Paul S

Over the weekend I fished various sets of flats out from my spare strings draw and fitted them on to a P bass to see which I preferred - this for my new blues band. I have some very thick gauge, extremely high tension that look like silver snakes with black silks at the top. These were too uncompromising, albeit nice and thuddy. I think they may be La Bella 760FS? Anyway, matters not as they are too tight. Then I tried a set of thinner gauge that were not ground so smoothly - if you run your nail along them you can still feel ridges albeit slightly - red silks both ends and far lower tension. Much brighter tone, brass ball ends. I like these a lot - they sounded lush at yesterday's rehearsal. Trouble is I can't for the life of me remember which ones they are. I'd like to fit a set of these to my 5 string but it would be extremely handy to know which they are - are there enough clues in my description? Muchas gracias! Paul

A small bump for next week's gig.

Easy. Gloss black. With a BWB pickguard and a maple neck. Oh, yes, and Precision shaped. I imagine that would be some folks' worst nightmare!

You can see these roller banners being used here:

Or, to do it to death, the blue cafe?

One that took me hours and hours of practice to get right was 'Keep The Faith'. It is an iconic bass line in one of Bon Jovi's iconic songs , I am in a BJ tribute so had to nail it.

I think that is the first 5 string Jack I have seen. I had bad GAS for one of those for a while. Passed now, as it tends to.

I'm guessing a lot of you chaps have either not yet reached or have gone beyond the 'elderly relative hospital shuttle'? There were a few years when a lot of my car journeys involved worrying more about the state of the back seat upholstery than what music was playing.🤢😷😂

So, moving on, what are the necks like?

Emergency string Tee for those occasions if you happen to pop out the side accidentally (and don't we hate it when that happens) - keep a cable tie in your gig bag, tie it around behind the nut to increase the break angle.

£113.11 pre-order at Thomann. Edit - i don't suppose there are many amps you can buy at Thomann and then have to add something else to get free shipping!

Well, I've owned a Peavey combo - not this one but a similar one - and it sounded immense. Huge tone, exceedingly loud for the spec, ruggedly built. I played through both of these that you are asking about in rehearsal studios where they certainly get put through their paces. The Peavey was everything mine was but more. By contrast the Ashdown Electric Blue sounded lifeless, dead and woolly, the knobs were loose, the buttons weren't engaging properly. Now I realise that is only a sample of one of each but it was enough to convince me.

Peavey hands down. Not even a close call.

Matt Bianco last Friday at Islington Assembly Hall. Fantastic. He does it all with a jazz band now - EUB (what a player!), trumpet, sax, piano, drums (what a drummer!). All those Latin rhythms of his early stuff translate so well to how he now performs them. Earlier in the week I saw Tears for Fears at the O2 Arena, supported by Alison Moyet. Both were disappointing. I saw TFF when Songs From The Big Chair was released and they were monumental. Now not so good - Curt's voice - always thin - was unacceptably weedy. Roland still had that marvellous quality about his singing but lacked the power of the old days. The backing singer wasn't up to Woman In Chains - not her fault - but absolutely smashed Bad Man Song which was the pick of the night for me. I guess without a reference point from that earlier period it would have been considered a good gig but, having seen them at their peak, I felt as though it failed to come up to the mark. Alison Moyet sounds great - she can still sing - but the sound was terrible - too loud and distorted. The arrangements of the songs were stripped back for keys/drums/her and only the early Yazoo stuff sounded good - Don't Go was the pick but everything else was toilet break material. Plus the keys/occasional bass sang BV and was awful.

Another fan. I also run mine through a BF Supercompact and it is the only small amp I have tried (and I've been through SO many) that gives me a tone and 'heft' near to my beloved Trace Elliot. Which, granted, is going to put some folk off .😂

In my little band the drummer has a click mixed in with the IEM feed via his own little wired set up next to the kit. Plus a strobe flashing. Seems to work just fine. It is mainly to standardise the speed and stop bickering over how fast/slow/spot on various songs are played. In the Bon Jovi tribute it is all a bit more important to the show - we use a click coordinated with backing tracks and, if the venue accommodates it, a back projection so the timing is essential. But in both scenarios it was a move for the better.

I think it is a rite of passage thing. If you are a tinkerer then at some point the pull of the EB0 gets too strong. You may as well do it sooner rather than later and get it out of the way

Must be why they call it a bridge!

I believe it is the model number as used in the Hondo catalogue. It is printed on that picture I embedded in the first post.

I ended up with fretmeister's Tecamp Puma 300, which arrived today. Have to say it ticks all the boxes.