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I asked an AI to do me an image of 2 of my favourite bass players: Duck Dunn and Bootsy Collins. Instead of generating them separately the AI went all BrundleFly...

A rare outing on lead guitar with Deadlight for our producer’s 60th 🎉 It wound up being a showcase of all the local talent, with tonnes of variety. Our original 80s inspired goth is always very well received and we had loads of friendly heckles - “you two are too polite to be goth”, to which I replied, “it’s a very misunderstood genre!”. A really special night and a pleasure to be a small part of it.

First gigs of the year for the Zep tribute, up to Kinross in Scotland on Friday then Cullercoats in the Northeast on Saturday. Quite tiring, driving for a 512 mile round trip in two days, setting off at 10:30 on Friday and getting home at 2:30 on Sunday morning. Both gigs were well attended (101 tickets sold in a 120 capacity in Kinross, with a 220 sell out in Cullercoats), which was good as we had just had to cancel a gig in Yorkshire due to poor ticket sales. The first gigs we've played since November, so we were a bit rusty, but we played well enough over the two gigs. A very good crowd reaction on both nights.

I put a TurboRAT in a Warhammer Land Raider, just finished it today. Many hours of work and totally worth it!

I think this is the longest I've ever had without buying something. I'm actually practicing with the gear I have already, and I've even recorded a couple of bass cover vids. It feels so very wrong.

It's not just you. Two of the input channels on my Yamaha AG03 PC interface have failed. Instead of buying a new one, I found the Xenyx 802 mixer that I was given, and used the working inputs from that, and a pair of effects pedal cables, to plug into the two remaining inputs of the AG03. The twin mixers are messy, but kept me operational. There's more. Instead of buying a midi expansion box with lots more sounds for my piano, or a better hammer-action keybed, I invested the same budget in piano lessons. My Grade 1 exam is on 10th March. And one more. Instead of using my fretted bass to practice, I am now exclusively on fretless bass, working on my intonation. So, all this gear abstinence malarky is giving me no extra toys, but a bit of extra ability on the instruments that I do already have. Practicing? It'll never catch on....

I do find it puzzling that the AI is capable of doing so much in these images, but then hits a brick wall when it comes to things like the number of strings / tuners / pegs etc.

There's been a bunch of news stories today about fake bailifs - my plan would be to give them a Trace Elliot cab to guarantee they never came back following whatever back injury they give themselves... 😮 !

[Ai Edit Video] Slim down subject by 2 stone[/Edit]

I have to agree, it's just nasty. Yup, all kinds of wrong.

Sire have a habit of doing that to your brain and sense of values. I've had a few Sires, and of course, they usually end up being trade-in fodder for more expensive instruments, but they are good. My most recent one was one of the 2nd Gen Ash V7's and as a backup bass to my American Original Jazz, it was easily as good, if a little punchier with the preamp. I think you sometimes have to end up taking money out of the equation and just accept that a good bass is a good bass, no matter how much it does or doesn't cost.

Admittedly guitar factory wages aren't high but it's hardly slave labour. If you're in the 'Land of the Free' and work for Ernie Ball you can expect $16ph, work for Fender in Corona and it's $18ph. For a comparison, the In-n-Out burger bar down the road from the Corona plant pays a starting wage of $22ph. It's just factory work so workers get factory wages. Over in Zheng'an, China the cost of living is 1/5th that of California but the guitar factory folks are on $4.5 - $5. There a few reason why bosses there pay a bit better. It's home to 130 guitar factories, if next door pays more you risk losing your workforce 🙂 If none of you offer OK money then you all risk losing your workforce to the big cities. Prior to the Guitar Park opening 25% of the county's migrant workers were in the big city guitar factories, keeping them happy and productive is now vital to the local economy. Exception to the $4.5-$5 rate is Zhang Weiyi. His place produces about 180 guitars per year but they carry $8000 price tags, he needs the cream of the crop for his work force 👍 South Korea has a higher cost of living than China but still much lower than the US. $9 - $9.25 is the going rate there.

