Silvia Bluejay

I don't know about the 1980s but I have very good memories of The London Music Shows held at Wembley in the 90s. They were very NAMM-like, in that they catered for all musical instruments, sprawled throughout several buldings, and had excellent star guests. Tickets were cheap even by the standards of the time, and included quite a lot of freebies. Very much unlike the LBGS, the Music Show had among the exhibitors a lot of big names with global market presence and practically no small luthiers. IIRC the rot set in when the Music Show was moved to the Excel in East London, a much less suitable place for that kind of event, and then was killed off by the 2008 recession.

Snow can happen in London throughout the winter until April. It usually doesn't last, but one or two days of it tend to be enough to make the capital and its surroundings grind to a near halt. The LBGS 2018 happened at the same time as one of The Beasts From The East - two horrid late-winter freezing spells that covered the whole of the country in snow when it normally should have been looking spring-like. Suffice to say that LBGS exhibitors and visitors were not impressed. Note: nothing to do with the guy with the cello above! He'd have frozen to death...

I have been promised an official announcement in the next couple of weeks, once all the details are finalised. At that point, their website and their Facebook page will have been overhauled too, and will carry up-to-date information. There is usually a Contact Us link, and an Exhibit With Us link on the page(s) which will have answers to questions and names of people to speak to.

I'd have attended this year's guitar show, but the Saturday was also the South East Bass bash, and we had a gig in the evening, which would have made getting up on the Sunday at a useful time to get to Olympia a bit of a struggle. I'll happily attend both shows next year.

I think they're moving to a NAMM-style exhibition too, as the target dates for the bass show appear to be the same as the guitar show, which suggest they are trying to house both shows in the same building (albeit - I think - separately), thereby optimising space renting costs and offering visitors the option to go to both shows. I'm looking forward to a full detail press release.

It is, @Dood - more to follow soon.

The LBGS has been moved from its customary slot in March to the last weekend in September (TBC), so it looks like we'll have to wait a few extra months for our next one. There are lots of other changes and improvements which will be officially announced shortly - I'll keep you posted when I know more. We'll have to make sure not to set the date of the South East bash on that weekend! 😮

As well as his double bass, as he told us at the SE Bash a couple of years ago.

Pics Album HERE.

Small, lightweight and high quality basses. Happy Jack gave me a 4-stringer as a present and I love everything about it, except the damned P pickup and the sound it makes (that's purely a matter of personal taste - there's nothing wrong in the pickup itself). If it wasn't a faff to EQ and make the Nanyo sound like a Warwick I'd play it all the time. In fact I tend to simply grab one of the Corvettes and plug and play. If it's in good nick, buy with confidence.

I don't think there's any way of bowing that bass easily. We were talking about that with Umut - if we wanted to bow it we'd need to replace the bridge with a taller, curved one, at the very least, but the fingerboard is flat, so bowing wouldn't be easy anyway. It's a good thing that Jack doesn't bow, and I only occasionally dabble on my Eminence, before horrifying myself at my ineptitude and going straight back to plucking...

Pics or it didn't happen...

95cm = 37.5" The low B is a Thomastik Spirocore from a 3/4 DB set. Umut installed the other 4 strings from the half size Spirocore set which doesn't come with a low B, and decided to use the same type of string rather than have a different low B. So he took the longer B string and installed it like that.

Umut delivered the bass personally to us in London, and stayed the night after attending a Junkyard Dogs gig at a rather rowdy pub in Hemel. He'll have tales to tell his wife and friends back home! This was taken at our place in the morning.

Hubby's a busy man, so I've been tasked with posting a few pics, before it all becomes utterly obsolete. 😉 It's a unique, 5-string semi-acoustic bass that Umut Dal created for Jack to his own specification. It has a stereo output and two pickups (piezo and magnetic) which can be blended into an amp through a splitter cable. These images are from my own 'propa photoshewt'. Jack prefers the natural, non-photoshopped look, but I found that I needed to get rid of as many of the harsh shadows as possible, at least from the background. Many, many more photos HERE.

Yes, almost immediately after my course finished, GuitarX changed its name to Guitar/Bass/DrumTech and then, later, left Acton for (IIRC) Fulham. ICMP and BIMM both evolved from that a few years later, but are now separate and independent, and have been for a long time.

My info is less up to date than @ambient's, because I did a bass course over a decade ago, when BIMM was still GuitarX (!) and based in Acton, a short walk from my home in Chiswick. In their case, too, even thrn, the course would take you through all modern genres as you go along. Worth going to an open day for both, perhaps?

Have you checked these out? BIMM - diploma BIMM - degree

Seeing that the neck has dead spots, wouldn't it be advisable to have an adjustable nut like those on Warwicks? I think they can be bought on their own. At least, that way, it's possible to adjust the action at the nut in conjunction with that at the saddles and by tweaking the truss rod.

And here are Happy Jack, MacDaddy and the XLR belt in action. Only eagle-eyed, sober members of the audience would have noticed something weird... 😎

LOL! It will soon become trendy to use an XLR as a belt, and you've seen it here first. Mark my words. 😉 The bloke on the left is @MacDaddy, who, like the rest of us, was p*ssing himself with laughter. That was after Rick the frontman and I ROFLed at @Happy Jack showing us some crack while adjusting the kick drum mic. We asked him to do something about his trousers, but TBH we didn't quite expect that! 😄

Spot on, Steve. Thanks.

Alexander Claas was at this year's LBGS. The exhibitors are in alphabetical order in this blog entry - scroll down to Claas.

The above, x1,000.