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'Money probably.' - Nope, I think it's fairly safe to say money isn't a huge concern for Nate or any member of the Foo Fighters these days... Unlike many brands today we don't give any free gear to any Artists and Nate pays for his Ashdown gear the same as any other artist. Pic of their payment for Nates last rig attached for you. As you'll see that's money coming in not out... 'In the studio the bass will be DI'd and tracked via some esoteric vintage valve pre-amp' Nope again. Usually it's a mix of Mic and DI from his ABM 900 Head, an old B-15 combo thrown in once in awhile and his BTA 400 as well. It's been this way for the past 15 years. 'The choice of amp and cabs makes zero contribution to the sound either recorded or live' - Really?!? Wow that's quite a statement, if that's the case then I'm not sure what we're all doing here to be honest.... As for testing gear vs ours... The Foo's do this every touring cycle, as you can imagine being in one of the biggest bands in the world Nate is constantly getting gear offered to him, they usually get all the gear together from a multitude of brands for a week of testing during their pre production, after this Nate will pick what he wants to use for that tour. Always a nervous few days from our point of view to be honest but touch wood we have always come out on top. Not for reasons of money or support or promotional purposes but because that's what Nate chooses...

Great response from Ashdown, and what it says to me in a nutshell is that he simply prefers the sound of their gear to other brands. Which is the way it should be imo.

Is it better to jam on a Cream song, or cream on a Jam song?

Is this any help?

I didn't even know there was football on.

That's right - you can fiddle with them for a while, then leg it.

I'll lend amps, but the list of people I'd lend a bass to is very limited. To 1 person actually. And even then the amp lending will have a receipt and a signature. Bad experience means I'm cautious.

all photos will be attached in future, to keep things simple for everyone.

Gotta give Ashdown their dues, they're great at responding...

Ha! That was great fun. 😜 For those concerned about power handling, we smashed 530 watts at 8 ohms into it and it didn't compress at quite insane volume especially for a 1x10. Some manufacturers say things continue to get louder as you turn the volume up. Mostly this is just marketing crap. In the case of the One10, that's actually true.

i'll try and find time to weigh it. its smoother with the sealer, even unsanded.

Not sure if that question is aimed at me or Josie, so I'll give my answer anyway! I'm a huge Dead fan, and to do their music full justice, the sets need to be long. Some of the songs last 30 minutes plus! There needs to be time and space to allow prolonged improvisation, or it simply won't be a GD experience. Over to Josie...

Just sent some Bass Player magazines to Iacopo. Great comms and instant payment for the postage. Great Basschatter. You can deal with this guy with absolute confidence.

After the recent North West bass bash, lurksalot commented that I should start a build thread for my small battery powered amplifier in case anyone was contemplating a similar folly. Some of this has already been posted on another forum, but since photobucket has blanked out all the images, it seemed to make sense to start at the beginning with a new thread. I play a lot with acoustic guitarists, either busking, or at open mic nights, and my existing combo, a Hartke Kickback 10, was adequate, but rather heavy, and limiting because I had to sit by the power socket so as not to trail cables across the floor. My initial specification was based on the Hartke, with a bit of Phil Jones Briefcase thrown in - about 100W, one 10 inch speaker, one 7 AHr 12 volt battery and 2-3 hours of use per charge. I had already built a couple of Jack 10s. so I had a 10 inch speaker to hand - an Eminence basslite S2010, and for a small box, WinISD suggests a volume of 0.9 cu ft (25.5L)and a port tuned to 58Hz. Eminence offer similar figures on their website. The Mk I was a simple reflex box with the preamp, amp and battery mounted on a plywood plate that could be carried separately, or bolted onto the back of the cab. The amp is a Kenwood car stereo module, containing a switch-mode power supply to give positive and negative voltage rails, and a 60W @ 2ohms pair of class AB amplifiers, so it gives a genuine 120 W into 4 ohms bridged. It was unwieldy and cumbersome to carry when bolted together, and a pain to work with in a crowded room when loaded in in bits. Also, the battery life was OK for an acoustic evening, but for a day of busking I needed more power, so I had another think. The MkII had the same volume and porting, but incorporated the amp in a recess in the back, space for three 7 AHr batteries in the base, and a space for the preamp in the front. The woodwork suddenly became a bit more complicated - And the final result. This one was easier to carry, but the amp, which normally runs cool to the touch, now runs too hot due the lack of circulating air. At this point I started wondering whether I could find a class D amplifier module, and redesign the cab around that. The Mk III used a class D stereo amplifier chip on a ready made pcb - readily available from ebay. Just for a change, I made the cab smaller to accomodate the amp and speaker in the same volume as the Mk I speaker. Having recently aquired an Ashdown MyBass 550 in a trade, I was keen to be able to use it with this pair of speakers, so I added extra speakons and switches to the back of the cab so I could connect either the internal amp or the external amp to the speaker, or connect the internal amp to an external speaker. Almost inevitably, while setting up in a hurry on a dark stage, I managed to connect the output of the MyBass to the output of the battery amp - the MyBass won. At that point I decided that I should go modular, and have separate heads that clipped onto the top of the cab. No more switching options to get wrong, just clip the head on before you leave home and you're good to go. This is the Mk IV - the current version. The Mk III cab was butchered to convert it into a MK I style cab, and kitchen-cupboard kick-plate fasteners were fitted to anchor the clip-on amplifier modules The battery combo: The mains combo: This is the battery powered amp and battery with an earlier version of the preamp. I need to take some more photos before I post the next installment. David

After 8 track tapes naturally.....

