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Dear Basschat, I know that I'm much better at talking about anything but myself, so please forgive the rather awkward reply. Had it have been a thread about my bass, then sure, I could talk all day about it. I'll keep this short and sweet for now. Due to ongoing (long term) circumstances out of my control indeed I am struggling. I'm not under any illusions I know that many of us are. So like many, I've sought to try to make ends meet as Daz39 has said by selling my work tools. I wish I could say that I did have piles of unused gear that I have accumulated, but the reality is that I only have a few items left that I am not using before we dip in to the kit I use every day. Andrew, you are amazing and making such a post has been really touching and the replies have also left me feeling slightly less invisible than I have been this last year or so. Thank you, really. I'm not really sure how to respond. In some ways it feels unfair that I am deserving of money to help me when I know there are others out there who are in dire circumstances. Don't get me wrong, I would kill for a lottery win! So, whilst I try to figure things out, I may ask for your help another way. I do work hard. I have income streams, so it's not as if I am sat doing nothing about it. I don't drink, smoke, go out much, nor have I been on any sort of holiday for years. 😔 There's obviously more to this that I feel uneasy about airing in public, sorry if it all sounds a little cryptic, but thank you for the kind and thoughtful words.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-65597518

Been a tad busy this week, but last weekend was fab. Just a local boozer where I’m squished into a corner, but my uni course is so intense it felt amazing just to feel like ‘me’ again for a few hours. This weekend is a double whammy so I’m looking forward to that! here's a few pics from Sat.

My first Jazz bass, liking the difference to my PBass In the new Candy Apple red colour

I'd chop off our keyboard player's left hand.......

Awesome! 👍😊 Same thing happened to some friends of mine in a band called KXB (from West Sussex) some years ago... They were playing 'Gay Bar' at one of their regular local Saturday night gigs, and Tyler Spencer, aka Richard Valentine, Electric 6's lead vocalist got up from the crowd and joined them on stage!

Pickguard on, pickup in with @KiOgon loom installed. We're in the home stretch now! One odd thing that took me a bit to figure out. I suppsoe my cavity was a bit shallow, so while the output jack was working, as soon as i screwed down the pickguard, the sound cut out. Turns out one of the pots was hitting the shielding and that was causing everything to cut out. I shielded the shielding with electrical tape and the issue went away.

I'd change the bass player 🙂

Gathered together various basses in various stages of construction today, all but two will be heading out (I'll let you guess which two). So many parts, so little time! There's a further two I couldn't be arsed to get out of the pile in the shad also 🤔

You’ll probably get better definition if you don’t play with your fingers crossed 🤣🤞

I finally bit the bullet, £349 delivered on coda music. Yeah I get it now. They are great bits of kit. Initially was frustrating pairing them up with Bluetooth and unfortunately the receiver thing doesn't fit my barrel jack yamaha bass. Apart from that they work well and are very handy. The two different Bluetooth settings boss audio and boss midi threw me at the start also. My biggest takeaway is how bad my tone and playing can sound with dry signal and no pre's Homework time. Overall would recommend 👌

I wish we could be more confident in all the non-playing aspects of band stuff - socials, publicity, tooting our own metaphorical horns and all that jazz instead of the whole "we're in a band but shhhh, don't tell anyone!" shyness/modesty thing. We don't have to turn into completely overbearing, arrogant knobs either, just somewhere between those extremes would be nice.

