bassbiscuits

I'm still trying to hammer out a deal by which I can get away for a few hours on my missus's birthday to attend. Could make Brexit negotiations look straightforward by comparison. If i do come I'll bring my old vintage Fender P and my Jack Casady bass.

I sympathise entirely Andy, I've got two young kids at the moment, which means I've scaled right back on my gigging as I simply don't have the time or energy to do as much. I've sold off various bits of gear i don't need as a result, and the rest of my kit is squirrelled away in cases and gig bags to keep the kids from messing about with it (the youngest is at the age where he's discovering the world thru grabbing and fiddling with absolutely everything). I'm keeping the stuff that I still use, or that is difficult/uneconomical to replace - but like you, I'm in the position where having a few grand in hand is better than having it tied up in a bass stashed indefinitely under a bed. I hate having stuff I don't use - it makes me anxious, and in practical terms I just don't have room to spare among all the baby stuff. The way I see it, as long as you've got a basic amount of gear to gig should you need to, you can always buy more if you need to restart regular gigging once the money starts to come in. Good luck with child number 4 as well!

Once in the late 1990s we got booked to play a gig in Soho (when I lived in South Wales at the time). We were an originals britpop sort of band, but found ourselves playing in a gay club immediately following a drag artist. Apparently we'd been billed as Jazz... So we did the gig anyway, but were really not what they were looking for. Then we're told the pay which was only £100 to start with was now £50, which didn't even begin to cover the cost of van hire or petrol. We got back to the van to find we'd got a parking ticket. The same britpop band also did a gig up in a remote club in the Welsh valleys. A friendly local having a fag outside told us it was their regular death metal night and a bunch of them had just dropped some acid. We were glad to get home alive from that one.

I've loaned people bits of kit for gigs here and there, but I've always felt there's a difference between someone assuming they are entitled to use your kit, and you offering to let someone use your gear to help them out. I used to play with a guy donkeys years ago who always had an excuse about why he wasn't driving to this or that gig and could he borrow my guitar, amp etc etc. He assumed my stuff was his spare stuff, and he'd never help set it up or pack it away. On the other hand I loaned a bass once to mate of a mate for a last-minute gig and it came back with £40 tucked under the strings as a thank you. Fair play to that man.

TNT130 in my day... I thrashed one for years and it still sounded decent. Weighed the same as my car tho.

Yes no doubt about it. A Squier set up to a broadly decent standard would work just as well as any of mine and cover most of what I need for a typical gig. It's longevity might be a different matter tho - I can be a heavy handed player once I get stuck in onstage, and I've rapidly chewed up frets and worn down bridge saddles on v cheap basses before now. Maybe the basses are fine and it's my technique that needs sorting.

These do look fantastic and I'm intrigued to see how they perform - I've not played short scale before, but with old fartdom looming in the not too distant future i'm liking the thought of smaller and lighter....

Car almost always. It's an old Volvo estate, so big enough for most eventualities. I don't drink these days, so driving to and from gig is way easier than trying to get a taxi at 1am after a skinful.

Yup - people selling 'the best bass I've ever owned....'

Is that the bass player's Ferrari?

My role in my last band seemed to be chief onstage DIY man when equipment broke or fell apart (more often than you might think!) so I always appreciate simple but effective things like this!

Yup I've come full circle. I currently own a bass I've had for 20+ years, a strat I've had for 15 years and an electro acoustic I've had for 16 years. When I slimmed down to just what I needed I realised that it was pretty much what I already owned and liked playing. I'll eat my words at some point for sure but the burning need to spend money on stuff has gone (helped along by the fact I don't currently have any money).

I think we just get caught up in it - if you're gigging and getting some spare cash coming in, its just too tempting to treat yourself to some more nice kit. There's no obvious cut off point once you get beyond the basic necessities, and into the realms of fantasy kit. The bubble burst with me about a year ago, mainly cos i cut right back on gigs for family reasons, and then realised how much kit i actually had. The apparently amazing, life-changing aspirational gear I'd bought didn't make me play any better, or feel any better. It just tied up thousands of pounds, so I flogged the stuff i didn't really need. I still look on Basschat most days and see stuff I like - but then a reality check reveals i don't actually need it. It's nice feeling that you don't have to buy anything. Sort of the opposite of GAS. I'll probably get lynched on here for saying it tho. It's lovely to have shiny new exciting treats, but constantly longing for different things and working out how to get them makes me really stressed out I've realised.

That's be good for all the headphones and trailing cables in my little quiet practice corner. Everyday genius there Stewblack. Take a bow sir.

I think i might know the answer, tho I might be wrong. The difference is that the ones on the red bass are probably of ceramic, bar magnet construction, whereas the blue bass pickups are probably more expensive alnico pole pieces. I have a MIJ strat from 1994, with ceramic, bar magnet pickups in neck and middle - like yours, the pole pieces are bright and shiny, with a magnet on the underside of the pickup which serves to magnetise all the metal pole pieces. The strat's after-market bridge pickup however looks like the one on your blue bass - it has greyer, less shiny pole pieces, which are usually individual alnico magnets. As i understand it, the ceramic bar pickups are a cheaper way of producing pickups, with the alnicos being closer to the real deal. It's entirely possible that for the 50th anniversary blue model, they pushed the boat out a bit and went for the more costly pickups, with the red bass having the regular generic ones. FWIW, the cheaper ceramic ones on my strat sound decent enough tho!

Bloke from Kasabian - Chris Edwards - also uses a pair of VBA400s and 8x10 cabinets onstage. I got a gawp at them close up a few years ago before their big outdoor gig in Leicester. Great sounding amps but weigh as much as my entire house unfortunately.

I've just discovered Ginger Wildheart, after going to a brilliant gig of his on Sunday night. Currently digesting his new country-tinged album "Ghosts in the Tanglewood" and waiting for delivery of "Year of the Fanclub" which I understand is the physical album bringing together the best of his crowdfunding music project from a few years back. Good lyricist and musician, good storyteller and great turn of phrase, and always nice to hear someone singing in their own regional accent too!

This^ Im a really heavy handed baboon of a player, tho I think/hope as I'm getting older that reliance on just brute force might be giving way to a bit more finesse. Once I'm on stage and getting into it, digging in feels exactly right quite a lot of the time.

Don't get me wrong - I love the sound and feel of mine too, but I can see why it isn't the most refined, adventurous or "all singing all dancing" bass ever. I guess a P does just a few things, but does them really, really well. But I love that simplicity and playing withing the inherent limitations of a single pickup etc. I've played a P for 24 years out of the 32 that I've been a bassist, so I suppose in many ways that's always been my reference point for how a bass sounds and feels.

Yeah I was doing some recording and took along my USA Jazz strung with nickel rounds that I had at the time which was a great bass, but listening back to the recording after the first day it wasn't the sound I had in my head at all. Brought along the P with flats on the second day to try something different, and it ended up being used on all the other recordings for that band. Just a classic studio bass sound, which for me was perfect.