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Being very boring and going back on topic (sorry 😆) - last night was gig #3 of the Katy Hurt tour, at Hot Box in Essex. Wicked venue, great engineer, backline supplied by Ashdown. Sounded fantastic, we played well to a packed room who seemed to enjoy themselves. Bass was my ACG RetroB (nothing else has had a chance since getting it tbh, it’s perfect for Katy’s music) and shoes were some new grey suede Chelsea boots to replace the black leather ones which hurt my feet in Bath. Shirt was one of Gab’s (guitarist) because I left mine on the back of the door when I went to work first thing yesterday 😆 Photo shamelessly stolen from Facebook

Another shamelessly stolen photo with a better view of my sexy ACG

This is my contribution. A Patrick Eggle I bought a couple of years ago in a bit of a state. Very beaten up and preamp was u/s. Fitted a Glockenklang preamp and got it up and running. then decided that I didn't like my Yamaha fretless 5 anymore so I defretted this. Stripped all the finish off apart from the headstock. I filled th fret slots with maple veneer and oil finished the back of the neck. The scruffy black finish was stripped to reveal a nice piece of ash. Sanded back to bare wood, stained into a nice teal burst and finished with gunstock oil. It plays beautifully and sounds fantastic!

So I went fast and dirty to see if 'Frankie' (for Frankenstein due to the bolts in the neck) as I've christened this bass would go 'bang' when strung up. I put in the new, shorter neck bolts and their captive nuts and tightened everything down - secured the machine head plates with cable ties ... as the peg box needs a bit of fettling before they will sit flat. Rough slotted the nut ... but just left the top of the bridge flat ... stood up the soundpost, put on the tailpiece - and then rootled about in my box of spare bass strings for something not too taxing for a patient recovering from major surgery. I had a set of green Weedwhackers that I bought as an experiment for my Stentor bass ... er ... they were not very good: super quiet and with no note definition on the E string ... but hey, they were only £30 and being low tension wouldn't over tax a bass coming to terms with being a bass again! I taped on the side access panel as a temporary fix (I've already made an inner lining ring so the hatch doesn't fall inwards) - and got on with stringing up! I didn't bother to cut proper bridge slots - this would just be a fast proof of concept, I didn't even shape the bridge feet - just whack it all on and crank her up. Plenty of time to get fancy with finish and setup later ... but only if the poor old girl doesn't implode! And she didn't! She went straight up to pitch and stayed there ... well as much as Weedwhackers do! First impressions - no rattles - no buzzes - and MY GOD SHE'S LOUD I mean even with crap strings she's 50% louder than my Stentor with good ones! It's mad ... she's a shallower and narrower bass but something in her construction just kicks out volume in spades. The tone ... in so much as you can tell with Weedwhackers is rounded and punchy ... quite jazzy for pizzicato but with a big woody slap for rockabilly (probably courtesy of that huge slab of Ebony. Not as 'metallic' as my Chinese made Stentor in the slap. All of this with an unshaped bridge and a nut that still needs refined - but the old girl has spoken for the first time since the late seventies - and it's a very pleasant voice. I'm going to do a 'Mussolini job' as the repair guy in the music shop I worked in in my teens used to call it: string it up for the weekend and see if anything falls apart. And next week the neck will come off for proper shaping ... and I will start to look at finishes. 😁

I found this SMX250 for a good price because it was making all sorts of horrible sounds, even before I started to play through it! Replacing the original hyper microphonic 12ax7 valve fixed it and now it's as good as new.

I'm thinking the bass may be the culprit here. That BF cab will put out pretty much exactly what you put in and it doesn't have a tweeter so shouldn't be too clangy. The MarkBass head can definitely do warm bassy traditional sounds. I'm not too sure about the TC head as I've never heard one. You've also come from an Ashdown amp which is really good at old school gooey sounds so you'll be kind of used to that - they're nowhere near as clear and exposing as the BF cab. But you've got 2 active basses which are both pretty modern sounding and it sounds like you want an old school 50s, 60s, 70s sound. They'll both struggle to get there I think. See if you can borrow a P bass or passive single pickup bass of some sort without new strings on it, turn the tone down and see if that gets you closer.

She's currently at Bath Spa Uni on the commercial music course and absolutely loving it. Loads of playing, recording, production as well as a bit of business and all that stuff. She's in five bands now so loads of gigs.

A while back I decided to try some flats on this bass and decided to try some Steely Dan bass lines as I've read Chuck Rainey used flats on many of their tracks. I found a few no bass videos on youtube of steely dan and others and had a play along.

Maybe Andertons have been following the "Ruin a Band or musician's name by replacing a single letter" thread on here? Don't Fodera make a Victor Woolen bass? 🤣

Enough with the flucking metric/imperial debate! This is "How was your gig last night?" FFS! It's bad enough when people start using it as "Basschatters upcoming gigs" but I've come to peace with that. But this irrelevant bickering can GTF - it's making the relevant stuff disappear with undue haste. Take it to bloody Off Topic where it belongs!

