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And at last, some much better photos of In Isolation from Saturday's gig:

@Dad3353 While I applaud your efforts to improve forum literacy, if this was aimed at me it is of zero use unless you also quote and point out where I have wrongly added or left out the apostrophe, and as I am mildly dyslexic could be interpreted as bullying. Also in the grand scheme of writing on these forums, missing an apostrophe out or putting it in the wrong place is low down on the scale of crimes against literacy that I have seen inflicted here. However if you were to flag up every error you'd be sticking in some inane graphic after every other post.

To get back on topic here's a photo of the whole of In Isolation from our set at Whitby on Saturday:

My second post on this forum, with the most important subject for a bass player : ) Pedalboard for my punk-ish drums + bass-guitar DUO:

Last night's board...

Could be argued that it is the repetition that makes it funnier. Really, folks, get some perspective. To claim that Douglas's gentle joke highlighting a punctuation error is bullying is beyond ridiculous.

Morning all Sorry for the delay in coming back on my rehearsal experience with the Katana 500. I was at my sister in law's funeral yesterday so a bit distracted Set up for rehearsal was me on bass with the Katana into an 8 ohm FMC 1x12 cab with no tweeter. Guitar, keys, electric drum kit and four vocals into a stripped down version of our gigging PA (i.e.no subs). I calibrated the cab to the room before we started, and the guitarist commented that it tightened up the bottom end nicely. The amp kept up just fine, volume-wise: I have no concerns whatsoever that it won't be loud enough to gig with. It sounded great! Really big sound, lots of body and presence to the tone. I liked "amp feel" set to "modern" best, with a little light compression and all EQ set flat. A little LPF dialled in too. The effects sound lush, really clear tracking octaver, watery chorus, loads of different drives. It'll be fun exploring them for sure. That said, I think using the effects live will be a work in progress, especially if I try and switch between presets, because as they take all the settings you saved on the front panel (gain. eq, compression etc.) if you've changed away from them in your setting up they may not sound optimal in the room, if you follow? So for now I am going to concentrate on just getting the "live" settings on the front panel right in each venue. Once I have set eq I will then have foot-switchable compression, drive and a single effect available to me (I can also have two other effects stored in the memory, but would need to change them on the panel rather than the footswitch). As I get to know the amp better I am sure I'll be able to work out the best way to make the three presets work in a live setting as well. EDIT: Just realised if I add the bluetooth adapter I can switch between settings from my phone!

Hoto né

Id not really thought of it like that before but youre right, it is a form of bullying. Im very dyslexic and couldnt agree more. Plus, has to be said @Dad3353 now quite tedious and doesnt contribute anything to the discussion (unless it’s a discussion on grammar)…. a bit like this post really! Basschatters have never been very good at sticking to the subject and this doesnt help.

With added knobs 👌

We've all been there.

would it kill him to get a red guitar to match?

Everything has had time to settle and so now is the time to level the frets, re-crown and polish. With the trussrod adusted to give me a straight neck, out comes my sanding beam to take off the high spots and/or high frets: The filings coming off the high frets are a guide - you know you are there when there are just the beginning of an even scrape across the tops of the lowest frets For recrowning, I use a diamond crowning file, first by itself, and then using the file as the former for progressive grades of emery and micro-mesh, all the way from 500 to 12000 grit. And, other than a few final bits of tidying up, it's pretty much there

Just watched this and was blown away by the chemistry and the talent in this s band . Willow is Will smith daughter , mohini dei on bass 🤯🤯🤯🤯

Sorry, no gig last night (again...). We have (maybe; to be confirmed...) been asked to play at La Fête de la Musique, June 21st, so my next post will be the 22nd (maybe; to be confirmed...).

I’ve been doing a light restoration for a friend on his Hofner. It’s been in its case, in a damp garage for nearly 25 years. It was covered in white powdery mould like substance when I opened the case. I thought it would have been completely delaminated too but by the looks of it has escaped with just needing a good deep clean and a New jack socket. I’d left it in its case slightly open for a couple of weeks before doing anything to it.

