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I’m a day late on this one - sorry - but on Thursday night I played Rebellion in Manchester with Stray. We were supporting British Lion, what with Del being good mates with Steve Harris. Bit of a hero moment for me. It was a bit nerve wracking as we had to pull in a sound engineer to take with us who fortunately did a sterling job. I gigged my Epi Thunderbird Classic 4 Pro for the first time. Loved it except for the fact that the side markers disappeared on the dark stage. It’s now been tastefully modded with electrical tape for the next gig! Also got Steve to sign the back of it for me. Anyway, we played well and the crowd were really receptive. The British Lion guys were all really helpful and welcoming and we all had a splendid time. Shall be repeating the experience in Nottingham tomorrow! Steve and I Steve’s Basses One bit of our two vehicle convoy with Maiden’s tour bus in the background!

Dutifully went to Mrs Gasman’s Rotary party tonight as her guest. Live band was setting up for after-meal dancing. I escaped the table chat and went to ogle the bass player’s gear, particularly the metallic red go-faster striped Mustang, rare beast down here in Dorset. The owner then appeared and we got chatting, she was about 4’ 11” hence the short scale bass, and a sh*t-hot player. I was then most unexpectedly invited to sit in and play a couple of numbers, as we know it’s unheard of normally, I didn’t ask, she just took a gamble on me after a ten minute chat and anyway if a bloke from a band called Mustang Sally can’t play Mustang Sally on a Fender Mustang it’s a poor show! It went fine, but the real revelation was how good that Mustang sounded, and how smooth and easy it was to play despite it being my first short scale dabble for 50 years; I know it was fate, I must get one!

Maple Road This Saturday 7/1 @ The Baree 7:00 Thiensville Very cool upscale outdoor venue. Probably the most important gig of the summer. Blue

Line 6 released the Variax bass (700 & 705) in 2005 which emulated 24 basses including solid, semi, hollow and synth. Lots of folks don't like them but I really like mine. Rather than thinking of the settings as actual basses I just consider it to have a huge range of tones. As well as different tones the sustain and attack is different on different models. In a band setting they can sound great, especially a covers band if you want to try to copy original tones.

Today:

Thanks! Alex picked it up yesterday...he pretty much said the very same thing

Plate done, actually done two…one using a 4mm strip of pine & stuck the veneer on using an iron, the other some UHU glue onto the aluminium plate & clamped it up. Roasted a 10mm drill shank up and fired it thru the holes.

Gigged last night and used my Player Series Jazz bass which is now back to stop pickups and Nickel Roundwounds. In the past I ran it to try and mimic a PBass ( neck pup on full, bridge in 50%, tone full on ) but last night .., I used it with both pickups on full, tone on full and then used my EQ pedal to boost 400-800hz. It sounded amazing in the rock band with gut rumbling lows ( deeper than a PBass ) and using the MXR 6 band EQ pedal I could put back some mids that get scooped with both pups in together. It fitted every song very well and it’s the first time I think I understood what a Jazz bass can really sound like. With EQ adjustment it sounded really good and different to the PBass thump. Better ?? Not sure but I like it and it’s worked out well.

Congrats to @AndyTravis on last month's success. We start the second half of the year with a reminder of some of the weather that broke after the lovely June sunshine. "Taken a good few years ago, walking home from the pub in a storm. Lightning and Street Lighting…" Simple rules ✔️ Entries must be <5 minutes and recorded between now and the deadline. ✖️ No illegal samples, copyright infringements or other snide goings-on ✖️ Bagpipes. please no bagpipes, there wasn't a truce worth noting this month, and if there was, we probably missed it! ✖️ No voting for your own entry. We'll know. And we'll shame you.. Deadline wise , we will go for midnight on the 24th which means you'll probably have till tea-time on the 25th A line or two of blurb as well for the vote thread will be lovely. Have fun

Rather than list what's wrong about this bass, its easier to list what's right about it. A list of everything that confirms this bass as being a 2007 USA Fender:

I have had a think and attached pics of the worse and best changing rooms we had over the years - A muddy horse box in a farm yard at a private event, and the best was the main ball room at the Cafe Royal over looking Regent St. as it was empty and we were playing in the small room next door. No M&M's but we did get Champagne and pistachios.

