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Found this today. "Marie and I had a second fun-filled day at Summerfest yesterday which was also the last day of Summerfest 2018. Bands we saw included Paper Holland, Soccer Mommy, Aleem, and Bad Boy. The day ended with Cheap Trick thunderously rocking the house filled with adoring fans. Surprisingly, they were not, in my opinion, the best band we saw yesterday. That was reserved for the local Maple Road Blues Band. https://www.facebook.com/Maple-Road-Blues-Band-181086306205/ We had never heard of them before, but went to see them because we had noticed that they hail from the same suburban/rural county north of Milwaukee where we live. They played to a much smaller venue than Cheap Trick with hundreds instead of thousands in the crowd. Yet their excellent musicianship and passion for their craft captivated the audience with both original music and standards. I think Stevie Ray Vaughn was smiling down. Sometimes the best is indeed right in your backyard." Nice, I don't see very many of those. I'll take it. Blue

I say bat the ball back into his court. Ask him if he's sure he wants to play guitar, maybe he'd like to play the ocarina instead. Ask him if he's sure he's in his 40s, maybe he's actually 27. Also I'd pull him up on his assertion that he's in Hitchin, because it's possible that he's actually from Croatia. S.P.

Among many other things, I love the trouser choices going on here.

It's just a tool. I play a 5 purely because I get piano scores rather than bass parts and I like to be able to play the low end without having to thing about changing things. Half the time I don't use the lowest notes but I have more positions to play in because I can play across the board rather than up and down. TBH anyone who does the "4 was good enough for Jaco" routine is a weapons grade silly billy. There were hardly any 5 string basses around at the time. There was the 15 fret Fender V 1965 but the first really popular 5 was the Stingray and that wasn't introduced until 1987. The year Jaco died. Wal and Alembic did some before that but they weren't common or affordable. Who knows what he would have done if he had lived longer. But one thing I am sure of - he wouldn't have said - "Oh look! a 3 string double bass was good enough for Bottesini so that's good enough for everyone"

Get some black Fablon type material. Goes on in a one'r,no drying time and no smell. I picked up a 2M roll of white for £3.99 in Lidl, so far it's done 3 scratchplates with plenty left.

Call me age-ist but I don't think you are going to make it big in alt-rock in your forties. I'm mid 30's and I wouldn't be able to put up with the lack of sleep from touring. It just seems like one of those ads from a complete dreamer who doesn't understand what they're saying. Wouldn't be surprised if he's never taken his guitar out of his bedroom.

I totally disagree, 40 is the new 20 so at 44 I am so close to making it big with my electro emo punk jazz funk..... now where did I leave my glasses? ........

Mastodon - Leviathan Off the back of the albums you tried to love thread; it really is superb.

+1. Also, there is much more of a continuum between the 'disowned' early records (Tone Float > R&F) and the 'official' canon than they'd like to admit. Aside from the title track, Autobahn shares quite a bit with R&F to my ears and there are still conventional instruments on Autobahn too. Florian's flute is quite prominent and Klaus Roeder played guitar - although he's been excised from the sleeve notes. I'm not sure if he's still on the back sleeve (inside the car). That picture was doctored anyway. Not only were Ralf & Florian composition students, but Karl Bartos was an orchestral percussionist - also from the Franz Schubert Conservatory, recruited via their former tutor for the Autobahn tour. Only Wolfgang Flur was a rock'n'roller. Ironically, given the flack they took about musicianship, there can't be many successful pop bands with a higher level of formal training than Kraftwerk. It shows too.

Or Messi. Or Ronaldo. Or Neymar. Remind me again, what happened to their teams?

Channeling my best Ron Manager, “Back Home; Esso coins, dad getting the petrol; Banks upset tum; Bonetti the cat; Uwe Seeler; broken dreams; best England team ever; jumpers for goalposts; hmmm, Wembley Trophy football...” Yep, definitely Back Home!

We played Scarisbrick Marina Festival, just outside Southport, Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Saturday clashed with the footy and predictably there were only a handful of people there, it felt a bit too quiet, and we drifted toward the end. Better on Sunday - we had a drummer this time, a dep who did pretty well, still only about 30 people but they were bouncing around in their seats and clapping to the faster songs, better atmosphere and we played better. Afterwards an elderly lady came up to me with the sweetest smile, put her hand on my arm and said "Thank you - the bass drives the band, you know." Made my day 🙂

Surely vindaloo qualifies on both counts 😀

Anything where they have to chant, Inger-laaaand. Which is pretty much all of them, well English ones anyway I seem to recall liking a Scottish one with the bloke from Gregory's Girl singing. Early eighties. Talking of Gregory's Girl, Clare Grogan 😍

