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Gear doesn't have to be gigged to justify having. There's no rule or special virtue about that. In fact plenty of us might be between bands or have ceased being in a band altogether. Does that mean we should sell all our gear? If it's sitting around not getting played at all, whether at home, in the studio or live, it's only at that point I think "yup this should be with someone else". But as long as it gets used and you get enjoyment, creativity or simple pleasure from playing it; in my books that's plenty.

And to the next scary bit - cutting and gluing the ebony blocks. The process was straightforward but needed to be quite accurate. Not only does the ebony have to be cut spot on, but because of the radius, it needs to be certain that the middle is proud of the fretboard but the sides set into the fretboard so, when attacking it with the radius block to smooth them flush, I don't sand into fresh air. Here's 6 done and 4 to go: And here's all 10 in place: I'm going to leave it on the template until I've sanded them flush - in the event that any or them are flawed, it then would be a simple job to rout out the ebony with the index pin still in the right place and re-do. In the meantime, I popped across to Neil's and took some profile and depth measurements from his favourite playing neck: Every bass has its own feel, but making the new one to similar profile and measurements should make it have a comforting familiarity when Neil gets to play it

Well the deko Stingray alike has arrived and well i`ve managed to find the reason for being a deko, a badly cut nut, ive set it up, played it and its perfectly fine even the B string is ok, quite happy for £43

Total miming should be compulsory for some acts, Florence and the machine for a start.

Having just sold my passive FRFR cabinets, I am hoping to soon join the powered FRFR collective! Exciting times ahead I am sure.

Hello Pete, as you quite rightly said, this is a huge area, likely to mildly upset the connoisseur by relating my experience. I’m no Milt Hinton, but I have recorded in a fair few studios, so I have formed an opinion which I transiently consider sensible (I.e. I may change my mind next week). I started out by being very particular about mic placements and now I’m of the school of thought of “stick the best mic you have a foot-and-a-bit away from my bridge and I will try to play my socks off”. That seems to work for me at the moment. Depending on your personality trait, you may also augment your chances of success by bribing/threatening the engineer. I feel being friendly works best... what I find very important is to keep your cans at a minimum volume on one ear only, so you can hear yourself playing “in the real world” which is essential for tone and intonation. your problem really lies on the mixing afterwards, when the bass may keep being pushed further and further back...you may want to keep the threats for that phase.... all of this may well be a load of rubbish of course. Most of all, have fun!

Sometimes good things come from bad auditions. I've been trying to find a band desperate enough to want me, and had some ...interesting... experiences. Audition 1: answered an ad on JMB for a blues group. I tell them how long I've been playing - not all that long - as I want to be honest up front. I do a bit of recruiting in the day job, and know how narked I get when confronted with bovine manure. Better to be straight with them from the off. Anyway, he replies, telling me that there's a drummer lined up, plus someone on blues harp and maybe keys too. Could I learn a couple of songs and pop round for a twang? Rightio. I turn up at the BL's house and am treated to half an hour's talking about his guitar collection before we get down to business. He's provided an amp - an ancient Vox gee-tar amp that didn't look much younger than me. Hm. I'd have brought the Eden if I'd known. But I crank the low end and off we go. He's hunched over his chord chart and doesn't look up. With no drummer to lock in with, some eye contact might have been helpful. He then chases me out of the house before his wife gets back. Hmmmm. Then about a week later, I get a 'thanks but no thanks' email. Meh. Think I dodged a bullet there. Audition 2: answered an ad on JMB for a rock covers band. Again, I'm up front about my level of experience. I get their set list - wow! Fabulous! - and learn half a dozen songs, as requested. Then the audition's brought forward a week. Great. But I rock up at the appointed time - to a studio this time - to find that the BL was struggling with one of the songs I'd learnt and had to teach the singer one of the others. Oh dear. But the rest sounded good, although at the end of the evening, they said they thought it was beyond me to learn everything on the list before their next gig. They were quite decent about it though, so fair enough. Audition 3: answered an ad on JMB for another rock covers band. As before, I make it clear how much I do and don't know. I learn the requested songs and turn up to a slightly less-than-ideal studio - bare wooden floor, no sound insulation and a PA that didn't look much more powerful than my home stereo. As I'm getting set up, a guitarist walks in; he's being auditioned too. He sets up his backline - a lovely Marshall valve amp. Then the BL arrives and sets up his backline. Then off we go. The PA just about copes, but after the first song, the BL says to me, 'it needs much more bass'. Well, I was standing in front of the amp and I could hear it OK, which meant he certainly could from the other side of the room. But no sweat, up went the volume to just under half and we launched into the next song. Jesus. My amp was making the room shake. I went to turn it down and the BL said ‘no, leave it, it’s just right’. The guitarist turned up his amp as it was being drowned by mine. Not wanting to be left out, the BL did the same and we went into song number three. This time, the weedy studio PA was completely overwhelmed; all I could do was lock in with the drummer and hope for the best. Then things started to go south when the BL started playing something a bit different before stopping to tell us that we needed to follow him. By now the volume was up well past 11 and the only way to follow him was by lip-reading. The next song fell apart when he missed out an eight-bar sequence from the intro. By now, the negative vibes were starting to creep in. At the end of the evening, the BL thanked us for coming and said ‘we’ll have a chat and we'll let you know’ in a sarky voice. So much for that, then. The guitarist and I compared notes outside and we both reckoned we wouldn’t hear from them again. We swapped numbers though, and decided we’d look at doing something together if it didn’t go anywhere. After a week of radio silence, I pinged the guitarist a text and as expected, he hadn’t heard anything either. He then asked me if I was still up for getting together, as he had another guitarist and a singer who were interested. Oh, was I ever. So a few days later, the three of us (the singer couldn’t make it) assembled in a very nice studio in Cranfield. What a difference! No attitude, a lot of fun and some great songs to play. The Stooges, Black Sabbath, the Undertones, Tears For Fears, the Cult… all good stuff. Plus some originals that the guitarist had written that needed basslines added. I had a whale of a time, and when we decided to make a go of it at the end of the evening, I was on cloud nine. So I did join a band from a terrible audition. Just not the one I originally went for!