Yup he just loves it. I saw them last year at The Craufurd in MK. When Maiden have a couple of night at a town on the current tour, he’s scheduling in a BL gig at a nearby venue, and using some of Maidens support band as their techs!

Amazing, what an opportunity! I saw British Lion last year in a tiny pub in Gravesend, they were really good. I find it amazing that Steve Harris happily goes from playing huge arenas to small bars because he loves playing so much

I've mentioned this one before in a similar thread, but the Behringer BX4500H deserves another nomination. I gigged mine again on Thursday and was reminded just how solid it is. Incredibly flexible, every tonal configuration imaginable, loud and clear. I've been underwhelmed by other Behringer heads, but not by this one. It's easily one of my all time favourites.

Nearly there!!

I love these old designs dating back to before research and science caught up with cab designs and building cabs was as much an art as a science. The scoop horn on the back was really too small to make much impact upon the bass and the 'sound' of this speaker would have been dominated by the direct radiation of the speaker but we tried everything to lift the sound output of the cabs. Everything was suck and see, build a cab and listen, swap speakers around and try again. I still hanker after designing and building some of the more ambitious and impractical folded horns and hybrid monstrosities I dreamed of back then. Thanks for reminding me of where I came from and well done with this refurb. Please don't try to carry it on your own

First of 3 this week for us at Bournemouth Pavilion theatre. Grand old place, with a very interesting room backstage (see below). Good to meet up with @Mickeyboro and his wife before the gig too.

We just got a couple of videos sent through from a recent gig. The audio is a bit 'quick 'n' dirty straight off the desk, (had to tweak the bass in post a bit cause of tech issues caused by monitor spill). But anyway, here's a 'Royal Blood' cover. Its almost all bass from my Zoom B9.1ut with a bit of help from a sparrow Di and a graphic EQ pedal. The guitarist does play a few quiet bits, but otherwise its just me doing what I could fuddle together without spending any money when the band said they wanted to cover Royal Blood! 😂😂

The massive, weighty cab quest/collecting is at an end. I think I’ve finally scratched the itch. This cab was the final ‘must have/try’ cab that I’d lusted after as a young player. It took me 35 years to find one of them. I drove to London to collect it in December. It came with a blown driver and missing one piece of plastic trim. Thankfully this one didn’t need re tolexing. Only a couple of small nicks which I was able to glue down. the plastic trim was impossible to find. A very flat ‘h’ shape with a coloured insert. I had to create the profile with 3 separate pieces of plastic trim and then get the colour matched and ended up painting both trims so the matched. The colour is remarkably close but the remaining trim had been non uniformly faded/stained with nicotine. the grill frame had cracked but only required gluing. I added some wooden fillets to the baffle as the grill and whole front is angled back and was Probably the cause of the crack as it wasn’t supported and difference of about 20mm between the top and bottom. Baffle painted, new 600w eminence installed and the Badge attached, I’d bought the badge around 15 years ago ’just in case’. These cab restorations often end in great disappointment when I play them in a band context. This wasn’t the case with this. Very loud and consistent timbre. It’s a great cab and now Part of the ‘keepers’. There is no other cab I fancy and I’m no longer searching. That said, if a second one came along or a second peavey 3620? 🤣

I think he realises that somebody turned him over following numerous messages. "Okay thank you, we’ll be ending this listing, have had a few of these messages, thanks for your help."

At my current band, the drummer, at our first rehearsal, told everyone, that he plays each song everytime a bit different (rhytmical). So i thought - dahh, i'll play what ever i like and try to fast combine it with the drummer dreams. No problemo!