I've been on a bit of a P bass kick lately, and wanted to pick something up that would give me that classic sound, but without breaking the bank. I'm a sucker for older basses too, so when this 1976 Greco P bass copy came up for sale in Japan, I snatched it for the princely sum of £113. Had to pay almost the same again to get it over here and through customs, but today I picked it up. Currently not getting any output, but the wiring is shot and I think it's more of a pots issue than a pickup issue. A spray of contact cleaner made no difference. Needs a good stripping down and cleaning, but should do me nicely! Nice and light not sure on the body wood, but looks fantastic. Everything's nicely aged too. No idea what's going on with the 2 additional switches - once I've taken it apart I'll try and work it out. Kill switch maybe? They're obviously not original, but it would be cool to keep them and use them for something- open to suggestions! I'll probably take my time getting this one back to working order, but that's all part of the fun. Cheers all, here's some pics....

I used to work for a company that did vinyl signage. They used to spray with a very weak solution of detergent i.e. washing up liquid, then squeegee it once in place. A soft cloth would do the same. Start from one side, holding the vinyl up slightly as you apply it. If there are any bubbles you can prick it with a pin then use a cloth to smooth it down

Here’s mine!

This thread could equally be called: ”List 99% of the worlds music” Si

Ooohhhh my veneer turned up today very excited but I won't get chance to start it till Friday 🙁

Excellent! Like the decal - LOVE the overall colour scheme

They'd generally play what they need for the gig. Sometimes a band leader might specify a certain instrument. I've never personally had that, but I do know people who have been told they must use a P bass or something. I know someone who did a musical based on the 1950s, the band were visible on stage, it had to 'look' right. Dave Swift is one of the UK’s busiest, his main bass at the moment is a 6 string Ibanez, though he plays others depending I guess on what the gig requires. Anthony Jackson always plays his 6 string Fodera. John Patitucci always plays a 6 string, usually a Yamaha. Jimmy Haslip plays a 6 string Roscoe.

Should be a good little project. Shows us the end result pics when it's done.

Yes, someone just made a mistake

That looks great @BrunoBass I'm trying to do the opposite - I have a white scratchplate and want to paint it black. The prices are daft!

Today's favourite post award goes to!

awesome. Many thanks!

That's a radiator and no you can't have the fire extinguisher..

As if my GAS wasn't bad enough already... https://www.talkbass.com/threads/the-2018-stingray-special-color-poll-w-pics.1352598/ Post 12 has pics of all the 4-string colours too.

Here you go good Sir; https://www.dropbox.com/s/q2hsody1salb1my/BassChat Podcast - Pilot.mp3?dl=0

Well done @Rob MacKillop, I had a quick look at the youtube samples and these look awesome! Although i mainly play upright, I do have an electric bass for rehearsals, so I'm gonna delve in - thanks for the introduction to Giovanni Bottesini, who I hadn't heard of.

Between the Buried and Me - Automata 1. In anticipation of Automata 2 on Friday. This band are a recent discovery of mine, can't believe what I have been missing out on.......

I'm a born again bass player, currently heading towards the big 6-0 but not there just yet. I wasn't a very good player at uni, but because in those days I was only one or two people who played the bass, I got to play a fair bit, mostly jazzy jamming, some of the people I jammed with were really great and one at least went on to play with a well known band of the era. Before Uni I was in 'practice bands' and did not gig much. Over the last 20 or so years I've occasionally given in to the bass desires, but its just been bedroom stuff, career or the rest of life just got in the way. Two years ago I picked up the bass again as I've always wanted to read music and wanted to give the online training a go, I did Yousician for about a year, then a year ago dropped that and started learning Bach pieces from the sheet music books. I learned a few pieces that continue to challenge me and at least now have a party piece or two that impresses non-musicians. More recently I was at an event outside and there was a folk band and a DB player, I asked him some questions about it with the result that he asked me if I wanted to 'have a go' as he wanted a rest. Although I was pretty bad, I had a go and he didn't come back for half an hour, so I couldn't have been *that* bad (I was though). At least I could more or less keep the rhythm even though the music was alien to me. I've always fancied a go at the DB so decided I'd have a go. Initially I tried to hire a DB, but it turned out that locally all the basses were hired out. So I decided to treat myself as a birthday present, and got a double bass which I'm currently trying to get sorted out, I think it will work out, and it looks nice in the main living room if it doesn't. Before I could start learning it properly I got an email from someone as a result of an ad I put out on joinmyband so now I've joined a rock band, well, its still not quite a full band as it has no singer. So there is a chance I may at some point go out and play somewhere locally. It's all very high energy stuff, punky rock and indy, musically simple but good for me to get me back into playing with others for the first time in several decades. I'm finding that I'm enjoying music more than ever. The Internet forums like this and resources such as studybass.com and videos on YouTube make a wealth of knowledge open to me that was impossible to access when I was a youngster, and I'm just loving learning so much more. Musically although I have a liking for classic rock and lots else, I was 'converted' to Jazz in my late teens and met my partner at a Jazz club, back in those days she was one of a very tiny number of women I'd see in such places. So music and Jazz have always been important to me. I'm not sure I'll ever be good enough to play in a jazz setting, but if it doesn't happen that's no problem. I may end up playing folk, not my favourite, but there's a lot of it about. If you call Danny Thompson folk, then I like that, and the whole psych-folk thing. Whatever, its all music and lovely, so thats what its about. I find these forums really fantastic, apart from occasional threads, there seems to be a friendliness that comes from sharing a love of music (or gear) to the point where these forums are a lot more fun than many other places on the internet these days.

