Rayman

This.

Another vote for a V7, 5er in my case. With 20+ basses to choose from, the V7 is still my #1 play at home bass. Absolutely lovely to play and it’ll do anything totally. Mine was ridiculously inexpensive used, and I wouldn’t be without it.

Yeah we had stunned silence a couple of times in the past. I remember playing the Nottingham Palais to a couple of thousand people, and literally at the end of the songs it was silent 😆, very odd situation. I’ve been spat at, had ashtrays thrown at me…. Etc etc, all many years ago now thankfully.

Yeah, we’re pretty lucky most of the time, playing original heavy rock to audiences who often don’t know the songs, we go down pretty well a lot of the time. However sometimes it just doesn’t click, and on a wet Tuesday night the folks that came to see what was on just didn’t seem to be into us. Cest la vie! The band before us went down pretty well, playing kind of indie rock, and they were great, but our 80s style heavy rock just didn’t do it for them. All part of the fun, and I’ll take indifference over hostility every time! lol, because we’ve had both down the years! Thankfully the days of having stuff thrown are long gone! 😆

Nice little venue in Manchester, good sound and engineer, and we played pretty well, but the audience weren’t into it. I wheeled out the Yamaha RBX A2 5, which sounded fantastic, ace low B, so I’ll defo use that again. My TCBQ500 via a house Warwick 4x10 sounded decent, and so easy to walk across town with just the bass and head in a rucksack.

Anything with “Yamaha” on it is fabulous. From my old BB3000S to an RBX175 I had, and a whole bunch of others in between, everything they make is great. One of my current favourites is an RBX A2 5, which is absolutely superb. I recorded with it last week and sounded immense, great low B.

I have one somewhere, but I upgraded the electrics to Vol/Vol/Tone CTS etc. I have a feeling that it was Volume, Blend, Tone originally. Sorry that isn’t a definitive answer.

Easily my best acquisition was this Hohner fretless jazz, used, from a BCer, I’ve upgraded the electrics to CTS etc and put a Fender high mass bridge on it, everything is as it was. The pickups are awesome, stock I presume, and the neck is lovely…. Its for a specific album track we’re recording, and I haven’t put it down since. The worst thing I bought was an Ibanez SR506 that doesn’t work, but possibly my own fault to be fair. It’ll be the first project of 2026.

A couple of decent gigs….. loving the P bass and favouring the TC BQ500 & 4x10 at the moment. One night in Leeds…. and one in Stoke…. Both fun ones, and the new songs seemed to go down well.

Glenn Hughes last night at the Ritz in Manchester. Still absolutely fabulous, I love his pick playing, and his voice…. Absolutely mesmerising, still, at 74yrs old. Amazing performance. Sophie Lloyd supported and came onto join in on Burn. She’s a decent guitarist, although her stuff wasn’t really my bag.

Absolutely my all time favourite player, and he rarely gets any credit….. the bass lines for XTC on Drums and Wires or Black Sea, are absolutely outstanding and completely original. Nobody sounds like that…. go and listen to Roads Girdle The Globe from Drums and Wires, and give your ears a treat.

I do it all for us, but unless there’s a joke to be had, usually at the expense of someone in the audience, I keep it to a minimum. I think it’s important to have a bit of chat between songs… but the big no no as far as I’m concerned, is introducing individual bands members. Literally nobody cares.

Yeah I don’t think I’ve seen a Steinberger in the flesh, it’d be interesting to try one. This Hohner sounded surprisingly big, and much darker than the P bass. It was a nice contrast.