Leaderboard

Played a support slot for Dr Feelgood at the Adrian Flux Waterfront, Norwich. It is a long way for us to travel - especially me - and not a particularly good payer but the promoter, Stephen 'Foz' Foster, asked us especially and, as he puts a lot of gigs our way, we couldn't say no. I believe it has been a music venue for a while but there has been some recent redevelopment of some old buildings along the river there, a fancy new footbridge over the river to a sparkling new cinema and eateries complex. Anyhoo. It is a very good venue. Downstairs is the big hall that will hold 700: we were in the studio upstairs that will hold 200. In the event, 150 tickets were sold so the place felt full. Dedicated parking, through a few chicanes and double doors, gear in the lift to the room. Nice stage. The Feelgood boys had long set up and gone, leaving us about 2 sq ft each in which to set up. As it turned out that was fine. Set up and sound checked in about 30 mins, which was good. Sound man was great, knew exactly what he was doing. Drummer and I headed off over the water for a Nandos, got back about 10 mins before kickoff. We were given a great introduction from Foz and off we went. Absolutely brilliant, everyone was with us from the first bar. A room full of people who had come to hear some good old fashioned RnB and thgat's what they got from us as a prelude to the Feelgoods. Really enjoyable and we went down really well - went over time to play an encore. Sold some CDs, too, and hopefully picked up some new followers. My SG continues to impress. Because of the long drive home we left just a few songs into the Dr Feelgood set. I had driven up to the guitarist's place in Ipswich and he drove us to Norwich. On the return leg he took a wrong turn and added 20 mins getting lost. Then, for final leg of me driving from Ipswich to home, A12 was shut, adding another 20 mins. Over 3 hrs in total 😒 So, travelling wasn't good. not much money. Would I do it again? You bet Obligatory pic, courtesy of Foz.

About 8 years ago I bought this 1965 Precision from Kings Rd Vintage Guitars. The neck plate number on Guitar dater says 1956, nothing found on the Fender site. It was advertised as being the house bass at Shangri-la Recording Studios and came in a Vintage case with the 'Mountain Dew Boys' stenciling on it. Somewhat battered and bruised but plays and sounds really good. Weird regarding the plate number though.

Hey there! Same floor (OSB 18 not plywood 🙂 ) different project ... but not that different! Mohogany Body with ash top, with rounded contourns (different from the first one, i.e. the red one). Slab body (no cavities for belly and arm). Telecaster like second hand maple + maple fretboard in more than decent conditions. Warman Drivetrain. Quad Coil 28+ kOhm ultra output pickup. 4 wire dual humbucker. Will require a modification of the pickup slot that is P51 standard, will get this done with router and chisels (maybe). All hardware will be black. Omega Pickup second hand (thanks for @walshy 🙂) Black pickup ring (need to conceal the good bad job I will do to extend the pickup cavity) Won't be colored, only oiled and will keep the mohogany color in the back vs the ash on the front! I hope I won't let you down! Thanks for looking!

My two Stingrays. On the right a 1977 which I actually sold 40 years ago in a fit of pique, not long after my then wife-to-be had paid a local jeweller to engrave my name onto the battery plate. Aside from my own regret she has never quite forgiven me for selling it so we’ve been looking for this guitar ever since! Well, we found it in late August this year, battery plate still intact, and I bought it back. On the left is an Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray Classic that I bought in 2014 as the colour and appointments reminded me a lot of my original bass. So now I have them both. 🙂

Got our debut gig with The Americana Revue https://www.americanarevue.com/ coming up in 2 weeks, so I went shopping with my wife for some new clobber. The gig is completely sold out, which we are very proud of. Anyway, here's the gear Anyone else buy gear exclusively to wear at gigs

Oh, and another addition (well, confirmation, really) Barry Moorhouse who set up The Bass Centre will be coming along to show some of his range of Bass Collection basses and to chat about his reminiscences of the old Wapping days (with a few juicy and humorous celebrity anecdotes thrown in for good measure, no doubt!!!).