Extremely irritating - 'The England band' and their following murdering eight bars from 'September'. It seems to go on all game, every game. All together....1234

Friday's gig, we were on straight after the football. Three Lions was our opener, and it took the roof off the place 😎 It was purely mercenary, we'd only learnt it a Wednesdays rehearsal, but it did job of getting the audience immediately onside 😁

And they're done, barring another couple of coats of finish:

Just thought I'd do a quick update on this topic. I haven't had much of a chance to use the cab in anger until the last couple of weeks down to the usual band politics and lack of gigs followed by all the work involved in starting a new project. You've probably all been there. Anyway I have had the chance to try it out in anger at a full rehearsal. As a little extra spice the drummer has a 7 week old baby and hasn't been out for a while so was hitting things with a little extra enthusiasm, thank heaven for earplugs! So, I was back in the hall with the most appalling acoustics, all hard surfaces high ceilings, well you name it. To save anyone having to go back the speaker was designed to cope with this sort of space, and those pubs where you just can't get the bass sound right. The deepest bass was rolled off with a 2dB hump at around 120Hz to add a bit of thump so they didn't sound too bass light, a kind of old school underdamped response but with a modern high excursion driver using a single 12 built into a very simple 30l cabinet. To complete the picture I was using a Fender American Deluxe P Bass with a Markbass Tube everything set flat with VPF set at about 10.00 o'clock. We play pop/rock covers AC/DC, Queen through to Chelsea Dagger via Summer of 69 sort of thing (I've no shame) It sounded awesome, first of all really effortlessly loud with two guitars a keyboard and drummer really driving on it was really well up in the mix, not a hint of a clipping light on the input and with plenty to play with at the master volume. I have to say there didn't appear to be much in the way of high power compression either, it was over 30degreees outside, warmer in and we played for three hours without any noticeable tail off in performance by the speaker. This with a single 12 in a cab the size of an old fashioned milk crate. The sound? Well it was the sound of a P bass, punchy but sitting just right in the mix once the band got going. Not the sort of thing you'd set up playing alone at home where you'd probably want a bit more deep and some mid scoop but with a band just spot on. I can also report that in this really difficult room I had no problem in monitoring my own playing both with and without ear plugs. I know you can't trust someone praising their own design but this was meant to be built as a bit of fun, a demo at the bass bash, something I wanted to try. I fully expected to be building a 45l cab which to my mind modelled a lot better but thought I'd try a cab just on the silly side of 'too small'. it was only when we plugged it in at the end of the bass bash I realised it was worth sticking with. It started life as a curiosity piece really but honestly I'd recommend building one to anyone who wants something really portable, isn't too bothered about the top end (it has no tweeter/horn) and who is happy with a straightforward old school sound straight out of the box. It will cost you around £120 to build and once the parts are cut, well it took me around an hour to do the basic build in the video, maybe 2.5 hours in total including the pre prep and finishing.

I've yet to see an advert targeting bass players, which saves me the effort of turning them down

Yeah, with you on that, really wanted to like it and whilst an improvement on Once More... and possibly The Hunter too, it doesn't do it for me. I am a bit sad that the Mastodon who wrote Leviathan doesn't exist anymore, but I understand the need to sustain a career. Try the Call Of The Mastodon EP - I swear the drums on that are just a constant stream of fills!

Without wishing to state the obvious, why not get an Orange?

Fixed. We can see that you're trying. ... ... Very trying.

There is at least one person living in France but I say un oef is enough

I hear ya. My ex-wife got me into Fish-rillion, but I've tried Ho-rillion a number of times, and it just doesn't light that fire for me. It's very good stuff, but ultimately not for me. Clutching At Straws, on the other hand, is a blinder from start to finish and one of my favourite albums ever. Some of Mr. Di ck's solo stuff is very good too.