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a ha hahahahaha!

Nice to see Diego Maradona keeping himself busy on BVs!

Getting the drummer to play quieter is like cutting the lawn with a tumble dryer.

From my humble observations and what I hear from people, venues don’t want space taken up with a full band and large speakers/amps, and they don’t want the deafening volume that a large amount of amateur bands seem to want to play at. Sadly in nice bars/clubs a full band is a bit too much for a lot of punters, but they can tolerate a quiet innofensive acoustic duo who just play ‘background noise’. There is a nice bar in the nearest town to me and they have live music a few nights a week. An acquaintance goes there fairly often with work colleagues etc as the food and drink is good, and overheard him say as soon as the local blues/rock/cover band of choice fire up for the night they all get out as soon as possible. I think a lot of the time people just don’t want to hear another band playing the same old dross or murdering modern pop tunes in their local. I’m guilty, I play in a covers band and despite being pretty good (IMO) I would probably avoid a bar with us or anyone else playing 😂

Here's the antidote ...

Thought I'd share this experience in case someone else has the same problem - it might save you some hassle/cash. A while back my MXR M87 died. The level meter was still functioning but there was absolutely no sound coming from the pedal output. I did all the usual quick fixes (contact cleaner on jacks, replaced footswitch etc) but to no avail. After a bit of digging I discovered that the output op-amp in this pedal (TLC2262 in case you were wondering) has a maximum voltage of 16V. Obviously this would normally be OK in a pedal that runs at 9V, except that MXRs "Constant Headroom Technology" feature is essentially a charge pump circuit that doubles the pedal's internal voltage to 18V. It shouldn't take a genius to work out what therefore ensues if, like me, you're unlucky. I replaced the TLC2262 with an AD822 (which has a supply voltage of 18V) and my pedal now lives and breathes again. I believe MXR will fix pedals under warranty for a flat fee of £75, whereas replacing the blown chip cost me less than a tenner and a few minutes fiddling with a soldering iron (the TLC2262 and AD822 chips are both surface mount - soldering these can be tricky unless you're experienced in doing so). It appears that mine is not an isolated issue as a quick Google uncovers many such failures, so I figured I'd pass this info on in case any other BC members' M87s suffer the same fate. Please use or disregard this information as you see fit!

I hadn't heard of Hot Rods so I googled it to see what they were... Found a thread on a drummers discussion board answering an identical question about being too loud for smaller venues, and one of them honestly suggests that to be quieter on stage the offending drummer should mic up his kit because that way they can turn the volume down through the PA

Absolutely this! Our shedbuilder invested in one about 3 months ago - same issues, he's naturally loud so the volumes creep up for everyone blah blah....... We thought we'd only use it on certain gigs where we are scaring the landlord but we've found that our whole sound is miles better with it and now use it almost all the time. As well as limiting the overall drum volume its tightened the whole sound up and i can slot the bass in a lot easier with the kick (which we put thru the pa/sub). Nobody's suffering from cymbal ears any more either. We can get a great controlled beefy sound at lower volumes. Its also a great topic of conversation with the crowd - especially when we tell them we fill it with water in the second set :-) And we're looking for some stick on Garfields to stick on the inside where he cant each them whilst he's playing.

The recommended approach is to position a piece of cord or edge of a cloth under the edge of the knob, (or the remaining insert), then pull the string/cloth upwards. Don't punch yourself in the face when it goes!

I told you at the time that joining a band with John Hall would be a disaster!

...was his solo a spoof..?

Thought I'd start a thread on my next builds, a pair of Les Paul like basses or my take on them. They will be made entirely from quarter sawn African Mahogany (FSC sourced) painted black nitro and both using Rocklite finger boards, one in Ebano and the other in Sunadri or ebony and Indian Rosewood substitutes. Other items to be used will be Mojo Thunderbird pickups for at least one of them, dual action truss rods, Warwick 2 piece bridge and Hipshot ultralite tuners. There will be mother of pearl inlays on the fingerboard and headstock along with Rocklite Ebano veneers. I'm not in any great hurry to finish these so i may take a while but so far other than buy some bits I have started wood preparation. The neck laminates have been ripped and stacked and will be left for a while to relieve stresses, the body timbers have been rough planed to an oversize dimension again to allow it to settle a little before planing to size and gluing together. So they are currently sat resting on top of my bench until I'm ready to plane the neck laminates and glue them. As that seems a very poor start let me introduce you to my tiny workshop and a basic list of what's in it Most importantly my bench, 10" Saw bench, 14" band saw, 10" planer thicknesser, router table, drill press, 12" disc sander, oscillating bobbin sander. Beyond that there are power tools, loads of hand tools hidden away and a dedicated sharpening station tucked away in the corner behind the bench. Being so small it's very difficult to keep clean and tidy so I apologise for the dust and the mess

I took out the passive circuit from my Super P today and installed a Stellartone Tonstyler. I got hold of an old 16 click bass model; they are not made anymore. Just: WOW! This is how it should be... - First position is straight to the output jack, bypassing the filter. Crisp and crunchy! - Second position is like a regular tone pot fully open. - All others have a steep roll-off, leaving much meat and potato all the way up to where it cuts. No wet blanket syndrome... - The last position is all about the dub, but with a nice full and warm low mid, giving body to the tone. Here is a nice YouTube clip demoing... No going back!

