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I was playing keyboard in a pop-reggae band a few years back (well, we thought we were reggae but really we were a rock band with a passing offbeat acquaintance) and one of the doormen round town booked us to play at his nephew's christening. He wasn't offering much but he was a nice lad and we already owed him a few favours for 'well-timed assistance' around town, so we hop in the van and troll down to Brum for a play. We rock up outside this old community hall about 6PM to meet Mustafa, and after a minute he comes out dressed in this incredible full-length black and red leather robe, which makes him look like something out of Star Wars. That was Red Flag No 1. Red Flag No 2 was the polyrhythmic music playing at punishing volume inside the hall. We go inside only to find ourselves walking into the middle of a traditional Ghanian christening ceremony (or whatever the equivalent is) and that was the point where we instantly realise we are not going to go down well. We're sat down over at the back of the room with the other men and given a plate of rice that nearly takes my head off (our singer causes a minor scandal by sitting with us instead of the women, but I think we got tagged with the 'musician' exemption) and Staf introduces us to approximately 350 members of his extended family, who are all absolutely lovely and just as totally baffled as to why we're there. The ladies are all sat in circle of chairs in the middle of the room with the kid in the middle, the men are sat around the edges, and the actual ceremony is being conducted by two MCs, one man and one woman, who will quickly become MC Tall and MC Short respectively. They're taking it in turns to shout through a PA turned up so loud it's become a fuzzbox; there is a second PA playing music at a volume where my eyeballs are vibrating; I do not recognise a single tune all evening. Every few minutes MC Tall or Short will double up on the shouting tempo and the women all get up and pull huge wads of dollars out of their pocket, which they then throw at the kid. The ladies are all stunning with incredibly elaborate hairstyles and the men are wearing the same leather robes as Staf - this is clearly a big occasion and everyone is putting on their best 'look how much money we have' display, which explains the throwing of the dollars. We are under-dressed, hungover, and trying to make awkward chit-chat at the top of our voices. Eventually the ceremony is over and we set up on the community hall stage, planning to make this the shortest set of our lives. We have a quick argument about what to play, which ends with us scrapping everything from our set that isn't the reggae material. Our singer is already nervous after the men's section faux pas and we've not been able to understand a single word of the ceremony so far so we have NO IDEA what is happening. We're gamely vamping away at our best imitation of an authentic roots band but are keenly aware that our material is aimed at a spot several thousand miles and a different hemisphere away from what the crowd is expecting, and it's just dropping into the abyss of stares. The crowd is polite but clearly expecting something which is not happening. Second song in and we're contemplating dropping the rest of the set and legging it. Singer is visibly wilting under the stares of an entire flock of matriachs perched to stage right; I'm getting extremely interested in the top of the keyboard, which I have never examined so closely before. My nose is scraping the flat keys at points. Suddenly MC Short is on stage with us and grabbing the mic off the singer. What fresh hell is this??? We're expecting to be cut off unceremoniously, but instead she starts shouting at the crowd with a variation on her earlier theme. This lady is about 60 and barely four feet tall, but she can shout for God and with the backup of the PA she is reaching pitches that are melting my fillings. Every dog in a twenty mile radius is starting to howl. At her instigation, the entire front row of (stunning) women gets up as a unit to start throwing dollars at us - I'm beginning to have some very complicated feelings indeed. After she feels the crowd are sufficiently harangued we get the mic back and play another few songs which are met with respectful applause if not much actual interest, so we take the hint and finish up. We've picked up about 600 dollars in ones and have to carry them in a basket along with our gear. As soon as we finish the party is back on and everyone is off their chairs and dancing; hundreds of kids have appeared out of nowhere to do the old church hall skidding dance which apparently transcends culture! Huge baskets of homemade fried fish and curried rices have started appearing round the edges of the hall and we eat as much as we can physically carry back to the table. It's all delicious but so hot my hair starts curling and I spontaneously develop sunburn, which the kids all find hilarious. Staf is crazily happy that we played as he seems to think we are megastars rather than the chancers we are, and we're just happy to have been asked to do it so we decline our fee and take petrol money instead, reasoning that the story will likely pay for itself in beer over the years. We donate the dollars to the kiddo as a gift because we're all fairly drunk on Star Beer at this point and getting them changed seems like hassle. Some of the stunning girls from earlier are starting to give us the eye but my daddy taught me never to hit on a girl when A) you're at someone else's family occasion and B) her daddy is roughly the size of a car, in the room, and giving you the death glare, so prudence becomes the better part of valour and we make a swift exit. In reality it wasn't actually that desperate considering we were playing to an audience who had absolutely no interest in what we were doing, but it was hell of a night at the time. Don't think I've ever felt so out of place before or since. The food sure beat the hell out of my family dos though! I'd do it all again just for another crack at that buffet, even if my fragile little English stomach meant I spent three hours glued to the toilet next morning...

