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Blockbustarz Glam covers at The Dreadnought in Bathgate. One of my fav gigs to be honest. Sound check went well and everything sounded great. Then for some weird reason i started to struggle to hear the bass out front. I had deliberately kept my on stage volume low and assumed the SE was on top of FOH. Unfortunately i spoke with my wife at the end and she said she struggled to hear the bass at times. I'll have a word with SE next time we play. He was experienced a deep feedback ring that we couldn't identify and maybe he's dropped the bass FOH to help and possibly forgot to turn it back up. My wee fingers are aching tonight as i automatically play harder when i'm struggling to hear myself. In future i'll be setting my stage volume to suit me if FOH are just gonna turn me down. I always set my stage level to balance drum levels. Other than that we had dancers from the get go. Only sold 40 tickets but a lot of walk-ins which the owner said was pretty normal these days. Ended up reasonably busy when we started and the audience remained. We had folks up from Galashiels and some came over from Livingston to see us so we have a fan base out there 😂 2x1hr sets or thereabouts. 2 encores which was nice. Odd thing was we had a crowd of Goths in and they were loving it and dancing virtually every song. At the end while loading car I overheard one of them say he's not danced that much in ages and loved it. So that was nice. It was an 80-20% ticket deal tonight and we did OK with that as we usually do. Back again Sat before Xmas which is always a fun party night and very busy. Usual gear :- Sandberg VM4 Shure GLXD+ wireless Keeley Bassist Comp. Handbox WB100 Barefaced 212 cab Loving this bass cab. Its lightweight and easy to lift but retains so much depth and the wide angle dispersion means i can clearly hear it if standing right next to it. Only downside is i always find 12's lack the mid punch of a 10" speaker but its still a superb cab and i just need to tweak my EQ abit more. I am loving the tone i'm getting with this rig. No more distortion when i play slightly harder now since i dropped the P pick up a touch on the VM4. I can still trigger it if i dig in really hard but i'm trying to play a bit lighter these days to save damaging my wee fingertips on plucking hand. All in all a great wee night and the Pizza from next door was pretty good too. 50min drive home on quiet roads and a nice wee toasted pancake and coffee and now time for bed. Night night guys. Dave

Just back from a sports and social club over in Nuneaton about 12 miles away. There were quite a few in, which made for a good evening, and a bit of dancing in the last set. We've played there before but I think there were a few more in this time. The guitarist had a bit of an off night, making some silly mistakes in songs we've played loads of times. However we were pleasantly surprised at how well Sir Duke came together after just learning our bits at home and then playing it together for the first time in the gig. I love playing with such talented guys. I love the painted back wall. The usual Stingish bass into GT-6B (operated by burgundy suede Converse one-stars) into Fender Rumble v3 500 combo. Passable cheese and onion batch (we ventured from our native cob-eating Leicester into batch-eating Nuneaton) from the bar - only £1.50 - bargain

Yesterday I was a Punk Pirate, having been to the Brighton Guitar Show with #2 son during the day and managed to avoid an impulse buy of a 72 P bass. It was very nice as was the 73 and the canary yellow 75 , but I just resisted. Having left there around 3:30 and dropped son off I headed over to Emsworth for a little light pirating at Kingsfest. Almost didn’t bother with IEM’s because it was quick turnarounds, but guitar from my usual main band said the onstage sound was a bit muddled, so in the end I set it up and just took a mono aux with bass, guitar and vox and put one plug in and it worked well. Timings for the day got out of sync due to weather and the Fest starting indoors then moving out. Would have helped if the acoustic duo had used the second stage rather than main, so when the compère said “the Pirates will be on in 15 minutes” there were cries of “I don’t think so!” but we were on pretty quick. Still somewhat curtailed of set time, not helped by my right leg going through the stage just before we started so so quick patching required…”I be capsizin’ cap’n” … “‘‘tis but a scratch ya scurvy scum” 🤣 Pretty solid set generally. Some flubs, but we’re Punk Pirates, nobody died, and it was generally good. Good crowd up for it and a lot of money made for a dementia charity, so all good. 90725182-ba33-4dba-ac6a-e0da656b2980.mp4

Had an absolutely banging gig today down in Poole at Country In The Park with Katy Hurt. We opened proceedings and had an absolute blast. Interesting moments..: I didn’t read the set list so was almost caught out by the first song My (Dunlop) strap lock popped out during the first song so I ended up having to improvise til I could sort myself out (embarrassing photo below) Cris, playing lap steel/acoustic guitar/mandolin kept stepping on my lead so I couldn’t wander the stage as freely as I’d been trying to do. Ironically I drove home via @franzbassist to pick up his Rockboard Tree 3.0 so I can have a bigger board to fit my wireless receiver… needed more forward planning on my part! But on the whole, an absolute blast of a gig. Very hot, very fun, and I hope we made some new friends. Shoes were the lo top Soul Cals again. Me pretending to play djent when the strap popped out: The whole band just having fun:

