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We played our first gig of 2025 at a regular haunt of ours, the Old Fox in Felling, Gateshead. This pub has a reputation for live music and it has a knowledgable music loving crowd so it’s always a pleasure to play. We were a fiddle player down which required revisiting a few old tunes and I made more mistakes last night than I have in all last years gigs - at times it felt like I was playing using someone else’s left hand. I also managed to bust the zip on my jeans, but fortunately my trusty Overwater spared my blushes 😅 Rig-wise, I used my Ashdown Neo 400w 1x15 combo which blows me away every time I use it, and my normal pedal board signal chain of Shute GLXD16 wireless, EBS Stanley Clarke pre, SushiboxFX Finally DI, and MicroThumpinator.

Last night was our first round heat in the M2TM competition to play at Bloodstock this year, which always tends to be a fun evening of small gear stores, tight stage turnaround times, punchy set lengths and unceremonious disco load-outs. We're serial semi-finalists so we know the format, but this heat was in a slightly more spacious venue than usual which made everything a bit easier logistically. The only problem was that for a 'heat' it was like a walk-in fridge and my fingers didn't warm up all night, so I made a good few minor mistakes.. but also made a conscious decision to just think sod it and move on, which I'm getting much better at doing. I have one of those Zippo power bank / hand warmer thingies but a] I left it in my other gigging bag, and b] it's not that great at the best of times, so I need to have a look round and see what else is available that isn't gloves. Quite a mixed show within the genre anyway (we're operatic power metal, and the other bands were metalcore, alt-rock and technical death metal) so the voting was probably all over the place, but maybe we were everyone's second choice vote after the band they'd gone to see, because we got through to the semis again and kept the dream alive that maybe this year will be our time. Decided to go back to where it all started and play the same bass I used on our very first gig back in 2009 (sadly not the actual bass, but the same model I re-bought a year or so ago for reasons of nostalgia) along with my newly put-together pedalboard, and it all behaved very well together which is always welcome. So, for the gear-afflicted: Warwick RB Vampyre 5 -> [G30 wireless -> TU3 tuner -> Thumpinator -> Boss BC-1X compressor -> Tech 21 VT Bass v2 -> SansAmp BDDI v2] -> Markbass Nano 2 -> Blackstar Unity Elite house cab (115C?) Tuner once again operated using a pair of Skechers Industrial Workshire boots, and jeans held up (just..) by a Skopes belt that really needs taking in a notch now we're post-xmas.

We're a trio and we've managed to squeeze into some pretty tight places, but this... ... was a challenge... A new venue that has just started up and is still finding its feet. Funnily it's right next door to the Donkey, the great music venue that had an existential crisis back in November (if you remember). Our first time there, and we had been warned earlier in the day apparently, that they ran at a loss last weekend, and might try to reduce the fee or pay us off if it didn't pick up 😮. Well no need to fear - we pretty much filled the place and walked away with the full fee! It always adds a little bit of something when you have another band in the crowd. Well we had two! I'd like to think they came to see us perform and were not just reccying the place because they had bookings too. Well they stayed until the end anyway. The usual Sire etc. I did have to get a bit creative with the lighting though. I don't normally like my amp anywhere but on the floor, but it really wouldn't have fitted! Solovair boots again It actually turned out to be a good gig despite standing on a postage stamp to play. Apparently the curries they were serving were very nice too but I didn't indulge - I'd had my dinner and am trying to shed a few pounds 🤪

Another dep gig with the Lee Aaron Band last night, this time in Bracknell. First time out with the LFSys demo Monaco cab which performed admirably with my Spector/GK combination. Tight, focused tone and sounded great! Great audience, up and dancing & singing from the off.... great fun 😎👍

