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I wouldn’t call it a 62; more like a 57- Heinz.

I bought a laser from aliexpress for a fiver inc shipping. Powered by USB, works surprisingly well and adds some patterns and a few LED colours.

Nice sounds

I'll let you know next week My 6 string 30 inch arriving this Friday Can't wait

A relatively easy one for folk who are early on in their reading career but need something more than roots to play with. This is the complete Paul Martinez bass part to the tune 'Big Log' from the 1982 Robert Plant album, 'The Principle Of Moments'. https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/big-log-robert-plant/

Drummer only stood on 3 cables to get to his kit - that's progress

Ampeg Scrambler and TC Electronic Spark Booster are both worth checking out.

Best friend and I, guess we were around 15, both loved music so thght we'd have a go at playing it so got a couple of guitars ...Within a few months it became very clear he had a real talent for guitar.. plus he was tall and lean with long hair. I mean he looked like a rock God from the outset, meanwhile myself? Lets just say I didn't. So, I got an old bass but then equally realised that I could make it sing, or sound funky I suppose. Shortly afterwards we went our separate ways and never did play together in a band as such, and as great as he was he never did really take it much further than playing at home, whereas I've enjoyed a lifetime of playing bass in all sorts of situations.

I bought some black vinyl for my Atelier clear plate , and stuck it too the underside of my scratchplate .. it has a very slight texture as it’s not the topside but worked a treat

Monday Monday- Mammas & Papas

Having had zero interest in any kind of music for the first 11 years of my life I went Scout camp where Radio 1 was on all day every day and was completely taken by the sounds of the emerging glam rock bands - T. Rex, Slade, The Sweet. My parents were horrified as pop music was not considered to be real music and did every thing they could to dissuade me from listening to it. I finally managed to persuade them to let me go to folk guitar evening classes when I was 13 and then to buy me decent (read playable) acoustic guitar for my 14th birthday. That was the end of their support though. The following year I formed a band with three other like-minded friends from school, writing and recording our own weird compositions. We were very much a DIY band, I even built my first solid electric guitar at school while I should have been studying for my "A" levels. None of us owned a bass but a couple of people in our year at school did and we would borrow one for a few days during the holidays when we were recording. I finally bought my first bass - a heavily modified second hand Burns Sonic - while I was at university in 1981. In many ways the disapproval of my parents only made me more eager to play, write and record music. On top of that there were two pivotal points in my musical career that pretty much set me on the route I'm still following today. During my first year at university which I was not really enjoying. I spotted a news article in the NME which mentioned a band called The Instant Automantons and the fact that their second album was available for free to anyone who sent them a blank C90 cassette and a stamped, addressed envelope. Intrigued, I sent off my cassette and a few weeks later got it back with the album recored on to it along with a printed A4 sheet folded to form a cover. I found the music variable, some I liked and some I didn't. What did impress me was the fact that if The Instant Automatons could do this why couldn't my band? We already had several hours worth of music recorded that had mostly been done for our own enjoyment, so during the Christmas holiday we assembled a C60's worth of recordings and I sent off press releases to all the weekly music papers. I didn't really know what to expect, but both NME and Sounds featured our news article and over the next few months I received a steady stream of blank cassettes which I only just managed to keep up with. By the end of the university year I had received over 100 requests for our album, which isn't bad for a band no-one had heard of and that didn't even gig. Not only that but people seemed to like our music, and as a result The Instant Automatons asked us to appear on a vinyl compilation they were putting out. A proper record, how could we say no? We even got played on John Peel's Radio 1 programme. We made another 3 cassette albums and contributed a track to another vinyl compilation. However with all of us being at different universities and only getting together during the holidays to record, it was getting difficult to keep the band together. Myself and the percussionist moved to Nottingham where we started a new band with the express purpose of playing some gigs. Again people seemed to like what we were doing and we were building up a decent local following. By being in the right place at the right time we got our newly recorded demo track included on a sampler that BBC Radio Nottingham was putting out to showcase local bands to record labels. Then out of the blue CBS records got in touch and seemed to be very interested in signing us. This was just the push I needed to drop out of university (to my parents on-going horror) and try and make a go of being a musician and songwriter. Eventually the band was passed over in favour of a much more commercial proposition - Wham! and as a result we folded. There is a good chance that without those two opportunities I would have at some point knuckled down and got on with my university course and gradually stopped writing and playing music. However I'd had a glimpse of what was possible and that set me on the course that I'm still following today. 70s glam rock got me into music, but it was the post-punk and electronic bands of the late 70s and early 80s that have really shaped the musical path I've followed when it comes to writing and playing and the sorts of bands I've been in over the past 45 years. If I didn't still love what I am doing musically I wouldn't be doing it. I no longer expect to be rich or famous out of it, but it's been a fun ride and I'm still having a blast gigging and recording with my current band. I even owe my current day job in graphic design to being in bands and needing to produce posters for gigs and cassette covers for our demos. My taste in musical instruments has been eclectic from the start. With glam rock I would see bands with outrageously shaped guitars every week on Top Of The Pops, and that's what I wanted. The bass players in my favourite bands all seemed to be Rickenbacker and Gibson players, or they had something custom made by John Birch. Fender was never really on my radar. When I made my guitar in the late 70s it was unconventional in both shape and electronics. Even when I was playing keytar in a synth-pop band in the 80s it sported a number of different custom paint jobs to fit the changing image of the band. When I saw the first Gus prototype guitar in a musical instrument magazine in the 80s I thought that if I ever had the money I'd have one. And now I have the money I have 3 (a guitar and two basses). My latest bass acquisition is an Eastwood Hooky 6-string bass which was bought specifically for the band I currently play with. When the guitarist left early in the band's development I suggested that instead of immediately advertising for a replacement that we see what it would be like with me play Bass VI instead. It appears to work fine. Six years later we still haven't felt the need to add a guitarist to the line up. And that's probably way more information than you wanted...

