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I was delighted to play a charity fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Society in Salisbury at the weekend. Having lost my Mum to Alzheimer’s, it wasn’t one I had to think twice over! A great lineup of bands - 7 acts who for the most part all supported each other. It was a really friendly atmosphere and we played really well. Our mid placed billing was definitely the golden hour and it is absolutely a contender for my gig of the year, so far. We played electric, mostly original gothic tunes. Here’s a pic, courtesy of John Armstrong, of me heading up the dusty end to channel my inner Peter Hook.

I was in Glasgow this weekend, and as is customary a trip to the various guitar shops was in order. First visit was Merchant City Music. I'm OK with my Reverend Triad, but I gave a Squier Rascal a go. I'm not generally a fan of short scales, but the Rascal wasn't awful. What helps it is the geometry - the bridge being away from the body edge by a few inches moves fret 1 more into the position where I would expect it. But sonically I'm still not convinced that the Wide Range humbuckers are the pickups for me. Anyhoo, on to Guitarguitar. Tried a couple of Ashdowns - they were OK but the one with the single, central humbucker was a bit woofy sounding for my liking, and the bridge pickup on the PJ one was so noisy, it really put me off. Nice feeling necks, interesting looks, but again wasn't doing it for the old lugholes. Then I spotted a second hand bass on the wall, an example of which I had previously owned and sold, but in a more interesting finish than the one I had (which was white with plain black pickguard). I guess because G&L seem to be off the radar of most folk at the moment it was priced very keenly. In almost as new condition - the film hadn't been taken off the pickguard - the only blemish is a small finish chip at the bottom/back of the body. A quick razz with it, nostalgia kicked in and I caved. Does anyone like these shaggy dog stories? Or do you just want the pics? You know the drill with these - Split and single MFDs, two volume controls, that's it. I'm very happy to have an SB-2 again, that'll hopefully stave off any thoughts of getting an SB-1... Guess I should really sell something now

Couple of gigs for me this weekend. Friday night I was with The Alligators blues band in Hornsea on the East Yorkshire coast. Gig was The Green Owl, a decent cafe bar more popular with locals than holidaymakers. Used my P-Lyte straight into the Rumble 500 combo which is now my go-to setup for this band. The Rumble is astonishing both tonally and volume wise - one of the best amps I’ve used. Anyway, the gig went well, with an appreciative audience for us - I’m the only band member not from the area so it’s nearly a complete hometown gig for us. Saturday saw the acoustic duo playing at a lovely big village hall in the Yorkshire wolds near Driffield. It was an early VE Day / late St George’s day bash! They hired a local fish and chip van for the catering (see pic) and by the time we started the hall was full. Some fairly normal requests, with no surprises so an easy gig really. 2x50 minute sets flew by, followed by a quick pack down as my guitarist mate was flying off to another gig, in Hornsea! I was home by 9pm so well happy - these late afternoon into early evening gigs suit me just fine, after decades of getting in at 2 or 3 am.

He's currently president of the US mate...

After taking myself outside for a good talking to, I decided that letting my Cort Space 5 go was a mistake, and I missed having it around as a backup/teaching bass that mostly lived in the boot of the car. I liked everything about it, apart that I had to have a 5-string at the time, so I traded the pretty bitsa Jazz bass with the EMGs, as I've got two working and earning Jazz basses which are both permanent fixtures on the fleet, and got an as new Space 4. Simples. 🤔 So overall, it's a break even deal and all I've lost is a 5th string. Hopefully the last NBD for a while. (He said!) Pictured here with it's SoloKing brethren.

I've been playing in bands for over 40 years and I'm still amazed at how many people - myself included - find it hard to have a grown up conversation about the core currency of the band, the sound, and that when it does finally come up, it tends to do so contaminated by emotions such as anger, resentment, and bitterness. If I was the OP I'd simply say, calmly and relatively unemotionally to the whole band, that despite the fact you clearly enjoy being in the band, the sound doesn't work for you, and that you'd like to discuss options. If you enjoy being in the band do not say anything like '....or I'll walk', because the guitarist might see that as an opportunity to retain his status. Also do not make it about the guitarist, make it about the sound, while one person might be at the desk, the whole band retain at least some if not most responsibility unless this is a fully pro-act. Don't do it when you and the band are tired at the end of a rehearsal, or stressed ahead of a gig, don't do it via WhatsApp, just choose your moments and have a calm and respectful in-person chat with them all 👍

See below... & I don't own any heavy basses. Unfortunately, my shoulder is just knackered! I am impressed - indeed it is. 269 is on all my basses. It was the number given to a cow that was destined to be killed but was liberated. 269 went on to live a long and healthy life.