Back in the day when bands were usually a gang of mates, a drummer I played with (through several incarnations of a few bands) was exactly that, we were best mates and used to hang out, go to gigs, take funny little pills, get off with girls, eat kebabs, etc blah blah.. This was all, I believe, reflected in our playing as a "rhythm section" if you want to call it that. We'd just naturally play stuff, lock into grooves, jam things and develop them into song structures, whatever. I somehow doubt this kind of way of going exists much now, (tho I'd like to think it did) Anyway good plan to try a "bass and drums alone" session and hope it is productive.. In your case I guess I'd make a mental note in advance of a few things or areas you think would be useful to work on. I'd start off with just jamming with some bass line ideas and go from there...

I've played with the same drummer since 2009. We've done some practices together just the two of us when we want to figure something out about a song that's bothering us and it's always been beneficial. Did it work? Well, we haven't killed each other yet, so I guess it did! But in all seriousness, I would definitely say it helped foster a "rhythm section as a coherent unit" mentality. Maybe time alone did that, who knows? Hints? Keep it light hearted, but have a purpose - like working on a song or portion thereof in particular. I'd say going into it entirely rudderless will amount to playing 2 songs then spending the rest of the time drinking tea and talking bollox.

😎

I have short scale TI Jazz flats on a 32” Aria TSB 650. Fit well, play great. Some useful info here <https://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/blog/how-to-measure-bass-scale-length/>

Your hands are telling you something. Listen to your hands. It's longer-term counter-productive to 'binge' in this way. Play for a while (a couple of hours is fine...), then rest (go for a walk, make a cuppa, read through the set list...) for half an hour or so, then back to practising. Slow is the new Fast, and is the quickest way of getting things done.

None of the above? I store them like rope. In half, in half again and tie them in a bow. Never had any cable failures, so I guess it's ok?

The decals say 'Made in USA' on both the front and the back of the headstock so it must be true. 🤣

I did a degree in music tech. In our first studio session, we were shown how to do A and that was the expectation of the studio. The beauty of it is when you've got long runs. You can pretty much hold on to one end, throw the lead and it shoots out in a straight line to your destination. Or you can uncoil half and leave it there tidily next to a mic stand rather than have excess leads going everywhere.

I have to wear glasses to do pretty much anything. Spent a few years wearing contact lenses but in venues they would quickly dry up (especially before the smoking ban). I have varifocals now but there's a certain distance that isn't covered. It can be best described as the distance between me and the setlist. Regardless of where the setlist is! 😀

You're right. All these puns are giving me a splitting haddock.

There’s been a further update to the latest FAQ, basically the exact date and time for batch releases will be announced at least 24 hours before on social media. No new designs (including T-47 Mini) before 2024. Si

Yeah, I know, but waiting for shiny things to arrive is rubbish. I guess my main annoyance is the inconsistency - another bass gets dispatched DE>UK on the same day from same company using same courier and sails through.

It's either A or D for me. Figure of 8 gives me the creeps somehow and anyone doing the elbow/hand wrap should have all their cables confiscated.

It's a bit random at the moment as to how expeditiously items get through customs. I've had things sail through in no time at all and others go nowhere for a week. Unfortunately, things are not as seamless as they were...

My kitchen scale says 4.18 kg

I’m out, surprisingly a lot later than I thought I’d be at the beginning of the year. I bought myself a Backbeat purely because my gig tonight has a stupid 75dB limit (honestly what are these guys smoking…?) so we are strictly on IEMs without anything onstage. So a sort-of necessary purchase but still it stops me from making the cut this year sadly. Maybe next!

Current line-up (left to right). SQ Squier Precision (about '84), Tokai Jazz Sound (about '82), '66, SVL Reserve, 72/68 'The Wreck', SVL Reserve, '71, Japanese A/E fretless, Greco Spacy Sound (about 1982)

Someone on TB just posted this lovely rehouse.