This arrived from Bass Bros just over a week ago. I was actually away on a residential course from delivery day onwards, so I had to confess to Mrs Rocks about buying it and ask her very nicely if she would stay at home and take delivery of it. She duly did, and even unpacked it and sent me pictures. Anyway, the bass! It’s a 1987 Made In Japan Fender PB-62 Reissue. These were apparently made by Fujigen Gakki for Fender at the time. The build quality is amazing, easily as good as anything I’ve seen from Fender. Acoustically it rings like a grand piano, very reminiscent of the 2016 AVRI P bass I had until recently. One of the most remarkable things about the bass is the condition, it looks more or less new, which is surprising for a 36 year old instrument. There are a handful, maybe four or five tiny marks on the body, that’s it, no buckle rash and no fret wear. It weighs 4.1kg, or 9lbs 1oz. It even came in it’s original shipping carton with matching serial number. The neck is lovely, very very close to my ‘73 P bass, 41mm nut, but just ever so slightly slimmer from front to back. I bought this bass primarily as a bass I need to worry less about than my vintage 70’s Fender basses. Also as a bass I can try things out on, looms, pickups, bridges etc, something I don’t need to be too precious about keeping original. So it’s going to get gigged, and changes will be made, in fact I’ve already made a couple. The first pics are as I received it, totally stock, with the white guard. I’ve been playing it like this since I got home, even with the rounds on it. Today, I received a new loom for it from John (thanks @KiOgon), so I was ready to make a few changes. Now it’s sporting a tortoise guard (thanks @dodgnofski) with full vintage style shielding plate underneath, Fender Custom Shop 62 pickup, new kiOgon loom, and new knobs. And it’s got a new set of TI flats on it. The action is low, it plays wonderfully, and it sounds great. The original guard and wiring with knobs, and the pickup are all stashed away safely if ever I want to put it back to stock. I’m going to take it out on Friday night to the local jazz jam and hopefully play a couple of tunes on it. Thanks for listening! Cheers, Rob

Bitter Sweet Timpani ～ The Verve

BassTheWorld?

Good luck if Steven Siegal ever jumps up to play guitar!! 🙂

Yeah, but now you know clearly how sh** you are! 🙂

I dunno about that. I listened to it later and we were still sh**

Designacable or Custom Lynx.... https://www.designacable.com/ https://custom-lynx.co.uk/

Swingin' - Tom Petty

How many exposures?

You guys think you had it bad, I used to be a teacher!

Born Zippy ～ Underworld

Kate Bush has posted about John Giblin on her website (https://www.katebush.com/news/john) Likewise from Jim Kerr on the Simple Minds facebook (remembering seeing JG at the Before The Dawn shows - also a hint at why he left Simple Minds) https://www.facebook.com/simpleminds/posts/pfbid02Ts2yZYGSY1h7rzKBsFrTQbSsme5EDqDdtPhw6u9a3iA2Q5w8vHc6k3MsnSdSxfL8l

Just butting in but I finally got my Dwarf and OMFG it's fuuuuuun. As you were.

My Lovely Horse - Father Ted Crilly and Father Dougal McGuire

yeah - this stuff isn't easy if it's not your thing. And the sort of "half-information" eg in the Epiphan piece (I found it on their website) really doesn't help. There's a lot to unpack with Hi-Z / Lo-Z / Balanced / Unbalanced etc. I'm not going to do a full treatment here 🙂 But if you want technically excellent info I'd suggest looking up the work of Bill Whitlock (associated with Jensen transformers and THAT semiconductors). But a few quick points: Balanced audio can be any level. Obvs if going into a mic pre it needs to be fairly low level (or padded down at the input) to avoid clipping. Higher Impedance connections are more susceptible to external interference - so it is often worth trading level for a lower impedance (as with a DI transformer that presents a high Z to the source and a low Z to the mixing desk input etc). Contrary to what the article says - it is not necessary for a balanced connection to drive the two legs in anti-phase. Impedance matching on each leg is what matters wrt noise rejection (CMRR)

That's fantastic - and all credit to the guy busking for seizing the moment!

I read a little piece yesterday about how Living Colour's Stain album was now 30 years old and how the initial US release had different guitar solos on tracks 2-4 (Ignorance Is Bliss, Leave It It Alone, Bi) - I was a huge fan (although it has to be said, I'm more Team Muzzy that Doug Wimbush) and have both the alternate and regular versions. This was kind of enough to kick off a bit of a Living Colour deep dive - been working though from the original demos, the official releases, bootlegs, the lot. This is a crazy mental version of Funny Vibe. Muzz was so great.