I got the Schecter P4 Exotic a couple of years back and while I loved the way it played and the look I realised that P bass sound wasn’t for me. After watching @funkle’s post on building a Wal-ish I decided I wanted to build my own. It’s something I’d looked at before but always seemed like a massive leap of faith with the lack of demos, all the content showing off the Lusithand NFP and Turner Pickups pushed me over the edge. Here’s some of the process so far: The original Schecter P4 Exotic. Prepping for incision, getting centre lines and working out how much needed routing out. A little improvising and got it routed, regretted forgetting the dust extractor for the router though… A new pick guard and some extremely deep pickup cavities to house the Turner English voiced multicoil pickups. Test fit before I attached the neck and started connecting wires. The journey has hit a blocker there sadly as I seem to have misplaced my flathead screwdriver bits to connect the preamp and pickups. Hopefully should get that all finished up this weekend though 🙌

With new singer comes requests to change the key of some songs. It is inevitable. No, I will not buy a 5 string bass. Our guitarist recently swapped his pedals out for a multi-FX unit and one of its tricks is pitch shifting. So that got me thinking, after I faffed around with retooling Whole Lotta Rosie and basically said "hell no" to retooling and just detuning all the strings for Hallowed Be Thy Name that maybe I could get in on this. So the research begins. Digitech Drop, EHX Pitch Fork seem to be the go-to devices. HOW EFFIN' MUCH? (full on outside Scots voice, inside voice didn't even draw breath). So I dig deeper into the more budget conscious end of the market. Spot the Mooer Pitch Box, ok, that's £60ish, that's getting a bit more reasonable. I look/ask around and the feeling I get is "OK for live work, wouldn't record with it". Then I stumble upon the Hotone Harmony - brand new, £47. Hmm, it's probably hot garbage at that price but I can easily return it if that's the case. Watched some videos (admittedly mostly guitar-centric) about it and no-one said it's awful. So I bought it. Well, I laughed out loud for about two minutes straight when I got it out of the box... I mean look at it - it's so cute, it's like doll's house furniture. I kid you not, for two straight minutes I just looked at it in my hand and laughed. Then I put it on my pedalboard and laughed some more... This has no chance, I thought to myself. Wrong! It's not bad, not bad at all. I've tried it through headphones, and live with a band in rehearsal. It seems to track OK and latency is acceptable - it didn't put me off or was noticeably off in the live context. Used it to go -1,-2 and -3 semitones and tuning seemed fine, it does get a bit warbly down at -2 and -3 on the lowest notes but I suspect that it's not strictly speaking designed to handle bass. It's not noisy when engaged, it does suck a little high end off the signal but that can be EQed back in a bit. I also used it in harmony mode to add in an octave above and found that surprisingly successful with added OD in a one guitar band, really helped fill the sound out. I did give the "detune" mode a try, again, pretty good, sounds a bit like the intro to Come As You Are, it's chorussy, and watery if that makes sense. Haven't fully explored that one yet. Despite being teeny tiny, it's a doddle to use - the top controls are just far enough apart and the top knob for the pitch setting is disproportionately large (probably and most disconcertingly larger than the knobs found on most full size pedals). And in case you were wondering how to tell if the effect is engaged or not... All in all, would I recommend the Hotone Harmony? Yes, with caveats. It's in the same ballpark as what I gathered about the Mooer Pitchbox - fine for live, probably wouldn't record with it. What it does, it does very well for the price, and if you can't find room for it on your pedalboard then you're not trying hard enough! The bad news is that it's discontinued by Hotone, who seem to have repositioned themselves upmarket with multi-FX, multi purpose expression pedals and inscrutable looking programmable pedals. So hoover one up while you still can! Or don't - I don't care, I've already got one!

Wow - this week's video is pretty awesome:

Here’s the finished product. Still needs a proper setup but it’s playable. I replaced the lace alumitone pickup with a T'bird styleone. To say it’s ‘different’ is an understatement, but I love it. To restate what’s parts have been used. A custom built Gretschalike billy bo Thunderbird aluminium body, made by molindar in Scotland. A 2002 (Korea) Epiphone Thunderbird neck. An Ibanez AGB2005 tun-o-matic tailpiece/bridge. 2 Gretsch chrome knobs and a Kiogan wiring loom (bought for another project that never materialised). I haven’t weighed it yet but it’s heavier than my Gibson non-reverse Thunderbird and Rickenbacker 4004L basses but lighter than many other basses I’ve owned. Anyway, here’s a few photos.

It's a Battlestar Galactica Cylon edition : )

What's the Korg tuner? That's purrrrrty. Lol

This is my board for the weekend, nice and simple but gets the job done!

I'd love to know how it would go down with the flock if you turned up with one of these:

This is nothing like Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran, this is real music! And soft, yes, but not dull. The musicianship is razor edge sharp, but not in a cold calculated way. Authentic and genuine, felt, real music!

