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Just back from the Audio Lounge in Glasgow after a gig with the punk band. We were second out of four and went down really well. Quite a small venue - it certainly isn't the Barrowland - but I'm really warming to more intimate spaces. The Stingray acquitted itself well, although it's getting a bit clattery. I think it's going to have to go to Chris McIntyre for him to work his magic. The backline was deffo old skool - SVT plus Workingman 810. Awesome sound and it was great to feel the air hitting the backs of my legs but completely OTT for such a small room. I wasn't complaining though, as for once I had enough oomph to hear myself over our volume 11 guitarist!

A bit of trivia and possible provenance, if I'm right. I think I know this bass pretty well. The George Radcliffe named in the MECAA card was a serious trombone player but doubled on bass. He was the bass player for a band called Five Penny Piece - a sort of Lancashire folk and comedy act with some big gigs and several albums (national TV etc.). George was also the landlord of the Star pub in Ashton-under-Lyne - the best pint of Boddington's bitter available anywhere in my opinion. The quality of the beer was largely down to George's son, the cellarman and another 'bone player, who I think inherited this bass, along with George's Jazz. As far as I know, the son was recently made redundant so not unreasonable that this bass should appear now. With a mate, I took both of the basses to be set-up by Ted Lee (luthier to the stars and painted Manzanera's Firebird red I believe) in the very early '80s when George was still very active. I shall make further enquiries with the son. Anyway, that passed a few minutes.

The covers band, Top Deck, played this afternoon at The Great Northern in Langley Mill, on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border. It was the first time we’ve played there. Four-thirty on a Saturday afternoon is their standard time to have bands on. Unusual, but there was an appreciative audience up for a good time. We’ve got a booking there for August Bank Holiday as a result, so a success.

Whilst we still have a handful of jobs left to do to fully finish the Nick Smith Midas, today saw a massive step forward seeing the frets leveled, crowned and polished, electronics wired and fully assembled and strung! We heard her voice for the first time today and the pairing of Aguilar Amplification HJ pickups and two band cut/boost preamp are sounding sweet! It feels bittersweet that Nicks vision has reached this point yet he won’t be able to see it or make it sing 😢 She’ll now be given some time to settle before setup and the last few jobs completed at which point we’ll tie down and announce the details of the charity raffle!

My drummer is absolutely amazing. Also read: a damn sight better than the last idiot we endured. He has a discerning ear, leads us where needed, gives awesome feedback especially to our singer whose confidence grows every rehearsal, and he is just grateful to be there with us sweating out his frustrations from the week. Top fella.

You know when you turn up to a venue. The place is busy and very noisy. The staff haven't started shifting people, tables and chairs out of your way. Then the crowd are constantly in your way as you bring the kit in. Then you have to set up on top of each other, deafened by people shouting to each other. ??? Well that's how Friday night started. Despite that once we had set up, had a few minutes outside to cool off and give some respite to our poor ears, we had a really good night. Some serious rocking out, some hilarious silliness too. I took the Sterling Sub5 with the Stinger preamp (I really must come up with a better name for it!). It's rapidly growing in my affections - relatively light weight, close string spacing, great sounds. This time with no backup bass either (growing confidence in it). The Rumble 500 continues to sound awesome, even with the low Bs and Cs. The purple suede Gazelles got another outing - not that you could tell in the non-white lighting, so I wore them again for a trip into town today too

TTFC's second gig last night at The Garden, Chorlton. Venue used to be Font Bar but has just changed hands, so all the signs still say Font. They're just getting live music up and running, so there isn't a ready made audience there yet. Fortunately it's a local gig for two of us so we brought quite a few people, to the extent where I knew almost everybody in the place! It's got a lot of potential once it gets a reputation and people know there's music on. Bar staff were super chilled and helpful, always a bonus and never taken for granted. We played well, although I made more little mess ups than I should have. The drummer is fettling the recordings, so I'll be able to agonise over them at my leisure soon despite being the only one who noticed on the night. Two 1hr+ sets and 30+ songs (most of them new to me) that haven't all embedded into the muscle memory yet. Gear was Fender Japan Kazuki Arai Jazz 5 -> HX Stomp -> GR One 350 -> PA. Footwear was Vans classic lace ups. A couple of phone clips from friends. If anyone can figure out how to let me resize them please shout up! WhatsApp Video 2025-06-07 at 00.13.50.mp4 WhatsApp Video 2025-06-07 at 00.13.48.mp4

If you want to charge vintage money for a bass then you provide history, pics and everything g you can for provenance. It’s not as if Fenders are hard to take apart! No hex keys, sealed bits etc.

