Marvin

Exactly! If you can’t sit at the bar and talk inane rubbish with the landlord...THEN IT’S NOT A PUB!!

Wetherspoons can't pay that well, staff went on strike recently over pay. And I'm not entirely certain that Wetherspoons has a reputation for treating staff generously. Besides all that, the food is at best meh...heaven knows where they conjured up their Chilli Con Carne from but it's truly repulsive. The ones I've been in have had some really unpleasant odours. Basically though, they're not pubs. They're soulless, cold places that are the antithesis of what a pub is. You can't have a chat to one of the bar staff, there's never a feel of *belonging* in one. I won't go in one, they are to pubs what Milli Vanilli were to music...completely fake. I'll stick with my local.

My Sire has gone up in value...but then I got one of the first 1000 that had the signed neck plate. The headstock is no worse than that on a D.Lakin or Sadowsky. Neither of those would pass an aesthetics contest to be fair. I was thinking of buying a second V7, but the changed neck profile and satin finish doesn’t appeal to me.

A chance photo of John Deacon used to trawl back over already known info, it’s pretty poor journalism...and I use that word loosely. I’ve got a lot of respect for John Deacon, he’s done the right thing IMO when it comes to Queen. Queen was the four of them, it doesn’t work without either of them. Taylor and May should have had some self respect, and respect for the band’s name, and known when to stop with Queen. The current incarnation is awful. And Roger Taylor needs a dictionary, sociopath? He sounds like he holds a grudge tbh that John won’t join in killing the band

I don't worry about nut width on a neck, it is actually how 'thick' it is i.e from back to front. I used to have a Rockbass Corvette (one of the first ones). It was a 38mm standard jazz style nut width but the neck was like a baseball bat. I found it almost unplayable and made my hand hurt. It was also complicated by how those basses hang, which makes the first fret feel a thousand miles away. My current basses have very playable necks regards their girth

If it was me I'd be going for the Rumble...as I used to own one and regret selling it. It's got all the features you need on it, lightweight, plenty of volume and quite simply a lovely tone. GK is good stuff, I've owned some, but on this it'd be the Fender.

Creed, Nickleback and what seems like an almost endless list of similar bands took grunge and commercialised everything about it. The resultant 'post-grunge' thing is generic, homogenous, derivative etc, etc, etc. It's actually difficult to distinguish one band from another. It's essentially pop music, and not particularly good pop music at that. Dull, comes to mind. 'Later' is probably representative of music at the moment, in that you very occasionally stumble across a half decent band or artist, but in the main there's nothing much of interest.

Over a week ago now, but I went to see Editors at the O2 Guildhall Southampton. Absolutely brilliant, loved it. My wife and I managed to get near the front, about 4 from the stage, so a good view. Some bods grumbled the sound wasn’t that good ( on Social Media), but I thought it was ok. I could hear Tom Smith singing perfectly well. The guitars got a little lost in some songs but nothing major. I thought they played a belter

I’m not particularly interested in what a bass player is up to when I go to watch a band, so I can’t imagine anyone being interested in what I do. I saw The Winery Dogs with Billy Sheehan playing bass a couple of years ago...I spent the gig in awe of Richie Kotzen. Sheehan was brilliant with all his tapping etc, but Kotzen stole the show

Even most other musicians regard the bass as just filling a sonic gap. You could get rid of the bass is loads of bands and most people would be none the wiser. There’s loads of recorded music where the bass is a sludgy mess buried in the mix. Bass isn’t that important for most music or songs

Sire V7 bass. 2 Barefaced One10 cabs. I can take just one to practice and small gigs, take both when needed. MarkBass head (or the Fender Rumble head). The Sire is the best feeling bass I've played and as for amp and cabs I need small and light, partly as the band I'm in is low volume and the places we play aren't large.

I shan't be joining in on this. I haven't bought any gear (bar a set of strings) for...ages. So long in fact I can't remember. I think the last time I bought anything was over 2 years ago, that was a bass. So, it's time I treated myself

I use pretty much anything that'll have the song on it to learn songs for the band I'm in...so that'll include Spotify, YouTube, shared MP3's, literally anything. I'll listen to Spotify, and I'm currently listening to a playlist on YouTube. However, if it's music I really like and want, it's always be the physical product for me. It'll usually get put on my MP3 player for portability, but I still have to have the physical product if it's music I really like.

