazon and it works pretty well. Excellent feedback from the owners, they've just taken on a new bar in South Manchester and we're looking at dates to play there. the singer is delighted, as it's walking distance form her house Right, a couple of rough phone clips: WhatsApp Video 2025-03-29 at 12.20.27.mp4 WhatsApp Video 2025-03-29 at 11.52.18.mp4

We played The Chadwell Arms, which is becoming something of a regular joint. The landlord now greets us with handshakes and hugs, and the punters are very friendly from the moment we walk in. Last night was a mixed bag - we went down a storm, with loads of singing along, rapturous applause and a double encore. We debuted ‘free Fallin’ and I brought an old custom bass out of retirement as a one-off. The down side? Our singer has a new ladyfriend, and he was in full-on showman mode (presumably for her). He upped the rockstar act, which went down well, but the distraction caused him to miss a couple of cues, come in too early, or too late, and generally be a bit mistake-laden. I loved the positive reaction, but I’m too much of a perfectionist to overlook the errors. Must do better.

Doube trouble. 2017 Atelier Z and 1986 Fender Japan

Hmm. i just sang and played guitar as a favour to a friend. Strangled a few indie classics and then came home. PA was woeful, couldn’t hear anything…people sang along and danced. I won’t be doing that again for a bit as I hate guitar playing, and I hate singing.

So JD Vance was unpopular in Greenland. Maybe he should have worn a suit and thanked Greenland. Just seems like that might have helped.

New day, new board! 👌 I love all these pedals so much it's too hard to pick a few for a compact board.

Yep, I noticed about ten years ago when buying my first class D amp, a Genz Benz, that when looking at spec, my eye started immediately dropping to the bottom of the list. What does this sucker weigh?

Nice cymbals. I use to be very particular about backlined bass amps. At this stage of the game for me, anything that makes it easier to get in and out of a gig, I'll take it. Daryl

I'm not sure how often the moderation team turns around, but it's always felt like they were very censorial over trivial stuff. I had another strike against me when I replied to the thread "Does the bass player from Korn use all 5 strings?" By saying "He barely uses the fretboard." They have very little tolerance for acerbic humor over there.

Hello! I've been an on-and-off TB'r for a few years, but the mods have finally left a bad enough taste in my mouth for me to give up on it. On a thread about "Best Pedals for Ultimate Clean Tone," I posted a picture of an empty pedal board as a joke. That was deemed offensive enough to warrant deleting my post on the grounds that I was insinuating bassists shouldn't use effects. The ironic part is that I myself have a large pedal board full of effects. Anyway, rant over. Here I am. Also, the challenge question on sign up felt like a trick question. Mr. Fender's first name was Clarence, not Leo.

Last year i've been working on a Wal copy bass. As Wal basses are my absolute favorite and i am the happy owner of 3 Wals (two MK1 basses and a ProIIe) i was wandering if i was able to build one myself. Since 2018 i'm following a luhiers education (6 hours a week) at the CMB in Puurs (Belgium). I allready build an acoustic steelstring guitar (Martin#1 copy) for my wfie so now it was time to treat myself. This Wal copy ofcouse needed to be an extra addition to my collection. Since i have a fretted Mk1, a fretless MK1 and a fretted Pro (which has a more vintage sound compaired to the MK's ) my weapons are quite complete. But they are all 4 strings ands sometimes i miss a low B. Since i prefer 4 strings i've decided to build another 4 string but tuned BEAD. To make a plan i disassembled my MK1 and measured everyting. Last week i've completed it and it feels and sounds damn close to my other Wals! Here are the specs: Mahogany body with ebony facings (maple veneer) Matching headstock Maple/mahogany neck Ebony fretboard Danish oil finish Lusithand Double NFP special MKII preamp Turner Multicoil Pickups ABM bridge Shaller tuners Handmade potmeter knobs and output.

….et voila

Not sure I agree. The point made by the OP is arithmtically correct; yes, you're still out of tune but - for a given finger placement - you're less out of tune on a longer-scale instrument (which helps). Unfortunately there's a quid pro quo in that the movement required to go from being badly intonated to hitting exacty the right note will be correspondingly larger. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

I've tried soooo many dirt / drive pedals over the years (like many other BC'ers!) and currently have a collection of 6 or 7. Within a couple of weeks of starting to get to grips with the GT Core, I found a couple of dirt/clean blend tones that was a ton better than anything I had got on my much loved Zoom B1-4 and, for my own tastes, better than my current dirt pedal collection which I need to get around to moving on at some point! An unexpected / welcome surprise! The Core's not the bees knees at pitch shift though!