Yep, three things come to mind.... 1. If you joined a band in which guitarist does sound you could have seen this coming 2. If you let the guitarist start doing the sound once you were already in the band, you could have seen this coming 3. If the guitarist decided to do the sound on his own volition, you could have seen this coming........ Sorry. But there's a rule to be adhered to here. NEVER LET THE GUITARIST DO THE LEVELS

That's quite possibly the best reply ever on basschat hahahaha

My latest haul. Annoyingly after hunting for months for a 442 filter I picked up this one which I’m fairly sure is the guitar model, then a few days later I’ve come across two more one of which is definitely the bass model so I’ve picked that up. The difference is likely subtle and for all I know this one could be modded to bass specs as you could request it from Mojo Hand at the time before they split them off to two models. Orange pedal in the middle is a hand painted 1 of 1 Zvex Concert Bass Super Duper. Going to be a fun week as soon as my birth year Rickenbacker turns up.

It went great thanks. Was recorded as his yet to be mixed live album.

Didn't get round to updating the thread last week, but this is what I think has happened while I have been away: @King Tut - T1 fail for a nice 5 string @Richard R - T2 for the Akai MIDI keyboard @Marvin - PSU for the pedal board. Not sure if this is T1 or T2 to be honest. It's not in the signal chain directly, but each pedal is. I'll call it T2 @Obrienp - T1 fail with a LFSys Cab @SimonK - was already out, but is now trying to start a breeding colony with all the amps he's bought @Geek99 - T1 fail on a 5 string @miles'tone - T1 fail on a CV Mustang @fretmeister - T2 fail on a guitar fuzz pedal, and enjoying his unsolicited bass @Quilly - T1 fail, Dr Green T1 bass reverb @Sean - T1 fail, buying back a bass he sold 4 years ago @Stub Mandrel - Sentenced to death for not only buying plectrums but getting them personalised. @Franticsmurf - T1 fail on a 5 string. @msb - still in as the bass was a gift @lozkerr - T1 fail Thumpinator pickup Three 5 string basses there - is there something in the BC water?

I played in a band that worked that way, more or less. The bandleader had a binder with about 80 songs in it and he mostly knew all of them but he didn’t really know any of them. He didn’t like to rehearse and the band had a revolving lineup anyway so even if we rehearsed there was little guarantee that the people who rehearsed would actually be playing the show. He would call out songs, we’d be expected to know them - in whatever slightly wrong iteration he played them - and if we didn’t know it he usually didn’t notice. I got increasingly frustrated until the guitarist, a good friend of mine from outside the band, told me: “You’re thinking about this all wrong. Just jump in and hang on. The audience is having fun. They don’t care. Play, get paid and go home.” He was right, of course. We ended up playing every Saturday at a club in Harlem. It wasn’t a really big room but we always had a good crowd, they always had fun and we always left with some money in our pockets. I lasted the summer before deciding I’d rather play with a band that actually sounded tight but I got a lot of good ear training while I stuck around.

Without wishing to open the can, I particularly enjoyed the marketing copy in this at Andertons: https://www.andertons.co.uk/bacci-guitars-amrita-woodworm-michael-league-signature-maple/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=surfaces&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADujoUqVDRQwkN1bWBZcEzip5ciCn&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzrzABhD8ARIsANlSWNOy6ZK_8WuK66VSG5h7Z3UTqmDDDEChjBNvC49jOeUAn4kUKGS7GKkaApxEEALw_wcB

Our rehearsal yesterday went well. Got thru 6 new songs with some we changed singers to see how they sounded and WOW they worked out really well. Ran thru the songs we don't normally play but keep them in the song list to allow set variation for different type of venues plus allows us to make changes when we return to a venue. Some clubs have members that don't like to see the same show as they did the last time. Used my Sandberg MarloweDK for few hrs then changed over to my VM4 for the 2nd half of the rehearsal. No real reason. Dave

In the language of basschat, that means "Buy another five string, but make sure it's a better one next time."