I usually start with the factory recommendations for neck relief and tweak from there, to get something comfortable and suitable for me. It’s probably not far off a factory set up. I don’t play heavy at all, but I still don’t seem to be able to get a cigarette paper low set up to work for me. I just get loads of rattle and buzz

I’d be looking at the Yamaha TRB6, as others have suggested. They’re solid, quality basses.

I totally agree. There have bee a couple of times when I’ve not been in a band I’ve said to myself ‘I will now learn all about music properly’. It lasted about a week. It quickly got to be a chore, quite uninteresting and then relegated to not being done. The last time I wasn’t in a band I didn’t touch my bass for 9 months.

Billy Sheehan, renowned bass fretboard tapping artist, cites Billy Gibbons, from ZZ Top, as the first guitarist he saw tap a fretboard ( although, it was not as an extensive a tap as that of the fella in the OP’s link 😀). Seems tapping was quite well established before 70’s flares 😎

So, LOUD memories with plenty of HEFT!!!

This is becoming a more prominent issue as time goes on. As an audience member, I absolutely loathe bands that feel they have to play loud, there's simply no reason for it. This isn't just a drummer thing, it applies to guitarists and bass players. I've been to gigs where drummers are hitting the hell out of their kit, where guitarists are using full stacks and bass players 810 fridges...and all in small venues, small pubs even. It's ludicrous. As the volume goes up the quality of what you hear simply goes down, and the gear might be able to handle these volumes but people's ear sure as hell can't. 3 gigs stick in my mind for just awful sound. One was a local covers band (that I stupidly ended up joining when they changed to do originals). They were playing a small local pub and I walked out. The bass player and guitars just seemed to be in a volume war. A couple of years back I went to watch The Dammed, that was god awful as well. I was incredibly lucky to be wearing the jeans I'd worn to practice the night before and left a pair of earplugs in my back pocket. It was just a loud mush of noise. Finally, a gig that was totally ruined by a crap sound engineer was when I watched Dodgy at a small local venue. During the second set the SE just kept ramping up the volume and made the band sound awful. This was a real shame as they really are very good, and underrated musicians. I'm very fortunate at the moment in that I play in a band that will not play loud. It's to the point where, in order to keep my volume down I'm using the -10db switch on my amp. Our guitarist simply won't play with a drummer who can't control dynamics and our drumming will rarely use sticks as he said "they're too loud, they even annoy me". Our drummer usually uses hot rods, and the other evening, even at village hall gig, he used brushes because the reverb of the room made the snare sound so loud. There's simply no need for these ridiculous volumes.

I want to get a V3 as a back up to my V7. Unfortunately I need to sell some gear first. I’ve had my V7 for over 4 years and it is my no.1 bass, just feels right to me.

Our guitarist is a very decent a fair minded guy, it's a good band to be in.

Gigs Friday and Saturday this weekend. Friday was in a pub in a nearby town where we've played before. The place is very small, but the crowd are good and always like what we do. It was a little odd at one point. At the start of our second set, we were part way through the first song and a very young lady, wearing next what was supposedly a dress started posing in front of the band and her boyfriend was taking photos of her...all very weird. Highlight was our guitarist called over a guy who regularly goes to the jam night we go to. He's not a musician really but likes to get up and maybe join in singing a couple of verses. At the jam night, some of the snobs have asked him not to, so our guitarist saw he was in the crowd on Friday and got him up on the mic to join in with song he knew. It was a bit of a squeeze as the guy is not small :) Saturday was a all ticket fundraiser at a Village Hall. Lovely crowd, up dancing and having a good time. Afterwards we had lots of compliments and asking us to go back, result. Only thing is the sound in there was awful. The best description would be, it was like playing at a public swimming pool. The sound just bounced around everywhere, it was a reverb hell. Otherwise, a good night.