On another post i mentioned my journey though owning the the Cort Space 5 and all things headless. Well, the madness continues. Meeting up to buy a sub 4hh from a felow basschatter in Guildford yesterday..meeting outside Andertons...oh dear. I saw the very briefest of discussion on youtube about Hils guitars and basses being available at Andertons, and intrigued, i thought i'd take a look at one. The one I was intended to looks at was a metallic blue with a rather plain white 'plate. Instead is tried this model in white with a tort plate. First impressions is that visually the scale and fanning on the frets looks very Dingwall like. As I own a Dingwall combustion 5, this is a very good start. Build quality is good (see gripe section below) , no blemishes or point and stare horrible finish issues but at £599 (dropped by £50 recently i later found out) list, there shouldn't be. Controls are from top to bottom, Sweep , Volume and the pre are Bass (nearest the bridge), Mid and treble. Jack socket is on the side back from the G string. Balance is excellent, but tbh is you cant get a headless to balance, get out of the guitars game. A quick peep under the covers reveals tidy wiring and a pot on the pre amp to control the output level. So the playing experience is very much like my Combustion, similar neck profile. Almost identical fan scaling, so i took to it quickly. On the front pickup the bass gives a p bass zone sound, with a hint of zing. Centered on the sweep the mid starts to feature as part of the character of this bass. Bass control is good, not to overdriven at maximum and gives a good footing for what is obviously the bass' bread and butter, the mids control. Wound high it gives a really mid range honk, and top that with the treble its sharp an poppy without hiss or hint of electronics noise. So impressed enough i bought the damn thing. And my wife was even in the room! result! Confident i could gig it straightway, i played a full gig last night with my comfort assesment of its Dingwall like qualities and balance/weight and playability being born out, I had a fine time and very happy with my purchase. At £599 i'd say the market position is about right, although the soon to arrive Sire headless series may give the folk at Hils something to think about. Gripes? two: 1. I would (and in fact will) have had the volume and the sweep round the other way with the volume uppermost. 2: A couple of fret ends need a tweak. Not much but this should n't be the case these days, look what the Sire people are doing with the rolled edge design at the same price point. I didnt notice them whilst playing live, just checking it over later on so not a deal breaker just one to be aware of. (probably a little bit of board shrink) Summary Great bass, good sound range with a wider working range than the Cort, that said if thats what you are looking for (in the Cort) then thats the one for you. This has a broader appeal and kicks some butt. If you've played a Dingwall combustion you'll get this straightaway. A dingwall like experience for a quarter of the list price, worth a try i'd say.

Sarum’s Lot played Qudos in Salisbury last night, it’s one of our favourite venues to play, easy load in and parking, nicely run pub, well organised and most importantly very busy. Last night didn’t disappoint. We’re a local band and I’d advertised it lots so was really pleased to see the place busy when we arrived and many more friendly faces turning up whilst we set up. We played a few, new to us, classic rock covers and some slightly middle of the road pop rock covers that all seemed to go down well, despite one or two moments, there was plenty of singing and dancing and lots of positive comments at the end. Unusually for us we decided not to take a break as we wanted to get through as many of the songs as possible, so we ended up playing from 20:45 - 23:00. I used my Geddy Jazz, TT800 & Big Twin II, sounded great in the mix (to my ears at least). We’re back there in April and we’re really looking forward to it😁

Hey, didn't realise there was an ibanez corner in here. Here's my ibanez SR875 in autumn leaf im sure its called. From what I can gather these wernt made for very long? Getting to grips with the 5 but enjoying it nonetheless.

First time with the new setup at last nights gig. Also, first gig using the Ripper so much to get my head around! Blackstar Unity 700 and two ultra lightweight Markbass Energy 2x10's. Big sound and needed some EQing to the room but easily sorted. Great fun using the Ripper and the amps distortion/overdrive for the more rocky stuff using a pick, it sounded awesome where I was standing. The Thunderbird is a great bass and a joy to play which I've used many times. I did have to roll back the bass on the amp however as it was pretty boomy. The cabs give a pretty deep bass output, more than I expected but again with a little EQing the results were very satisfying. Still early days and I'd like a lot more time to experiment with the amps many settings and features but for it's first outing I was pretty happy.

Oh you can say whatever you like here as long as it doesn't involve sex, religion or politics... oh and guitarists. If you want to go to a discussion about free speech there are loads of places you can freely go to where it is appropriate. No need to apologise. It's only an Internets' forum for special interest. Although we do have general discussion, we just don't tolerate flaming. It's what makes BassChat popular. Enjoy it because legislation is about to make this very difficult to continue running without charging much more for people to manage it. I am a supporting member, meaning I have paid because I appreciate there are people here to suppress forest fires before they endanger the rest of the villagers. Just keep it friendly and relax. This should help if you haven't already found it - BassChat Terms and Conditions. @Rich; I'm damned if I can find the BC Ts &Cs. Can you drop a link into the topic title above for me please? PS: Here's what I was looking for: Posting guidelines - a reminder

This has cropped up in previous threads, but it's worth mentioning again. Yes, whilst you are free to say what you wish, you still have to abide by forum rules. Here, politics is a topic that is generally frowned upon for discussion, for myriad reasons, but mostly just to try to maintain decorum and a peaceful environment for everyone. Mark

We recorded a 5 track 1/2 hour mini album, got our mate Jez from the Utah Saints to help us mix it. Then our guitarist's son produced short promo vids which we're doing the drip feed thing with on the various socials... We've set up streaming release dates, have contacted 30+ journos plus 6Music DJs, and may even stoop so low as to play a gig. Anyone got any more ideas to guarantee some form of musical world domination? We've done gigs in daft costumes, and none of us touch weed (or any other drugs barring a sneaky Mezcal), even though we're called Weeds (we're even so trendy we don't have a "The"!) Here's the first promo vid to poke fun at, featuring Pierre, a Belgian performance artist:

Actually, I did contact Fender in the mid 90's to see if they were going to issue a Clinton Jizz bass, but I never got a reply. Close, but no cigar.......

Not so much my gig as one I went to see instead - Moving Pictures were just brilliant as always! 🤘

Awesome, thanks Andy!

Haven't owned a Lakland for awhile. But here's a new one!

I was going to suggest this one too, so here's Bernie's BBC Friday Rock Show version as well:

Continents have fallen over less…….

My advice would be to not invest too much time in learning a particular arrangement until you know how the rest of the band play it. Of course, you may know that already. Several times I’ve learned the bass line for a song only to have to change it because it doesn’t work with how the band play it. For example, drummer can’t or won’t play it as recorded or guitarist plays ‘different’ chords.

I'm nearly always up for a political debate. Nearly always. But anyone who remembers Tin Pan Alley on that other bass forum will almost certainly agree that bass forums are for talking about bass. The only right vs left that matters here is what sub forum you list your basses for sale in. Besides what does something petty like politics matter compared to the big issues like rounds vs flats?

The elixir of eternal Sonic Youth 🤓

Sounds great to me Honestly I'm a musician I couldn't care less about anything political My bad

Or time to annex the Sudetenland?

I don't know why but our "Public Schools", back in the day were only for the wealthy public. They were neither free nor cheap. We used to call our free of charge secondary schools "Grammar School". They were only free up to the age of fourteen. Being without children of my own, I am not at all sure what happens in detail these days. That, my friend, is not a conversation for this forum. We have been warned officially.

I like that a lot! What you need to do will depend on what you want out of the project. If you are happy with simply lots of people listening to your music and don't need any real financial reward then short-form videos like the one above and streaming is the way to go. You'll need to get your tracks on popular playlists which will probably mean searching out ones where you think your music is a good fit and contacting the people who curate them and ask for a track of yours to be included. It's most effective if they are actively looking for new tracks to add. Otherwise you are going to need to get out there and play gigs and have physical product available to sell at those gigs ideally in vinyl form, although TBH if you just want to make money you'll be better off producing an eye-catching T-shirt and sell those instead. For both approaches, my experience is that unless you are very lucky you need to be doing lots of promotion otherwise it's just vanity publishing and no-one but your friends, family and few people on here will ever get to hear it. Even for bands that in the past have been popular I've found that the moment you stop promoting whether that's through playing live or being interesting and entertaining on-line the number of listeners you have will rapidly decrease. Once The Terrortones stopped gigging our sales of physical product and number of streams dropped off very rapidly. At our most popular we could have been out gigging every Friday and Saturday had the money and logistics been right (as it was we were playing at least 3 times a month) and we were selling serious amounts of T-shirts, CDs and vinyl both at gigs and on-line. These days it's down to a handful of streams each month and nothing else.

I’ve slowed down…more stuff is staying…which Mrs T is getting a bit fed up with. i have been allocated a space when Iris’ works are completed “it’ll be just your room”

Brothers in Bass I'm glad I found BASSCHAT

A credit to the forum 👍

Very classy

F uck. busted …

A transcription of this 3-chord classic from the 80s is now online. Tom Petty - Free Fallin' | Jeff Lynne

I didn't do a thread of actually doing the Squier Jag and actually didn't take progress photos (as I confessed, apparently, in a post in 2011. 2011!!!! That's a mid-teenager's life span ago!!) but I think I can find a thread of the method used if the photo links are still sound. I'll have a look.

pff - who wants to end up in Sunderland?

With signature stuff I always think that if you like the artist then you might have similar tastes. They're doing what you're doing, and they have a certain amount of free reign to design tools for that thing. Take the Mike Herarra Stingray. I too play punky, fun music. I too like Stingrays, I also like passive basses for 'that' pick tone a lot of the time. I also like bright coloured basses. I also like maple boards... The Ibanez K5 was the same. You can like Korn or not but that bass was amazing for heavy rock, you can tell that that's what it was designed to do.

Exactly! Do you want your bass to sound great, or like a dull thud? 😜

@Jack and all that twaddle about tonewood… or is it ? 🤔🍿

Hmmm...not sure. I think so. I'll have a look in the morning.

My current pedal set up. The one i am in need is MXR octaver

Just traced the fault to a loose screw in the speaker lead speakon plug. Just threadlocking all my speaker plugs at the mo as a preventative measure - cheers for the heads up though!

I have a set of USA ones and to be honest, they are not a patch on the Gotoh Res-O-Lites.

Still my favourite looking bass. A super rare Hamer Impact neck through, from the 90's..