The things we do for bands Dave

I imagine Krispn would say "I love it so much that I mount it straight on my board. Everything I'm on the fence about goes on an angle, but the for the Simone, I got my set square out."

That’s hilarious. We love you already. You’ll fit in beautifully but the pressure is on you now to maintain that level of wit and repartee 😃

A new family picture of my 3 Wals together with a new born Claassen bass which I made myself. if you’re interested, here’s the build diary of my tribute to Wal: Wal tribute build diary

I’m using the Beta V and Diamond Comp with my passive Warwick 5 (strung with Chromes). I like it

A 'complete album' version of 'Caress Of Steel' is up there now.

It will soon wear off...😁😆😆

Well, I couldn't help myself... Freeway 6 way switch installed. Now it's switch, volume, tone. Now I can do my fade ins/volume swells with whichever pickup combination I want.

Don't confuse turnover with value.

Well.....an update after many years..... Turns out I was wrong on the top assumption, and guessed correctly in the second. 😎 It was indeed Max Bennett on bass....and Joe Sample on keyboards. So what...? I hear you say. Yes, you are probably right, but I am happy to finally have found out.

It was A&W burgers in the 1980s who thought they would be able to rival McDonalds with a bigger burger for the same price. The Americans weren't falling for it. Everyone knows 3 is smaller than 4.

One thing that absolutely makes all my fuzzes/distortions is sansamp at the end of the chain, that analogue cab sim just makes everything sound like it should as opposed to a bag of wasps etc 🤣

S'pose I had better 'fess up to my recent pedal acquisition then... I just upped my pitch shifting game with a TC Electronic Brainwaves. Up until now I had been using a Hotone Harmony, which was a revelation and frankly better than I could have hoped for from such a tiny and inexpensive pedal. So intuitive as well - one knob, numbered in semitones, up/down switch, wet/dry knobs. DONE. I had been looking at posher ones, but they all annoyed me in various ways, like expecting you to know that a minor second is 1 semitone (I don't naturally think that way because I'm not a "proper" musician), or having missing intervals (no minor third, Pitchfork, WTF?), or having overly complicated (to me) controls (I'm mostly looking at you, Intelligent Harmony Machine), or being too big/wrong format for my board (Slammi Plus has all the intervals, but it's a pitch shifter in an expression pedal - do not want/need) I nearly skipped the Brainwaves and went for the IHM (which I would probably have ended up sticking a sticker on to write on it which settings meant which intervals) because on the face of it, the Brainwaves is missing a minor second (1 semitone) interval. TC manual is utter garbage - there's all this complexity under the hood with Toneprints etc. and you're basically left to fend for yourself. Well, I stumbled upon a guide which explained how to get that custom interval on the Voice controls to be 1 semitone. The barrier to acquisition was lifted and in I went! It's really good. Was doing some A/B with the Hotone and it's clear that this is a step up in quality. Both track well with little latency, but there's a warbly/artifact-y nature to the sound coming out of the Hotone (especially when you start plumbing the depths) that isn't there with the Brainwaves. Isolated, it still sounds a little "odd" but that oddness is harder to define. What this opens up for me is more options. Being dual voice, you can do cool stuff like be a fake guitar by adding a 5th AND an octave above (sounds really good with some overdrive) or do some of the Sub n Up thing by having an octave above and below - it's less flexible than a true Sub n Up because there's no third octave (you'd have to choose between 2 of octave above, octave below, two octaves below) and you can't individually control the octave levels, they must be the same relative to the dry signal, but it's good enough for a chancer like me! Also the MASH button is fun - push down on it and it gives you an extra tone bend, like a string bend except you do it with your foot. It's obviously not as controllable as an expression pedal, but with practice one could get good at it. As I followed the instructions to create my custom Toneprint to unlock the single semitone interval, I could see that there's a whole bunch of options to play with, you can make the MASH button do other things, change the curve of how it changes the parameter through its operation, looks like sneaky auto tuning with an option labelled something like "lock to nearest semitone" and a whole heap of other stuff. There are other basic modes of operation that I haven't even looked at yet (V1 > V2, WHAM). There is a detune mode, but I'm going to leave the Hotone on the board for that one, because it's good at it and the Brainwaves can't be both a detuner and a pitch shifter at the same time. Apologies for the shaggy dog story, but TL:DR it's a good pedal and I'm happy with my purchase. I'm a lazy boi at heart, I don't want a 5 string and I can't be bothered retooling/relearning songs when the singist asks to do a song +/- x semitones. The ability to be a fake guitar at times will help fill out the sound (as we only have a single guitarist). MASH is fun. That is all.

