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Here’s the end result - what a stunner!!!

I always liked Howlin' Wilf, although he wasn't really a tribute act.

The basic carve of the body is almost done. Just got to take a bit of thickness off the back of the lower bout and then I'll move to the neck. I'll finish sand it all at the same time. From the view above, it looks pretty conventional. But this gives a hint that it's not quite... :

Punter came up and handed me a slip of paper once, with a request on it. At the end of the song, I announced "We've had a request from one of you lovely people, it's for a song called...", I unfolded the paper and read, "...'youre crap, pack up and fk off'..." Nah, not really. But it's only a matter of time till it does happen.

Further to my last, as they say. Just found a snap of my 7er.

I always thought masonic ladies were known as maisonettes

EBS_freak, great questions. We're at the Summer NAMM show this week, so please give us a bit of time to respond.

Dread Zeppelin are real. And awesome.

I'd suggest you are not driving the existing 4x10 sufficiently. Buying a better cab will not change anything if you are still using an inadequate head (I would imagine a Behringer amp taken from a combo will not have much power). Upgrade the amp and continue to borrow the Hartke for now would be my advice.

We'll do pretty much any request as long as it's from the 20th century. Any requests for Kings of Leon, Arctic Monkeys, etc. receive a good telling off

We do abba, so that is why that doesn't cause a problem for us. One of the heavy songs, I use the full distortion for that one. We get that quite a bit. People get a bit annoyed with me - "Do you do any oasis", "Who?", "Oasis!", "Sorry mate, never heard of them", "Dont be stupid, you know - lateleeeey.. gonna be the one that saves meeeeee...", "Nah sorry, doesn't ring a bell". I really really detest oasis! On the other hand, one guy at the last gig was really insistant we should do Hazel O'Conner 'will you'. Doesn't strike me as a good song for a party / dancy band like us.

Hi All, We've caught wind of this discussion and wanted to chime in a bit more "officially". First off, we're thrilled about the enthusiasm and the discussion here regarding our latest model, the N8. Keep it coming and we'll do our best to chime in as-needed. The response above is accurate. We wanted to provide a bit more context: Often times the recommended minimum impedance is stated for damping factor reasons, frequency response reasons, or as a precaution. Whatever the case may be for why Shure stated 9 ohms in its specs, the results of the tests we conducted show otherwise. We have tested the N8 with both the Shure P9RA and the Sennheiser G3 EK 300. Both body packs drive the iem well with no problems. The output impedance of both packs is on the lower side so they are able to provide MORE than enough juice should you choose. Neither of the packs presented any "cutting-out" or went into any over-current protection modes, etc... We were impressed, so we decided to try an artificial 4 ohm load as well. The results were the same. Both packs remained stable and were able to drive the 4 ohm load with no problem. The THD stayed low at an impressive 0.01% on the Sennheiser and 0.04% on the Shure. The voltage across the load was 1.9 on the Sennheiser and 1.55 on the Shure. Driving the N8 "as is" with either of those two body packs should not be a problem based on our tests. Also, we beta tested the N8s over the last few months with a number of people (including Nathan East himself) and there were no reports of any issues related to driving the iem with any of their amps, phones, body packs, and other devices. We're all ears so please keep the feedback and questions coming!

Seen this a few times in the last couple of days. Fortunately, if you look closely, in the text of the fob-off the word "listing" is actually a link back to the original item. Still a frustrating pain in the ar$e though. I'm guessing there's a rationale behind this, not including an obvious link & making the actual link inconspicuous, but it's anyone's guess what it is. Just another step in the ongoing process of making Ebay hostile, awkward, unintuitive and irritating.

We regularly announce songs as requests , it engages the punters quite well cos although we might not have time to do all the requests , at least they know we are trying , we get away with as long as they don't see the set list 😉

Both types, country and western

I like it.

We only play requests when we’re asked.

Last Saturday we'd just finished playing Don't Stop by Fleetwood Mac when a rather drunk punter asked us if we knew any Fleetwood Mac.

Recording the gigs and playing back afterwards can be a useful tool - sometimes people don't realise quite how fast they are playing.