Just had my 1st unrequested slap bass demo in at least 20yrs, when asking to try a bass in Dawsons. For the record, I've not missed those!

I had this at a gig recently. It wasn't a deliberate act, just an unfortunate error that the guitarist put the capo on the 2nd fret rather than the 3rd. I was used to singing this particular song in Bb, and something didn't sound right...a quick look down at the guitar neck confirmed my suspicions, and I spent the next three minutes trying to shift the vocal line down a semitone whilst still trying to capture the gentle, summery wistfulness that this song is supposed to evoke. I wouldn't have minded so much except that I was also the guitarist in this situation...

Hi guys, I'm sorry, I meant to mention this at the SW Bash Yesterday, but completely forgot. This may already have been covered before here, but if you are a professional player, sound guy, industry professional, you may qualify for this scheme:- https://www.hearformusicians.org.uk/ You'll need to demonstrate that you earn the bulk of your income from music but if you qualify, you will be able to access hearing tests, consultation and a pair of ACS moulded ear protectors, a package worth £285, for just £40 (its just £30 if you are an MU member!). If like me, you spend much of your working life in loud venues or on loud stages, then if you have not done so already, get yourself signed up! *For clarity - this is nothing to do with custom moulds for in-ear monitoring, it is purely for ear protection... which is pretty damned important!

Bed-time now - I'll finish the story tomorrow!

“The wand chooses the wizard”

Wow...! Now that's how to do it. Looks amazing. Even the location itself. Have bookmarked for reading through that thread after work... PS: I notice they're using RPG BAD panels... I've just ordered a very small batch of those. For my garage. And not my multi-million dollar purpose-built, carbon-neutral studio. But heh, other than that point of difference, I'm right with them

But most people don't really need a fully-featured DAW. I've been a Logic user for almost 25 years now, and I only use a tiny amount of the facilities that the program offers. In fact for a lot of what I do these days Garageband would probably be more than adequate. Don't forget that the OP is a self-confessed beginner when it comes to recording, and the last thing he probably wants to do is get bogged down in an overly-complicated program just to get a few ideas turned into full-fledged song recordings. IMO a bit a simplicity can do wonders for focusing the mind and the basic task in hand which is recording your musical ideas and turning them into a fully arranged song. In fact if the OP is new to all this, then he probably already knows the songs and the arrangements and he just needs a way of recording them is quickly and easily as possible, and the fewer new things he needs to spend time learning, the better the end result is likely to be. Because these days you can buy the same DAW is that used by all the big name studios for a couple of hundred pounds at the most, the choices can be somewhat overwhelming for the new home-recordist. When I first started recording in the mid 70s you had basically three choices: Live into a mono or stereo reel-to-reel or cassette recorder Bouncing between to tracks of a stereo reel-to-reel recorder building up your recording one instrument at a time. Going into a commercial studio (which unless you had a lot of money to spend would probably only be 4-track) There was semi-pro studio equipment available, but even the most modest of 4-track studio set ups would cost you several thousand pounds in the days when a new Fender bass cost around a couple of hundred. It wasn't until the original Portastudio came out in 1979 that home recording started to become remotely affordable and simple enough for the average musician to get to grips with. And this brings me to another point. What exactly does the OP want out of the recordings he makes? And how much is he prepared to spend getting them to sound the way he wants them to. OK he has and iMac and Garageband, but he's still going to need an audio interface and some form of monitoring, he's taking about buying a keyboard for playing the Garageband instruments, and he'll probably also need a microphone, unless all his compositions are instrumentals. All of a sudden you are looking at spending money that could buy you a couple of days in a decent local studio where a well-organised and rehearsed musician could quite easily record and mix a 5-6 track mini album which will most likely sound far better than anything he can do at home. As others have already said, spending on studio equipment can make even the most rampant bass GAS look completely insignificant. I have my own cautionary tale of home recording. Having stated at the bottom, recording live onto a stereo cassette recorder and working my way through 4 and 8 track Portastudios adding analogue and then MIDI sequencing along the way, I finally upgraded to a fully-fledged DAW. by this time I had spent well in excess of £30,000 on equipment and the room in which it was all housed (most of which was done over the space of 7 years, and in retrospect for what I was trying to do would have been better spent hiring a pro-studio and producer). And while my recording were improvements over those I was making in the 70s, it was mostly technical improvements in sound quality (the elimination of tape hiss, wow and flutter, and not having to worry about sound degradation when bouncing tracks), and I still wasn't able to make recordings that sounded as good as the records and CDs I was buying. In the end I had the face up to the facts that the weak link in my recording was my (lack of) skill as an engineer - something that was very much brought home to me after a couple of trips to local studios with my last band where it took the engineer a matter of minutes to get a better sound than I was able to achieve on my own in weeks or fiddling at home. I've ended up selling nearly all my studio gear, and for anything other than basic MIDI sequencing and sorting out song arrangements I would go into a decent studio. So to the OP, think carefully about what you want to achieve. Home recording can be a lot of fun, but it can also be very frustrating experience. Just because you are a competent musician doesn't automatically mean that you will be a good engineer as well. From my PoV I'd much rather have a few really professional sounding recordings than what I do have which is lots of "home demos" in various states of (un)completion.