Take that responsibility ! i joined up with a new formed band and after the first gig we had terrible PA sound issues , so when I asked who knew how to run it they all shrugged the shoulders and said the PA came from a previous band split and a different guy used to run it 😂 So took all the kit , hired a hall for a couple of hours and played with all the kit and worked a simple solution with desk , amps and speakers , sound checks take a 2 minute blast of roadhouse blues 👍 In the land of the blind , the one eyed man is king 😉

Get 2 layers of foam that are half thickness and cut right through one then put it on top of the uncut one...

...followed by gagging and a sack over the head for a finish

Not much cop if he couldn't even get your name right.

Am I the only one who read this topic title as Guest Beer at gigs? Wishful thinking or dementia, I fear

I play in a duo where I sing and play guitar. I also play bass and do bv in a 4 piece playing "red dirt" country (modern alternative country from Texas/Oklahoma). The singer who does some solo gigs called and wanted to use a duo at a bar-b-que place, but the guitarist didn't like the money offered so the singer asked me to back him on guitar. Did the gig, got more money than expected and free ribs. Singer called said he missed the bass, getting more money, so now the guitarist is in, it'll be a 3 piece for the next 3 gigs. Same money for me. So.....either he really missed the bass, or he likes the other guy better on guitar (he is good). I don't care. I'm getting money for nothin' and my ribs for free!

A bit of a whim purchase this one as it really hasn’t been the best of years but I was on the Eastwood site and saw some cheap ex-demo stock. I’ve always liked the natural finish on a flying V and really liked the look of this one. Eastwood’s always seem to play well and be great value for money (at least all the ones I’ve tried do) so I took the plunge. Amazing customer service from Eastwood as always, although DHL could probably warrant a thread on its own in terms of how they tried to deliver it. 30.5” scale, fairly lightweight body with a pretty thunderous sound. No, you can’t sit down with it but standing up, you can release your inner Rock God. And yes, I am probably old enough to know better!

I really must get round to watching the last two episodes, I'm really glad it's not like the good old days though, when I had to sit though the whole of the Old Grey Whistle in the hope of seeing the odd good act, at least we've got fast forward buttons now, count your blessing you youngsters

Well after several gigs and a couple of rehearsals with my new QUILTER BASS BLOCK 800 I am as pleased as punch. I am now using it at all gigs. Way too good to have as a back-up. A fellow player was very impressed with my sound last Saturday night (and surprised at the price). Quizzed me about the amp, took photos and went off to buy one. A great range of usuable musical bass tones, plenty of punch. Simply marvellous ever player should have one

It looks like this might be a thing folks, I'm going to try and put decent pilot together with @SpondonBassed by the end of the month, so we'll see where it goes from there. I'll PM people individually to sort out the specifics. Thanks to everyone for showing an interest in this and feel free to keep posting any ideas in the mean time, but it's not the end of the world if this thread sinks, I'll be sure to bump it once the episodes out! 😁