After a while with no pedal purchases I treated myself to 2 new ones. The Accountant (top right) is the first addition. Its noisy, abrasive and not very flexible but I love it. I've got it set quite light, it does a nice job of evening things out and imparts a grizzly character which I love. Certainly not clean or transparent. Two Notes Opus (top left) a spicy DI, to quote @tayste_2000, that offers preamp, power amp and cabsim and a bunch of other utilities in a nice neat package. Barely scraped the surface so far but love it. I'll admit I wasn't blown away with the DynIR cabs it shipped with but I have my trusty Science Amplication IRs. The power amp simulation is great though, really brings some of my preamp pedals to life. Also ships with Genome which is a nice bonus!

Surely he’s piled it all back on by using 46,782 screws? About 9 would suffice

Come on: this is a nation with some of the lowest literacy and numeracy standards in the developed world. McDonalds tried, and failed, to sell the 1/3 pounder burger because customers believed it was smaller than the 1/4 pounder (no, it isn’t urban myth.)

ELO (ELP renamed to a crap Beatles tribute band.)

My work around is to have 4 compact boards

Not just any 30w, but a Vox AC30..! Those beggars get to be incredibly loud..!

That escalated!!!

You changed two letters for others - z -> v, y -> i. I think a Hard Stare is coming your way.

Pedals are made to go into bass amps. Rack mount pre-amps are made to go into power amps. I'm sure there are exceptions, but the only way to know if any combination is to make sure that the output voltage of the pedal is at least equal to the required voltage to drive the power amp to full output. Unfortunately neither your SPB-1 nor your GSS provide those specs. The impedances aren't the problem, it's the output voltage of the pedal and the input voltage sensitivity of the power amp.

I went through two different Hartke cab set ups. I started with a 2x15 VX way back in the early 00s and then upgraded to a dual 4x10 XL set up when we started touring, which can be seen in the background here: And here: These days I'm not so loyal, but for probably 15 years all I played was Hartke.

The SBP-1 is a floor pedal, not an active bass, but you're on the right track. Floor pedals by and large are gain configured to drive a full on bass amp, not a power amp.

Welcome Fugazi. You're not the first new member I've heard saying something similar. I sure you won't be the last. We thrive on humour here. We have to. If we didn't laugh about the way things are today we'd have to cry instead. Who has time for that? Enjoy.

That was a damn good Joke!!! 🤣 Shame that they find this offensive.....

After a very long 2 months off in the hope my ribs would recover, we were finally back out last weekend. The Gifford Arms in Wolverhampton on Saturday was sold out. I was hoping for the same comedy sound guy as the last time we played there but unfortunately it was a thoroughly pleasant and competent engineer. Still, at least we sounded good but I don't have a lot to rant about! Sunday was the Hope & Anchor on a lineup supporting The Vapors. We were on at 5:30 pm which seemed very early to me but it was absolutely packed in there! I was forced to use the awful house kit. Obviously the bass drum couldn't stay still which forced a couple of errors. Thankfully my bandmates were tolerant of it this time! We went down a storm and we've seen merch sales online trickling in from London since. Result! It is so, so good to be back out gigging, even if it does still hurt a bit. Photo of my beautiful cymbals set up above the absolutely terrible house kit at the Hope & Anchor... Mini rant then: Imagine your band leader telling you that you have to use the house bass, and the A string tuner keeps slipping. You knew it was going to be terrible, you knew you could swap for your own gear in plenty of time, and yet you're forced to go with it due to others' ignorance. The band leader, the promoter, the sound guy, the headline act... everyone thinks it's fine to force the drummer to play sh*t drums but you're never forced to use a sh*t bass are you?!