Now, some of you may remember me fawning over the original RM800 which Ashdown released back in 2015 - there’s a review in the relevant section to which I’m far too lazy to link! That was a solid amplifier and frankly the best class D head I’ve used. I had to sell it because of cash flow issues and regretted it ever since. Last year I bought a Trace Elliot Elf, believing it would be the answer to my Class D needs. And in some ways it was, but I missed the RM tone, power and drive. I then heard Ashdown were releasing the EVO II which has a headphone socket, the one thing I’d have liked on the RM800. So May this year I decided to sell the Elf, sell my little Hotone Nano Legacy Thunde bass head which I used for home practice, and find me an RM EVO II. There have been a few little tweaks since the original RM800, such as headphone socket, second speaker out, VU meter with blue LED showing mute, separate active and passive inputs, improved drive (not that I felt it was lacking before). Plus the new 500 is lighter somehow - I haven’t looked to find out how! Today it arrived. First impressions I’ll be honest, the new Matt anodised alloy front panel isn’t nearly as cool as the old polished stainless steel but Ashdown have their reasons for it (easier to see under stage lights apparently - I never had a problem before!). But once I was home and got to annoy the neighbours that little gripe went away, this was like an old friend coming home. Everything I loved about the original is there in spades, and it sounds amazing with my Barefaced Super Compact. First gig is on Friday, cannae wait!

We record gigs too. Then we send round the recordings just to say " this was us, what would we do better." No finger pointing or blaming. Individuals are often quick to put their hand up to any of their own mistakes when hearing the recordings. It's also a good opportunity to say "your tone was great," or "that was a fantastic solo" or "you really nailed that part" . We all like a bit of recognition from our own bandmates too.....

I’m not really sure if doing a few simple modifications to a Harley Benton PB-50 really counts as a build, more a bit of painting and fettling. But anyway, I wanted to get this finished before I move onto the next project, so here’s a few pics about what I’ve done to my two week old bass.

Thanks dude, I have tried Ashdown, but they don't produce sleeves for the rack mounted stuff, it's a different size to the sleeved I've made contact with a couple of folks who will build a proper sleeve, just a little pricey so I need to be sure its worth it first. Congrats on the rig though, its a peach! Eude

Metallic strings for the acoustic have been available for a number of years. (Finding them used to be trickier though). for example: https://www.thomann.de/gb/pyramid_bass_ukulele_strings.htm https://www.thomann.de/gb/kala_metal_round_wound_4.htm

Congrats on the Markbass 2x10. I bought one after Christmas in the sales...it's a great cab. Used to run a 1x12 and 1x15, now I just use the 2x10 Traveler.

I`ve found that on my Precisions I generally have the tone on full, but if I want to roll it off it`s about a third - I set the fixing screws from the control knobs to be facing downwards when fully off, and then when backing off line it up with one of the screws on the pickguard. This way it`s got a bit of each so to speak, and goes from a gnarly/growly/twangy sound to a more traditional warm P-sound.

New updates to the NT Series bass designs. Here's the 4 and 5 string. These are near final.

Did you play it particularly badly or something? The punter may have been stone cold sober... in which case, he's a sarcastic genius.

Ha - that's the lamest GAS coverup I've ever seen. You just want a new gadget don't ya?

Gonna bit a bit tricky to dance to. I think it’s because of the saxophone!

Bit of a no win situation during the gigs - if you don't go with the drummer, even if the drummer's wrong, then you're the one that looks like you're making mistakes. I like the flexibility to vary the tempo during a gig depending on how things are going. The best drummer I ever played with, not necessarily technically but certainly for rapport, we could push each other, or pull each other back to control the tempo, and we tended to agree on the changes required (and if we didn't, we could have a word after the song and it was instantly sorted out, no arguments or macho nonsense about who was right). Clearly that's not the case here... Sounds like you've got a classic case of "I'm the one who plays this instrument so I'll decide how I play it, not you" pig headedness. Unless you have a clear band leader who can lay down the law, I suggest that the only solution is to give it a good airing, bring it up with the rest of the band at the next rehearsal/ahead of the next gig (and having carefully briefed everybody else beforehand and made sure that they agree with you) so that everything's clear and he knows what's expected of him. That said, an old band of mine tried it once (not exactly the same problem, but a similarly fixable one if the band member had paid any attention to what we were saying) and it didn't solve the issue. However, what it did do was make it very clear that they had to do better, so when he was replaced he didn't have any argument - he still thought that what he was doing was right, but we'd made it very clear that we didn't want him to do that so it was time to part company.