We played the fabulous Richard Jefferies Museum in Swindon. A beautiful setting with what I thought was a respectable crowd. I flew back from Spain yesterday so we hadn’t really rehearsed. I think we have it in the bank though. A varied crowd from 3-87yrs old and the under 10s all helped us pack up. Luckily, the other half of my duo is a teacher so he was able to coordinate them so we had no breakages! Everyone was super friendly and it was certainly one of the more memorable gigs.

Cool weekend of gigs. Friday night playing bass with Superbad at the Sapcote Social Club in Leicestershire. Really good turnout, lots of dancing and good sound. Saturday night playing bass with my own band (the Andy Wales Band) at Bar Dos Hermanos in Leicester. We were all knackered and it was a bit ragged and “seat of pants” at times but still plenty of good bits, a decent crowd and some righteous noises were made by all. Gear for both gigs was a Yamaha BB604 and little Markbass traveller rig. Then Sunday, helping our local village guitar teacher with his twice yearly gig for his students (including my eldest lad who’s just discovered Nirvana). It’s quite inspiring to see the youngsters grow as musicians over the few years we’ve been involved. The biblical rain from the morning thankfully stayed away all afternoon and it was a lovely outdoor shindig in his back garden, with me providing the PA and bass gear, being a general helper and being roped in on bass for one song. Gig below from Saturday night and Sunday afternoon’s gigs.

A bit of electrical tape on my old CV Squier Jazz and she's ready to rock for tonight's gig with Stray at 'Time to Rock' Festival in Sweden!

Just a few bassists from the day...

A happy update on this - the band had left the stage briefly to get Ozzy a cake 😆 They came straight back on for their farewell but unfortunately the livestream was focused on the fireworks.

Why not? There’ve been plenty of replacement Searchers!😂

Oh no it isn't.

This has been on the cards pretty much since I first discovered ACG 11 odd years ago. It was @eude’s Finn 4 which first drew me to @skelf’s basses and very soon after that I saw a Holly-topped Finn. I’ve been hooked since the first bass I bought, and for a long time had a Holly-topped Finn in my wishlist. It almost became a reality about 5 years ago but I never got beyond the “annoying Alan” phase. Fast forward to last year, an ebony Finn which Alan shared on socials made me hatch a cunning plan for a yin/yang pair of basses - one holly, one ebony. Specs were developed, plans were hatched, then I had to be sensible and drop one of the two. Naturally I kept the holly plan as it has been on the list since day one, and the shape changed from Finn to RetroB. Thus this spec was born and a deposit was paid last July. Today the 5 string bass of my dreams was delivered. She sounds as good as she looks, and I’m over the moon 😎 So, the specs: Limba body, bloodwood accent, holly top 3pc Ash neck with ultra slim profile, ebony fingerboard with bloodwood blocks, 30” radius 3+2 headstock with holly facing and limba rear veneer 50mm RFB in bridge, 50mm OPB in neck Passive vol/tone/blend with coil select switch for RFB Black hardware 17mm bridge spacing (Hipshot A) Gotoh resolute tuners Honestly couldn’t be happier at this point, I am looking forward to getting her out in the wild with Katy Hurt next month 🤠 First 3 pics are from my “unboxing”, the rest are Alan’s:

Thanks to @stevel my quest for a Aerodyne has been fulfilled. A cracking bass in as new condition and good to meet a fellow Basschatter.

Busy weekend, after a while of not doing anything. Had an hour slot at a local festival, Party by the Parrett, and got the 6pm slot which was nice. We had played a wedding and a party at the venue, and the guy that run the club liked us. Very well organised (stocked fridge back stage and everything) and handily the two main sound guys were the guitarists friend and one of the guitarists in my other band. We had argued a bit trying to get the set list down, we had been asked to do mainly rock (there was a more poppy band and a ska band on after us, so we stuck to the rock mostly) seemed to go down well and we managed to get it down to 1hr and 3 minutes, so went over a bit, which messed stuff up a bit but not too bad. We had quite a few dancers . My guitarist / sound guy did a video from the side WhatsApp Video 2025-07-05 at 18.45.55.mp4 Today we played a pub, outside, on shingle which is a bit of a pain for getting dust everywhere and trying to stand your drink up. Also not good for wasps (or well, good depending on if you are a wasp or not!), back to the normal 2.5 hour set. To be honest I wasn't really feeling it as my hand hurt for some reason but it went well with only a few notable mistakes, like going to do the organ backing section of Brick in the wall, and not realising I didn't change my patch from the backing track of Baker street (which is like a bell), which was quite amusing. We had a request for timber which we hadn't done for a year or so but the singer couldn't remember how to play it! Glad to get back to work tomorrow for a rest!

