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First Bass Owned: Univox violin-shape with giant scroll headstock 'Go To' Bass: Eastwood Univox Hi-Flyer (reissue) 'Your' Bass: Hofner CT Club Bass, best sound but string spacing too tight.

Our rehearsal place just kitted out their rooms (about 15) with full Venture stuff, replacing the old svt3. The fact that they're going with this instead of the DIY repairables says a lot. They do their homework.

Hill street blues theme Eagles - One of these nights Walk on the wild side Practically any jazz song is good for fretless. Long, singing notes sound very different. I think fretless is best suited for simple lines. All extra can be cut away, and still - or because of that - sound so good.

Thanks! To be honest, I fell for the stock Bronco in Tahitian Coral the first time I saw it because the color is just gorgeous and would look great with a floral pattern on the pickguard - so funky! But it quickly went from "funk machine" to "doom machine" since stoner and doom are my genres, and with the pickup that has a lot of oomph it turned out to be great for that purpose. It likes fuzzes.

I’ll be off to Wemberley in August to see Blackpink on parental chaperone duties.Hmmm… can’t wait. Friday at the O2 Arena watching the Doobie Brothers was much preferable and a fabulous evening. Proper quality country rock, yacht rock and blue eyed soul. Treat to have Michael McDonald back in the fold too. Lad had a great time so there’s hope for him yet 🤞.

I've spent a pleasant couple of hours fitting most of the remaining hardware. During this process I discovered that (1) my M5 bolts were too short for mounting the transformers safely, and (2) I've run out of 3mm nylon locking nuts. I've placed orders for these, but in the meantime this is starting to look like it wants to be an amp:

On private function nights, 90 people. We can squeeze a few in.

I'd love to be convinced that the Venture range is everything that the Portaflex range should have been, and I may get there eventually as long as their long-term reliability proves to be good. But we need valves. I think the new Trace stuff is excellent (as the owner of a TE-1200). But there's a lot of people out there who refuse to even acknowledge that a good Trace amp could have been designed and built outside Maldon - a Trace users' group that I'm in on FB is full of posts from owners of 89s/90s Trace gear ranting that the Peavey-era stuff isn't "real" TE. It's as real as any post-Kaman Trace gear, and they all seem happy to play through those.

Sorry about the first song on this clip... we just wanted to keep people dancing 🤭 The second one is more representative of us. https://www.facebook.com/share/r/16xPj2EtMy/

Year started playing: 1986 Number of basses: 1 (3 if you count the spare bass and the one in the loft, neither of which I ever play) Music theory: 8 (What's all that mode stuff about?) Technique: 5 (No slap, no pick) Groove: 7 (I spent too much time fighting against a bad drummer.)

So onto the matter at hand. The problems. As I mentioned in the first post, Marylou probably ended up in the attic of a house in Norwood because she'd had an accident. When I first got her, the action was unplayably high. I didn't really know anything about double basses at the time, so I didn't think too much about why that might be. I just did what I'd do with any instrument whose action was too high, and lowered the bridge. As it turned out, in order to get the action even half-way playable, I had to remove an enormous amount of material both from the feet and from the top part of the bridge (not sure if that has a name). If you look at the picture at the top of this thread (taken before the great works) you can see the comically cut-down bridge. This was fine though, for my limited abilities and even more limited knowlege of double basses. I played Marylou in this state for about four years, having a lot of fun even if my technique was probably pretty awful and my intonation worse. The problems started when my original set of rotosounds started to get a bit frayed and tatty. They were probably fine, but I was also aware that Marylou sounded a bit flat and quiet, and wondered if different strings might help. I bought a set of d'Addario Helicore strings, which have a steel core and are higher tension. This made Marylou a little louder, but also much harder to play. Unfortunately, I also injured the tendons in my left hand around this time, which meant that Marylou was now effectively unplayable – the effort of trying to play her for more than a minute or two caused me quite a lot of pain. I started to look a little more closely a Marylou's neck. I'd noticed before that she'd quite clearly had a fairly violent neck break in the past, and that it had been glued up rather ineptly, but I hadn't realised just how ineptly. Note the luxuriant froth of PVA glue and the decorator's-grade wood filler. This picture shows the angle that the neck had been reglued at. As you can see, it's almost parallel to the body. I realized that if I was going to ever be able to play this bass again, I was going to have to get that neck off.

How big is this hall?

I'm thinking of songs that would suit fretless that I do. What Is and What Should Never Be would work well. Crossroads too, I think Jack Bruce may have used fretless on the original.

I tried to make a list of necks and options proposed so far. I am not quite sure if all options are available to every neck. I suppose that depends on the interest. - J (£450) - P (£450) - MM (£480) - MM5 (£480) - normal nut - slim nut - frets 20/22 - fretless - no dots / unlined - dots / lined - blocks (+£30) Prices do not include P&P.

Carmine Appice, with his enormous 'in your face' 24" double bass drums.

Just added 24, 25 & 26 who all expressed an interest in coming 👍😎👍 #1 - Paul @NancyJohnson #2 - Paul #2 @prowla #3 - Martin @Merton #4 - Matt @Wombat #5 - Andy @Wolverinebass #6 - Stevie @stevie #7 - Lozz @Lozz196 #8 - Matt @neepheid #9 - @bassace97 #10 - Robert @bass_dinger #11 - Christopher @chyc #12 - jaco @Geek99 ** #13 - Alan @WalMan #14 - Trevor @TrevorR #15 - John @jonno1981 #16 - Gary @cetera #17 - @MacDaddy #18 - Steve @Stingray5 #19 - Russ @Russ #20 - Rich - errm, @Rich tbc #21 - Happy Jack @Happy Jack #22 - Silvia Bluejay @Silvia Bluejay #23 - Mike @mikelawrencecalleja #24 - @admiralchew #25 - @police squad #26 - @Sean

Great name for a band!