Ah fair enough, I think I'm just defining slickness with a different threshold but I totally agree with that. I'm a freelance audio engineer on-top of my part-time day job, I'm not just a hobbyist, the last job I did was for the "The 8th Asian Awards" and I've done a tone of audio restoration work and production on different podcasts. Plus I'm a fairly eloquent and charismatic fellow too on the sly, 😜🤣 so i'm up for putting a pilot together if folk are cool with that? Personally I think https://appear.in/ is the way to go for the first punt, it's like Skype or google hangouts but with less delay and better audio. That's if everyone's cool with me capturing all the audio at my end to minimize fuss for this first pop at it. If we want to go for better audio after then; we could use something like http://www.pamela.biz/ and everyone capture audio at their ends and we comp it afterwords but that means we'd have to use Skype. If no one objects to me kinda taking the rains for the pilot would you @SpondonBassed be up for co-hosting? We could do a few segments and then interview @Chownybass? Providing your still up for it Chowny? Then once its all recorded I'll do a rough edit and possibly pass it to you @project_c to do a QC listen through to catch anything I've missed? Then if you'd pass it back to me I'll master the audio and bosh; post it up here and see what folk reckon, get some feedback on if we should/how to proceed with it? If it get's "green lit" then figure out who's going to run the Libsyn and the admin side of things. What do folk think? I by no means wish to dictate what should happen to everyone, I want it to be BC's podcast not mine. You just posted this after I'd typed up my previous gambit so for the record I'm up for traveling too if in-person would be a preference but it's definitely less doable if we'd like to make it regular. I'm in Manchester not sure where everyone else is?

I'm finally in a band with a great drummer AND a guitarist who can play quietly and I'm very grateful for that. Those who say they have to play loudly 'to get my sound' are talking crap, basically. Even rock bands can sound 'heavy' without being really loud. My view is that some people like to be loud to direct attention away from their playing, paradoxically.

Yes indeed missed by many a band. One huge problem is with certain musicians who are under the mysterious spell of thinking that things only sound good when REALLY loud. "My valve amp sounds better cranked" and "I can't get the tone out of my kit if I play lightly" I have heard oh so often. Thing is, I agree that certain equipment does indeed sound awesome loud, but are totally overkill for 90% of gigs. That Marshall 100W and 4x12 cabinet doesn't start to do that beautiful compression characteristic until the valves are working hard and the speaker cones are near their limits. By that point, the volume is tinnitus incurring. So, for the most part, that kit is the wrong kit for the job at the Dog and Duck on a Friday night.

I remember my Thunder 1A as being a solid and great sounding bass. The biggest downside of them was their weight though. Bloody heavy basses, but when they sound like that, you can manage. The cachet is coming from people of a certain age, who bought & used them as their first/second instruments, and went on to use them in our first bands. Add to the fact that they have the Matsumoku history, and better build quality than some of the other "budget" instruments of the time, and now that people of a certain age have a bit more time available and a bit more disposable income, then prices start to rise. Yes, I would have another one, purely for nostalgia purposes, but it'd have to be at the right price. Saying that, I always wanted a through neck Thunder II or III.

Nope. Everything I buy is to be gigged, as often as possible.

Just heard that Aretha Franklin is the latest artist to have her classic recordings re-done with new string parts. Think she is the first artist to have this done who is still around, probably due to recent successful sales of albums by Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. Only heard a couple of tracks of the Aretha stuff so far, but despite it being the RPO playing on it, I just can't understand why it seems okay to meddle with something that was pretty damn perfect all those years ago. The Elvis stuff was to me pretty dreadful too ( anybody hear 'Burning Love'? ), and although Orbison's material lends itself to the more orchestral approach, the originals were just sublime as they were. Some things just need leaving alone......rant over.

Oh no....my favourite drummer. Met him at couple of times at Paraphenalia gigs and was always friendly and ready to chat and autograph CDs (as did Barbra Thompson) which I treasure. My sincere condolences to Barbra and her family. A sad day.

It works fine in Virtualbox for me. Linux Mint 18.3.

Well at least you did not get stung .....

put them on at lunchtime and the first play was great. they have a great feel. not alot of zing which is no bad thing. felt pretty neutral right out the box. ill give an update after a few hours playing

The Sex Pistols playing Pretty Vacant & New York live on their comeback in `96 was pretty good too.

If that's where the market price actually was & I'd paid £395 for mine (which is very similar to that one apart from being fretless), I wouldn't have felt short changed at all. I've seen & played a lot worse £500 basses in my time.

That's a 'great' new ebay feature/idea (?); but if you click on the word 'listing' in the panel, it does take you back to the original listing:- The listing you’re looking for is no longer available. Check out this similar item we found for you.

I've been the "sound guy" in a couple of bands (I've also played in) mostly by default. Although I essentially don't know what I'm doing I've got to the "I can get by" stage more by luck than judgement. However, it's completely stresses me out. Other band members have always been consistently irritating. "Yes, I know it's bloody feeding back. Now go away and let me fix it!!!". I'm never doing it again 😂

Nobody taking responsibility for the Vocal PA (or knowing how to use the desk). Every gig I play there seems to be issues with faulty Mikes, faulty leads, too much reverb, not enough reverb, tinny vocals, muffled vocals, boomy vocals, feedback, monitors not working etc etc etc. Drives me effing nuts.