Thought I’d share my bit of Surf Green joy on this wet and miserable Monday 😁. Saw this on a well known auction site and fell in love at first sight but unfortunately the seller was miles away. Now I like a drive as much as the next gas head, but this would have been about 4 hours each way. Step forward the extremely helpful seller (the original and only owner) who offered to meet me halfway. Met him at the weekend and I’m certainly not disappointed with the bass, it really is in unmarked condition. A 2006 model according to the Sandberg website, the bass came with the original gig bag, tag showing the woods and serial number, Allen keys and even a spare pre-amp (apparently this was a sweetener to the owner as the original delivery from Sandberg was delayed for some reason). It’s a weighty beast but that’s good for me as I do like to know I’m wearing something when I play it. I’d say it’s a similar weight to the poplar or ash Stingrays I’ve had previously. Plays beautifully and has a great range of powerful tones. I’m loving the split coil in both active and passive, but I’m also pleasantly surprised by the tone with both pickups on together. Very punchy sound with added oomph! All in all the first impressions of my first sandy are very good indeed 😁

The event is open! Graham has slipped seemlessly from cable-laying to reception duties and the first guests are arriving - here's John 'chienmortbb' on his way to start setting up the 12" cab shootout. http:// Back in the kitchen, Scrumpette Mandy is rustling-up breakfast in the shape of her world-famous (well, certainly in Newton Abbot) frittatas... http:// ...which didn't hang around for long! http://

I've sent and received lots of guitars and now basses internationally over the years without issues. I've shipped in gig bags that have been stuffed with bubble wrap inside and then really heavily wrapped outside to secure the instrument, we're talking a lot of layers and a lot of tape. I wouldn't send a hollow body in a gig bag though, as the package needs to be able to withstand not only sudden impact but also heavy weight on top of it, which I wouldn't want for a hollow bass. The ideal for me is to ship in a hardcase with bubble wrap on the outside for impact absorption. It goes without saying, ship insured. When I buy a bass I'm happy to pay extra for insured shipping. I can't recall ever sending an instrument internationally where the buyer didn't go for the full insurance option. Remember that if you're worried about the bass getting rough treatment during international shipping it's worth considering that mishandling is just as likely to happen in the UK by the parcel carrier. Also, it's worth bearing in mind that the horror stories you do hear about are a biased way of assessing the risk of shipping. For ever horror story someone goes online to post, there will have been hundreds of instruments delivered successfully without issue and in the event it does go badly, if you've paid for the insured shipping then no one is left out of pocket at the end.

Is that an Elf & Safety Warning? Coat got...

