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As part of Record Store Day, I played a church in my hometown. Not only did it mark 12 months of me being alcohol free but it marked the first time I played a venue that my Dad had played. No, we're not religious but it amazes me that in 37yrs of playing, it hasn't happened already. I had friends come over from Wales and down from Yorkshire and we were on it throughout. The playback confirmed it. It was promoting my friend Rich Davies and his band The Dissidents. Got to use my Blackstar head and cab with my trusty Ric 4003s. It sounded immense.

Two gigs for me last weekend. First was with the blues band at a rather remote pub on the coast. Not as busy as last time we did it but still a small appreciative crowd. I made a classic schoolboy error of leaving home a bit late and grabbing a gig bag on the way out, only to discover I’d brought along the ‘wrong’ bass. Fortunately I also brought along my Dano Longhorn to show the guys, so ended up using that into the Rumble 500 and it sounded pretty damned good. Haven’t used it for a while, so a nice reminder of how it will always be a keeper. (see pic). Then Sunday I was with the duo at our regular venue in Scarborough, ‘The Lookout on the Pier’. A full house as per usual and some interesting requests, including ‘A certain smile’ ( for the owner Jill ), ‘Africa’ and ‘An Englishman in New York’ with the crazy walking bit in the middle which is OLF. Encore of ‘Eight days a week’ which is a cracking tune as well. We’re there again in May and it’s always a pleasure.

NOT LAST NIGHT! I played a gig at the O2 Ritz in Manchester (My old stomping ground) a few weeks ago with The Groove Chorus - a 40 odd piece choir playing fun/funky/cheesy/disco/pop stuff. I used to go clubbing at The Ritz when I was a kid (Monday night Alternative (Goth) night and Wednesday night student (Indie) night) and I've seen loads of big gigs here (Including Chas & Dave!) so... this was a big deal for me! It was a long day, got there about 1 for setup, tech sortouts etc then a full run through... knackering but good fun! Eight piece band including a four piece horn section - we had a monitor engineer which hasn't happened to me for a long time. The MD, guitarist and drummer were guys I've worked with before and not seen for ages, which was nice; the keyboard player was a great bloke and really good laugh - it's always nice to meet someone who hasn't heard any of my jokes. The dress code was 'Denim on Denim on Denim' (NO black clothes allowed!) so I had to buy a pair of blue denim jeans - I don't own that many clothes that aren't black... It was as camp as a row of pink tents (at christmas) - we did 'I Will Survive'... how camp do you want it?! The gig was FANTASTIC - the place was packed, the choir sounded brilliant, the crowd loved it, the band were great, I played pretty well... a great night all round. Certainly the biggest gig I've played for a while. The organisers (and the rest of the band) said some nice things about my playing, which was gratifying and I've since been asked to play the next one, so... a good nights work! (Decent payer as well) Highlight was probably 'Groove is in the heart' - who wouldn't want to play 'that' riff through an ENORMOUS PA while hundreds of people dance to it?! Played the StingRay -> Secret Weapons board (Thumpinator ->VTDI) -> MB802 -> ENORMOUS PA Shoes were peach pink sparkle Converse (not pictured) Video- https://www.facebook.com/reel/1005081587691904

A bitter / sweet gig this one (Chateauroux in France) 18 original compositions from a good friend who's now sadly very limited with regards to time left. 10 pce band and I only know one of them, two days of rehearsal, live recording third day and public concert on the last night. Quite an honour to be asked to provide the low end. Fingers crossed I don't mess up🤣

My experience differs. When we were kids, a mate of mine could play all kinds of widdly-widdly stuff, very technically accomplished, exceptional coordination. He couldn't create to save his life, however. He had absolutely no creative gift, everything he wrote was mediocre and, when he tried to solo, is was just a mish-mash of licks of the players whose material he had learned through reading tabs. He had no musical voice of his own. That well was dry. I used to know a clarinet player in an orchestra for whom the idea of writing or improvising something of their own was an entirely alien concept which did not compute. Being a coordinated player does not correspond to being an interesting creative spirit and vice-versa. That this lad has taken the time to learn so much of other people's material and try to pass it off as his own suggests that he is not well endowed with a creative brain. At the risk of a generalisation, you'd expect creative people to spend their time... well... creating, rather than learning other people's material forensically.

"Milk & Two Shuggahs". The band name alone deserves an award.

I want to form a John Lennon/Gary Barlow tribute band... Imagine That!

Updated. After a good fretboard oiling, new strings, slight action adjustment, new black sparkle pickguard and a set of straplocks - the latest addition is looking pretty darn tidy

For those who can’t be arsed?

Okay. I think I may be the only person in this thread to have seen Giacommo live and... he was very good. His band was excellent. They did that kind of MOR-funk that Vulfpeck do, but while it was very tight and well-rehearsed it was kind of bland and soul-less. Sort of how I'd expect a very, very good cruise ship band to be. I came away thinking he was a very, very competent guitarist, a skilled performer and his band was oustanding. I had no desire to listen to any of his stuff or go see him again, but I do think that given time to practise he is an outstanding musical mimic. It's the fact he's monetised other people's work that's at issue and that he's done it so blantanly and flagrantly that having been caught out he's got nowhere to hide. Personally, my suspicion is that he hasn't got any musical creativity or imagination but that's just a guess.