Give them an inch and they’ll take a kilometre…? 🤓 Sorry.

My board which is “always on” (apart from the tuner mute!) and I DI into our desk and use IEMs.

Untrue! I offered £495.

There are other kinds of guitard? 🤔 who knew ?

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. 😁

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

My friend Johan Sievert has a joint venture with Unicorn Basses here in Sweden, who builds a nice model only obtainable through Johan's company Basstraders (basstradersweden.com) They release a new five string model - they had only six string basses before - and Johan asked me if I would be so kind to spread the word. "For anyone who comes through your posts I give them 10 % discount before I sell the basses on Reverb..." I won't get anything, only the buyer. Anyway, I've spread the word. If I break any rule, just delete the post, otherwise enjoy the video. Here is the link:

Holy old thread revival Batman !! I have two of these and they are my pride and joy. The six string is a solid Shedua body with figuring from something several leagues higher. The fretless is arguably nicer. I'll never part with them.

Shout out to Mark at speakergrills.co.uk, two grills arrived very quickly and at a reasonable price (£110 for the pair, with all the trimmings like boxing and powder coating). The quality is good, as is the fit. I'm in no doubt they will protect the speakers very well. Will take these for a gig in a week. I'm sure they'll be great.

Just ordered some acetone to start stripping the finish - The look I really want to go for I think is like the black Gewa Rockabilly ... so a violin-burst in satin black. Something that will hide some of the old girl's battle damage but still allow her to look old and funky. My thoughts are to use a NGR (non grain raising - alcohol based) black stain on the stripped wood ... bursting out to near pitch black at the edges and allowing the centre of each panel to 'pop' slightly. My intention is probably then to use Tru-Oil top coat with multipole wipe on layers to build up a satin sheen - finishing off with a flatting grey Merlon abrasive pads and a wax polish.

I'd probably pay £80 for the excuse to learn a load of new songs and gig them with new people!

Strange one at church last night. New songs,I'm fighting off a cold, the IEMs were playing up and the sound engineer was relying on me to sort them out, and so the band couldn't always hear themselves. Fab drummer though, so all I did was play a rhythm with roots and thirds while squinting at the chord chart and try to hear myself from the FOH. Finished up one of the most groovy rehearsals we've ever had! 😃

Do it anyway 😉

If it's standard pub songs you would probably know 20 of them already. And I suppose the potential for further gigs with the same band comes into play as well - if it's likely a one off you would be less inclined to put too much effort in. We had 2 dep guitarists and a singer that we used regularly (they probably did about 8 gigs a year each with us) and over a few years they gradually picked up the whole set. They really became valued extended members of the band, never needed to buy a drink and came out for a free curry at Christmas. We also learned a few songs off their wish list.

I guess there's a worry about crossover distortion. We treat crossovers as neutral things that just cut off the lows from one speaker and cut the highs from the other. In practice the cut off isn't instant and there are a range of frequencies when both speakers are operating. At the crossover point the theory is that both speakers are designed to be 3db down halving the power to each and tow halves make a whole. That's the theory in practice it's really hard to get the exact match and on a frequency plot even with the best hi fi speakers you can always see the crossover frequency as either a little dip or a little peak. In most speakers you can hear it too. This is compounded by phase changes, slight delays between the sound coming at you from one speaker and the other. This makes the sound cancel at some frequencies. There's a slight delay in the speakers moving with the big ones taking longer to get going, the crossover components cause their own phase changes and to add to that the speakers would need to have their centre's equal distances from your ears. Crossover design is really complex and even the best computer aided design only gets you so close. Sombody really needs to sit down and spend the hours/days remeasuring and tweaking to get it right. Digital active crossovers make it easier and we benfit from the move to active PA cabs. Various trade names like 'Firphase' indicate where the manufacturer has tried to tame all the phase related crossover distortion and used a bit of delay to time align the drivers. However I don't think this is so much of an issue in using subs. Our hearing is just so much less sensitive down there and although theoretically a bass singer could get down that far he would have so little fundamental content that I reqally don't think it would be noticed. Maybe a trained sound tech in ideal studio listening conditions would be able to hear something in the kick drum sound but not in the wilds of PA. A lot of the new stick PA systems crossover in the 300-1,000Hz range and do so quite successfully and have the advantage over the 2-3,000 Hz crossovers of conventional PA in that part of what they do. The OP doesn't need to worry he only has 100 or 120Hz to choose from.

