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So, played the Farmyard Party at the weekend - pics above on @casapete's post a couple of pages ago. The Friday was very hot and sticky. As we were staying over, I had to put up a large tent pretty much on my own (the missus is recovering from an operation on her hands) in rock hard ground - hence me managing to look sweaty, pasty and sunburnt all at the same time in the picture of me and Pete above. Great to meet Pete before the gig - I was obviously pretty busy trying to get everything ready for our show, so I only managed to see a couple of songs from his band, but he is obviously a very tidy bass player. There was a bit of a groan from backstage as they played a song on our setlist, but fortunately that seemed to be the only one, so we managed to avoid too many duplicate songs! The gig itself was a bit hit and miss. We had a (very good) dep guitarist and it had been sounding brilliant in the three rehearsals we managed to get in before. However, live there were a few adventures starting and (particularly) ending songs and a fair few missed cues. Endings became a bit of a negotiation between me, the guitarist and the drummer, with the poor keyboard player trying to work out what was happening from the other side of the stage! However, we got a pretty good audience reaction and had a lot of very positive feedback after the show (with a couple of gig offers thrown in), so it can't have been too bad - amazing what you can get away without the audience noticing when playing live sometimes! Gear wise, I was using the 78 P bass and the usual set-up of a Shure GLXD wireless, Thumpinator, Cali76 bass comp and Caveman pre into a Handbox R400 and Berg CN212 cab.

I'm playing Glastonbury 2025, I have 4 gigs lined up, playing with Andrew Maxwell Morris. Wednesday 25th: Toad Hall - 17.10-17.50 (40mins) Thursday 26th: Mandala Stage - 14.00-14.45 (45 mins) Friday 27th: Open Arms - 12.00- 12.45 (45 mins) Small World Stage - 14.10-15.00 (50 mins) I so can't wait 😁

Did a forum search for this guy and there was no threads for his music, so I thought i'd share, he gets a watch a few times a month from me. Really lovely playing, and great band to boot.

You might have a different perspective on this if you have had your designs appropriated from confidential documentation that was passed on to a competitor against your will. I have, it took money out of my pocket and the companies that produced those products. This may explain our different perspectives. Most modern designs are pretty difficult to reverse engineer without spending considerable effort and cost of doing so. Documentation reduces this cost to do so. Many companies do not release documentation for this reason alone.

I couldn’t have written that better myself. That’s my philosophy exactly. All of my basses get played out because I love playing all of them and I’ve always taken good care of them as you have. For example, this was my gigging set up for a decade playing in pub, function and wedding bands… Never had a qualm about taking my Wals out and they never had any mishaps with due care and attention. OK, for an open air gig in dodgy weather I might take my Frankenjazz instead, or I might take it just coz I fancy playing it. My most sentimental bass is my Aria SB700 - my first bass bought new as an 18th birthday pressie by my Mum and Dad. I’ll never part with it but, again, I’ll happily play it out (like at this 80s theme night from last year…)

Absolutely, Nate Mendel's Lakland P gets used for every Fu Fighters gig I play ( Rockprest on Sunday ) and the '79 Bicentennial T Bird and the 74 Rippers do the Nirvana gigs ( A local music boozer in Newcastle on Friday ) . No point having them if you don't use them for their purpose.

All these should have been recalled IMO, they cost far too much money to be looking like a ratty old rehearsal room cab after a short while. Some of them were an absolute state.

No, silly! It's obviously the Isabel Marant Shirred Paisley-Print Georgette Miniskirt! I always go topless at festivals! (actually, it's the toothbrush. Good piece of kit!)

Phew! Just made it in time. The playing and mix are a bit rough but it's kind of pop punk so I'm not too bothered. This is 'Aliens in the sky' by Jinky Fuzz. The bass is one of my daphne blue Fender JMJ mustang basses and there are two guitars - my Pelham blue Harley Benton DC-Junior FAT which has tone knob pulled out to put the single stacked P90 in humbucker mode, and my black Fender Telecaster custom switched to the wide-range humbucker pickup in the neck position. Both guitars were recorded from the usb output of my Fender GTX100 amp using a patch emulating a mesa/boogie IIc+ with a Boss DS-1. The organ is my Yamaha Reface YC. All the processing etc used logic's stock plugins.