Well, after a spur of the moment "If I dont buy this, someone else will!" while perusing the latest bass listings last Sunday morning... This was listed for about 8mins before I jumped on it. I sold my Danelectro DC recently with a view to finding something else but wasn't quite sure what. Was still looking out for another Jazz with a rosewood board (been looking for a 5th Jazz to round out the collection and cap off 12 months of reconnecting with my first-love Fender model). Was thinking maybe a CIJ or something. Missed out on a couple of cool basses locally- an Epiphone Tbird Vintage Pro, a red Cowpoke Precision (for practically nothing!!!) and a cool Aerodyne Precision Special in green. But then randomly, this pops up and the price was almost too good to be true. I took that as the sign I needed. Cut to today and 3.5hr drive each way (but barely even noticed tbh). But here it is: One 1998 American Standard Jazz in black with rosewood board. Came with a 2008+ American Standard case too. Not long in the door, straight to the jamnasium and plugged into the SVT! And dayum! This thing thunders!!! It is so loud and punchy. almost absurdly It is in great condition overall, bit of swirling on the finish on the back and a light scratch on the front but no dings or dents. The rosewood is beautiful on it. Will give it some oil to bring it up a bit more but it is absolutely lovely. Overall quality feels very good. Very similar to my 97 American Deluxe P. Neck feels great, similar to my American Pro 2 Jazz but slightly different somehow (guessing radius). It is ridiculously heavy though. Like 70's Precision heavy. But will see how it sits on a strap later. Originally thought it would make a good mod platform later but I'm inclined to keep it stock now. Though I will swap out the pickguard for something a bit more 'disco'. Will also have a play with the action and maybe swap out the strings. Pretty darn happy

Sunday night was the prog covers. Drummer works late so only managed the last half hour but sounded good. Gave us a chance to work through stuff in readiness for his arrival which helped with the following. Keyboard player has had ancient keys that have been disintegrating for years and showed up with two much newer instruments so there was some tweaking of sounds and arrangements that has not happened before. Gave me the chance to say "can you not play the bass bit as well as the main part in Turn It On that opened things up and stopped trampling over me 😀 Last night was my main band. Ran through some songs that haven't been in the set for a while and tidy up the new ones. Considering some of the old ones haven't been played for a while - a couple could date back to lockdown recordings and videos - they were all still pretty tight and can be brought out for soundchecks in future.

As a sax play and someone who has an interest in jazz, one of the things that I get frustrated with going to listen to a jazz gig is the typical way that playing is approached. The typical method is: play the head, perhaps repeat head with some variation/decoration, everyone takes a solo for 16, 32, 64... bars (cue perhaps solo sax, trumpet, guitar, bass, keys, drums...). After 15 minutes of boring the audience to death, return to head and finish. Repeat process with next tune. You do not need to have everyone taking a solo in every tune, but that's what a lot of jazz groups do. They then wonder why their audiences almost no one under 70 in them. I don't go to a lot of jazz gigs, but I've been to enough, first one in my 20s, and they all operate this way. More imagination would go a long way.

An interesting video on gear obsolescence and what we can all do to avoid falling into the trap of buying gear designed to become obsolete / unusable. One particular quote (paraphrased): "So what can we do to avoid despair of musical equipment becoming obsolete bricks? One is, buy pedals that don’t require a computer hookup." I've always felt this way, and only tolerated computer hookup with ONE pedal: my Future Impact v1 synth. This is purely because while I loved what it could do, it seemed to lack that many simple useable 'synth-bass' sounds straight out of the box and half of its capability is inaccessible without a computer and access to the patch database. I half worry that one day I will lose my 99 custom patches due to memory failure or lose the ability to hook it up to a computer, rendering it closer to a toy than musical gear. Since buying it back in 2019, I've bought zero pedals that require computer hookup.

This is the board at my feet at the mo... Covers all the classic rock/metal we play..and there isn't a pedal on there I don't use during our set, which is nuts... I made the Schmidt Array style 2 tier board a few years ago and it has been fantastic. Ignore all the spaghetti on the left...nothing to do with the board!!

But you're the bass player. You're the smart one in the band. At least it's always been that way for me. 😄

This is currently playing...

Just playing a random YouTube playlist and this just came up

It was last Thursday, not last night. I was complimented on my tone, my timing and for being the first of their bassists to notice the do do do dee dee da do bit in the middle of the organ solo in Golden Brown. Apparently all of my predecessors have either missed it entirely or come in late. Because of which they don't play it anymore, so I was wrong as well 😂

The contents of this thread thoroughly explain why tubes and SS are different, and why watts don't define loudness or tone. Folks like agedhorse, Phil Starr and myself have been posting this information for as long as there have been forums to post it on. Can't say we haven't tried.

