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One trip to Edinburgh later... Okay, I'm still on my way back! Gotta love Competition Burgundy. Thanks Dave!

Oh my…

So... about time I got my lot done. The Hohner B2 that lives with my partner needed some tlc - loose ground wire, loose jack and two loose pots (all down to me rushing reassembly after a refin). So, how do I sort them into logical groups? I've tried... enjoy! The little ones. Headless and short scale. Hohner B2 (my second bass). Hohner Professional Jack Custom V (name longer than the bass!) Kay (not Teisco) Tulip. Squier Jaguar Short Scale. The Jazz(ish). Squire Standard Jazz (2002, fitted with mutes). Fender Flea Signature Jazz. Fender Performer (intended succesor for the Jazz). Sire Marcus Miller P10 (Precision shape but feels and sounds like a Jazz). The Precisions Harley Benton kit bass with Squier neck (it came with the fake decal. Moster sound and plays well!) Fender American Vintage II 1960 Precision. Squier 40th Anniversary Precision. Maya Fretless Electric Bass. The Odd Bunch Harley Benton MB5 (Warman pickup and 5-way rotary selector). Deathburger (my bits, the HB kit neck, Wilinson hardware and quilted maple body from an unfinished blank). Harley Benton Marquess 5, active. The Omnium Gatherum Tanglewood Acoustic bass (Labella nylon tapewounds and aftermarket cheap piezo system). Epiphone Embassy. Westone Thunder 1.

So this is what happened. I read all the valued inputs here (apart from the one about all amps are dead🤣) and got a shortlist. The list was Agi AG700; GR One; Eich T900. Planned a trip to Bass Gallery for a start, they have 2 of those so a fair start. But I had a look on Reverb just in case. Just happened to find a mint Eich T 900 so I got it. This way I own it a while (maybe longer) and really get to know it. If I find I have any doubts I sell it on at a small loss and try one of the others. I think this makes fair sense - the effort of taking my bass up to Camden then compromising on a similar cab (they don't have any Vanderkeley 210s in) and make a hasty judgement in a shop... better than buying blind but not at all ideal. This way I get to use it for as long as it takes to be sure. SO FAR: Bloody amazed!. Had it a week, done 2 rehearsals no gigs yet. I have not even touched the EQ yet, it's all set flat. I've had a play with the taste control (basically a tilt control) and like that a lot. Early impressions are it suits the cabs very well, it's really detailed and clean but in no way sterile. Think I'll do a review of the rig soon, but very happy - how I think my PJ sounds, but louder. Thanks to all for sharing knowledge and experience, it got me to here and I am very happy👍

These two 🤤

Bit more subtle…

Just joined this club after a cash for Streamer exchange with @40hz at a service station off the M4 on Saturday! Just realised my 30 year dream of a Warwick into a Trace Stack, although have to wait a couple weeks before testing it in anger!

Slightly changed things up as I’ve added the Pork&Pickle and Taurus Servo to my board. The Pork&Pickle is doing low gain duties as my always on drive and it’s first in line (after the tuner). I did try the Pork&Pickle after the preamp but it just sounded better before it. I’d placed a MojoMojo there recently and as good as it is the Pork & Pickle is more pleasing overall and it stacks really well with my heavier drive - they do sound glorious together! There’s very little going on settings wise but the tone control sounds great across its sweep and I’m hearing more in the midrange - maybe because it’s a bass specific pedal but it edges out the Mojo for me! After my first gig with it (I didn’t tell anyone I’d changed things up) the drummer commented that my bass was sounding great in the mix. I’ve not really tried the fuzz settings with the band but I have fuzz later in the chain. I have used it stand alone messing around at home and it’s classic muffy fuzz! Side note I’ve said this before (I’m sure) but having the Funkulator in the signal chain means I can instantly add in that classic 800hz scoop and it’s like every drive pedal takes on a second voice. It’s no different with the Pork&Pickle and it sounds great with the slight scoop and supportive lows and highs. The Funkulator is a real sleeper pedal on any board and not just for slap tones! The Taurus Servo replaces a Hyper Luminal compressor on the top row which is basically my FOH/IEM pathway (the blue box is my preamp which goes to both FOH and amp). The HL is great and BUS mode adds nice punch but I wanted to add some more character overall to the signal chain for IEM and FOH and toyed with leaving the comp as I’m routing the Pork&Pickle first in the signal chain. Hearing the Servo in this spot ticked all the boxes- some compression and the right amount of saturation in a tiny box! It adds exactly what I wanted right before the CabM+ which just sweetens things before hitting the ears and pa. I’ve the punch switch in position 1 which throws in some bump around 100Hz-300Hz and thickens things up. I did try this standalone into the amp and it’s a powerful unit with the punch in position 2 but again for my needs it sit perfectly in its new spot. At last week’s gig I could really hear the added oomph kicking on the boost side on some tunes and felt the added weight coming out the subs. No one seemed upset by the added low end but I’m always conscious of being too bass heavy in the mix and due to some timing issues everyone was late last weekend, my phone wasn't connecting to the desk for my IEM mix etc so I hope to dial in the IEM sound with levels etc. more closely this Friday - at home playing along on the IEM mix it sounds great. I think I’ll generally keep the Taurus on the ‘blue’ side (not boosted) with punch engaged in position 1 with the Pork&Pickle in low gain settings as described.