I was very positively surprised and actually really liked it (the Tiny Desk Concert video linked to in the OP that is). A lot even. I was expecting cold Fusion w**ker bass and contrived vocals that would sound like someone being tortured into an orgasm, overplayed and fake, but this is actually pretty damn awesome, and genuinely emotional. And I for one love the vocals as well, they sound authentic and genuine, and fits the instrumental part of the songs perfectly, not the bloated fake Soul groaning I was expecting. This is real music! Thanks!

Jeez, it is Douglas having a bit of fun. Lighten the flip up, guys.

Yes in many ways. I was blessed with being taught by Mr Hunter. Whilst a devout classical head, with everything else deemed noise, he did allow me to play a video of Jimmy Page’s theremin solo in our class once. Main lesson I got was following scores. This was long before I was reading music, but with those little yellow books of full scores by yer Beethovens and Mozarts, he’d put the music on, we would follow along and after a few minutes he’d stop the record and ask - what bar are we on? Bonus points if you could work out the beat and note. In a nutshell that showed my how written music worked. Eternally thankful.

I replaced the stock P/J pickups in my Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro Bass with a P/J set of EMG Geezer Butler pickups, and the tone went from decent to amazing. I can only recommend it. Definitely no boomyness. Quite on the contrary, these pickups are really articulate and adds a ton of definition.

Just finished routing the pick guard and some finishing touches like countersinking the screws etc. Was just about to connect it up and realised all my flathead screwdrivers i need to connect the pickups and preamp have gone missing 🥲 Very happy with how it’s turning out, ended up spacing the pickups a little further than initially intended largely down to cosmetics and symmetry.

Right, so that's absolutely magnificent Admittedly, I spend a lot of time lately listening to solo fingerstyle guitar recordings so I may be more open to this than many bass player. This is all magnificent but what stands out is how expressive his tapping is. I believe he is on another level compared to all the other youtube show-offs I am aware of. Not because of his chops, but because even at the frantic pace he has to publish videos in his line of business, he still often makes some great music. The objection to youtubers is often that their chops won't account for much in a band context. Well I'd rather take this than the mediocre stuff that 99% of bands record.

The question 'Does Humour belong in Music..?' has its answer here. No bullying; I can't know the status of every BC member, and I dish these out randomly (so fairly...) whenever the mood takes me, whoever has blundered. It's usually only the predictive typing at 'fault' anyway, but the poster has not read through his/her copy to spot these little things. No kittens die, the sun rises the next day with or without my tiny joke, but, as it seems to offend so many folk maybe I'll sit it out for a while. Have fun, y'all, bunch of grumpusses that you seem to be. I'm sorry that the lighter side of Life has not come across for you as I would have hoped. Never mind... Peace.

My upright is sub-£1000, it's a white-painted plywood model. It is probably this one, though I bought it second hand: https://www.thomann.de/gb/thomann_kontrabass_rockabilly_weiss.htm I only play it pizz, and use it for bluegrass, jazz and worship music. It has had a pro setup, decent strings & pickup. I had to have a new end pin fitted after the original one self-destructed. I wouldn't pay anymore unless I moved over to classical or wanted to return to bowing. I actually like that it's plywood and not worth much as it's regularly gigged and I don't worry too much about it.

I'm still tempted. It isn't ludicrously expensive, even with shipping. I just don't need one. But it's a clever sales tactic, with a limited pre-order time. FOMO and all that.

I can't speak highly enough about David. I've had a couple of basses, lots of bits. Importantly he is as pleasant and fair to deal with when things don't go quite right as he is with straightforward sales. One of the good guys who makes some lovely kit that is exceptionally reasonably priced.

My next gig is with In Isolation on Saturday May 11th at The Black Bull in Gateshead. Saturday May 11th, it's Twilight Zone Day, and the planets have aligned over Gateshead as Liber8 and OTH present a Spring Special In the bar: Liber8 and many other local traders will be on hand with uniquities, curiosities and all manner of goodies. More info about the awesome market right here Also playing are Machiner. Bands on from 8.00pm. Tickets available here

On Saturday May 4th my band 'Shreds.' hits The Victoria Inn in Derby... if you're nearby and like punk / hardcore, you won't want to miss this show! Tickets are only £10 !!! Let me know if you plan to be there! If you aren't nearby and want to catch another show, you can find other dates on Bandcamp and Songkick (https://shredshc.bandcamp.com/)