Did a really lovely gig by the seaside near Swanage and, as well as a large fee, was allowed to order anything form the menu, which included this £70 lobster. Would have been rude not to!

Had a great day. 12 hour drive each way so it was quite a trek. Tickets were still available on Ticketmaster on the morning of the event and these were not showing as re-sales. I did notice a surprising number of empty seats. My weekend away was a retirement gift from my children so I did not have to delve into the budgetary aspects of the trip (other than parking and some fast food). I have read some reviews bemoaning various aspects of it but I liked the variety of bands, the quick turnaround times and the general vibe. Live music doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be fun. An unforgettable gig.

I tried this today with my C4 and MXR - sure enough I heard it on the C4 and my tuner picked it out too. I couldn't hear it on the MXR though there may have been a really tiny drop in pitch according to the tuner. That might just be an artifact of the tuner not really being able to pick out the main note - I guess it's designed for a simple bass note, not synth tones with modulation on them. I must say though I hadn't heard that on the C4 but I'm mostly using it at gigs and rarely hold notes long enough for them to decay that much. That led me to mess around with the note hold function on the MXR - that is a very fun way to keep a note going, probably not something I'll need, but definitely something I'll play with. I had fun comparing the IMA sledgehammer setting on the MXR to my "setting" of just using my octave and chorus - I prefer that to the MXR. And my "go to" synth sound of octave/fuzz/chorus still holds up favourably to some of the MXR sounds, though clearly isn't as versatile.

Reminds me of the time I started a new school. Went into the assembly hall and saw a double bass on the empty stage. Just there. On its side. I’m not ashamed to say it was love at first sight and it informed my life for the next sixty years.

SHARRRROOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNN?

I feel your pain. I've been though a bit of it myself recently, much the same position in that there are two of us committed to the project and we've had a series of false starts with people turning up to rehearsals unprepared. It's horrible to turn up to rehearsals only to find you are wasting your time and everyone else's because one person hasn't done their homework. Doubly horrible becaue you know you are going to have to tell them they aren't needed and then go through the process of finding yet another new person and making another fresh start. Firstly I think it is quite possible that a band can thrive if you are all in other bands but it's really simple: once you've accepted a gig you do that gig lettig the other bands know you aren't available and you turn up to rehearsals prepared, exactly as other people have said. I actually don't think it is a bad thing to have a band where a couple of you are highly committed and others come in for the ride so long as everyone has a degree of professionalism in their attitude at least. I've played bass for a band where I took no part in decisions and just turned up and played. It was one of the most fun experiences I've had at gigs, all I had to do was learn the songs and turn up and play. The motivation was that audiences enjoyed themselves and I got to play a load of new songs without worrying about anything but playing bass. I've found I've needed to develop a thicker skin in all this. Most musicians I've met are pretty focussed on what they want to do, and partly that is a sensible and practical attitude. I play strictly covers, the thought of playing someone else's poorly written songs or trying to find an audience for an unknown band fills me with dread. If I'm looking to join an existing band then the first thing I want to see is their set list. How many songs do I already know? Do I like the songs and want to play them? Do I think they are out to please an audience of just themselves? How many gigs are they doing and will they be a decent venues? How far away are the gigs and the rehearsal rooms? Do they look organised or disorganised? Can I deliver what they want? I can't ask all these questions myself and then complain when they look at my band in the same way, balancing the pain and effort against the rewards works both ways For many of us the rewards are lots of good gigs. I'll rehearse because I need to and I'll turn up prepared because I hate letting people down. I've got a bit of pride and lets face it sometimes you need to rehearse. I don't want to be in a band that spends time in the rehearsal room every week for six gigs a year. I'm a grown up (some of the time) if a band are getting good gigs, fun to be with and moving forwards I don't need any other motivation.