If you get nowhere, I am happy to talk to them. 10 years a VAT inspector and over 30 years in industry, as head of VAT for the European region.

Off the back of the Vintage Fender thread I purchased a '74 P-bass on Reverb, beaten up just how I like them (not everyone's cup of tea I know). It needs work to get it up to scratch, the main things being: 1. A refret. 2. Replace the installed electronics back to the original (if they are usable) and earth wire 3. Change the scratch plate 4. See if I can free off the bridge from the body consider reconditioning or replacing. 5. Add my favourite flats. Happy to listen to constructive advice as I update this thread.

Picked this up a few weeks ago -a lovely 2012 walnutglo 4003 I'd owned a few Ric guitars before and found them o.k. but this is sublime.

I feel the gloves are off regarding encouragement and luring others into gear acquisition is now standard operating procedure.

"That's a great sounding bass! I must buy one for myself, for, as we all know, new basses make us sound great. " Or is that the wrong sort of thing that is being encouraged?

That probably would have increased the value - flatwound players are a weird bunch...

This is me all day every day. I don't dig in. Might as well let the amp work for it's keep and turn up the volume knob as and when needed. My tone doesn't suffer one bit as a result.

Sold them on here mostly 👍

We do regularly get asked for photos with the full band after the last song so it kinda goes with the territory in a Glam band. Its always fun doing it to be honest and gives you a bit of a buzz. I've even been asked out on a date a few times while wearing the full Glam gear but had to say my wife sitting next to the stage wouldn't be too pleased Oddly enough i regularly got people talking to me with the punk band. Dave

I keep hoping one of our gigs turns into something like any of the scenes in the United Artists 1964 movie " A Hard Days Night ". Is that too much to ask? It's going to be a long wait. Lol Daryl

After almost 60 years playing bass I can still have bad gigs where I couldn't get it together. Especially if I'm playing with a marginal dep drummer. Daryl

I played an S2000 at BassBros in Warwickshire last weekend, and was reminded how ballsy and powerful the original 2-band preamps were in those things. Just a pity that it was nearly £3000 in 2025 money. *Sigh*

Glad to hear it went well up this way Pete. Looks like a decent sized venue and crowd. Dave

My new board

The way it was explained to me was: If you are a shop, your inventory costs you money, you're paying for floor space, you're probably paying for a loan to purchase the stock. If you have an item that isn't selling, its making a loss. You have no emotional attachnent to the gear. You're better off dropping the price and getting rid of it and buying something else with the money, that's more likely to sell for a profit. If you are an individual, you probably don't have a loan on that specific piece of gear (but you may have a credit card bill for other gear) and you won't be equating floor space in your house as costing you money (it is, you are paying to run your house). The costs are hidden and it's not so urgent you clear the space and sell the gea unless you need the space for something else. You also will be emotionally attached to a piece of gear. It only really becomes an issue when you run out of space at home and need to declutter, or the bailifs come round...

Just to share a tech tip: many years ago I built a headless bass using one of these cheap headless bridges. As many others have found, they are almost unusable as they are incredibly hard work to tune, the design puts huge friction on the tuners. I've just dug that bass out again, and (fingers crossed) managed to make it considerably better by adding cheap thrust bearings from Amazon (other suppliers are available ) : Kozelo F4-10M Thrust Ball Bearing 4mm x 10mm x 4mm, only cost me £6.79 for 5, and took literally a few minutes to fit. Remains to see how long it will last of course... There's today's geeky post for you! Photo with bearing fitted to E string, middle strings as they were originally. Cheers, Andy

T-shirt with Road Crew - Bass Tech is my suggested move.