That's the only way loud bits work for me ,having quiet bits in ,with the odd exception of course

Well, obviously that attempt to ‘break the cycle’ didn’t work. Maybe this one will? Old Smoothie Stingray, 3 band Stingray, 66 Precision, US Std Jazz

This is good info. We usually mic the room, close mic the bass, stick a SM58 wrapped in foam in the bridge and take a feed from the piezo. Then they usually mix one or all of it to get the sound.

Another suggestion re: audio quality - while it is true that you'll get the best quality if everyone records their own voice separately, there may be times when this isn't feasible. On these occasions, I'd suggest using Discord instead of Skype. I know that it's not quite as ubiquitous, but the transmission quality is far, far better. S.P.

RE: getting sponsorship. Don't approach any potential sponsors until after all the snags have been ironed out, the podcasts have been running successfully for a while, there's some firm audience stats, a planned 'broadcast' schedule for the next 3-6 months and some quality material available to be cut down for inclusion in a sales pack. One blows one's best chance if one goes to the market too early or unprepared

In my band everyone understands the words Quiet, Slow, Space, Atmosphere and Tension - all words that seem to draw blank expressions on many.....

I've asked our drummer if he could play quieter, he said "yes but it wouldn't be so much fun", well we all want to enjoy ourselves

If I'm honest - there's an ampeg svt3 and 8x10 cab at our practice room. I plugged in once before the rest of the band arrived, as I've always wanted to try one. I gave it 2 minutes before I decided it must have been thrashed to death or broken. Awful fuzzy sound, no real punch or warmth. Really disappointed. Sounded like an old gorilla amp. So I used my own amp instead. Then a few weeks ago for whatever reason, I couldn't bring my amp so I had to use it. I had a little eq and drive play around and it was still sounding pretty poor if I'm honest. Way too much drive not to get in the way of what the rest of the band were playing. Imagine a nice standalone bass tone then whack a thin sounding guitar distortion pedal on full over the top and that's what I was getting. Then, the band turn up, and as soon as the drums are playing ..... Wham!! The bloomin thing comes alive! Punchy, tight, warm ..... and errrrrr where has the awful overdrive gone? I don't know. I know it's still there, but I can't hear it. I reckon it turns into magic bass dust and just makes the whole rhythm section that little bit better. I don't know why I'm surprised, every rock band for 40 years has had those svts or similar on stage, but for some reason I thought I knew better. I didn't.

80s fenders don't have a bad reputation as such, they are better than the late 70s its just that by the early 80s the japanese instruments had stopped being a joke and had surpassed the quality of the fenders so in comparison they didn't seem as good

Well, there's my potential contribution well and truly scuppered, then. I was about to embark on an interesting exposé on the do's and don't's of successful radish cultivation, but I fear that, if the intention is to produce 'sound-bites' and slick talk, I'd maybe not be the best person to deliver such. However, I could propose a short (a few hours..?) on how to build a model airplane, or dietary tips for diabetics. An in-depth analysis of the monthly Challenge entries..? My favourite version of 'Dark Star', copiously illustrated with medium-length (twenty minutes or so...) extracts..? A lecture on home recording minimalism; how to compress all one's gear into less than one square metre..? And for the older listener, armchairs and how to choose 'em..? Hmm... The more I think about it, the more attractive the idea becomes, more especially if video is not required. Let's test my 'hipness' with some modern, 'youf' phraseology, then... 'Hit me up when you're done jawing, to take the above subjects to the next level. Let's get this show on the road.'

Stainless DR Hi Beam. Untouchable. If you want higher tension... Stainless DR Lo Rider.

That thought crossed my mind too. Mind you Id have expected something like "removed the troublesome complex pick guard and electrics and replaced those bog standard Bartolinis with some Chinese howlers. Now a sublime sound"

So I have done a few shows with the Sumo now, so final instalment. I continue to be amazed by the power, sound and portability of the Mesa/Sumo combination. Crank it half way up and your guitardist will be begging for mercy (assuming you actually have some speaker area, like my 2 212s). Monday I tried my old M600 again, just to see if hearing it again after a few weeks would change how I percieve Mesa/Sumo. Answer, no... it is a great amp and a tone I know and love, but I also love the Mesa/Sumo tone and they are not far apart tonally. Overall, the M600 (which is my "go to" and has been for many years) is a little richer (tubes/mosfets) and has more elaborate EQ options but the difference is very small. Much smaller than the Darkglass M900 (which I have now sold BTW), Genz Benz, EBS D class heads I have owned before. RESULT!

Love them! Here are mine..... Two very rare Hamer Impact basses (designed by Kip Winger) - these have a very Spector 'feel' to them......... and a white Hamer Scarab bass.

I owned one back in the 80's. I can vividly recall it being significantly better than the USA Precision that I owned at the same time.