Quite excited ... a big package arrived from China 8.00 this evening. ... neck, fingerboard, bridge, end spike, tuners, the whole lot to do the bass all in one. What was I expecting? Well £200 spent on the whole shebang - what was advertised as 'ebony fingerboard' and 'nice maple neck'. I was dubious. What did I get ... well amazingly ... a bloody great chunk of what appears to be rather nice ebony. Sure there are some slightly lighter streaks - but really, barely visible. The neck is indeed maple, and even has very faint flaming. Sure it's fairly roughly finished and needs a fair bit of sanding all over, but it's really not bad at all. They have left so much spare wood on the neck heel that it's going to be a fair old job trimming it all down accurately - but better too much than too little I suppose Photos tomorrow.

These were some of my old Thunderbirds. I still own the Hamer and (to a degree) I wish I'd had been able to hold onto the white one, but hey-ho.

Yes - it came out well...and sounded great! It was your 5er Sterling with the Aguilar P added. Very enjoyable project and satisfying result : If you are tempted, @fretmeister, I would say 'Go For It!'

Nice idea. You could call it Feck 🤣

Yeah he was a trailblazer in the 90s, making music like a laptop creator years before those technological possibilities were realised. Plus he could write folk songs like an old man 🤯

We always record our rehearsals - mainly to be able to listen back individually to the progress made, to be able to play along to what might be different arrangements to the originals, and also to catch and moments of brilliance!!! Good luck with the new band - it's always great to be making music with mates.....😎👍🤘

We had a very good practice last night. Part of last night was getting our sound and mix sorted. And without much effort it was very good. Especially when none of us have much experience or have dealt with that end of things. We're a new band and have our first gig in a few weeks. We went through the songs we have and they sounded really good. One of the new ones to the list, played it first time, it sounded like we'd been playing it for months. Very happy all round. Can't wait to hear the recording the drummer made.

This week, the ZeroFive Audio Lowrider and the Sushibox FX Neptunium. Pointless in a different way to my 442 comparison where both pedals were discontinued around 10 years ago, both of these are out of stock (almost constantly), produced in very small batches when they are produced and then subject to import duties and shipping from France or the US. But anyway, maybe this will kill your gas for either of them. Was going to just make a post for this video, but best to have a thread lumping these all together as I think I’ll be making more of them.

I bought one of the 3D printed kits from Ebay. It just needs some 25mm x 25mm stripwood and eight woodscrews. I carefully cut the stripwood, 4 pieces, to the length I wanted. All good and I used some dark mahogany wood stain I had in the garage. There was a little bit of a wobble so I unscrewed the screws slightly and pressed on two corners to try to straighten it out. CRACK! B*gger. After calming down, I used the remainder of the wood to replace the broken brackets. I also added some feet to give an angle and some small blocks to add strength. Adding the new side pieces adds 50mm to the width, and it is now bigger than the padded bag I keep my pedal board in! Here it is with the wood colour on again:

So may find this interesting

This is sublime

It's good, but I think it misses some key points. Janek and his wife Chelsea address it very well here, especially around how "we have no evidence that fakery is bad for self esteem", except we have a litany of evidence in young women and facetuning:

I’m just weighing up how to do an updated photo…don’t think I’ve got enough couch real estate…

Well first rehearsal done and it felt like the last 5 years hadn’t happened and that I’d never left, sounded great, really tight, and the JMJ really worked - tho I had to use a thinner pick to coax some top end nastiness. Even my backing vox were to standard, which was the area I thought I might be lacking in. Overall am pretty pleased.

