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Busy day yesterday so just sitting down to report on Friday night's gig for my covers band In Like Flynn. It's a new start-up by 4 experienced musicians and our gig count hasn't reached double figures yet. We were playing in the beer garden of the White Hart in Castle Cary for the second time in our short career. Nice venue recently taken over by proper people who you really hope will make a go of it. By the advertised start time of 7.30pm, the garden was full with a crowd spanning 3 generations (come to think of it, I span 3 generations on my own 🙂). Despite a few mistakes - annoying to us but probably not noticed by the punters - it was one of those gigs where we felt we'd reached that kind of comfortable plateau where the enjoyment of playing finally overcomes the anxiety of not being totally familiar with what you're doing. It was the first outing of my active Sandy s-s TM with its Aguilar upgrade through my Ampeg SVT 7 PRO + LFSys Monaco + Barefaced SC3. Absolutely amazing sounds with more than enough tonal flexibility to cover the wide range of stuff we do!! So that put a smile on my face from the sound-check to the final encore. The icing on the cake was that we got a booking for a private function. Life's good!! If you get a minute, visit https://www.inlikeflynnband.com/home and have a look at our show reel.

Double post nightmare! Will it happen again? No-one ever knows...

Someone else's.

AF simply means "across flats" It's a terminology used extensively (but not solely) on imperial tools, quite often for spanners too. So you 1/2" AF spanner is exactly that. Half an inch across the opposite sides of the hex bolt, and your 13mm spanner is just..well a 13mil spanner 😉. Don't ask me why, just seems to be more often used on imperial tools. Technically a 13mm AF spanner is correct too, but you don't often hear then called that. In terms of allen keys it's just the measurement from one side of the flat to the other opposite side flat. Also please don't use a metric allen key even if it looks like it'll fit as you'll bugger up your socket then have to spend a day trying to find SAE screws from a company who are prepared to sell you less than 10 for an exorbitant price are we're pretty well metric here now and SAE stuff is more specialised. 👍 You can get a set of imperial keys for about a fiver or so on Amazon, well worth having a set of both if you spend time messing with your basses.

Yes good choice, the RM amps are unsung heroes imo.

What a curious design - never had a close look at one of these before. So - I'm assuming the saddle blocks have tabs which sit in slots either side of the channels in the bridge base, so tightening the grub screws locks them in position in the channel? A pair of button-head allens for saddles/height adjustment is an interesting solution - I've absolutely never seen that anywhere before.

Nice

I like the retro style of the Italia basses. I have an Imola (the Ampeg AEB hommage), it is well made and very light.

I finally (after ages!) tried out my M-vave Cube Baby. I put it through a small 8-inch HH powered speaker (no tone controls) to simulate a 'worst case' di situation. Switching in the IR cabs does change the sound to feel much bigger and more like bass amp. The compressor seems to do a decent job. The tuner is a bit clunky to use but works. Boost seems to add some gentle overdrive. The reverb/ modulation effects are a bit odd, some seem to lack a clean component (maybe bad choice of settings) so a few moments delay before getting an ethereal echo. For price/size it seems a good thing to have in a gig bag as emergency di or to let you use a monitor as a bass amp.

Say What? - Trouble Funk

The things that go on in school staff-rooms nowadays.

Don't Mess With My Toot Toot - Denise LaSalle

Just got this from @Tomjbass (cheers bud, good guy) the 1967 Jazz is my favourite jazz - Adam Yauch’s stripped J is my absolute fave. Second to that is Sherwood Green or a gassed off Lake placid Blue to Ocean Turquoise- lollipop tuners, block inlays…so when the Adam Clayton came out, I was looked and thought yeah looks great but for some daft reason signature basses seemed too fanboy. also new too expensive and I’m not a U2 or Adam Clayton fan in particular. But I kept looking at Tom’s ad, and thought it might be perfect for what I’m doing. At approximately 9.5lb a bit heavier than the player 2 next to it but not much. I had the player 2 as a back up the the P bass I’m reluctantly selling - and just had a full set up on it. Luthier ran hour under the frets are a couple weeks dead and a full fret level and dress now it plays brill- but I’m now afraid it’s not going to get played The reason being - did a set up to my taste, oiled board, stuck a tort guard on and been playing it all weekend. The neck has a great silky urethane and a custom AC shape, quite a hard maple and bit neck divey, the frets feel really worn in and rounded edges. So great to play for hours. The best thing though, are the pickups, superb range of tones, if the player 2 had those pickups would be perfect. The heck soloed with birds mute us pure Jameson vibes, and a pick with bridge and 50% neck is brilliant- the time I need for my band. So when my P goes, I’ll be sad but ok going forward with this Jazz. Cheers Tom.

Easy if you put a capo on the 29th fret.

I've just seen this video with Trevor talking about his session and gigging career from the early days. It's just casual talking and very funny at times between two of the UK's top session players. It around forty-five minutes long:

Deleted. Sorry didn't realise it was breaking rules as it's a free download. Apologies