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Bass arrived yesterday. I didn't have much time to play with it last night (early night in preperation of today's early radiotherapy appointment), but first impressions are good. Straight out of the box it seemed to be set up well, perhaps too well, very little relief in the neck - almost dead flat, and pretty low action, and almost in tune! I immediately noticed the tightness and tone of the B string, even before plugging it in - this boded well. Plugged it into my little Blackstar practice amp, switched the bass to passive mode and heard a nice full range tone without any of the mud of my EHB's Bartolini's, and more top end. Switching to active mode sounded pretty much the same, with everything set flat. The EQ centres seem well chosen - the bass knob in particular adds girth without adding subby boom. I noticed a little buzz at the third fret and grabbed a fret rocker. There are indeed a couple of high frets low down, but I'm not totally surprised at this price point - my more expensive EHB has high frets too. But I'm hoping I can mitigate this by introducing a little more relief and setting the action to my preferences before I think about a fret level. The neck pickup looks a little low too and needs balancing, but I also need to match the volume to my G&L JB2, my main gigging bass). I haven't tried it on a strap yet, but it appears to balance well when I held it by the top strap button. I'm not sure about the fret markers. Whilst they aren't as bad as the EHB markers, they are a little difficult to see, but that could just be my preferences. Oh, one last thing. The tuners are a bit stiff and sticky, but see there's a solution available, by adding some small bearings But I have to say, so far, so good. The small issues I have found so far are not surprising at this price point and straightforward enough to remedy.

So. After three-odd years containing knee surgery, a pulmonary embolism, torn rotator cuff, additional knee work and hand surgery, Sunday sees me back in the studio. I'm genuinely feeling energised to dip my toe into things. It's a blank canvas, we just go in, write in the fly and hit record. Old school.

"And this next one is one that my computer wrote earlier"...

Hologram performances of ABBA and former stars feels like a very specific type of (phenomenally expensive) tribute act? And if you've ever been to ABBA Voyage you will appreciate how just how fantastic the session musicians are who are playing the music live at every performance. My brother in law asked me if I'd like to play bass on that set? Hell yeah! Except I couldn't tie my counterpart's shoelaces... 😅 @edstraker123 - love what you're saying in your two posts above! Using AI creatively in the way you're suggesting seems to me like it's democratising and making accessible the songwriting process to music creators who are using AI as a tool. Getting what's produced to an audience to listen to is going to be another matter though and no doubt the music industry will fight tooth and nail to retain the ability to "make" and promote their own artists to keep some control and earnings. For me the prospect of covers bands like my own coming up with ai assisted original material that they end up performing alongside all the covers we do is an interesting one and feels like a hybrid approach; one that is a way different skill-set and quality-control threshold to hitting "Suno write me the words and lyrics for a song" to add to the tsunami of "ai slop" being produced. Will be more of a challenge to both us and our audiences in terms of introducing new music than playing Mr Brightside for the 1000th time? https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002f1d0/radical-with-amol-rajan Interestingly the discussion of ai in music was a topic of discussion on Radio 4's Radical last night, between Amol Rajan and Panos A. Panay president of The Recording Academy, which organises the Grammy Awards. There's about 13 mins focussed on the role and impact of ai between 27 to 40 mins in.

Going Mobile - The Who

291g pull force per magnet. That seems like quite a lot to lever open with a pl3ctrum as you would presumably need to lift two completely off the back and then use your finger?

I think the Acorn Amps “Epstein didn’t kill himself fuzz” trumps them all. See what i did there? 😁 🤦

I had a similar experience letting that maple board rocking horse poo BB2024MX get away. I'd still buy that.

As an artist myself in both music and graphics I would completely disagree with rejection of digital forms for creation and distribution. The internet and digital media both audio and visual have allowed me to reach a far wider audience than I ever could before those things existed. Before the internet became mainstream the best I could hope for with any of my musical projects is that we would reach a couple of hundred people mostly here in the UK, and it was hard work doing just that. The first band I was in produced a handful of albums on cassette and two tracks on a vinyl compilation before disbanding in 1983. In the early 2000s we were contacted by an indie label in the US offering us a deal to put out a retrospective compilation on CD which meant we could now reach listeners all over the world and more importantly our music could be heard without it being buried under 3 generations of tape hiss. Without the internet or the digital domain that could never have happened. Without the internet and digital media the bands I have been in during the last 20 years would have probably done a couple of years worth of local gigs before folding. Instead we've played to knowing and appreciative audiences all over the UK. My current band derives a useful portion of our income from people all over the world streaming our music Similarly with my graphic art. I'm old enough to have worked with paint, ink and Letraset when there was no alternative, and while I produced some cool stuff that way (one example of which has been deemed interesting enough to be in the V&A Permanent Collection) I have absolutely no desire to return to those days. With the computer I can produce something far more interesting and innovative far more quickly and that won't include mistakes that I didn't have the time or money to correct. Again I can produce work for clients all over the world and not be limited to those on my doorstep. Innovators come whatever the medium and they will find new ways to use it that the majority of us had never even considered. IMO those worrying that "The Sky Is Falling" are those without sufficient talent or artistic vision.

Thank you!

Hi Dave, The reality is that lots of people still value a printed mag (including me) I've spent a lifetime making magazines and they are still so important for so many people - print will never die! Unlike the last owner of Bass Guitar Magazine we can operate on much smaller margins and hopefully we can make this work.

But I think that is the thing it can be extremely good and human created music can equally be woeful. I still see it as an artistic endeavour, before I was just a bassist, now I'm also a lyricist, sound engineer, producer, arranger etc. Obviously you can just tell Suno to give you a blues song with a male singer and it will, but that isn't how I use it, I have literally used 1000's of generations honing songs to get them to be the finished article I want. This weekend I am starting collaborations with another musician who uses AI for creation but differently than I do - this could be the magic sauce ! I also worked at a University till last year and saw the fear that all AI would produce was cheating students but the reality was something completely different when you saw how it could positively contribute to teaching and learning and help those with accessibility issues etc. I understand the fear musicians have whereby the tens of thousands of hours invested in honing skills can be replaced by a one sentence prompt but this will open up music to so many people who haven't got the time or commitment to put in the effort.

The Crossing is one of my absolute favourite albums to come out of the ‘80s. I still feel sad when I think about Stuart, same for Chris Cornell.

If AI is destroying anything in music/media I think it is the online social media/content creator roles (and I struggle to be sympathetic about this!). I find myself scrolling far less due to the sheer amount of AI related trash on facebook etc. While online marketing has helped many especially younger musicians over the last ten years or so, I think things may start moving back to the importance of a musician being someone who doesn't create glitzy and technically perfect 20 second online clips, but actually someone who plays real music to real people!

Thanks Dave, Burn is on my list to add in at some point.

Sounds like a different song Neil. Pretty good song tho. I've never heard of Volbeat but this is pretty good. Catchy song. Like a modern Classic Rock song to those of a certain generation. 😂 Dave