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I was pressured into playing through yet another utterly rubbish venue bass amp last night. It was one of those gigs where loads of bands had been on, and all the other bass players had (probably reluctantly) all used the same knackered, low end Ashdown rig. No offense to Ashdown users, they make some great kit, but this thing was an old, underpowered, thin thing. It seemed to have a compressor button that didn't actually switch the compressor off, and seemed to pull of the trick of being simultaneously too loud but also inaudible. The FoH guy had pre-rigged it with his DI box, and it was a small stage. I felt like it would have made me look like a real dick to insist on using my own amp, which I could have got on and off the stage in less thsn 30 seconds. But can you imagine a situation where a guitarist would allow himself to be coerced into using some knackered old amp that happend to be on stage? There's no way on earth. Also, if for logistical reasons of getting bands on and off quickly, you want everyone to use the same bass amp, well why not buy something so lovely and so flexible that no one could possibly mind using it. But house bass amps universally seem to be sourced from skips outside the local Cash Converters.

We generally just do Slade and Mud. We have done Womblin…in the past but it was a fair bit of work for little audience reaction.

The Positive Grid. I don't use the others since getting that.

Yes, they're astonishing basses. Here's mine next to it's older cousin! The only thing i dislike is the actual finish. Might be different with the other colours but onthe black one any finger or sweat marks shows up - always looks a bit mingin in photos!

Spinal Fap

Goo Poo Dolls

Wet Peg

Just want to check - is it definitely a 42mm nut, not a 44.5 or 45?

All those woke music fans cancelling Christmas this year...

Med Zeppelin

Don't know what's going on with the Xmas songs this year. Last year the Slade and Wizard ones literally filled the floor. Dave

I'm trying to really nail Do The Strand by Roxy Music at the moment and that line seems to exemplify a lot of what is being said here. The rhythm of the song, which is an absolute classic mover, is driven by the bass which is working largely as percussion and it's busy in a sense with the notes without over complicating the choice. I also find you get a fantastic sense of how much the bass of a track is holding the rhythm when you pull the bass out and listen to the tune without. Sometimes it is still largely the same (a lot of pop stuff) but with others the whole thing falls apart and feels completely empty. Roxy Music's first few albums are a great example, as is Roly Wynne's lines on early Ozrics stuff. They are often quite busy tunes and quite a lot of the time he is noodling but the bass is nearly always the dominant instrument in terms of the tune feeling like the tune. What a player, gone very much too soon.

Tempted to go down one of these routes for a living room practise tool. The Positive Grid stuff looks amazing and satisfies my hatred of wires. Dare I ask, if you had to say out of your lot which is the ‘best’ (not necessarily bang for buck but which is the best outright), which would you choose?

Local venue with my regular gig, SlowJin. Lakland 55-02 via Shure GLX wireless into EBS Microbass. DI to desk, line in to Genz Benz Shuttle 9.0 power amp section and Vanderkley 2x10. Long term IEM user. Big Martin house PA Rig. We came, we saw, we Rock’n’Roll’d.

I wasn't so much highlighting the importance of rhythm keeping, but thinking of the wide range of rythmic possibilities. It feels like we lack the vocabulary to discuss rhythm the same way as we do harmony.

Just sent you a message. I tried them in lockdown, but I just don't like flats on anything 😅

As a direct result of watching that video, the next Junkyard Dogs gig will feature me turning to the drummer and saying, "Paul, the next song should be played as a Scotch Snap". I will then repair to the nearest A&E to do something about that drumstick ...

First Christmas show with Glam Viva! last night, awesome live music venue on the outskirts of Chesterfield. We hadn’t played this venue before but it had been advertised well and we hadn’t played a rammed pub for most of the night. Dancing from song one..like @dmccombe7 the Christmas songs were less appreciated than the normal songs but we normally stick to just 2 for this reason. Sandberg Lionel into my normal Boss pedals using my aging Smoothound wireless. Normal Markbass mini rig of doom. End of gig celebration with 4 jammy doughnuts - I did share! Crap drive back home as, as per normal on a Saturday night after midnight, plod had set the variable speed limit on the M1 at 50. Purely a revenue job as there was no roadworks or poor visibility. Cruise control is your friend.

Melt Loaf

I hated Markbass amps when I was a younger, more naive man. Everyone seemed to have one, and I was once loading out my Ashdown CTM 100 all valve head into the back of my Corsa when a chirpy ‘older’ bass player on before me pointed to his 1x12 Markbass combo said ‘you want to get rid of that, get one of these! Does everything that one does but lighter!’ - despised them from that moment on. Why would I not use a big, gritty valve amp instead of some horrible little yellow thing? Anyway, here’s my AG1000 head and Ninja Cab. It sounds so good in a mix with minimal tweaking, it’s got handles in the right places on the cab, carry bag is hideously convenient for the head. Preferred this set up to nearly everything else I own apart from my SVT and Bassman 8x10, but it annihilates everything in terms of portability, quality of sound and ease of use, second maybe only to the stupidly lightweight GR Bass stuff.

Thanks Pete, yes that ascending part is quite (major understatement) tricky, in fact that’s the only bit I’m concentrating on at present, figuring once I’m happy with that the rest will fit in easily enough.

Thanks Dan

Th only difficult thing with the studio version is the 'Our only goal will be the western shore' bit, where you have to play ascending major scales at a brutal tempo. I can only get the speed by playing it with hammer-ons, so all credit if you can play it at tempo picking every note! There is a very effective cheat that you can use that sounds great, playing major pentatonics rather than the full scales. I first saw Michael Anthony (of Van Halen) doing that on a video from some jam at a party, where he was playing the bass part and singing lead. That's a very difficult thing to do, hence simplifying the bass part slightly. I tend to play like that with drummers who perhaps haven't really nailed the part, or are playing it at a too fast tempo (it's surprising how many people want to play this when they ask you to sit in or at jams). If you want to challenge yourself, have a listen to some of the live versions where there is an extended guitar solo, where there is a lot of bass playing going on! The secret there is to play lots of runs using the F# blues scale, but targeting the flat fifth as much as you can get away with! Funnily enough, Kashmir is a pretty easy song to play, once you get the hang of the groove.