Ok, i think ive got it all sorted. Got home from work and put a few drops of superglue in the slot while the kettle was boiling. Left it for an hour and re strung. Perfect!!!. I didnt bother filing anything, it just seemed to work fine without that, and i took the paper out as well. Im going to put some new stings on over the weekend so will have a closer look to see if it does need anymore attention. This will be fine until i can get the nut replaced. Not sure how long the glue will last, but as i dont change strings much im sure it’s not going to wear out anytime soon. Thanks again for all the tips.

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.

Comparison of various Octavers An early Cog T-16 Sonicake Octaver MXR Bass Octaver Deluxe Pearl OC07 Zoom MS60b Bass Octaver Zoom MS60b+ Analog Bass Octaver My thoughts. For those that don’t know the Pearl OC07 is the original Jojo Mayer Nerve octaver. It sounds identical (as these old pedals can) to a Boss OC2. The Sonicake Octaver is an OC2 clone. When I compared it to an OC2 I couldn’t hear the difference and once again here, not trying to destroy the resale of my pedals I can’t hear it either. The Cog is quite unique sounding compared to everything else and has to be felt to be believed. The MXR is the most versatile but the so are both of the Zooms. It has some noise when idling but doesn’t appear to come across in the videos (at least until I add layers and layers of gain) Once you put these in a synth chain most of the differences disappear. I’ll be keeping the Sonicake (because they are so cheap they aren’t worth selling), probably the MXR as I find it the most musical and varied and then both Zooms because the MS60b isn’t worth very much and the MS60b+ is really really impressive. If I was playing a lot of synth focused music, I’d keep the Cog and have it next to a Sonicake or MXR Vintage Bass Octaver and then the MXR BOD if I was doing any blended with clean stuff. Anyway, enjoy

Cancel the order now, that's a cheapo body. Dots on the neck aren't right and it looks like J width nut to me. Fakedy Fake from Faketown.

I always think about The Who that if they came out today with that same music they would be feted as the hippest new indie band on the scene. Their music hasn't aged, and equally guitar- orientated rock music is still in the thrall of bands from that era. Those classic Who records are still incredibly modern and current-sounding.

Grotty services everytime....

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. So far this tells me that I'm not a million miles away either with the J-tone pickups for now (This is my first year of gigging on the DB. Maybe one day I'll think about laying out more for something else) and my markbass and trace combo as my monitor with a line out to PA (possibly with no bass in my monitor if possible). I hadn't thought about blocking the F holes. I'll look into that.

I've never thought to use F hole blockers. I'm very new to the world of double bass.

If only my life was that interesting! Tonight I'm playing a gig in... Fraserburgh. "The Broch". Biggest shellfish port in Scotland, I'll have you know...

Just ordered one of these from AliDistress: to give it a whirl with Fender Studio and anything else that takes my fancy. £14 (prices may go up as well as down).

You can also get good punchy electric tone out of a U-Bass if you really go for it with the right hand. This took a bit of practice…

An other option is one of the shorter-scale acoustic basses. I’ve replaced my U bass with a Taylor mini-bass. Light as a feather. Other, cheaper, options are available. Ibanez, Harley Benton are two that come to mind. I’ve found that with a feedback-buster in the sound hole it can sound great through either a rig or PA. Lighter technique with the right hand and a bit of EQ experimenting helps a lot.

I would love to be able to have a go at playing through a rig like that, just for the experience. The great thing in your situation was you didn’t have to do the load-in and out! Result!

She stole my band name for a uni grunge project. I was going to call my next punk band Crooked Snout after our slightly wonky lurcher.

If that amp and cab isn’t loud enough then your band is too loud, even if it is a doom band. It should be plenty loud and then some.

He was on the Masked Singer, called "Viking", singing his own song, and nobody twigged it was him.

The 7lb jazz bitsa bass which has I believe has had a number of bass chatters as its custodian has me as its latest one. I bought it yesterday of Chris (cdog) in Leeds. I really like it, light as a feather (compared to my last jazz bass) and plays wonderfully - probably due to being played in extremely well by the excellent bass players who have had it before me!