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Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John

We graced a huge sports bar last night. Palpable sense of menace in the air, drunken, broken nosed, tattooed football fans wandering into the playing area to chat with the singer during songs, people asking for Pink Floyd tunes (we're an Irish band, whistles, mandolins, cajon etc) and one guy offered to take over as our bassist. I nearly let him.

Hehe, yeah, though Boston at night wasn't that bad - I've experienced worse! It cost me more in travel than the fee (my car is very pricy to run and was bought before gigs were back on the table!). The dep aspects are here...

more concerning is a lack of muting below the 0th fret

Usual process for me is to cut the songs out in the morning from the recording of the night before that I make when there's a reason to (a new band, set or drummer etc) and I have to say I'm cringing at my playing on the 2nd set opening song, Happy Hour - I'm playing it a semi-tone out, the first 3/4 🫣😥🥴. My mind was convinced that the MD had given us all the correct band key (A) on the setlist, when in fact they all were ignoring it (except the new dep) because they always play it in Bb. Looking at the setlist later I realised that the MD had written down the band key was A, the original was B and the difference was -1. A clue. At the time I knew it was off within the 1st bar, but kept going, wierdly my ears half adjusted to the discordance, but I knew that something was wrong and tried to figure out the right key whilst keeping the pattern. Stopping for a few moments would have been better. Painful lesson. Note to self: trust my ears, not what I was told and find the right damn key PDQ!

Where the Streets Have No Name - U2

All the way to Boston for a dep gig. I applaud your commitment. 😜 All credit and respect to you for stepping in like that. Its not an easy thing to do. Dave

Superb Daryl. Love those kind of venues and a decent crowd too. And using a proper bass rig this time too. Happy days sir. Dave

Maybe a Zoom B1-4? Can typically be had in good condition for < £60. As well as being a neat multifx, it includes a very useful tuner, drum machine, looper and headphone out.

I've got this FrankenFender up for sale on the selling page if anyone's interested. Cheers

Back at The Plumbers Arms in Huddersfield last night. We usually end up really cramped there because there's football on and they don't move the tables for us, but this year we made a point of asking for the space so we had maybe another square half-metre to play with. Hey, every little helps! We were due to go on at 9, but while we were setting up we were asked if we wouldn't mind going on at 9.30. We grumbled a bit but there wasn't a lot to be done at that point so we said yes. We wondered why since the place was quite empty, until our singist did some sleuthing. It turned out that we weren't going to be the only band on last night. We were told that another band had come up from Wales to watch rugby, and were going to perform for free around our sets in exchange for a free room for the night. All very enterprising but not promising for getting us out of there at a reasonable hour. The band in question were a vox & guitar/sax duo from Anglesey doing covers to a backing track, and while I appreciated their technical competence it wasn't really my cup of tea, though I watched a few of their songs to show support and was pretty much the only person who applauded any of them. To be fair they watched the whole of our second set and their singist/guitarist said some extremely complimentary things about us afterwards, including that we should be doing a lot more gigs and he'd set us up with some on Anglesey if we ever fancied it! We didn't have our usual crowd there as they were all either busy or ill, and so the place seemed really quiet, and actually emptied a fair bit before we started which had us fearing we were in paid rehearsal territory, but people came and went throughout and there was always a good dozen or so in the immediate vicinity of us to keep us a bit interested, although applause during our first set was very hard to come by even though everyone seemed to be enjoying us. Out second set is livelier then the first so there were a few more people getting involved, helped by the arrival of part of a wedding party, including the father of the bride who wore a very natty red suit and a porkpie hat and who, along with one of his mates, created probably our first and only ever mosh pit (albeit quite a tame one) during Teenage Kicks. I didn't think we'd get any calls for an encore but we did, and so we didn't end up finishing until nearly midnight. A swift pack up and load out later I was home by 12.45, where at the request of my 8yo I slept in the living room on a pair of stacked foam mattresses that was Not Comfortable while he slept on the sofa, so I got hardly any sleep and am a fair bit broken this morning. Didn't get any photos because I forgot, but I used the Sire V7 - Elf - Two10S combo again that sounded ace. Shoes were black Converse Chuck Taylor Hitops.

