Jackroadkill

To be fair, if I'd been there I might have done a bit of sex wee when you played that song, so be grateful it was only applause!

It's coming along; the finish isn't as great as it could be but it's pretty good, and the electrics are complete now too. Once the shielding paint is dry I'll align and fit the bridge, fit the pickups and get all the rest of the gubbins fitted. Everything's just mocked-up here, and nothing is permanently attached, but it's starting to look like a bass at last. Cheers, JRK

Very glad it's not just me that does that! Same here - I'm in charge of printing set lists for everyone, and I do one for them and a separate one for myself with messages about all the stuff I might have forgotten, like "Tone full up", "retune to E", "You play the intro on this one" etc etc. It's not foolproof, though! It seems you're among friends here!

Thanks Sam; so far I'm still using an SD card!

Thanks Rob, I'm considering one of these myself. I'm a proper Luddite and am just about getting to grips with an ancient Geeetech job. I have a question, if you don't mind answering it - what do you mean by Octoprint being a "print server"?

Nah, in ten years the lights will have gone out, and Spotify with them!

Funnily enough, when I put the white primer on I thought "That would look lovely in pure white", then the same with the silver base coat and again with it as it is above. I'll stick to my guns though, and maybe build the next one in satin, or arctic white, or Inca Silver or....!

A quick mock-up; everything is just dumped in place and there's no gloss coat on the body yet, but you can see what it might end up looking like. I've also fitted the string tree and tuners to the neck, rolled the fingerboard edges and tidied up the fret ends. Some of the previous "work" done to the fretboard may or may not be repairable; I'm experimenting to see which is the case. If it doesn't work I won't be too rattled, but it would be nice if I could succeed with it. The next job is to order more bits and bobs; scratchplate screws, a nut, some shielding paint and some knobs being the most important. Cheers, JRK

Gents, when I say he shat himself, I mean an unscheduled bowel evacuation took place mid-scream; at that point his sense of humour failed and shortly after that, so did mine! Quite how it was anyone's fault was beyond me, but the screaming fit that followed the screaming sh1t put the blame firmly on the rest of us.

I've had a few; we wound up a really good band that had run its' course very amicably and I still see the other lads pretty often and love reminiscing with them (and there are plenty of high-jinks to reminisce about...!). There was another when I fired the singer because he couldn't be arsed to learn, write or arrange the songs and another where the singer shat himself at rehearsal, blamed the rest of us and I broke the band up there and then because the drama and hassle was just too much. The best/worst was not the band breaking up, which happened some time later, but when I first left my first "real" band. I've told the story before, so I'll keep it brief: We'd recorded a demo and sent it around the record labels (this was the early 2000's) and it had received the sum total of sod-all interest, until it landed at Visible Noise, who were the label du jour and riding high with the success of Lostprophets (hmmm, that didn't end well, did it?). They showed a bit of interest and the singer/bass player (I was on guitar at the time) went mental. Suddenly we had to write commercially viable songs, make an album with 14 potential singles etc etc. It all went horrid, from being an almost-credible noise-rock band to some sort of nasty indie-pop-emo bollocks. I tried to register my unhappiness but it fell on deaf ears. I was only a young 'un and didn't know what to do, so at one rehearsal I went for a wee, climbed out of the bog window and got in my car and drove off, leaving all my gear and the band!

And that's the difference between gig in the States and gigs here; it would have cost me 175 bucks to do the gig and I'd have had to have bought my own ribs!

I've had positive comments about my bass, my playing, my sound etc in the past (sometimes!) but never been complimented on my dress sense/knees!

Absolute belter for us last night; it had all the hallmarks of a disaster (charity gig put on by someone who doesn't put gigs on, the bingo over-running, a raffle that lasted an hour... you know the drill). We had an old PA from our rehearsal studio that I had to build and run so sound was a concern. It was a far cry from the festival we played last week, with a superb PA and engineer, proper running order and timescale etc etc, but we resigned ourselves to doing our best and hoping it would go down well. We finally hit the stage over an hour late, and opted to go for the shorter set that we'd devised, which was an hour as opposed to an hour and a half. From the opening notes it was bloody brilliant, and we went down a storm with the audience; given that it was a breast cancer fundraiser, 90% of them were women in their 40's (including the obligatory hen party) and if I'd been asked to bet I'd have said that a load of blokes playing rock, punk and metal covers wouldn't have been their cup of tea, but I'd have been wrong! The sound was really good, too. A great night and lots of money raised for Coppafeel, lots of positive feedback this morning and a nice, pleasant tingly feeling all round. Gear was my Eden WTX500, Cali76, EHX chorus and Ampeg Scrambler with my trusty Player P's and nasty plywood Squier J. I was well pleased with my sound and got several nice compliments about it. Cheers, JRK