Reverb started as a very US centric website, and in many ways it still is. What people outside the US often miss is that in the US people expect to be able to haggle and pay less than the listed price. That's true of things that would have no chance of being sold for less than the asking price in places like Europe. So a lot of the prices on Reverb reflect the starting point the seller expects to have to take offers below. People who do not understand this then think "wow, my <insert item> is worth <insert price>". The other problem, and one that is true of websites like eBay as well as Reverb is when researching prices sellers usually look at the current listings. They rarely look at the sold listings to see what people are actually likely to pay. When I'm looking to sell something I check the sold listings, and then price at the high end of what the item has sold at but with the option for people to make offers. Then of course you get the chancers saying "it's only worth half what you've listed it for mate", (and it always invariably has that "mate" at the end of a sentence like they're doing me a favour). I just ignore the chancers and hope they see the item's actual sold price when it invariably sells at the list price or just below.

Crude version

I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about...

Cloud busting - Kate Bush

the moment Brexit gets mentioned it's gets political, and some folk can't get political without getting abusive, if you want to discuss politics (or Brexit) I suggest you head over to Fretboard's Politics and Economics thread

I pick this Aguilar octamiser from a packomat an hour ago. Not disapointed. Had a drink already.

Good point - the generations who were really into gear are in the downsizing era of their lives now, or soon will be. And the younger ones don’t fetishise gear as much (a good thing IMHO) and could never afford this stuff anyway so never developed as strong an attachment maybe. Either way, it sounds like the numbers of market value are hugely inflated. And they don’t tell you how long an item was for sale before some person with money showed up.

Or maybe the market’s flooded and we’ve all got way too much gear than we’ll ever need 😂

I can hear my wallet sobbing in sympathy from the next room.

Spot on. After asking Paul’s advice I bought a HB short-scale P bass. I was happy with it straight out of the box, at £79, and gigged it for a couple of years. I’ve now passed it in to a youth outreach project who get teenagers to form bands.

I'm the opposite and would quite happily wait in the changing room until the venue is empty and then strip down my gear. With the Glam band most people don't recognise me when i walk out to strip down my gear. Maybe i should get a band t-shirt with "Road Crew" stamped on the back. Dave

Headed to Guitar Guitar Birmingham today. First thing to say is they had a really good stock/selection and I was totally looked after/put up with. It’s the same chap each time I go in, and he’s a gent. A/B’d Squier CV/New Standard/New Player II and US Pro Precision basses. The Indonesian made Standard bore the spaghetti Fender logo, and played fine but….they were NOT ‘better’ than the Squier. The neck was anaemic and the ceramic p/us were rather lacking in character. I played a 3TSB and the Poplar was rather ugly under the laquer. At £549, it’s the logo you crave at a price you can afford, but the Squier (possibly made in the same factory) was a much nicer looking and playing instrument. Same Poplar/Laurel combo and more pleasing Alnico p/u. £369. The New Mexican made Player Ii at £749 was an improvement on the previous iteration. They had a glorious Alder-bodied Aquatone blue example I played and it was a much more appealing neck with rolled edges to the fretboard. It just played and felt £200 better! Model I played had a maple board, so not an exact. A/B…but the quality jump was obvious. The USA pro was £1000 more. It had the best wood under the laquer, fretwork was 10/10 and the neck just sat right. The tuners, the bridge, the neck joint…it’s a better quality of parts. It’s sound was impressively round and full…yes there is a difference from the Squier CV 😘. There were Ultras and US Performer PJ version available, but I stuck with the single pickup instruments for sake of reference. My conclusions.. The Standard is a marketing ploy…I wasn’t disappointed, just felt it was a triumph of brand over substance. The Squier CV remains a very gig-worthy bass The Player II was impressive; it felt and looked like it was worth playing and equally paying £749. The Pro is what it should be. Anyway, my two pennies worth. PS I don’t, or ever have owned, a Precision bass. I want to add one to my arsenal. Today made realise I really should dip my hand in my (bass) pocket.

New to me again.