Anybody seen this? Looks amazing. ATB Guitars in Cheltenham do sell some choice vintage stuff. They also have a mint 1980 MM Stingray in at the moment. https://www.atbguitars.com/store/product/1965-fender-jazz-bass-sonic-blue-ohsc-nr-mint-1965fjbsb/

Hello Everyone, I'm Jacob, I have been a lurker for quite a while so thought it was time to join the conversation. I used to play a lot when I was younger, but kind of fell off after I finished at university and started 'real life'. Anyway, I recently picked the bass up again and have really gotten back into the swing of things and am enjoying it, even thinking of trying out for some bands once I get a bit more confident. My gear is pretty random, I play a 5 string LTD F-205 with a pair of EMGs which makes me look like I am going to head out church burning, picked it up from a mate who was pretty much giving it away because he had overspent. I play it through a small Ashdown After 8 combo which is perfect for my needs. I am planning on getting another bass at some point but don't know what, mainly because I don't want a 5 string because I never use the B and the LTD is very uncomfortable to play sat down but am also unsure as to what sound I want haha! Looking forward to chatting with you and contributing where I can!

Way back in early '86 I spent a wonderful day at the much-missed Wapping Bass Centre, trying a whole load of fabulous exotica. Out of curiosity, I had a quick go on a Steinberger L2... It turned out to be a very quick go. What a ghastly instrument. No redeeming features aesthetically, ergonomically or sonically. Just utterly dreadful.

It's important to try and listen to your sound in the context of the rest of the band, which is hard to do effectively at high volume rehearsals. I like to play along to studio recordings with different combinations of basses and preamp pedals into headphones to figure out what works best. The last couple of bands I've been in have had a very thick distorted guitar tone (e.g. Les Paul into a cranked Orange tube head). Here I've found it best to use a scooped tone to provide a pillow of low end to underpin the sound, but with a bit of crispy gain up top to add clarity and fill out that upper midrange where the guitarist and vocalist don't often tread. I used a BB1025X with both pickups on which is naturally scooped and growly anyway, into a Darkglass B3K, although the Tech21 DP-3X is my weapon of choice for this tone now. If I'm playing at the jam night down my local, totally different ball game. Often more then one guitar, but usually thinner sounding, and often a higher pitched female vocalist. To slot in here I stay out of the upper mids, go easy on the deep low end and fill out the lower mids with a P-Bass or my Sandberg Basic (a bit like a Stingray), both of which are wearing TI flats. Either straight into the amp or via a low gain drive pedal of a totally different flavour to the other setup. Full range OD with no clean blend is the order of the day here, something that produces a guttural roar from below rather than grind from up top when you dig in, e.g. SFT, BB Preamp, Beta, Agro.

Good one this! As far as I'm aware, the sound in my head is a sound remembered - although I don't know from when or of what. Not to mention the fact that the memory can often play tricks. I guess it came from the players who influenced me in the '60s and '70s. However, they were pretty diverse (Jamerson, Macca, Jack Bruce, Andy Fraser, Ric Grech, John McVie, Pete Farndon) - so presumably an amalgam then. It's smooth but punchy, weighty but clean... well, I know what I mean!! But knowing that I'd recognise it when I heard it didn't help much, as there's so much stuff out there to try. I've been satisfied with my sound before but, after lots of trial and error, what really hits the spot now is my Subway 800 through a couple of BF SC3s. This seems to work with all my basses and the only pedals I use are compression and volume.

thanks for the heads up.

Sounds like a couple of nice projects looking forward to see them progress

Oh man, this is good... I know there are many who sing the praises of tks on here, but I'm over the moon. All the cliched words apply - punchy, articulate, clarity, reactive, rich, sweet... I have read that these 1x12s can be a bit lacking in bass, but at loud home volumes with rounds on a jazz and flats on a P, it sounds mega full. Flipping loud too - I'm running a Eden 260 through it, and it packs a real wallop. Rear ported, metal grilled front, recessed cable inputs, immaculately finished, very nice, thick soft case. Many happy hours to be had with this - heartily recommended...