These months just seem to fly by, but then, we get get to hear the great new jazzfunkpunk creations from @Leonard Smalls who was on fire again in MAy. So we fired up the DAW once again and showed how the following picture inspired us. "Here's a pic. it's of some UFOs I saw while on a plane to Geneva a few years ago." Have a listen through and vote for your favourite 3 tracks 1 @Al Nico amongst Us Inspired as we all are by alien music, I created this short piece in Canis Minor, building sounds on synths that portray typical sounds heard during alien encounters, including deep low bass. All dynamics have been removed to capture and portray the natural sound, feel and anxiety of being probed in a busy alien space craft hospital. 2 @Chiliwailer Jammin' with E.T. - is inspired by how I imagine it'd sound when jamming with E.T. at 30,000 feet. 3 @Baloney Balderdash So I put on Syd Barrett's spectacles, and this is what happened... : 4 @Leonard Smalls A punkyfunky thing based on a true story told by a lovely old man (Herr Wilhelm Lügner) in my local pub... 5 @upside downer Anything can happen on a plane. You could drink a hot brew, have a snooze or ingest some top quality drugs whilst watching unidentified flying objects out the window. 6 @AndyTravis Just thought about Top Gun incidental music… 7 Lurksalot no singing here then , definitely 8 @Jean-Luc Pickguard This is 'Aliens in the sky' by Jinky Fuzz. Eclectic works as descriptor for this collection, excellent also works for me ! So that's the lot please cast your three votes by midnight on 30th Enjoy

You could try the Basschat 1x10 here

Calling @nilorius

I suggest you work out the answer for yourself while you fix your own amp

I’ve been doing a blues jam in my favourite downtown dive for close to 28 years now. We have a good number of regulars but one never knows who or what might come in the door. It’s been said a good Sunday will have both extremes , some misery , and some magic too. Last week was no exception. Part of my Monday is always looking up songs I might not have been familiar with the night before. The harp player runs the night and is good at changing up grooves and things on the fly. If things get loud he’s quick to bring things down. Volume is rarely an issue except when full bands are sitting in. Funny how quickly that can happen.

Not so much intimidated but my reputation, especially going forward in bass building and if I potentially want to make this in the next few years post Police (don’t hate me) retirement option, it is really important to me. This is especially when it comes to asking people to part with their hard earned cash. It doesn’t matter to me that in the grand scheme of bass prices, this is right at the bottom end of the scale. I have applied 2 tests to myself over the last 25 years of public service. The “my mum” test and the “mirror test”; “Have I treated others how I want my mum to be treated?” and “Can I look myself in the mirror at the end of the day and genuinely say that I did my best today whether I won or lost?” So as of today and coming up for a week after the last contact about issue, I have had no further contact from the buyer. I left the ball in their court to let me know when was convenient for them to let me have the bass to look at and that I would turn it around for collection by the next day after that.

Did anyone film any of it? Is there any bits posted on social media... I'd love to see it 🤩

Go (Fred) West - Pet Shop Boys

@Linus27 caught in the act!

Something a bit different last night, with two rather different featured bands - Aquavit (fronted by a Danish lady) doing jazz and a brass ensemble, the Drayton Brassets, doing various songs like I'm a believer, Take on me, 9-5, and a couple of Bruno Mars songs. I had a few accompaniment slots too - including for one guitarist who started coming to these open mics a few weeks ago playing acoustic, and has now shifted to electric (and very good he is too). And nobody shouted "Judas!" either.

Summertime sounds - 😎

The Ironbird which really grabbed my attention first was Johnny Rod's yellow one, love this bass.

True, one of my big problems with gigging in general is it relies on other people. And we all know drummers tend to be the clumsy ones. I took best instrument to mean most expensive, at least for me they’re the same thing. Mine is an Overwater fretless J4.

I think that normal use damage / wear and tear and the odd accident are unavoidable for just about everything. Even for a sitting down jazz performance at some point a music stand is going to get bumped into an instrument, or the player themselves is going to stand up and collide with something. I gave up worrying about that sort of thing years ago as it was limiting my enjoyment of my instruments. I do my best to minimise damage of course, but some things are just unavoidable even if just playing at home.