Our BL shares vocals with our other guitarist. Blue

Fart Frequency changes when using a 5 string

And handling charge by whoever sorts Customs and Theft ?

footie? who watches that?

Of course, the other option is to burn the studio down and everything in it. Perfect excuse that covers all eventualities.

My three pence worth: whilst I appreciate your dilemma, in my experience people do not take care of borrowed equipment. Personally I wouldn’t not lend the Amp and certainly not the bass. Just state your case and neither a borrower or a lender be 🤓

We take 2 ten minute breaks. Blue

Just bought a Fender Marcus Miller Jazz bass from Tonci, great communication, all the way though the sale, Bass was packed excellently with all tracking numbers gven, Bass was excellent as described, I love it!! Tonci is a great guy and I would recommend him to anyone Martin

Please explain this. I've heard it mentioned many times over the years, but a quantitive explanation would be most useful. What does it sound like, considering everyone's farts quite different.

That looks a lot of guitar for the money. The quality of cheapish "starter" instruments is amazing these days. I'm in my 50's and I would imagine like me, many of my peers on here struggled on to beome bass players despite the desperately bad planks we had to start on.

Early symptoms of seller's leaver's regret? - What you've written above, doesn't sound too bad to me and I'd trade that for not being in a band at all. Must admit I'm with @blue on this. Making music is all about, well err...making music, whether that be playing live or studio recordings. For me bass was never intended to be a solo bedroom instrument; it was always meant to be in with a bunch of other musos, playing 'cos you all love making great music. As long as some of us are engaging with the audience and they're having a good time, doesn't matter to me that a couple of band members are less extrovert / 'shoe gazers' than others. Been plenty of times when I've got fed up with my bandmates (as I'm sure they have with me!!). But the fun / good times have far outweighed the bad. When that stops being the case, it will be time to move on, but until then the grass definitely isn't always greener, right?

I have no experience with that particular cab but can add this. Yorkville is part of Traynor and are very common here (in Canada). Usually the quality is top notch, very durable and road worthy gear. I've owned Traynor cabs in the past which were light and loud. Although some older models can be heavy. Maybe do a search on talkbass.com to see if anyone has any experiences with that particular cab.

It's the same in the Kemper world too. Everybody trying to flog profiles... alot of them absolutely dire... and with no evidence of them actually being their own profiles, or even profiles of what they are reputably meant to be profiles of. The good thing about the Kemper though, is that there are the established folk out there that have the supporting evidence and great sounding profiles that back up their business. MBritt is probably top of the class for that... and in this country, theampfactory.

I assume that cable came in through the Dumble door?

I've been known to jam on a Cream song, but there were no scones involved as far as I know!

If the same criteria were applied by Fender in the 70's, a significant proportion of highly sought after instruments now would have been sold as decoration only then

tomorrow night's gig is a $20 cab fare away and we finish at 11, so there is drinking time afterwards. Venue has a house drum kit so I'm sharing the cab with our drummer who lives near me. He hasn't realised yet, but he is my roadie for the night hehe

Sure @Cosmo Valdemar just pm me and I can get you on the list.

The gold knobs turned up today. Now finished. Looks a lot better than i thought in real life (if a bit more gold than originally planned).

So he's probably too old by most bands' criteria??

Good man. There's a topic somewhere on the forum where you can show your material. Sorry I wasn't able to think of its correct title but have a look around if you've not found it already.

This is awesome! Beautiful looking and sounding work!

Arguably, strings that weren't noisy would be pointless ...

Our singer Tony has an entertainment agency with lots of different acts from Laptop Johnny DJs and solo tribute acts to 8 piece function bands. He lives in Wythenshawe so most of his acts and music venues are based around Stockport and South Manchester. His agency has a few blues bands and he is often looking for dep musicians or permanent replacements. I'll ask him if he knows of anybody needing a bass player if you like?

And as promised, some fancy pics

There are a number of builders on this forum, @Bastav , who are my inspiration and act as my aspiration to improve certain aspects of my own building. To do carves like this without a single lump or bump evident is what I presently strive for. I haven't got there yet and will look at these photos as a reminder of how close I'm getting - or, looking at them here, how far I am away.

Monster Trace Elliot AH500 If you feel the Earth around you shaking I might need to turn it down a bit...