I think some couriers won't accept liability unless the instrument is in a hard case. If so your options are either: Buy cheap and/or secondhand hard case and include it in the sale cost. Find a courier that will offer insurance without a hard case and ask your local guitar shop to kindly supply you with a cardboard shipping box and any included packaging material (I've done this myself at Dawsons in central Manchester and they were very obliging - got a sturdy Fender bass box with all the trimmings, including a free cable). You definitely don't want to be sending it in a gig bag within a standard cardboard box. Unless you're a masochist.

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Yaaaaaay. A pick player doing a demo That makes a really nice change to all that slap stuff demos that show absolutely nothing. :-) Love that tone.

Bridge cover only on my P bass. Looks cool and keeps the foam out of view too.

What a great day out! And a great venue in the Somerset countryside. It takes a lot of work to organise an event that ran as smoothly as this one. So, many thanks to Mike for all his hard work and impeccable organisation, and to his wife (and/or daughter ) and helpers who prepared such lovely food and served it with a friendly smile. I can still taste that apple cake..... For anyone who half-considered coming but didn't, I can say that the atmosphere was very relaxed, and that everyone was really friendly and welcoming. So make sure you make it next year. People were keen for you to try their basses and amps, and there were some fascinating products - old and new - to play with. I tried out some of my fave Ibanez basses, and was surprised at how good an old Mk IV Trace Elliot 150W head was (bloody good!). I spent most of my time in the techie room, as Graham calls it, auditioning cabs and discussing the finer points of Linkwitz-Reilley crossovers (not really) and collecting opinions on the voicing of the latest incarnation of the Basschat 12 (a project that will no doubt continue as long as there is Basschat). John put in a lot of work for the cab shootout, even though it didn't quite go as planned - but lessons were learned . And Phil's cab building demonstration was an eye-opener. He built a complete, working cab in 42 minutes. Amazing! Thanks to all who contributed to making this such a brilliant event!

Yep, had that one. 'I'm too old to play in shitty pubs' - she was in her 30's the rest of us were old farts in our 50's. Oh and not getting back to me for 4 days if she was available for a gig we'd been offered....and then saying no to it! She was a nightmare....brilliant blues voice though. We did a couple of Janis Joplin songs and she very nearly had me in tears she was that good

If you love it, then play it. End of.

I've seen this a lot. Also drummers who insist on setting up bang in the middle of the stage when it's obviously not the best use of space. What makes them think they're entitled to the ENTIRE bloody stage? Of course this is all a LOT more annoying if they're crap...

I'll be there next year, for definite! The Wal needs a spot of gentle TLC -- she's an old lady now, y'know -- so I've got a year to get her sorted out.

I've sent hundreds of basses all over the world with only 2 problems that were solved as I had an insurance. One is related here : The other was a theft by the delivery man himself, a very clever guy... Beware that the English post only covers music instruments up to £100 GBP... I'm using for a while EuroSender when I have something to ship within Europe (UK is in Europe, by the way ), because they are a logistic company that will offer you the lowest fare, will pick up your parcel wherever you want, can send up to 30 kilos within UK and up to 40 kilos to Europe or even more on a pallet and will offer you up to 2.000 Euros of insurance. The slight issue being the two days of latency for your parcel to be picked up because they make the whole logistic part. It's fast and efficient. A link : https://www.eurosender.com/ That said slackening the strings could be more dangerous than it seems as the truss rod will induce even more tension to the neck. If you do this, then also release the truss rod tension and there will be no problem at all.

Slacken the strings to reduce tension on the neck. Package it sufficient to withstand someone standing on it. Send fully insured via UPS (as used by all of our overseas shipping companies at work). Interparcel offer good deals. There are horror stories associated with every courier company, but lots more success stories that you never get to hear about (Royal Mail's own failure/horror rate is quoted as being 0.01%). Life's too short for much fretting beyond that

"Well, Edmund, it's just that while Baldrick and I were searching through the bass guitars, we found one...pfft! ...shaped almost exactly like...a thingy!" "I trust you have removed this hilarious item?" "No, my lord, I had a cunning plan to put it up for sale on ye internet, where all the world might marvel at it from the comfort of their electronic terminals."