Visually, it looks like a £400 bitsa. Sorry, but it does. Questions: Did they clear all the Woodworms out of their delicious home? (I've seen the resultant damage on plenty of 2-300 year old Cellos.) Why is Lee Anderton trying to hawk a £7k bass when he knows most professional musician's cars aren't worth that much?

| Each hole is meticulously cleaned and cleared for maximum acoustic impact. 🤯

I used to play in the house band at an open mic night. We never rehearsed except alone, at home. Sometimes it did not work very well on the night but hey… it’s amateur night. What it did was teach me to listen and follow on the fly and probably did more for my ear training than anything else, especially when a player asked for bass on o song I had never played! In my current and, the Rhythm Guitarist said when I joined that we play everything exactly to the record. Like scratched record almost every time we played a song for the first time, I would say, “that’s not like the record” In the end I kept my mouth shut. I get on great with the rest of the band but the RG has always been a PITA. He announced recently that he was retiring on health grounds ( heart attack last year, Self inflicted diabetes, and more) with his last gig this Saturday. We had a rehearsal as a four piece last week and it was tight, a lot of fun. Now just the prospect of a one more gig with a below below average RG that cannot keep time and likes to play loud then….relax.

Just the average egoguitarist approach to mixing. Nothing new under the sun 😁 OF COURSE everyone wants to hear his crunchy tones and nothing else, that's why they're there for on the wedding!

Pic from last night

I’m with this ^ And this ^ Plus I’m so bored of web-based shit taking up our lives. Stop feeding the f***ing machine folks

It’s not just images. It’s hoovering up all the content on the internet, including written content, music and images and regurgitating it. Plagiarism is, or should be, a moral outrage. We, as a society, are giving access of valuable material for free to tech companies who will then charge us to buy it back, repackaged and recontextualised. Mind you, this is the country where people will happily share their DNA with a company if they get some report that says they’re somehow related to a king etc. Anyone involved in the creative industries should hate and fear what AI is doing today - and could do in the future.

Just finished having a quick razz on it. Good old MFD oomph! Then to a little bit of finessing - removed the pickguard film, had to tighten up the jack socket, redid the intonation and finally replaced the nasty, cheap dome top knobs with some nice solid flat tops. New flat tops with one of the original dome tops in the middle for scale. Bonus is that the set screw of the flat tops acts as a position indicator.

Pictures say all that needs to be said, it's taken me a while to get here, but I suspect that of all the fretless Precisions I've owned (P, PJ, PP, PM) and all of the board materials I've used with them - rosewood, ebony, maple, graphite - this is by a long way the sweetest. Classic Vibe body, PUP, and circuit (the PUP as I'd been told would be the case, is very very good indeed), paired with a stunning Warmoth neck. First rehearsal tonight

Just finished putting together my new kit... Absolutely love it! The Shell Pack is a 7 piece Tamburo Opera Stave kit, hand made in Italy. It looks and sounds awesome with Evans blue hydrolic heads. I've switched my cymbals over to an 8 piece set of Meinl Custom Classic Darks. The black/gold hardware on the 'fantasy blue' finish of the kit works perfectly with the black/gold of the Meinl cymbals. It's a WAY better kit than my amateur drum skills deserve... I'll keep at it and maybe build up to skills deserving of it in 20 years...

Any local bands whose sound you think is good? How about (having agreed as a band) to ask their sound engineer to come to couple of gigs and mix for you to set a new template that you can then take forward? It would be worth paying someone good to help you overcome this hurdle.

Always makes me wonder, when it says 'designed in collaboration with' - when it comes to a FSO, surely the input is 'this pickup, these knobs, that colour, make the pickguard extra ugly'. Hardly 'design', is it?

I’d like to reserve judgement until playing one, but given the price it’s highly unlikely. Anyway, it’s lunchtime and for some reason I fancy a bit of Edam cheese……..