Well I like to customise the odd thing. Thinking about it, I wear these for my gigs and have worn them to go to gigs too so, yes

We're just trying to confirm exact timings, but as long as you're there between 10 and 5 you won't miss anything

Hmm... John Paul Jones.

I bought my first BF cab because of the weight. Nobody else had anything anywhere near that light. I had just had a load of hernia related surgery so I bought on weight alone and was just happy that I liked the sound too. The introduction of very light cabs by BF was really proof of concept to other makers who slowly followed. Although I am still amazed Darkglass released really heavy cabs a few years ago. Then nobody bought them so they got discontinued and replaced with lighter models. Of course now there are weight competitors. GR are really light, the new Ampeg Venture stuff is very lightweight too. That's been a great advance across the board. My favourite cab in the world is still the Marshall VBC412 but I am not dealing with 110lb cabs ever again. My little stack of One10 and One10T sounds great and very similar. TBH though I never owned them at the same time so I don't know how close they really are.

And we're off! Sanded and base coated. Undecided what colour to go for, I'm torn between metallic purple or some kind of firey orange. I have a great space at a friend's workshop, but tracking down paint isn't easy. I'll just end up using whatever I can get my hands on.

Just picked me up this rather nice 2006 Butterscotch Precision.

Somebody has to stop me - this is my 3rd new bass day in a month! But when you see something you simply must have at the right price... y'know. Picked it up for roughly £100. Thailand's used bass market is a wonderful thing. Anyway, this is a project bass. It's an early Fender Japan Boxer bass, 32" scale. It feels absolutely tiny, even compared to my other 32" basses. It has been seriously abused. The electronics are shot - pickups are OK thankfully. The neck seems fine, too. The big question is... how to refinish? I'm thinking metallic British Racing Green or something along those lines. here's pics!

I picked this G104 up recently. A bit risky I know as these are quite marmite basses, however very much blown away but the quality and the tones it generates. No hint of it being thin in any way, shape or form. I genuinely don't think that I have picked up any of my other fretted basses for a few weeks now.

I love the fact that bands think about their appearance live. It doesn’t matter if it’s a local pub or a stadium, giving the audience something to look at is super important in my opinion. We, just wear black, all black. Which works pretty good for original heavy rock. To me there’s nothing worse than going to see a live band, who just wear jeans and t-shirts. Often the lack of effort in how they look reflects in the music they’re playing.

I'm happy with all my rigs 🙂

Spells Like Teens Spirit ～ Nïrvana

Steve has had a phenomenal career -the list of albums he's worked on is full of influential recordings. He's mainly known for bands such as Death, Sadus and Testament, but he also rerecorded all of the bass parts for the last Megadeth album, after the last incumbent was caught in a compromising situation with a fan online. The fretless work on the Control Denied album - The Fragile Art of Existance is nothing less than godlike! A sig model that is long overdue, and will no doubt be a killer instrument

East P-Retro is the gold standard, come up for sale on here occasionally 👍

@Stub Mandrel Never tried the tough resins, all the resins I've used have been quite brittle, but I'm no expert in resin printing. I'm not aware of any printer that could handle the size of a neck, never mind all the stresses and wear and tear. The shape I chose here was something to hold stuff together. At the end of the day, I suspect ths shape makes no difference in this model. This is a prototype to test the theory as I was intrigued. It's simple enough (relatively speaking) to chane all the outside bits for a Flying V or an SG or anything really. The core of the project is the neck, the neck holder module, the neck pickup module, the bridge module and the plywood backbone. Everything else is just noise. I have done screws into the print, I have a little business doing astrophotography bits, but I found that embedding nuts is far stronger as you can put a lot more load as its pulling against a significant area, and as you say, if you repeatedly screw and unscrew, your lose the integrity of the screw mount. I have no idea about the material creep once under tension. My intention is to tune it up, and then leave it for a few days and see how much it needs retuning. Now printed the top right element and attached it to the neck clamp module. The 4 x M3 bolts are very tight and seem to work. No idea if Loctite is neededyet, that may be an option for later. I'm holding off on attaching the neck itself until I've sorted the nut out. No idea what to do with a nut, so time to learn. Rob