Speedo Freak - Motorhead

It depends on what you mean by handle low B string. It is the 30hz to 80hz content that is the concern. Most modern 12" bass cabs will handle it pretty well with a high pass filter to snuff out the 30hz content and let through some 60hz. The higher performing ones folks are recommending you can make that 60hz quite loud. None of them will produce audible 30hz so a HPF is still a very handy thing. A lot of players even take out a bit of the 60 to 80hz. Their cab is too good at making it and the tone gets to be wallowing in lows.

The SGFX Diamond Bass Comp EQ is the mutts nuts the original BCP-1 also excellent

Nothing so grand as a festival for The Rebbels, our first outing as a four piece at Christchurch Con Club, Saturday. We have had no rehearsals for 8 weeks, and so I am a tad nervous, but that is what makes it fun! The lead guitarist and I are having a get-together tomorrow to work on beginnings and endings and other fun stuff, so I may feel better or worse by tea time.

Just been trying to have a little fun promoting our gig this Friday, loads of bands on plus festivals this weekend so we're not expecting a big crowd...but one can try as hard as one can 😁 The pub's called the Avon and it's right next to the river Avon so why not?

"Shortage of bassists in Aberdeen after they were all press-ganged into working on a galleon....." Apparently the kings shilling was found in the bottom of a few glasses of craft beer, rhtyhm orientared guys work well with oars so it seems.

I have an LFSys Monaco and it's fine with a 5 string Spector.

So having decided that I'd like to set myself the challenge of having a go at fretless, and wanting to try before I bought, I looked at what was around on the cheap end of the market and my local music shop (I say shop, I suspect it's more the owner's retirement hobby and gear museum/hangout, with incidental music teaching space attached) had this, so I dropped in and had a look. Internet research suggests it was made in the Samick factory in 1994/5 and will have originally been fretted. The defret job looked good to my non-expert eye, the body and neck felt comfortable, it wasn't too heavy, it sounded OK unplugged - considering it had flats of unknown provenance on - and made a good range of tones plugged in to the shop Trace combo. The action wasn't exactly low and I noticed the G string bridge saddle was as low as it could get, but I figured a bit of setup attention could probably sort that. Oh and a previous owner had decided to replace the output jack with an XLR. Anyway though, I decided I liked it, so two hundred quid plus trade-in of a Marshall MB15 I no longer need and it came home with me. Closer inspection and plugging in at home and the imperfections started to look a lot more imperfect. I realised the intonation was badly out and the bridge saddles didn't have enough adjustment (away from the neck) to get it anywhere near right without reaching the string end wraps. And there was a huge amount of interference pickup, which only almost went away when I turned the tone control fully clockwise, which corresponded to maximum treble cut (??). Inspecting the cavity again, the wiring I'd thought looked passable in the shop now turned out to be a right dog's dinner. I started to feel I'd got a dud on my hands. Maybe I should have gone with the safe-but-boring Squier Vintage Modified 4-string that guy in Ashton with the leather sofa had on Gumtree… But then I took delivery of a set of lightly used Elixir stainless roundwounds courtesy of cdog, and went through the setup as I swapped them on, and everything started to make a bit more sense. Intonation came right in a more sensible place and I had to raise the G saddle a little to cure a rattle on the top end of the fretboard, which left the action still a bit higher than I'd like but definitely playable, and the rounds are easier (or at least more like what I'm used to) than the flats. And I've ordered the parts to screen and rewire the electrics and return it to a normal jack socket. So I'm a happy bunny after all. And I do think it looks rather smart in the black. I reckon the fretboard may have lifted a little bit at the top end, so once I've played it a bit more I may get an expert opinion on whether a bit of work would improve the action, but I'll leave that for a while as I'm planning to stick to the fretted until my next jazz jam in a couple of weeks, then play only the fretless and see how quickly I can get used to it. My own intonation is currently at the 'surprisingly good, but still terrible' level so some practice will be required.

Well I can tell you exactly what I'll be playing and it's not very interesting or original 😂 Fender Japan 60's Classic Precision with LaBella Deep Talkin Flats. Sansamp BDDI, Ampeg Opto Compressor, Boss or MXR Octave and TC Electronic Tuner. Boring but a solid workhorse setup 😂

Singist hits some loud shit in our Odelay gig, went great, could have been better, could have been worse, Beck has said the same about his own gigs