Anyone who 'noodles' between songs in rehearsal, which is normally the guitarist, and generally bits of song that never will be in our repertoire. Again in a rehearsals - Singers who insist on talking through their mic all the time, even though everyone else is conversing at normal volumes. Oh - and band members who don't practice the agreed material but come along with loads of other suggestions instead. Edited again- Singers who don't even own their own mic and do FA to help set up/breakdown.

Very happy with the Squier you kindly swapped to me, needless to say have changed the pickup covers back to black and given it a brush up and polish too (not that I'm saying it was dirty, just I have so much polish......)

Just to echo what everyone else said - cheers @scrumpymike and gang. Oh and I wish I had the dough for your headless Hohner Jack - it fit like a glove! Hopefully it’ll still be available at the end of the month. Thanks to @yorks5stringer for the swap - I’m very happy with my new bass! A mate popped over this evening and used it to work out a couple of riffs/incidental pieces for some short he’s working on - very cool. Brilliant to talk to the all the builders, too. I still can’t believe my wife was encouraging me to buy one of @Jabba_the_gut‘s marvelous creations (ignoring the lack of funds element). She’s after something, that one...

As long as the engineer has enough aux sends on the desk and is happy to spend the time sorting out a decent mix for her. She's unlikely to get a stereo mix but you never know. Personally I prefer to have my in ear mix set up just to my liking with compression so I take quite a long time when setting up with a new or unfamiliar desk. It would definitely be wise for her to buy a decent system with a limiter function.

Any BCers playing in experimental bands I f you heard us, you'd think so😂

Thanks ped. I'd better get writing :-)

Definitely bad for your Elf!

Yes! Always excellent.

Or Guitar Interactive Magazine Premium if you have more 'specialist' tastes

Looks good. How soon before we can buy it off you second hand? (I give it three months, tops)

Definitely not stupid. I did this with a pair of budget off the shelf iems and it worked very well.

Well it arrived today. Very impressed with the quality. Heavier than i expected, and the knobs feel really nice and smooth, but with good resistance. I wont get a chance to plug it in before tonight's rehearsal but ill report back tomorrow. The only slight issue i have is its been supplied with a European 2 pin PSU (and shaver adaptor). Not too happy about that so ill email G4M and see if they can source the correct one. Ill be using my Cioks DC5 for the pedal board but for home use id prefer a smaller form factor as far as PSU goes.

Hello, that’ll be me! I had intended to try selling it, but I arrived too late and I wasn’t really committed to letting it go! I should pop it in the for sale section here, but haven’t a clue how much for!

Just whilst we are continuing on our HPF discussions, I thought I'd take a bit of time out this morning to go through this excellent / very helpful thread from the start, as there's been stuff that folk were saying from the outset where, for me, the penny has only recently been dropping on! Anyway I've taken the liberty of cutting and pasting some of the comments from our more expert brethren into the attached note (and apologies if I didn't get ALL the 'best bits') which I've found particularly helpful, and which I'm sharing in case anyone else would also find a condensed version of 14 pages of the discussions useful. HPFs.docx

yes, it's always surprising how mistakes seem to really stand out when they happen, but nobody else seems to notice them them

On the rare occasions I've experienced this attitude it's always from people who really can't play their own instruments. Funny, that.

Big thank you to Scrumpy Mike and the rest of the team for putting on another cracking event. Lots of interesting people, gear and fab food!

Sound engineers have actually been using that general approach pretty much forever.

Well done Norm - that just leaves my pink torpedo-up to sort then Blimey, we're well chuffed that everybody seems to have had such a good time - I'll book the hall for next year's Bash tomorrow!!

Best bang for the buck cans for recording are Studiospares m1000 . Beat speakers 5x more expensive IME. Loads cheaper than monitors which are not really going to help much if the room isnt treated, theyll just confuse the issue to a greater or lesser degree.

Sounds like my kind of weekend. Nice! Blue

Said the man in the orthopaedic shoes.....

I'll have a bash at putting some pictures up.

I've had all of those and a lot more over the years. The flawed personality type who is drawn to play in a band seems to have existed forever. Mozart probably had guys like this in his orchestra. If you can't change them or fire them learn how to deal with them. I'll endure almost anything if the gig is good. I've played with the mildly eccentric to the outright criminally insane, but I've met more good guys and they make up for it all.

Makes you wonder why the rest of it is so heavy then......