Just to clarify, her current board was made in the 50's and has a metal board, which we think is zinc or some sort of brass combination. Here it is....

Aaand if anyone was wondering… Black on LPB looks the balls too…

As I've ready posted my (embarrassing) felt puppet picture, and it really is about AI generated content (and not a gratuitous excuse to post 'something what I done', honest...), the band generated blisster pack action figures of ourselves which I used to make a poster for our next gig. It still can't generate a Fender with 4 string, our guitarest isn't that fat, and the drummers legs aren't really that short!

I see the problem here - you need a bigger sofa, mate

Have you seen it?

My Maryszczyk Jake, factory PMM. All-passive, Vol / Vol / Tone. Nice and simple, well balanced, sounds immense. If anything happened to it, I’d get another.

Aye, and this reminds me of the gig of so-called avant-garde electronic music I once went to, where a reel-to-reel tape recorder, an amp and two speakers were the only things on the stage, and some guy walked on - - to a grand-but-ironic applause, to which he sniggeringly bowed - - and proceeded to said recorder and turned the lever to PLAY. I tried to protest: "Playback!", but got the big "SHUSH!".

This one has some more live show examples: https://youtu.be/Jqyt2fk7aNw?si=9nldbl6gB_DFBuHU

Lots of bands mime substantial parts of their performance at concerts, especially at the professional level. My wife is a former professional opera singer and was in denial when I told her that several of her favourite bands mime a lot. I knew this because friends have actually played in those bands and told me about it. Then through one of those friends she was offered a chance to perform with the side project of the lead singer from one of her favourite bands. It was to "perform" the operatic backing vocals and keyboard parts. They sent the backing tracks, which consisted of pre-recorded vocals and keyboard parts that the audience would hear plus an in ear track she would hear. That in ear part included a click and cues of the form like "chorus in 4, 3, 2, 1" simply to ensure the mimimg was convincing to the audience.

Yeah this x100. Ripping off other people’s work and monetising it is what he’s been caught out for. If being a crap guitarist was a crime I’d be in prison with a double-sided criminal record.

Of course, but you weren't there, and you probably also do not know @kwmlondon. There are probably several possible explanations, of which playback is only one; another one is the one kwmlondon offered: that the player in question had chosen the material with care. BTW, I'm an unfan, and I'm much biased too. I like to believe this rat is also committing many other acts of low quality.

Given his brief will have been “engage John in conversation about his life, career and collection to give us material for an interesting video” and all he got back was monosyllabic or single sentence answers, no wonder he was trying to inject some energy into proceedings and feed him with leading questions. Feel a bit sorry for him trying to drag any kind of response out of Entwistle. I’ve interviewed a few people like that and it’s hard work to get any useful material.

Had a shift in focus for the bigger board. New band requires more heavy tones, so tweaked to add more drive.

Perhaps that is why I like the music I like so much. You can view videos of Hawkwind gigs, and they don't play the same song the same two nights running and will sometimes randomly improvise a song (notably Delilah on one recent live album). Seeing Arthur Brown when the guitarist's combo blew a fuse mid-song, and Arthur helped him fix it while the drummer and bass player improvised for three or four minutes. Or any band where you can see the little mistakes and recoveries or the bits where they pull it all together. The best live music is like kintsugi. The flaws are the golden bits that raise it from the ordinary to the exceptional.

Theres more to it than that. Granted, there will be mimes - but when you get to larger productions, where there is a hell of a lot of effort put into polishing the audio, click is vital for things like time based effects (e.g. delays). Theres simply too much going on for sound engineers to be tapping tempos or trying to get players to control their onstage effects to be in sync to an ever changing tempo. Solution = click, and midi timecode. Lets not also forget, for large scale events, you'll need a click for automations on the light show. Cues is no biggie - why wouldn't you prerecord the cues if you are running to a pre-arranged show? It's making the MDs life a bit easier on the talk back mic. I know Rick Beato talked about changing up shows - all possible if you mark your loop zones in the arrangements. Like everything, it's all in the prep. And thats why the best stadium shows are complete mammoth works of art.

If you can use a soldering iron, this: https://www.musikding.de/Classic-Bass-Preamp-Preamp-kit Don't worry, they are available by batches, so worth taking a look from time to time.

Get Your Socks Off - Primal Scream

Yep, we tend to see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear