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Great thread On stage at City Poly early-mid 80s. My hair was somewhere between Mike Peters and Tony James Largely as the result of lot of...... ....that my them GF, a stylist, used to apply for me Anyway, mid gig, I became aware of two things going on at much the same time 1. A weird, sickly, smouldering smell 2. The audience paying an unusual amount of attention to the bass player So, transpires that Andy, the keyboard player, had nonchalantly flicked a cigarette across the stage, by luck it had been caught in my 14-18" high barnet, had apparently smouldered there a while before igniting the spray with the result that my hair had pretty much started to melt. Guitarist helpfully came over and put it out with a few hefty downward pats to my cranium. Frankly I wish we'd had a malfucntioning smoke machine to hide it all, it was not a good look at any level. Had it all cropped off a few days later, nothing to do with health & safety and everything to do with minimising the chance that anyone who'd been at the gig would recognise me 👍

Personally, as I've got older I have less tolerance for other people's penchant for being awkward. It's challenging enough to get four people who like the same music into the same room.... then someone decides to become 'difficult'. A bit of time out can clear the mind and help refocus. Good luck with it sir! 😎

After 7 yrs with the Glam covers band i've decided its time to call it a day. Few decisions in the band i wasn't entirely happy with and after losing sleep worrying about it i thought best to step aside and let someone else take over. Its always been a hobby for me and have always said when it becomes more like a job its time to walk away. I've offered to cover any gigs up to the end of 2025 or a replacement is up and running. Whichever comes first. Shame as i did enjoy playing in the band but that's life and it will allow me to spend more time on other hobbies. On one hand i'm kind of relieved and on the other hand i'll miss the good fun we had at gigs. Not sure yet but don't think i'll be looking for another band to join. I'll still be following everyone on BC tho and might be selling off some of the gear i've collected over past few yrs. Dave

I have no guilty pleasures. Good music is good music.....

I was wondering if it might be similar to the Freddie Mercury tribute at Wembley. Several shortish sets from various bands during the day followed by a 'Sabbath & friends' set in the evening featuring multiple special guests from the other bands. It would make sense in terms of giving Ozzy a bit of extra support Time will tell.

I saw Sabbath back in their heyday and it was something special. That's the way I would like to remember them. I actually found Phil Collins struggling on the Genesis farewell tour quite upsetting to watch. I really don't want to witness Ozzy suffering the same way. I'm sorry to say it but this extravaganza looks like it has every chance of being absolutely dreadful. Such events always end up being less than the sum of their parts. To me it's a sad ending for one of the most important bands in the history of rock music. Legends are best left intact, for everyone's sake. As soon as see phrases like "Fred Durst" and "supergroup" banded about my alarm bells start ringing. It's going to be exactly the kind of cringeworthy modern rockfest you would hope it wouldn't be. Americans with tattoos wearing board shorts shouting a lot. However much they might pay homage, all those bands are a million miles away from what Black Sabbath were in their prime. Sabbath had an originality, subtlety and finesse that's beyond their would-be disciples' grasp. The truth is that Black Sabbath was over a long time ago. They already belong to history. At their best they were an awesome prospect. No one can take that away from them, except themselves. If they want a last farewell I suppose it's up to them, but I really wish they wouldn't.

These things happen sometimes. I quit a band I had slogged away with for four years. I was scunnered, ready to jack it all in and enjoy my evenings weekends and make plans without thinking "do i have a gig'. Quit the band in July, joined an originals band in August, bought a double bass in October, now looking at recording an EP with the originals band and gigging/recoding on the double bass with a singer songwriter. Feels far more relaxed and enjoyable again. Dont rule out playing again, and dont sell your gear too soon, unless you'd sell me a lovely ACG bass for the £1.43 i have in my savings after buying the double bass Jonny

I've been gradually stepping back from the frequency of gigs over the last few years - the current main band I play in only does between 4 and 7 gigs a year, so it's not very invasive on my weekend nights at home! I actually enjoy the regular rehearsals we have as much as the gigs! However, I've been getting involved in an acoustic folk band over the last year, now playing acoustic bass and Kala Uke basses a lot. It's such a refreshing change to the 'full band' situation (quieter, more relaxed, less gear to heave about, and it's all loads lighter anyway!). It also opens up a while new genre of audiences - again feeling like a fresh start. I hope you find a balance with your home and music - but as @tubbybloke68 says, never say never! All the best 😉👍

We all wonder if we’re doing the right thing sometimes.Did you voice your concerns about the ‘issues’ ? If they value you, then maybe they might bend a bit now, and compromise on certain aspects? If the situation is irreversible, then i wish you all the best in your future ventures, and never say never regarding getting involved with another band,something might just pop up! . All da best, Jeff

I'm actually quite touched that quite a few have commented on enjoying my gig posts. That means a lot to me. Loved the "travelogue" comment. I'll always be on BC. Its my 2nd home even before Faceache. Dave

I'm using an RB Boss Shelf which I got online from Wicks. Industrial grade, free standing and not fixed to the wall, although it does have a couple of wedges under the front feet to just angle it back slightly. You can put the two middle shelves wherever you like.

Old pedal board: Current iteration: The GT 1000 Core is a considerable step up over my long term love-affair with the Zoom B1-4, which has been an amazingly good value workhorse budget mulitfx, and has been at the core of my board for several years. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that, unlike the B1-4, the Core does a great job at providing a very usable drive/fuzz which I'm liking a lot and also an octave up/down capability that is easily as good as the excellent Boss OC-5, and which I can access different settings as presets e.g. starting with just octave down and adding in an octave up to further fill out the sound, rather than needing to manually adjust during/between set list numbers. Had its first gig outing on Saturday with just a few basic patches set up and performed just fine, so I'm looking forward to getting to grips with it via the easy to use Boss Tone Studio PC Editor over the coming months and refining my current patches and creating some additional gigable ones as well as some fun ones for home use. For some reason I never really bonded with either the HX Stomp or Effects, which I know a great many BC'ers love, despite several attempts! So it's great to find an alternative and equivalently capable mid-range multifx (but with a much more recent and more powerful chipset) that has been so quick and easy to take a shine to. I suspect it's going to mean a clear-out of a bunch of my pedals e.g. I have managed to accumulate half a dozen drive/fuzz pedals in my quest for that elusive drive tone...only to find one I really liked within a day or so of auditioning the factory presets on the Core!

I'm not out to impress anyone with my musical taste anymore and I fully embrace the cheese

You shouldn't have boil washed it.

More of a mod / assembly job than a true build but thought it may be of interest. This project started with a few questions: - What do you do when you like the look of Mike Lull's PT/JT basses, with TBird pickups on a Fender-esque body, but you can't justify the cost? - How do you make use of your new discovery that Gemini pickups do 5 string chrome thunderbird pickups? - How soon after receiving a new bass is it reasonable to take power tools to it? - Is it more than 2hrs? Seriously though, I have always loved the look of chrome thunderbird pickups on a Fender style bass. A good few years back I put together a 4 string Jazz style from an unknown roadworn body, a Squier neck, and some cheapish chrome pickups from eBay. Unfortunately I'm mostly gigging 5 string so it hasn't got much use lately. When I saw Gemini's pickup range, cog's started turning and I started looking at options for basses to mod. First issue what that 4 string and 5 string TBird pickups use the same sized housing, this ruled out using a jazz bass body, as the preexisting pickup cavities would be too wide to cover with the new pickups. Instead I started looking at 5 string P basses. Covering the pick up could be handled with a new scratch plate. I had to find something without a bridge pick up though to avoid the jazz bass issue. I opted for a Sire P5r, and after reading reviews I reckoned it was worth a pop even at full price. Had a bit of a mare getting it via DHL so pickups (Gemini Devastators) had already arrived. I was therefore keen to go. Quick play of the bass stock confirmed it was a nice player and good starting platform. ~2hrs after getting it out the cardboard, power tools met wood. First decided to open out the existed pickup cavity to a regular shape, rather than cutting the TBird shape through the Precision one and leaving a weird hybrid. Also routed it all down to ~3/4" as the original route was very shallow. Then measured out the bridge pup, basing positioning on a) reference Lull basses, B) TBird pickup position and c) what would actually fit. Went down the route of starting out with a forstner bit then routing to shape with a template I laser cut. This left a pretty decent finish if I do say so myself. Drilled through to the control cavity and that was about me for the night. Tomorrow I'll drill out a side jack. Hand cut a new scratchplate and start on shielding and wiring. Whilst the bass played well stock I am contemplating new hardware. Whilst it would be pricey I'm thinking of going whole hog with Hipshot ultralite tuners and a style A bridge.

I’ve changed power amps with Monique!

I've enjoyed reading about your gig adventures (often like a travelogue 😀) and I'll miss them. But you have to do what's right for you. As others have said, don't sell up yet. With all the emotions going on, it's the wrong time to make that kind of decision as well. Give ti time and see what happens.

The only time I ever scrubbed the Squier logo off a bass was for humour (well, also because the headstock had a silver finish and the body was blue and it just looked weird). My current Squier Affinity (Jaguar H) is wearing its identity loud and proud.

A couple of Fender Pro II Jazz basses I tried recently either had string misalignment or bridges which were not flat to the body, as the arm carve encroached underneath a corner of the bridge (or maybe a warped bridge?) I'll stick with my Squier Affinity thanks, which due to a recent luthier setup has fantastic action, beautiful polished frets and smooth fret ends. I'm proud to have the S on my headstock. Edit: in fact it looked just like this. https://www.talkbass.com/threads/bridge-separating-from-body.1450437/

Ikea Ivar or Hejne, just don't put shelves in the lower part.

It's a life decision. You have to do what feels right for you. I think I'm in the last year of doing this myself, due to health concerns and other stuff in my own band. I'm 66 and don't need the money or the hassle anymore. The band nearly stopped this month. We have a full diary to the end of the year and I'll be surprised if we actually get to New Year's Eve. The idea of starting something else after this just gives me the heebie jeebies. I've already got some instruments on Ebay.

As an early music (i.e. pre-1750) enthusiast, the issue of tuning and temperaments comes up all the time. Equal temperament is a fudge to get around that the maths doesn't quite work. If you stack 8 perfect fifths on top of each other, you should go up 5 octaves, but you don't.... that's the Pythamgorean comma that @Rosie C mentioned. ET has been known about since the 1600s but it didn't come into a more general use until late in the C19th and primarily for pianos. It is possible to tell from early recordings of pianos made in the late C19th that they were not tuned in ET - which is what everyone assumed until recently. Rose mentioned the book about ET, which I have and it's a useful introduction to the subject. There's also the book "Lies my music teach told me". There were a lot of alternative temperaments about and that's what Bach's 48 preludes and fugues in the Well Tempered Clavier are about. "Well tempered" is NOT equal temperament but a tuning that plays 'well' in a lot of keys. The ET fudge is to divide the octave in 12 equal sized semi-tones, which means that they are each the 12th root of 2 apart. The problem is that some of these gaps are bigger than they should be (e.g. the major third) and some are narrower than they should be (e.g. perfect fifth). A surprising example of people that use 'just' intonation is barbershop quartet singers. They do not use ET which is why their chords 'ping' the way they do. On my viol, the frets are lengths of gut string tied around the neck and then moved into place for tuning. On certain frets, you 'split' the two windings on the fret so that you can play e.g. C# flatter and Db sharper...

Shame you're thinking of hanging up your bass. Bass has never been a hobby for me. Even if a band felt like work, it was always a million times better than w-o-r-k! I've worked with some a-hole band leaders but the a-hole managers were always worse. Good luck. . . . don't sell all your gear. . . . you'll be back.

You've done well to be in the same covrr band for so long imho . . I think being in gigging bands is like a job in itself . Trying to book rehearsals with band members going on holiday/ looking after the kids etc can be a pain . Then there may be times when band members are in more than one band . Booking gigs and following 5hem up can be messy. I think the best feeling of all is playing in front of people . A great rehearsal is great too . I don't miss it at all , but it took about a month to realise that . When the fun stops stop 🙂 wishing you all the best anyway

This statement may be true, but I can't imagine any circumstances when I would wear this garment. Unless it says on the back 'He wishes I wouldn't"

Let's go back into the midsts of time to Pythagoras... he made an instrument with one single long string on it - much like a bass guitar. He played the open string - let's say it was a C. Then he had an assistant 'fret' it at the 2/3rd and it sounded a G. Then they did 2/3rd again and it played a D. They kept doing this and filled out the scale, and eventually when all 12 tones were played they arrived back at C. Except it didn't, because the octave of any note is 2x the frequency, whereas all those 2/3rd divisions added up to a very slightly different number. This error is called the Phythagorian comma and it's a largely unsolvable problem with musical tuning. Back in the days of Bach and co. they used different tuning systems such as "just intonation", which meant that each key had a different feel (Spinal Tap and "D minor is the saddest of keys" actually has a root in history), and a composer would choose a key for a particular mood. (I think this is why so many classical pieces make a point of including the key in the name - but don't quote me on that!) Skipping forward a little, Victorian factory owners mass producing pianos, they used a tuning called "Equal Temperament" where the tuning was an approximation with most notes a little bit out of tune. It meant you could play a tune in any key and it would sound OK, but you lost the idea of keys having different emotional qualities. Modern instruments that can't play any pitch such as an accordion, piano, organ play equal temperament. Some notes are reasonably in tune, others (as @zbd1960 says) can be quite out, particularly thirds. Instruments that can vary the pitch - violins & other strings, brass & woodwind with a decent player with embouchure, fretless bass. If you leave a group of these players to their own devices, they'll naturally drop into a tuning that is not equal temperament where the music sounds sweeter. If this is interesting I can recommend "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony" by Ross Duffin: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0393334201/

If you feel embarrassed about the music you like, the music ain't the problem. Why would you feel you need to keep something like that a secret?

Some Amps of them are really heavy...

My Skyline 55-64…. My main P5… sadly no longer made as a straight P. Such a great bass.

An original glam metal band I was in played a gig up near Stoke in about 1992. It involved us a driving up in our various cars from Swansea - quite an outing. My dad drove me and my girlfriend, while the singer drove the guitarist and their girlfriends in another car. We got home about 3am. The singer’s car didn’t get home till 7am having somehow taken a wrong turn; alarm bells began ringing when they reached the outskirts of London, a mere 190 miles east of their destination. Looking at the map now I still can’t figure that one out.

I had a similar experience. I had got used to lightweight, class D neo- gear and then found myself using a Trace 4x10 combo in rehearsal. It belonged to the studio so never had to be moved, and it sounded out of this world. Night and day difference to what I had become accustomed to. Really was an ‘awesome’ sound. It’s like cinema audio… if you don’t have to worry about moving it, amplifying bass is very different !

Made in country x or y really does mess with our heads doesn't it? I've played Korean built basses that can run rings around anything coming out of Corona USA.

I'm about to meet up with some people (none of whom have played with others in a while either), and I am obviously worried about this part of it. My last band was me on drums, my brother on guitar, a friend playing bass really badly, and a revolving door if vocalists. My brother and I were on the same page 99% of the time. I don't like change and it's hugely anxiety provoking. We only stopped playing because of things beyond my control. Sometimes just withdrawal from something is absolutely the right thing to do though.

F..fff….ffffinish, a project? I am unfamiliar with the term.

From reading your other posts about the band it sounds like there was a fair bit of travel involved? Maybe if you found somwthing a bit more local it might bring some of the fun back? Anyway, all the best for the future and whatever you do it'll be good to see you hanging around on BC.

I've been through this a few times and if you can't sleep because of it like I did too, then you took the right decision Dave, but don't rush selling all your gear as you may find something more relaxed and pleasant to play without all the hassle. 😉

Indeed. There is music I like and music I don't like. Don't care who it is by or what genre it is.

What you've done is accidentally gone back to a 'proper' rig, and forgot how good they were Happrns to me a fair bit. I just get super happy that a new lightweight cab and amp is my best sound ever, then an old studio rig blows it out of the water... Its a bit like we've convinced ourselves over the last 10 years that the new stuff is better (probably because we want to because it's lighter and easier) when really it isn't. But yeh..... You'll soon get fed up of carrying a proper old skool rig around I tried lifting one of those old trace 410 combos years ago.... and I can still feel it now

Today's progress. Jack socket drilled out Decided to try out a full contact socket, looks like a nice design. Tuners removed and screw holes filled with bamboo cocktail sticks. Tricky to hide with the roasted neck, used a little acrylic wash to tone them down but may stain them in future. Ready to fit the Ultralites. Cavities copper taped. Now working on cutting a new scratchplate. Taking time as I'm doing it by hand. Used a coping saw and file to get it to shape, now to bevel it with a Stanley blade.

Anyone remember this CD being issued free with one of the bass guitar magazines back in the 90's? I thinks it's a compilation of the then current endorsees/users of Trace Elliot gear.....😉👍

The improv collective I still play with were playing a mini festival at a kind of artists' commune, big decrepit country house full of hippy arts types, with a couple of hundred guests and an outdoor stage. During our set, an entirely naked man first tried to pour beer in the monitors (there was a smoke machine and I think his tripping brain thought something was on fire). Then a few minutes later, he flung a child's bicycle on the stage. I was a bit taken aback but continued playing, and it turns out half the band were oblivious to it. After the set we spotted him with a blanket over his shoulders ranting to someone about The Conspiracy Of The Cows. It was the year of the foot and mouth outbreak (was that 2001?) and all the paths to the surrounding fields were cordoned off with notices. I think I still have a board recording of the gig somewhere...

These are the reference basses I want to emulate And this is my budget 4 string precursor, though it is now graced with a John East pre.