One thing's for certain, he's not spending all his money on haircuts!

Mine arrived earlier this week, very cheap and very fast from Scan. Best bass accessory I've tried, blows the PJB gear out of the water on functionality, usability and - surprisingly to me - on core tone (although let's face it the PJB headphones let the side down awfully). Strolling around the garden playing bass to myself, living the dream! Why no-one did this years ago is beyond me, thanks for the recommendations folks 👍

Love it. I was at a gig in Barbados and realised I was standing next to a rather well know singer. She was loving the band and getting really into dancing and cheering, and the look on the singer's face - he can't have been much more than 18 - when he realised who she was was priceless. I love it when celebs act like they're not celebs 👍

You should have kept that bit quiet, then you could have sold them in pairs on here as ‘tone weights’ and made a fortune.😆

Spy in the cab - bauhaus

Just arrived home from Joe Satriani at The London Palladium. Wowser, he certainly can play. Bryan Beller on bass too who is one of my faves. First time I’ve seen him play a fretless.

This doesn't sound right. The EA Doubler is a decent amp, and a 12" EA Wizzy 12M has a sensitivity of 103dB. Given you're playing an upright bass I would guess you're not playing thrash metal, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you probably could be loud enough without spending anything extra: I'd be blowing barn doors off with your setup. A few things for you to check: When you blend your two pickups, have you ensured they're in phase? I don't think this has ever happened to me to a significant extent but when blending two sources each one could be cancelling each other out. One way to test would be to dispense with one for a bit and seeing if that improves things. As an aside how loud does your band play? Of course if you like the blended sound of the two pickups then I can't argue with that, but if it's just to tame feedback I've never ever had problems with using just a Full Circle. Are you using a HPF? You absolutely definitely want to be using this. The double bass booms so removing all the bass frequencies paradoxically is what you want to do. I don't know which EA Doubler you have but the manual I'm looking at seems to have a jumper setting for an 80Hz HPF. That's what you want, and don't let any electric bassist tell you otherwise Again I stress I'm saying this without knowing what type of music you play, but I will say that I've played many jazz big band gigs with 350W into one 10" speaker. Sometimes in the absolute worst possible rooms I was left wanting, but not often and I know more about EQ now so perhaps that was down to my naivety. Your setup is on paper (I've never tried it) more performant than what I've used for many years.

Overwhelmed with this set up , the tone from the Handbox is unreal and that cab makes it sound like an earthquake ! All set to be making some people deaf this weekend...

It's no secret that I had to sell up everything a handful of years ago, all the basses, all the gear, everything, just to pay the bills. It's only been in the last year or so that I've been able to start assembling a modest group of instruments. It's a very depressing place to be, when one of the things that makes your life better has to go to pay the rent, and actually, at the end of it all, it made no difference really, selling anything, it just delayed the inevitable. I should have at least kept a couple of the basses.... I really miss my Stingrays..... All I can say, is that from personal experience, selling you prized possessions to pay bills isn't worth it. Unless you have a collection of Foderas to sell, that will really make a financial difference, don't do it... it's not worth it. That said.... I'll be at the front of the line to help, if I can, any brother, or sister, who needs the help.

Just back from a rather splendid gig, 10 minutes walk from my front door. It’s not every day that an ‘80s star visits the boondocks.

I'm not really sure what to say. I'm really touched that anyone would even want to do this for me, it's a really thoughtful thing to suggest. You'll have to forgive me if for once after many years of recording review videos, I am lost for words. Things are really tough at the moment and I can't help feeling a little bit like I've been thrown under a bus. I think the reality is that I'm not singled out, everyone is being stuffed financially and I feel for those who are in an even more difficult situation than I. I'm trying to figure things out. (Long story) I'll keep everyone posted. Thank you, really.

Its twin is waiting ... 🙂