Analogue pedals do get outdated in some ways too though. Parts get worn out and can't always be replaced or technology just moves on (e.g. massive noisy pedals with odd power requirements). Nothing lasts forever, I think if I got 10 years use out of a pedal (digital or analogue) it would feel like I got my money's worth.

I think a lot of Sadowsky's success is down to the time and place they were in. New York is full of session/theatre musicians who were mostly using Fenders. No doubt a lot of them had reliability issues, or became too valuable to play out, or didn't have a low B. Sadowsky was able to solve all these issues locally while still giving them an FSO that was familiar/comfortable to them and their employers, so it's no wonder they became successful. That said, there's nothing inherently pioneering/groundbreaking about them - B strings and active electronics had been around for a while when Sadowsky started making his own basses - he just put them into a package that appealed to a lot of people, and which also happened to be a high quality product. I'd guess that a lot of the hype about the Sadowsky preamp is less due to the fact that it is unique and special in some way, and more due to the fact that it was the first active preamp available on a traditional looking/sounding bass.

I'll have you know they're PEACH pink sparkle Converse! 😀

Basically ever since electronic devices stopped being made solely with discrete components and moved over to ICs everything has the potential to become obsolete, and even then you're not safe. These days there are a limited number of valve manufacturers and many of them are in countries we probably shouldn't be doing business with. There's also the problem of improved quality of modern components which may now be too good to be suitable replacements in vintage gear to relies on the fact that it was built with components from the 60s and 70s that have 10-15% tolerance and a modern <5% tolerance component will make it sound different. And of course when that component fails it is no longer possible to find out other than by trial and error what the actual value was. As has been said already don't buy equipment that doesn't do what you want out of the box on the promise of some future update that may never materialise. I've done this once and won't do it again. A very expensive digital mixer that had several dedicated front panel controls that did nothing other than bring up a message saying that their function would be implemented at a future date. That didn't happen. However those functions that were there when I bought it carried on working for over 20 years and I can't complain about that. I've been working with digital music equipment for over 45 years now and have plenty of time to get used to the fact that once one of these devices stops working it will either be impossible or too expensive and take too long to fix. I have now moved most of my high-tech gear into my computer and only buy from one manufacturer. I have no plug-in incompatibilities because apart from two I only use those that come with my DAW (Logic) and while they are convenient neither are essential.

Pink sparkle Converse ! Jeez !

Both this PLUS the dynamic (burst) power factor and voicing into the perception of loudness. There are switchmode power supplies that are far more stout than line frequency supplies, and have very high duty cycles as well. Like everything in life, there are good and bad examples of both line frequency and switchmode power supplies.

here's the view from the back of the room

The Salty Dog in Northwich on Friday night. It's a small place so we easily filled it. I love this place 'cos they always have great beer. For the first time since I started playing there, they had a great sound engineer! Every other time we've played there the sound has been plagued by low end rumbling and constant feedback, however, it's always been a barman or the like just doing their best. This guy clearly not only knew what he was doing, but was also concerned with doing a good job, and he did! A very sweaty 1.5hr set and all the free beer I could drink made for a very entertaining evening

That was what I was getting at in my previous comment. Sounds like a combination of the Windows single-USB-MIDI limitation along with a complex set of interface controls as opposed to an FI problem - the same issue would occur with any other app that needed access the USB MIDI connection in this scenario.

This howling piece of crap! Flat as a pancake and weighed about as much as a nuclear power station!

Ah see but this thread proves you should never throw things away!

It's all.down to your new pedalboard 😊

FWIW, I think the Z3 sounds much more like a vintage Stingray than the current Stingray Special. Amazing bass for £400.

Here's what I managed with my L2000 re: Justin Chancellor, best listened to on headphones as I tried to volume match the original bass

Ah, makes sense now! Yep, missed opportunity.

Quite. in all my years on basschat I have not owned, nor been seen playing, or said anything positive about, or given away in a raffle some brands: Spector, Smith, Rickenbacker, Stagg, Reverend, F bass, Moon or Tobias. I can confirm I do not “hate” any of them. My indifference ranges from unaffordababilty to really just not giving a flying fish. but I am not a hater. thank you

Alice Pooper?

Does anyone know if Stubz Thumbs is transmissible by touch?

Latest single from our album Sow Shall Ye Reap. Shot at a fantastic location in Dumfries and Galloway, Castle Volt. Check that place out. Hope you enjoy. PS Finally got the ACG 6er out in the wild 😀

added the octave clang and pickle back on, have a noise project coming up! the clang is in a damnation dirt fixer and is mad when you add the octave! And everything sounds cool running the life into it!! all about running in parallel aswell with the ML10x

Another Eagles tribute show in Hexham, Northumberland. Nice to have a monitor after persevering with IEMs at the last gig. Old school, but.. I prefer it. Also used my new Jazz for a bit. It's lovely, but I’m not sure stacked knobs - or white - is for me. We'll see. Next stop... Rotherham!

"I noticed that you've got a Yamaha bass guitar. I bet you dream of having a Fender one day." - random punter at a summer festival gig some years back when we were packing up my BB2024x. It wasn't the only time I heard that.