Ok , so it was actually Saturday night just gone but we had a fab local one for us at the hawth theatre in Crawley, 600 tickets sold, and such an appreciative audience. I recently purchased a Trb 5 mk1 Yamaha, one with the ‘slap cut’ recess. Second show I’ve done with it and I’m bloody well blown away by how good it is! The b string is sooo good, i never imagined I’d get on with the wide neck, but it’s nice and shallow and seems to fit me like a glove! Lightweight as well ( from what I’m used to anyway) the B string actually interacts with the other strings and is so useable.Ironic as it’s by far the cheapest 5 string I have. happy days! X

As promised, here's a little picture and write up of the Chinese Amazon special in the Bronco. As I said previously, it fits in the stock pickguard and the mounting screw holes line up perfectly. The pole pieces almost line up perfectly, at most the strings are 1mm misaligned from the very middle of each pole piece. Also feels like a well made unit, cloth pushback wire and enough potting wax to keep a Yankee candle aflame for a few days. Really quite impressed with it. Sounds a lot more balanced than the stock pickup, and is a lot quieter in regards to background hum. Also sounds like there's more low end in it than stock, almost as if it's a bass pickup and not a cheap guitar pickup. Does sound similar-ish to a 51 P Bass style sound albeit with the thump of a short scale. Keen to try it out in a band mix at rehearsals tomorrow night. All in all, I'd highly recommend it. Absolute bargain if you own a Bronco and don't want to put the normal cheapo hot rail in but don't also want to spunk £60-100 for a Toltec or McNelly or something. Link to it is here if anyone is interested: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B06XQVZG72?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

He was bassist in Pink Flod I think…….

No? Me neither, but he must be famous. Andertons is selling his Fender signature bass (second hand) 😁

Got sent this by a mate, the tiny 50w Spirit of Rock and Metal heads are heavily discounted, the Vintage one looks to be sold out though: https://www.andertons.co.uk/hughes-kettner-spirit-of-rock-nano-amp-head/ https://www.andertons.co.uk/hughes-kettner-spirit-of-metal-nano-amp-head/ Thought they might be of interes to some on here. Not me personally as I only play proper instruments like.

Any updates on this? I’ve never met Phil, but have had some contact with him on the interweb. Always been impressed with the PJB line and his concept for how audio can be. Hope all goes well for him.

I know you can do a lot with midi, but I don’t want to ask what, or who, the bottom middle switch on the aux switcher turns on

First outing with a metal band in drop A, next week is a pop rock covers band. Nothing I can complain about - sounded huge.

Two coming soon, only got Saturdays booked today!

Handles on the side make this a pedltray

Sat in the pub tonight discussing this very track. OK, JE was one of the great bass players, and Daltrey a decent front man, but Moon and Townsend are just incredible in this, in fact it's Townsend's guitar that holds it together at times. f***ing glorious 🙏

Road of Bones is a favourite of mine although I haven't heard it in a while. I will have a look at it.

Well we do always complain that we never get an accurate description on a sales listing 😂

I've only did a quick test last night and it works well, and the price is good too Thank you!

My U bass is well under 2 lbs... maybe like the weight of trashy love novel.

Not completely happy with this but it's here fluffs and all. 😂

Anyway @SteveXFR, has your daughter made the decision yet and which way did it go, and how’s she getting on with it?

Well, that's a disappointing way to find out that I'm a robot...

I suspect you're thinking of the Roger Waters signature models.

It's a very unstructured situation at the 'cover band' level. I've done several deps for one band where I had two rehearsals first. Another band said 'we don't rehearse' so I went in cold. One interesting gig was with a dep guiarist too. We did Come Together... I knew the band played the the Gary Clarke jr. arrangement but the guitarist was all Beatles which came out a bit odd! As for bringing in deps, drummers generally do well, guitarists you need someone who can improvise instinctively by ear if they aren't able to rehearse. When I've been depped for apparently it went well but she knew the guitarist well. Usually you get a list of about 30-40 songs many of which won't be played! I might veto one or two which can reduce the learning time by 50%. Links to 'the version you play' are useful. People always tell you the starting chord not the key... Never come across anything other than getting the same share as the band, although one gig we threw in a bit extra for the dep as it wasn't a big payer. Deps aren't expected to chip in on rehearsal costs. Most deps do it because they enjoy learning new material and the buzz of playing by the seat of their pants. A good amateur dep who throws themselves into the spirit of things (maybe with some improv) can be great to play with.

I've just had an email from Strings Direct telling me that tomorrow is World Strings Change Day. At about £30 a bass plus a tenner per guitar, that's about a thousand quid I've got to find, not to mention two days of work. I think I will ignore it and hope it goes away.

If anyone in Bristol is still looking for tonight's Friday 6th June entertainment, I'm on at The Folk House with Steve Tilston, with the added ingredients of Keith Warmington on harmonica and Tony Orrell on percussion. This is a relatively new project, although Steve and the other two go back a long way.. Keith was on his first album in 1971! Reet looking forward to this one.

I'm very strict about changing strings: Every 15 years, whether they need it or not.

Me? No. I have a shirt and everything.

Whoever Roger Walters is there must be a chance that he's less of a bellend than another bloke who plays a bass like that.

Temperature always in celsius for me. I can't grasp fahrenheit at all plus it has no logic to it.

I'm the same, and it makes absolutely no sense? Long distances and a person's height have to be miles / feet and inches, but otherwise smaller distances have to be metric, temperatures should be in fahrenheit for weather, but otherwise in degrees centigrade and weight must be in kilograms, except for a human being, when I can only compute stones / lbs. Dunno if it's my age, but I'm caught halfway between imperial and metric, even thought I know that metric obviously makes more sense and is a better system!

Settling in to my new weekly residency at a local club’s rock and roll night. 2 x 50 minute sets of stuff for dancing, ranging from rockabilly and Elvis along with some lesser known tunes from Eddie Cochran, Buddy Knox and Dion. It always ends with a waltz, and this week it was ‘Until it’s time to go’, made famous by Elvis and The Four Pennies, written by Buffy Saint-Marie. A lovely song but with some strange changes - glad I had a part supplied! Nice crowd in, including a couple who regularly come to see our duo when we play in Scarborough, so nice they made the 100 mile return trip. My first gig there using my own rig, so took along my lovely GK 800RB amp and my Loud Inc 4x10 cab. Used my Precision Lyte passive bass with them, and it sounded fine. Think I may take my old Precision along one week, or maybe the Dano Longhorn too.