Played a few times in Paris....Rex Club.....New Morning Club....FNAC department store Make sure you've always got your ID on you and do not loiter...we were frisked by the police while hanging around waiting for our tour manager

Grip with pliers lengthways down the shaft enough to grip and start moving the rubber and pull upwards. If not then use a stanley or other knife to cut away the rubber. Two screwdrivers, one either side and twist them to start the rubber moving up the shaft.

You sure it isn't one of those superinposed joke vocals over a video thing? Like

Just a mini-hijack continuing on @Jimothey 's excellent explanation of the sellotape trick. I'm doing a partscaster for @Harryburke14 and he wanted something quirky on the headstock to do either with his name or associated the Peaky Blinders. I thought - ideal opportunity to try out the technique. Still got to varnish on top but even without - FANTASTIC! So, so, so much better than my previous method. Many thanks for sharing the tip @Jimothey and back to your excellent mod job @BrunoBass

Norm Stockton on bass?

“Bass player’s face says it all I think”. I think he was preparing himself for his own, comical, Bass drivel routine at 04:20 onwards.

I've had many basses over the years including some fairly expensive examples, but my current go-to is a modded HB P-50. Admittedly I upgraded the tuners, electrics, bridge and strings but all you really need to do is buy one and put some decent flats on it. The necks on these are remarkable and very playable. Real old-school vintage thump, for peanuts.

Welcome! I've once seen a bass player really play a 7 well - and then there's this: http://www.jsbach.net/bass/instruments.html What sort of music do you play? Possibly not JSB :-)

With a 'regular' drummer and bass player The Who would have been boring, I bet. It was KM and JE's pyrotechnics that made that band what it was. They were both pioneers in their way. If PT can't see that, he must be a ****.

"Next month, the one and only scale guitarists ever need" Doh. Rae,. Me Me Me Me Me........

Personally, I tend to be able to put up with most people until the limits of their talent has been exhausted. I've definitely got some not very friendly relationships with former band members, but they started at the point of the sacking (or shortly beforehand). I haven't been surprised and am not fussed by them, but it always seems to be that when things are going well in the band their annoying tendencies are just little quirks like everybody else has got, and when things are going badly they are evidence of what terrible human beings they are. One in particular, was a really nice bloke, but being a lead guitarist, a bit of a c#nt. When we formed the band, me and the drummer were waiting to see exactly how he proved to be a c#nt, because there was no evidence of anything we seriously objected to, maybe he was the exception that makes the rule, great feller, good to hang out with, etc. By the time we sacked him it had all soured and we had no desire to ever see him again, and certainly never play in a band with him again, and we've all stayed out of each others way. But if he hadn't been so much of a c#nt in the band, I'm sure we'd all still get along brilliantly

This is my Jazz, modified a bit

"the first chord in a song isn't always the key, fact or fiction?"

@GisserD there was a Sandberg Appreciation Society all along!

About fifteen years ago, I spotted an ad in our local rag: "Experienced lead guitarist and singer (been playing guitar for 15 years in all styles) looking for others to jam with and maybe form a band". TBH I was a bit scared to call the guy (let's call him Dave), seeing as he was clearly far more experienced than me (I hadn't been in a band since school, but then Jimmie quit and Jodie got married....). Still, he sounded ok on the phone, so I arranged to go round to his place the next evening for a jam. When I turned up, the door was answered by a tall freaky guy, who just stared at me. Eventually Dave appeared behind him and said "it's ok John, he's here to see me". We went downstairs to the living room, and started messing about with a few songs. It turned out that far from being an experienced LG, Dave could just about manage a minor pentatonic scale if he looked at his fingers, whilst his singing was really best left in the shower. Also, there was something about him that I couldn't quite square - he was certainly too shy to ever be a frontman, and he sometimes seemed to be in another world entirely, and then struggled to finish his sentences. John, meanwhile, took up position in one of the armchairs, and stared at me continuously. Eventually John got up to go to the loo, and I decided to make my excuses and leave. Dave said, oh, don't mind him - he's got schizophrenia, so it means he's not good with new people. It's just this house is owned by the council for the six of us to live in. We have a care worker during the day, but in the evenings he only comes round if we press the alarm button.......