Just come across these interesting things: https://www.lifeisunfair.co.uk/category/controllers

I bet Alex did some market research and found that players tend to regard tall narrow cabinets as odd, so he stayed more conventional. If you're as old as me you remember when PA columns ruled. They were driven from the market by trapezoid cabs made for side by side placement with an outward splay. Where dispersion was concerned columns were better, but buyers didn't know that and insisted on the trap cabs. Marketing and sales departments decided it was better to give the customers what they wanted than to waste their breath trying to educate them. I see that the Ashdown 310 is gone from their line, probably a victim of this very issue.

All in the fingers innit!

SR400B-CW (US Model...) It's Going Passive...

Depends how the nut was cut. I have never needed a new nut going back to EADG from my BEAD basses. I guess if you had it cut cut for a .145 and you're stringing up with a .095 you may run into issues, but even then, under tension with a good break angle at the headstock, I can only imagine it would be an issue bending notes really quite heavily in the first position, otherwise it'll work just fine. Just switch the strings and see. Regarding truss rod, chances are very high that BEAD tuning has less tension than the EADG (the extra G in an average set of strings will have ~10lb extra tension than the missing B) you'll go for, so it'll likely need tightening a touch, and you'll need to look at intonation like you would with any string change, but it should all be easy enough, mostly just fine tuning.

Marcus Miller for me, closely followed by Michel Alibo.

Long since gone, but worthy of posting here.

@Geddys nose It's not. The middle cone is offset to the side. The enclosure is the same size as a Super Twin in height and width but only as deep as a Two10 / Four10. It has tilt back wheels. Tweeter is optional.

It was just a drop, no excess, to make sure the thread didn't get stuck. All done now, grille on, and a test with the Puma 900 powering it went well.

Cool one here on eBay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204479943392?hash=item2f9bf452e0:g:QBIAAOSwHoRlFkaw The fingerboard has a pearloid edge. I had a Bacchus with this feature which looked pretty cool.

Meter man. Human league

For all my class D heads I put a black rubber beer spill mat on my cab similar to the one below Works perfectly

A £20 note for entry and a couple of tickets should help cover costs and make a donation. 🙂

Maybe his wife has told him to get rid of it but he wants to keep it, hence the high price and unhelpful response? “Sorry dear, I’ve tried but it’s just not selling” 😂

I've been clearing out a load of stuff recently and have a fairly firm idea of what gear I want to be core stuff. The one rig I'm really happy with which has proved time and time again to be very reliable, great sounding and fairly loud if I need it to be is my reasonably compact GK rig. It's one amp & one cab that's like a swiss army knife of tones and works particularly well for rock and blues music which is mostly what I'm playing these days. I still have my Ashdown stuff but that plan is in a state of flux at present which means the GK gets more rotation than anything else thats available.

Today I went to a lunchtime concert at St George’s in Bristol by an amazingly talented chap called Will Duerden. He did some contemporary pieces and a few from the DB repertoire. A quite wonderful player and engaging young man. I was embarrassed when someone in my group mentioned I played DB (with all my years left on the earth I couldn’t do it). Thoroughly recommend checking him out if he’s playing anywhere near you. https://www.willduerden.com

Given your caveats about routing and battery compartments, might a good off-board pre-amp (in pedal format) be an idea? I've found that the A channel on my Two Notes Le Bass can nicely tailor a passive bass' tone without any distortion if I keep the gain to sensible levels. There's plenty of choice, The vintage Markbass pre and the Genzler Re-EQ both caught my eye. Perhaps the Two Notes Revolt. At least if it's external, you can try some out together and see what you like.