It’s gone lol. Just like the genzler 4 on the floor when I go to look for one they just have been sold 🤣🤣🙈

Cheers for the quick response. I’ll check it out. The amount of pedals out on the market makes my brain short circuit lol

If it becomes mine, if it becomes mine! Ah OK, when it becomes mine 😁.

Short-scale, narrow body depth...won't be as loud as a jumbo-body acoustic if you're buying it to play unplugged. The Luminlay markers are nice. I like the 12th-fret marker, too. Other than that... https://youtu.be/JoJLbabnPc0?si=asu40LuFxC2qZQ_Z

I use an EHX Bass Soul Food to do just this. For me it's an always-on, very low gain pedal. Just there to put a bit of hair on things. I think there's one currently for sale on the marketplace for not very much.

Hey peeps, I recently bought the genzler Magellan 350 combo. Really really like the kit. I would love to add a little tube like warmth to the sound. I play a pbass ash with maple fretboard. Style of music ranges from soul, funk to jazz. I only play fingerstyle. jeff genzler suggested the genzler 4 on the floor pedal which has gotten great reviews. New they are like 200 (out of my price range) so I put a wanted post on the pedal but no luck as yet. I’m looking for possible alternatives to add some creamy low gain warmth. Something that all always be on. I suffer from analysis paralysis lol. Not really a pedal person at all. I’ve got a ditto x2 looper on the way which I’ll use with it. Possibly a tuner and a compressor. suggestions?

There isn't really a clear "I want to play bass" moment for me. It was an impulse that just bubbled up to the surface from the teenage primordial soup of dumb ideas, anxieties and dreams. When I was 14 or 15, a few of my friends at school started to play the guitar, as did my older brother. I thought they seemed really cool and wanted to join in. My dad would probably let me play his old bass, I knew that, but I was ultimately too chicken to try. At the time, I thought of myself as unteachably inept at any sort of physical skill – I was crap at sports, a risk to myself and others in a workshop and had displayed a spectacular lack of musical ability throughout my childhood. I figured trying to play an instrument again would just be setting myself up for embarrassing failure. At around the same time, oddly, I also developed a sort of nagging and largely irrational anxiety about the prospect of learning to drive. Like, I was aware that this was a thing – a physical skill – I'd need to do, and I was concerned that I would turn out to be just as bad at that as I had been at everything else. I started thinking that perhaps I should try to learn to do something (play an instrument? juggle? knit?) to reassure myself that I was capable of learning something new. The final piece of the puzzle came on a day when I was off school and bored. I was playing 1080 Snowboarding for the N64, and set a time on the "Crystal Lake" run that was genuinely world-beating. Well, perhaps not world-beating, but definitely fast enough that I could write into the magazine if I wanted, get my name in print. I sat there, looking at my character celebrating on the screen, looking out of the window at the sunny summer's day I was avoiding, and had a sudden urge to do something – anything – more productive than this. Something that might make people think I was cool, something that girls might think was cool. I went upstairs and pulled my dad's old bass out of a cupboard. I downloaded the tab for "Dammit" by Blink-182 and started awkwardly plucking the notes. With help from my brother and my dad, I beat my expectations and got surprisingly good surprisingly fast. Haven't stopped playing since. It never did help me get any girls though, and I never did learn to drive.

Thank you! - I'd agree, there's definitely a difference between the stock pickups and the new E4W's. There's some really nice depth to them over passive, obviously extra output and a really clean and sweet top end. I really like them and Nords are without a doubt a great pickup, no knocking. I feel my bass sound was more controlled with the EMGs.

No, you haven't - gifts you are involved in any way with the choosing of (which you have basically confessed to above by announcing your prior knowledge of the bass in question) are a fail - so you have the choice of failing this year or next, depending upon when it becomes yours.