I used to play in a honky tonk/western swing band in the 1980s. We worked regularly - forces bases, functions, festivals, etc. Fiddle was my main instrument at the time, but we had an excellent fiddle player on board who was also a pal, so I played bass in the band. Said fiddle player got a good offer of work and left, so we decided I'd switch to the fiddle and we'd find a bass player. This did not work out - a succession of mainly pop/rock players auditioned and although some were good, they were out of sympathy with the music (didn't swing and played too many notes), so we opted for Plan B - find another fiddle player. It was decided that I'd field calls/replies, invite applicants to my place to check them out/play through a few things and arrange a full band meet with anyone who showed promise (this was pre-internet days, so no YouTube demos, etc). One character (who assured me he played in the style we were looking for when he phoned) turned up at my door. He was from Scandinavia and had a very intense, unsmiling manner. Introductions over, I got out my guitar and invited him to play something, suggesting we start with something simple as a warm-up. He fixed me with a stare and announced, "I shall play you something I wrote" and launched into a scratchy, frantic flurry of notes that seemed initially to be based on "The Devil's Dream" (an old-time fiddle tune), although the B part went all over the place. The tempo varied wildly. I stopped him and said "That sounds like the Devil's Dream", at which he glared at me and said, "No. I wrote that piece". He was obviously a folk fiddler (and a ropey one, at that), so I explained that we were looking for someone who played in the western swing/honky tonk style, at which he asked "Vot is honky tonk?" Life was too short to explain or play him examples from my record collection, so I suggested that he was not familiar enough with the idiom and thanked him for coming. He glared at me, informed me, "I am not satisfied vith your explanation" and remained sitting in his (my) chair. I decided that it would be best not to physically eject him and risk damaging my furniture or belongings, so I took out my fiddle and played him a brief example of what we were looking for. I also gave him a few bars of "The Devil's Dream" just to make the point. As politely as I could, I and informed him that he was in my home and that if I asked him to leave, he would do so. He gave me a terrible look and packed his instrument away. On speaking about the incident later with a friend, I learned that he had been answering ad's all over town and behaving similarly. How do wallies like him imagine they will fool anyone?

I bought Brendon’s Freya P51 style bass. It was a perfect and easy transaction. The bass is excellent, it was well packed and the comms were great. Spot On Brendon. 👍👍👍👍👍

Quite a lot has happened in the world of Gillett since I last posted, and it’s a bit remiss of me not to have posted for a while. (I’m going to do this in easy instalments, as the forum seems to struggle with long posts made up of imported stuff.) So, where were we? Ah yes, fighting our way through the snow in a desperate bid to reach the London Bass Guitar Show. As many of you will know either from being there or seeing Silvia Bluejay’s excellent coverage on this forum (also in Bass Guitar Magazine), we DID make it – albeit a couple of hours after the show opened, and without all our customised stand-wall panels printed with colourful (and expensive) graphics for the show. This is how it should have looked… http:// …but what we actually got was a plain white shell-scheme hastily cobbled together by the show organisers (for which we were most grateful). No matter, the fact that we made it to the show at all was a great relief and anything over-and-above that was a bonus. So, how was it for us? BRILLIANT! We had a steady stream of interested visitors and, thanks to the fact that we had ace keyboard-player Paul Quinn (a mate of Michael G’s) on hand, our stand was notable as the one from which some very nice music was being made much of the time. The way we worked it was that we had a couple of ‘playing stations’ – one in the main body of the stand and another tucked round the side out of the way. When a visitor started playing in the ‘hot seat’, the versatile Mr. Q would just kind of join in with whatever they were doing. If it appeared to be working, it just took off; if not, then Paul didn’t push it. This plan turned out to be inspired and certainly made life a whole lot more enjoyable for stand personnel and passers-by, who generally stopped for a listen, a look, and usually a go on one of our basses. We had deliberately chosen a pitch just off the main exhibition area at the end of the concourse leading to the Olympia auditoriums (and the loos). In this area, there was not much noise (apart from what we were making), a constant trickle (no pun intended) of people heading for the toilets and, thanks to the packed programme of on-stage events, queues of people in front of our stand waiting for the doors to open swelled by the stream of people coming out of the previous show. One casual passer-by was Yolanda Charles on her way to her headline gig on Sunday afternoon. Like pretty much everybody who sees our Contour basses for the first time, she was struck by the sculpted look and promised to come and have a play after her performance had finished. And, true to her word, that’s exactly what she did, accompanied by a couple of her friends (another bassist and a keyboard player). The resultant half-hour jam session was an absolute joy and Yolanda made it clear that she was very impressed with our basses. http://

Sold a Warwick Streamer to Brendon, no hassles nice and easy cheers bud

cool no worries lol.

I have an actual Superfly 1000. As stated above, it does indeed have a fan. I am aware that the 500 watt version was prone to overheating which is why Ashdown intended to remedy the problem for the range with the addition of said fan and an increase in power. The preamp is great and it's a really punchy and versatile head. No reliability issues and it's just as quiet/noisy as the ABM heads and combos I've dealt with (e.g. not that bad but that "characteristic" Ashdown hiss is there). It's certainly not twice as loud as the 500w version BUT you can drive a single 8 ohm cab off one of the outputs with the same might as an ABM 500. I've not seen another Superfly 1000 version about so it's quite possible that less than 30 were indeed produced. I would love to know if there are other Superfly 1000 owners in this parish. I'm feeling lonely. - Andy

Coheed and Cambria - Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV, though just for balance I will be listening to Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children after the former has finished.