Trying one might turn out to be difficult: USA Laklands are not widely in stock in music shops. I know of about 2 or 3 shops in Europe that have them. And yes, you can see the differences (but you have to know what to look for): the USA Osborns have stacked knobs, the Skylines have 3 black knobs (like a "regular" Jazz). The Skylines have the skyline logo on the headstock: These are my current JO5 and my ex-55-60 next to each other:

Scott's Bass Lessons Scott Arrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

Although I haven’t exactly noticed any degradation in the valve sound on my 3500 head, I’m wondering if it’s time to upgrade the tube as it’s done some hours in it’s ten years of life. I sometimes think it’s a little too middly and the other day possibly farted a little using my p bass with custom shop 62’s. Any recommendations or just don’t fix it if it ain’t broke?

Stunning!

Depping gig inside a church for a wedding near Hinckley. I was worried about the acoustics of playing in a place with high ceilings etc but no problem at all. The audience were really up for it with lots of dancing, plus one guy who came up and sang a couple of songs with us (I think he knew the singer 🤷🏼‍♂️). Good catering too courtesy of a pizza oven thing out the back. Winner. Took a small rig of just one Markbass 2x10 cab, a LM2 head and a Yamaha BB604 bass. Pared down the effects board to just a tuner and a compressor gaffer taped to the top of my amp head.

Is that why we had a power cut yesterday!

I played a gig as a dep bassist in my mate's band last yesterday. I had 2 weeks to learn 32 songs most of which I hadn't played in any form before and a third of which I'd never heard before. It was at a rugby club where a local derby match was being played so the prospect of post game rowdiness was high. And it was in a smallish marquee on a day when winds and thundery showers were forecast. We set up in the morning, pre- game, during several heavy downpours and the water was running into the marquee under the sides and across the band area. There was only staging enough for the drums so when I got there everything else had been placed on beer crates, duck boards and in the case of the keyboard player, an old door. I was stood on the upstream side of the band area and only had a couple of old rubber car mats for my pedalboard. Fortunately the stage had enough room for the Trace Elliot cabs, which were only for monitoring anyway as I was going through the main PA. In the gap between set up and gig I was able to go home and make a mini riser for the pedal board and a folding duckboard for me which I deployed when I got back for the soundcheck. The anticipated rowdiness wasn't there and we kicked off at about 5.40pm, playing all the way through to 7.30pm when the crowd started making their way home after an all day session. I managed to get through all the songs with few 'creative lapses' - the drummer reminded me when to come in on one song and there were a few fumbles on transitions between choruses and middle 8s. We had a full tent of dancers for pretty much the whole gig and best of all, no river flowing across the band area. Kit was my Hohner Jack into a Sine HPF, MS60b (for noise gate and tuner only), NUX Sculpture compressor, EHX Bass Clone, NUX Voodoo Vibe and into the desk via my Ampeg SCRDI, with a signal to my Peavey Minimax 600 nto apair of TE 1X10 cabs, one angled for the drummer the other angled across to me. The original plan was to take a split from the SCRDI into my Behringer P1 monitor and via radio to IEM. But one of the cables in that chain was playing up and all I got was crackles and blips so I gave up on IEM, retaining the earphones as ear protection. As it happens, the monitors were good and I could hear myself nicely. After rejecting the idea of wearing wellington boots as being a little out of character with the rest of the band, footwear for the evening were a pair of black shoes, brand unknown. Morning set up. My pace is stage left. Duckboards

had a little sort out and switch up as I fancied bringing my Tyler back can’t wait to dial this in later tonight

Done. 😁

With regard to my current advert (here & on FB), so far I've had: I live in SE London but I should have no trouble getting to Harrow for regular 7pm rehearsals mid-week; I hope to take my driving test next year but don't worry, I have a really small bass rig that will easily fit in someone else's car; Yes I know I was really enthusiastic yesterday but that was when I thought you meant it was £300 each. As you might imagine, all of those were from those wonderful people on FB, and in fact nobody has yet got as far as an actual audition. In truth, I've had zero interest from Basschatters.

Having been alerted to this thread here ..... ....and having just read Jack's first two posts, I'm looking forward to grabbing a couple of cold ones and working my way through the whole 10-pages this evening. Please feel free to add any further experiences in the meantime