BrunoBass

At home and plugged in. Sounds savage, especially the back pickup, pretty close to a Rickenbacker to my ears. Build quality very good. Previous owner liked a high action by the looks of it, but intonation is spot on with just a bit of fettling required. I'm very happy with it. It's heavy though, compared to my Stingray - not sure the old shoulders will cope for a two hour set!

Today is a good day. After a year waiting for the right one to come along, I have just today acquired a lovely used Rockinbetter in Fireglo. It's band practise tomorrow so I can't wait to give a good old blast at volume! I'll post some pics later.

When I first started playing my thumb used to cramp up, the tendons would spasm and pull my thumb into my palm. No pain, just a thumb that wouldn't move until the tendons relaxed. I just had to remember to not press my thumb against the back of the neck so hard.

In all my years gigging I've never had anything fail or break on me. There, I've jinxed it now, next gig it'll all go wrong...

I'm not too precious about my basses; I look after them, they stay in their cases when not being played, but if they get dinged in the line of duty it's no big problem for me. I personally don't see the point in owning an expensive instrument but leaving it at home and gigging a cheap one (unless in a particularly rowdy venue) but that's just me.

Where did you find the font? I tried to find it a few years ago for a project I was working on and TFL wanted a ridiculous amount of money for the rights. Great job though, well done 😊

[quote name='IainS' timestamp='1480020790' post='3181149'] Listening to Woodface right now. It's so good. What did he play? Was it a Spector? [/quote] Warwick I think.

I'm a massive Crowded House fan. One of my favourite bands, and Neil Finn is one of tbe handful of songwriters I really love and respect. One of the best live bands I've ever seen too (1993 on the Together Alone tour in Birmingham). The fact that they had such a tasteful, melodic bass player in Nick Seymour was an added bonus. I've really been enjoying the demos and outtakes on the recently released deluxe edition albums.

We played at The Red Lion in Brackley last night, just down the road so nice and easy. Good venue, decent crowd, went down well. We played well apart from a couple of drummer-getting-lost incidents. Horrible tone from me though, wooden floor making the amp boomy and hard to control. I eventually got it sounding about right after a few songs following lots of between song tweaking. Really feeling it this morning, I'm the oldest (47) in a band full of 30-somethings and I'm finding gigs harder and harder to get over the next day. Does there come a time when the negatives of being in a band outweigh the positives?

I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I've been there (relationship breakdown, moving back in with parents) so I know what you're going through. So with that in mind, and I don't want to sound like a dad, but grab this opportunity and go do whatever you want to do with your life right now. Don't let it pass, because if you do you'll look back one day and say 'damn, if only...' Don't let that happen.

I've never 'got' Pink Floyd, and what I have heard does absolutely nothing for me. But they are held in such high regard by so many people, there must be something in there for me to enjoy. What would be a good point of entry for me?

This might be a bit mainstream for the jazz funk aficionados amongst you but I do have good memories of hearing tunes like this at the youth club discos when I was a little 'un. http://youtu.be/FExauuV3acA http://youtu.be/Yh0hGoESFcE 😊

The person behind this ad is just a kid trying to get a band together. He may well be clueless but he's enthusiastic. It's better than noodling in your bedroom for the rest your life. Give him a break.

Speaking from my own experience of bands; those that are successful are generally dictatorships, and people will either accept that, do as they're told and think themselves lucky to be in a band, or (as is the case with most people) they'll rebel against being told what to do, what to play etc, and the band will fail. Unfortunately this is the way things work I've found. Truly democratic band do exist but rarely get past the jamming and messing about stage. A gigging band where each member has true equality in the bands direction, influence, set list etc would appear to be a very rare thing.

As a bass player in a covers band I've never really thought about what time signature I prefer, I just play whatever sig the song is in. As a songwriter however, I find there's something about 3/4 which is very inspiring, the way the rhythm flows and rolls lends itself particularly well to strummed open chords when piecing together the framework of a new song. A lot of my songs are in waltz time.

Does anyone have any experience of KBG? http://www.kitbuiltguitars.co.uk/ The Jazz Bass kit looks quite interesting, if only for the wood work to upgrade with better hardware later. Not a bad price, too good to be true?

Our last gig of the year. Back at The Bell for the third time in 12 months, always a good night.

Great venue, looking forward to this one!

Nick's now in Temperance Movement which are a long way from Jamiroquai style wise, but still feature some nice tasty bass playing.

I'm in a bit of a Crowded House phase at the moment, I've loved them for years, since the late '80s and rate Neil Finn's songwriting very highly. I've enjoyed going back and immersing myself in albums I've loved but not listened to for a long time, particularly Together Alone from 1993 which is their best, I think.

We played at a well known rock bar in the East Midlands which in the interests of professionalism I'm not going to mention. It was our second gig there, having been rebooked following a gig earlier in the year. In short, it was the worst gig I've ever played and I'm pretty cheesed off with the whole situation. We arrived to find that the person who booked us had gone home, and nobody else on the staff seemed to know or care who we were. We bought four friends with us which was good because they outnumbered the clientele for most of the night, and provided the only applause / audience noise etc. The songs we played when they went outside for a smoke were greeted with complete silence from the remaining punters, and I mean absolute silence, no acknowledgement whatsoever. The bar owner/ manager started complaining that we were too loud (we weren't). We explained to him that our amps and PA were balanced volume wise with the drum kit (unmiced, apart from the kick) and that we couldn't turn the drums down. He then proceeded to walk around the venue for the rest of the set with his fingers in his ears, which he clearly thought was very funny, but I thought was f***ing rude. From that point on it was a shambles, constant mistakes and general sloppiness on songs that we've been playing for 18 months since I joined, and three years before I joined. I was furious, embarrassed, and couldn't wait for the gig to end so we could get out of there. For the first time ever I didn't enjoy playing a gig. Not happy.

I saw a female fronted rock band recently, the two stand outs for me were Trouble by Pink (great vocal on the original, the girl really rocked it) and Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl which they really rocked up with a sexy, heavy glam rock beat, I was impressed.

Good luck, I sent several emails to TC's customer service division and never got a single response.

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1477659581' post='3163659'] Could you for example play your bands entire set solo ? [/quote] Yes. We rehearse and gig regularly. It's my duty to the audience and my responsibility to my band mates to make sure I'm able to do so.

Banbury: pop. approximately 45000. The Wine Vaults, The Swan Atic Ye Olde Reindeer The Dog and Gun The Three Conies Also Known As The Wheatsheaf All good venues with regular covers and original bands, not bad for a small-ish town!