Stub Mandrel

This. Remember theory is far more useful than notation.

Reckon you can have some fun doing that up with a wild paint job.

That carpet puts Vulfpeck firmly in the shade!

For bass I feel cabs should be efficient, capable of taking plenty of power without distorting, light and tonally pretty transparent (i.e. without a strong character as with guitar cabs). This does tend towards expensive, but you can compromise on efficiency (if you have a powerful amp) or weight if you are young and strong. I feel that your basic tone comes chiefly from your technique, the bass you play and your amps overdrive characteristics. Pedals might extend your pallette but your cab should be reasonably faithful to what you put into it. You could get one of the ~£25 bass multifx from Aliexpress that has a series of cab sims in it, put it through a hifi amp at modest volume and see if anything particularly suits your taste. But what effect you get could probably be achieved with eq...

🤣

Deep Purple. I enjoyed it greatly. Long guitar and keyboard solos by the youngsters helped the original guys pull off a one and three quarter hour set. Reef were bloody good too (as usual).

Bendricks Rock played the Railway in Llandaff last night. Quite a compact space! I left the setlists on my printer plus we had to add in several songs to compensate for an 8:30 start. This meant some conferring between songs which affected the flow a bit, plus a couple of false starts (no the guitar starts paranoid not the drums...) We had a modest but highly appreciative audience and went down well. Manager very pleased and we got booked again for next year, but outside in the summer. Plus the owner got in touch and has asked us to play a bigger venue he's opening in the valleys where our rock set should go down well.

Yep a TE Elf is so tiny and relatively cheap, ideal backup.

This Friday. Nick has the Mackie powered cabs so I can leave mine at home (hooray).

What I want to know is, why have they got XLR cables up their noses instead of the usual ants and coke?

Yep. Borough Blues Club was a good night. One guy said 'it's great to be able to see a band like yours in a small place like this, I had a marvellous night' which was pretty flattering!

Raffle Time. But making up for last night. For Mickey...

Unless I use I different bass rig, I don't repeat my genre (Bendricks Rock is, classic rock*; Bluesfire is blues rock 'power trio') usual setup each time I post - An Orange Bass Terror with a GRBass AT212 slim. My arthritic left thumb was screaming at me on Thursday when I had a Bluesfire rehearsal, so yesterday I took the Flea signature '63 Jazz and the Sire P10 mainly as they have skinny, easy to play necks. Ibuprofen and paracetamol got me through and using the joint means it's actually feeling better today, which is good as we are at Borough Blues Club tonight. *At the heavier end of the spectrum, even when we play Cliff Richard and Tom Jones 😁

GIYF "Google is your friend" DILLIGAF is an Australian expression equivalent to "I couldn't care less".

GIYF

Deep Purple on monday. A bit late considering I was introduced to them by my Patrol Leader in scouts in about '75. First time for everything...

Last night marked my return to the fray for a busy November. An hour's drive up into the valleys, to play in an underground snooker club with Bendricks Rock. Deeply weird setup, down with the snooker tables in a vast echoey room, with a few small tables, while 90% of the audience were above us in the bar BEHIND us! We set up on the 'dance floor' while a DJ blasted (literally) out a mundane rotation of 'disco favourites' and irradiated us with an insane whirling light show. So loud that I had to put earplugs in when we weren't playing! It wasn't a great gig, the sound was appalling with everything reflected back at us in a mush, compounded by an electrical whistle that I couldn't completely suppress (probably from the lights). I had to wind my volume down between songs. Also we had whirling lights on us the whole time. We didn't play brilliantly, but for fun I took a "DILLIGAF" approach to Crossroads and went full on random in the guitar solos... Ironically the locals were friendly and helpful, and although sometimes it felt like we were playing to a handful of people (we could barely see the real audience) the response afterwards was positive. Here's a preview of the migraine inducing setup, and the rest of the bad during the break, when the audience went out for fireworks and the musical assault stopped. It sounded like WW2 but felt peacful. Never felt more relieved to get home after a gig!

Unlikely, a good HPF won't affect those upper frequencies at all.

Yes... but my phone has decided that three utterly irrelevant apps are the only ones it will offer, despite Word and Acrobat being on my phone... and if I try to set different default apps tp PDFs it will only let me choose from a tiny selection.

Saturday's gig guarantees an appreciative audience!

Just a thought... I think your demo videos have the bass too low in the mix, you want to be a bit more prominent in a video that aims to showcase your playing. I also agree with the suggestion of taking five or six varied songs and editing together 15-20 seconds of each for a short, snappy showreel.

No way, definitely the Nordics...

As someone who has had no trouble finding bands at ~60: Find your local music scene and speak to people, and jam when you can. Don't be afraid to use social media. Don't be too precious about what you will or won't play, especially at first, a band needs to get a couple of sets together to get gigging and start building a reputation, once that's done you can refine your offering.