There have been many times in my life, including now, when the bass I’m carrying is worth more than the car it is in…having said that, can I charge more for dings, which are asynchronous unintended organic tone divots?

I can hit the shop websites for pictures, but this is where the stories belong. I think it's more interesting to hear the process behind the purchase. And I can always use some of the arguments for making the purchase in future decision making of my own. 😀

Very cool pic.

This 1995 Stingray had many mods since I first got it in 1996; it's not the best Ray I've ever had, but we have history and it feels like nothing else in my hand. It sounded great with ceramic pickups earlier in the year, but I think I've finally cracked the right mod for me this time (see Sabre comment below) - 2 x Nordstrand MM4.2 pickups and an Aguilar OBP-1 preamp. Each pickup has a 3-way series/single/parallel switch, and there's a 3-way pickup selector switch. I may add an active/passive push/pull volume switch at some point, but the cavity is pretty tight with wires so not too sure yet. 2 x 9v batteries are under the pickguard, in between the pickups. The neck pickup in single coil mode is real oid school, and almost like an old P Bass, so that was a nice surprise. Each pickup has the rear coil engaged when in single mode, which I prefer to the regular Stingray HH single settings of either both outer or inner coils; it just sounds better and makes more sense for me. I'm haunted by a '78 Sabre I sold in 2007, and keep hearing it on old recordings, but this bass now finally gets into that territory with the neck pickup in series with the bridge pickup in parallel - such a great tone So it's now wearing a new 90s style matt black pickguard and a fresh set of Tis. Happy days.

You can't help but suspect that the luthier had an otherwise nice batch of timber that had got ruined by woodworm, and decided to make the best of the situation...

That is ONLY factor here..... The other factor being what do the audiences think...?

Me too, I think we should have both got a hall pass. If you do fail, but your purchase isn’t described as nice, you should get a pardon, Trump-style 👍

We all love the stories. Stories make the world go around.

We've done a few afternoon / early evening slots with the Glam band too and its great getting home before 9pm. Dave

Sounds like a nice weekend. Daryl

Dave, We're basically background music at The Harley Motor as well. However, we're set up in front of they're large horse shoe shaped bar and I know we draw more interest from the punters than most bands that play there. Daryl

Brit Club beer festival. Got some great British ales and Belgium beers in. These pics taking just as we set up, but did get about 200 people once it got going. Setting sun straight into stage area with everything, including us, getting really hot. Bizarrely fried my Aguilar tlc pedal which gave up the ghost. I put on 5 bands, I was in four of them. Made sure the last band was the one I wasn’t in so I could enjoy a few ales before having to pack up. Everyone played well, started off with chilled vibes playing the likes of Bill Withers, then Hendrix/blues, punk/new wave, a 80s/90s cover, and finally my mates metal band at the end. Oh, and used my new (to me) Zoom L20 for the FoH and monitoring and worked a treat. So easy to get a good sound. All told, a great day but after playing for four hours and a 12 hour day of setting up and packing everything away I’m having a very lazy day’s rest.

Last minute Bluesfire gig for the Ex's Club after a private party cancelled. For only a day's notice and against the boxing we had good numbers. Our normal sound guy (guitarist's dad) is in Indonesia so we used a club tops with one sub, and guitarist mixed using a huge Behringer desk. Sound was great. Apparently my bass sounded much better (usually I have to boost my rig as the PA is just muddy bottom end). A very good bass player I know turned up with mates on a stag night (the guy was wearing a Spice Girl union jack dress with very wayward rubber cleavage...) Soon became apparent at least three were bass players... no pressure! Drummer launched into The Hunter after instead of Walk in My Shadow. I confused Spoonful with Crossroads 🤣 We haven't played since January but somehow we hit that spot where the arrangements are loose but we sounded really tight. Lots of fun and do glad we got that gig in.

This stuff is all good fun but we’re ripping off the intellectual property of huge numbers of people doing this. ChatGPT aren’t paying to license this. Neither did they pay Studio Ghib for the manga stuff and a near limitless number of other things they’ve stolen. It’s fun and a I enjoy seeing the results, but ultimately, it’s theft, however the AI guys want to dress it up.