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Thanks to all who organised such a great day, and for everyone who brought along such a wide range of gear. It really was a lot of fun and great to meet so many of you. Really enjoyed the talk with Matt from Montys ... still trying to figure out which P pickup I should buy since they both sounded excellent. Also loved the fact that we had a hall full of us listening to bass loops through different cabs. That was an eye opener given my favourite was an 8".

Meh, chicks dig mojo.

I bought an Adamovic Jupiter Fretless, what a pile of crap that thing was. Looked nice, really nice even, the woodworking was faultless and the woods were beautiful. However, the playability was ok, but critically it just sounded awful. I can't remember the last time I played a bass that was just so acoustically dead. I can't remember what pickups it had in it (it had a big wooden ramp made from the top wood which looked great but completely hid the pickups) but I know it had a Glockenklang preamp. The tone was woody, not my preference but not a bad thing, I had a Sandberg Thinline Custom that also could be described as woody, but it sounded really lively, it was great, however the Adamovic sounded utterly dead. No harmonic richness, no character, just a dull note. It sounded about as exciting as a £200 starter bass, completely at odds with the exotic looks. In fact, that might be unfair on £200 starter basses, on reflection. I think I paid £1300 for it and sold it for the same price, which seemed like a scorching deal at the time - to order one new from Adamovic would have cost more than £5000 and that was before Covid and Ukraine inflation madness if I remember correctly. Ultimately it put me off the brand and I'd still advise anyone thinking about buying a used one to play it extensively first and in no way would I buy a new one, money up front, before playing the finished article.

I would have loved to have been there, it looks and sounds liek it was a lot of fun and tehre's plenty of you I'd like to have seen again and, of course met for the first time! Maybe next time. Looking forward to seeing all the pics and vids!

I posted this elsewhere, but this site offers a (non-scientific) but very useful sound guide for each of the ear plugs reviewed, volume normalised. I found this very useful as I was able to pick up some cheap generic plugs that offered better speech intelligibility versus some that I have that seem to be more bass heavy. I have another set here that are really peaky around 2Khz, which is really fatiguing, so making sure I didn;t end up with another simialr set mean this site was invaluable. I have to say, these would be only short term use as all generics hurt my ears afetr a while and rarely sound as good as a set of moulded Pro plugs. Mine are 64 Audio, but I do have a set of the "Help For Musician's" moulded plugs by ACS through the Musician's Union too - highly recommended for busy professional bassists. https://www.hearadvisor.com/earplug-rankings https://www.helpmusicians.org.uk/get-support/physical-health/protect-your-hearing

Three’s a jolly good fellow . Great news about being mortgage free ! Massive achievement.

We have a gig to support one of our favourite charities, Matthews House (a drop in centre/cafe/advice hub for homeless people) on Friday. Last night's rehearsal was a chance to go through some old favorites and pick out the best for a short set following our performance with the charity's choir. It was quite a relaxed affair and I think we've settled on the core songs, with a few extras should the need arise. The event is to start a '24hr sleep out' raising money for the charity and it's being held in the Swansea.com stadium so technically, my 'How was tour gig last night' post will be for our stadium gig. I somehow doubt it will be a 21,000 seat sell out, though. 😀 As it's an outdoor event and the weather forecast is for rain and cold weather, I've been practicing with thin liner gloves just in case.

That's a JBL E140, rated at 400w, will he really blow it with a Dual Showman? I like the sound of the old D140F in my Bassman cab, but I will never run it very loud, and it is VERY heavy. If the intention is to gig this behemoth, then Bill's advice to put another Deltalite in and port the cab accordingly is the best in my opinion. At least it will make the cab "slightly" more portable. I would also get some new grill cloth, it's fairly cheap, and it's easy to install and it would smarten things up considerably. I like your cab. Rob

If we're happy with the venue - it seemed to work well enough - I think we'd be more than happy to arrange one for next year. Obviously, there's going to be some minor logistical issues, but all in all if we just set out a handful of ground rules at the start and stick to timings, we should be good. Personally, thanks to Paul and Gary and to everyone that turned up!

I've had the Enzo X for a few weeks now and so far have found it nearly impossible to get a usable sound out of. It's VERY involved. I'm persevering with it but it's not a plug-n-play pedal for sure....I think if in a few weeks I've got nothing from it I'll have to admit defeat. I really wanted to be able to sync / time -sync via midi nasty bass noises with my drum machine which it appears to have the capability to do....in practice no joy so far.

Black Hog - Led Zeppelin

i Suddenly wish i still had this thing to sell on but , i know its a right hander , but with no plate and some super low profile knobs it would have just been the ticket i sold this thing to a guy starting a local 80's cover act , it was a matt eggshell texture , and it played really quite nicely . Washburn " lyon"

Big thanks to all for coming and making this year another great success. Always good to put faces to names/usernames! The venue worked, I think,..... especially considering how spoilt we'd been in the past with access to lots of rooms and a hall in a school! Thank you's from me to Paul @NancyJohnson and Paul @prowla in particular for doing a lot of the advance legwork and prep as I was unavailable. Also, of course to our guest speakers re: cab shooutout and pickups.... and to my old schoolmate @Mike Brooks and good friend Chris Childs for their insights and contributions. I think @stevie may have secured (or is about to!) a few orders as well so a great day all around!

Most of the rep that needs 7 strings with the low A is the French solo repertoire. I mostly play tenor. I got rather frustrated at the lack of people to play with for consort playing. I'd only get o play on weekend workshops etc which gets very expensive.

Regarding the stickiness, if it's just a coating that is sticky you'll have to remove it, otherwise it will come back no matter what you do. If it's the actual material itself then the only real solution is replacement. Maybe some nice wood for the end cheeks and see if someone is offering 3D-printed replacements for mod and pitch wheels.

Had our first rehearsal as a 6 piece... Though 2 pieces were missing - drummer due to bad back and singer as we thought we should perhaps do some arranging of guitar and bass parts before a full rehearsal. We had drum parts from our album recording going through the PA, along with vox if we needed them (I quite like to do it without so everyone knows and counts the structure - I've found it gets into your head better if you don't just rely on a singer's cue, this helps if there's poor monitoring I find). And we got new and sort of different arrangements for 5 songs - with chuggy rhythm guitar I've got room to explore some new pastures up at the widdly end, which is nice (some may disagree!), and lead guitar now has the space to do occasional crazy stuff. So all in all, quite promising! We'll see whether singer and drummer agree next week.

Hi, I'm looking at doing the third annual NW and Scotland Bass Bash and Petting Zoo for 2026. This would be at the Clapham village hall in Clapham https://claphamcumnewbyvillagehall.org.uk/ We are on the NW tip of North Yorkshire, 20 mins from the M6. Parking is easy and we would have the whole hall again. Currently the following days are available, so I'm trying to work out which ones to do. Saturday April 25th 2026 Sunday April 26th 2026 Saturday May 9th 2026 Sunday May 10th 2026 Sunday May 17th 2026 Saturday May 30th 2026 Sunday May 31st 2026. If I can workout a poll, I'll do this to make it easier. Rob

When I was a kid, most boxed sets were made once and then the bricks went into the general collection so I could make whatever I thought of. Back then the main reason to buy a boxed set was to get hold of some of the specialist bricks that weren't available separately. That doesn't seem to apply these days.

There’s so much amazing music on the ACT label.

Yes - a big thanks to @Mike Brooks: hosting those talks was a big contribution to the success of the day.