I've put the silver base layer and the first coat of the trans red colour coat on the bass. It took a bit of doing as I don't have a spray booth, but sop far so good, other than some spotting in the red, which may take a bit of fixing, but I'm sure can be done. So far it looks like this: It'll need a bit of cutting back before the next coat goes on, so I'll let it harden off properly and then get some fine wet and dry over it. The rest of the hardware (apart from the nut and the knobs) and the electronics will be arriving in the next few days so I'll be able to dummy things up and see what it's going to look like. Cheers, JRK

A bit of a strange one for us on Saturday, playing at a local festival that's always very well attended and has been going since 2006. I played there years ago with a previous band and we went down well, despite dodgy old PA's that were cobbled together from various ancient components etc etc. Fast forward to Saturday and things were.... different. The gig was indoors, the PA and engineer as well as the lighting were superb and the audience was sparse. Okay, we assumed it wouldn't be heaving at 5:30 on a Saturday but it was a bit of a shame that there weren't the crowd we'd been told to expect. We went down very well with the people that did see us so that was great, despite playing immediately after some young 'uns (the drummer was 14!) who played covers of mostly 1990's grunge songs and played them like they'd invented that sound - bejaysus they were good, and following them was a tall order! We played pretty well, and the bass sound was immense. I don't mean it was big, I mean it was like Kyuss in 1993. The amp was the provided Ampeg head and 4x10 (I think, but it could have been a 2x15) and combined with my new Cali76 the tones were amazing, even if I say so myself. Our singer, bless him, reckons he let us down but he wasn't feeling especially well and was really nervous as a result, convincing himself that he wouldn't be any good. I thought he was grand - maybe not quite up to his usual high standards but still better than the majority of cover band singers I've heard. All in all it could have been worse, and we broke our duck with our new drummer, so that in itself was good to do. Onwards to the next gig on this coming Saturday, which is a fund-raiser for boobies. Cheers, JRK

I've got a degree; I graduated in Criminology in 2001 and it's been absolutely bloody useless. I wish I'd gone to college and learned how to be a precision engineer.

That was a fugly bass before the termites got at it.

I met Patricia Morrison in High Wycombe in 2000 when she was playing with The Damned. She very kindly signed my copy of Floodland and we talked for a few minutes before I shuffled off, tongue-tied.

From Painted Lady? No, it's Melissa Auf Der Maur, who played in Hole and has been involved in many other projects, most notably her own albums under the Auf Der Maur name. She's a superb lyricist and vocalist as well as a great bass player.

Years ago I cut my roadie teeth working for a Stones tribute act who took attention to detail to a whole new level. They had a plethora of vintage instruments onstage (I think 22 was the most I counted) and all of those were period-correct and song-correct (as in if Keith Richards once played Street Fighting Man on a white 1963 LP Junior, for example, then a guitar of the same type and age would sometimes be used for that song. If he'd not played the song live with that type of guitar it wouldn't be used by the guy who played his parts). Their costumes were either original clothing or carefully made replicas. Amps were similarly accurate. The mannerisms of the actual Stones (or lack thereof where Bill Wyman was concerned) were reproduced by the guys at every show. It all made for a lot of work to stage and the gear cost a fortune but the band was just brilliant and set the standard I've always judged tribute acts on since. Whilst tributes generally aren't my thing there was no denying that these guys were not just some guys with wigs who could play Stones tunes. The song choices were not just the hits, either - sometimes the Stones would play an album track or a deep cut, and those were all features of the set at various points (including Chickensucker Blues...). If you're going to be in the tribute game I think this is the way to do it.

Old: Slightly less old:

We;re learning that one, too. I reckon it'll be a belter when we've got it baked.

This, 100%. There are a million bands out there who play all the standards; I really enjoy not being in any of them.

Depending on the gig we play If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, and it usually goes down well - with the right crowd. For those who don't know it, it's a song about the Spanish Civil War, and I find it very moving. To be fair, though, Peaches tends to get people dancing a bit more.

Oh hell.... How did I forget Paul Simonon?!