We played in Wells earlier this year at a pub and our 2 acoustic guitars , bass, cahon and fiddle group was asked to do 'Mr Blue Sky'. Well I suppose we did have the fiddle, just needed the rest of the Orchestra....! We do 'Ace of Spades' as an encore however!

I agree - it will be the right way round when the basses are being played, which surely is when it it meant to be seen.

You can pick up 8x10s ridiculously cheap. There's always ones on eBay for under £100. A 6x10 maybe a better option but they're usually more expensive. A 4x10 should suffice though if driven properly, and is more flexible as you can also dad another 4x10 if not, and they're easier to carry around. As a very rough guide you would want your amp head to be giving out approx 300w at 8ohm (depending on cab). If you need more clarity try changing your eq on your current rig to see if that makes a difference - add some high mids. If you love the ampeg svt sound there's ways to get close, but you'll never be spot on. A VT pedal, flyrig pedal etc will definitely get close and be more flexible. You'll then just need to know that your loud enough with your current amp and cab. If it was my choice id probably be looking to spend £100 second hand on a cab (you can get some real bargains), and the rest on a better head.

Here's my pair, UK hand made from scratch, no Chinese crap, and not cheap either. I couldn't decide on WB or not, so decided to have both! 4005 Fireglo, chequerboard binding to rear, full width crushed pearl inlays, 60's spec throughout. 4005 WB, Mapleglo, plain white binding to front and back. Both full 60's spec in every way.

It won’t have the look but it’s worth considering some of the newer cab designs. I recently swapped from an epic Trace Elliot rig to a Barefaced compact and midget. They are both one hand lifts and take up little space but boy so they pack a punch, attached to a 1000w Terror bass head it has been massive overkill for every venue since I got it. For medium sized pubs I sometimes just take the compact. Visually not as big an impact as an 8x10 but you won’t be lacking sound wise. You wouldn’t get all of of it in your budget but if you were prepared to have a slightly tatty one as you say then one of the bigger Barefaced cabs would be in budget.

A lot of the benefit of an 810 cab is simply having some of the speakers up nearer to ear level so I'd try raising your cab up off the ground on some beer crates or something like that to see if that helps first. A Hartke 410 should really be plenty 99% if the time - I'd say the lack of clarity and volume is more likely down to the amp than the cab. As far as the Ampeg sound goes you could do a lot worse than running a Tech 21 Vt-Bass preamp pedal into your amp which often come up second hand for around £100. Would still leave you a decent chunk of money to upgrade the head if you still felt the need (Behringer kit is good value for money if you're on a tight budget but you can definitely find something lightyears better in your budget - especially if you go used. If you're borrowing the cab and would rather have your own then you could probably pick up an Ashdown 410 cab and amp head as well as the Vt-Bass pedal for comfortably under the top end of your budget.

That's it, you win! Shut the site down, close the accounts, nothing more to see here, it can't be beaten. I'm taking up crochet instead.

Just caught up with this. That is a very fine looking ‘instrument-in-the-making’ Looking forward to performing my test pilot duties if required...

@devinebass won't be stumped in the slightest. Your collection of TABs is fine, if all you ever want to do is twist and mangle your fingers to re-create some other bedroom-warrior's interpretation of a great bassline. If you want to add your own fills, and chromatic runs etc., then it helps to understand what influence these will have on the overall feel. If you're playing a song and you're mainly playing A, D F#, G, then it throws in some Fs in there too. Isn't is useful to know why? If your front man is hogging the mic and talking away to the punters, isn't it cool to keep playing a quiet bass line in the background, to keep the vibe going? Pros do that. But if you don't have a TAB for that, what will you do? If you're putting together a montage and songs are the same rhythm, but in a different key, but you want to "walk" from one to the next is it better to do this, playing notes that fall into both Keys?

Well I think I redeemed myself after my disasterous gig of last week. Back at the same venue, but with a different band this time. We did a whole (short) set of Everly Brothers covers this time. Great fun to play, but not too technically tricky. All went very well, I really enjoyed myself and I think the punters did too. I had a couple of friends in the audience which was nice, including the estimable BC'er Kev B! So it was all jolly good fun :-)

I never did put my revised board up 😁

I don’t have it yet, but I can’t help posting the finished pictures!! 😍 Should have it next week I think! Specs you can’t see, dual coils with a East Uni-Pre. Si

My EURO 5LX

Update, finished