Viva la difference! I loved Alanis’ set. Yes she has a distinctive voice, but it’s hers and she’s a made a career with it. She can’t change her voice. I can accept it’s a bit of a a marmite voice, but she has really good songs with a lot of unexpected chords, quirks and key changes. It’s clever, well worked stuff, and she delivered it great. I’ll admit it was a massive nostalgia trip for me as well, as I loved the JLP album when I was a young teenager! On an unrelated note, if Glastonbury ‘25 has proved anything to me, it’s that men around my age (ie early middle age) and above are the most intolerant of other people’s tastes in music. The amount of posts slagging off bands and artists I’ve seen on social media is astounding, and it’s almost always men above 35. It seems we really are a breed that like to tell other people what to do, how to do it, what they should like and for what reasons. It’s like we can’t accept that something we don’t like might hold emotional value to someone else. At least with music it’s reasonably benign, but when the same trait is applied elsewhere in life - politics for example - it’s exposed as being quite controlling and sinister. And unfortunately it’s all too common.

How come the Doors get two hours then?

After a few beers at Christmas I ordered a knock off Dingwall from Ali express.. I woke up the next morning to an email from the seller asking what “customisations” I wanted.. what a treat.. a custom bass!!… so I went to town, orange finish, 3 x pickups, maple neck… and a custom headstock logo! It arrived this morning - it’s awesome!! Obviously it’s not actually a finely crafted, custom instrument - but the finish is pretty clean and it sounds good, all the electrics work and it’s very playable!! The hardware is a bit lightweight… but for £279… it’s a lot of bass!

Finished up at the bluegrass festival this afternoon in very heavy rain. Full 5 piece band and we had a good rehearsal before our set and then found out it was shortened to 30 minutes instead of the normal 45-55 minutes. Not much playing and a two hour drive each way. Yesterday we played at noon and the band was in good form and we were very tight and did a beautiful version of Seven Bridges Road, the acapella part was wonderful four part harmony, a good set and the crowd enjoyed it and our leader and lead vocal was back in good health. Usual festival set up, Czech DB with Nux wireless into Traynor amp and DI to PA, excellent sound guys and we sounded good.

Then we shall make that happen!

Definitely bringing the Brawley 5 and 4 string basses. Rarely seen in the UK, except at Bass Bashes. Will bring the Roland V-bass system fitted on an HB MusicMan-like, if I still have it. This is huge fun and does a pretty good impersonation of many other basses in a live mix. It's going up for sale next week though.

I thought I'd post an update here, having read this thread about 30 times in the last year, as well as having messaged @Mertondirectly for a view. I picked up a TE1200 earlier this week. Rehearsed once with it but thought I'd share my initial thoughts as it's my first trace Elliot gear. Build quality feels so solid, and the knobs are tactile. I use the bag at the moment which feels ok, but understand concerns. Sound wise, it sounds big, dynamic and punchy right out of the box and the EQ feels really powerful. I haven't yet worked out the compressor so reserve judgement - I'm in the thinning out the sound space at the moment. I'm after some sustain out of it if possible. Overall first impressions are bang on what I'm after - simple to use, spades of power and a light weight alternative to my gt200. Gonna take a spin with 8 10s this Wednesday hopefully. ✌️

I much preferred guigsy on bass. More melodic and bass like. When Andy Bell took over (no disrespect to him) it just sounded like noel (as a guitarist) had written all the bass lines, but in a guitarist style. No contrast between guitars and bass. They didn't do anything for me after guigsy.

I must admit that going a range one 200 watt amp and one 1200 watt amp suggest a hole in the range at 500–600 watts.

I’ve been through this many times in other posts. The Boss is not generating a pitched oscillator so is not tracking pitch at all, rather it’s simply overlaying/processing the incoming audio directly to make it sound like a synth, that’s why it feels so fast and will hold as long as audio is present.

Hi all, Just thought I'd drop a message on here considering this is my listing. Firstly, thank you for all of your replies to this as if I've learnt a lot about this bass from this. I struggled to find information about this bass online to price this bass so went with a similar price to one listed on Reverb somewhere in Europe. From reading this is clearly very overpriced so I'll be making an adjustment for this. To answer someone saying as there are no strings there must be an issue with the neck I have since restrung this and plays great. I just took some quick photos to list the bass. I'd only put Pedulla in the title as another seller who is selling this had done the same. I presumed this was a model name but from research this clearly isn't. I appreciate all info on this and will be adjusting things accordingly. Any ideas on a more realistic valuation so I know what to price it at? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Dan

Welcome from an exiled Aberdonian. And another plus 1 for what Acebassmusic said...

Oh oh cocked that one up already

Mate, I'm coming down from Aberdeen - there aren't any regional eligibility rules, the only rule as far as I'm aware is "don't be a d!ck" - actually, they bend that one for me a little

Will they take a deposit? To hold it for you, I mean.

Celebrate the best of Swedish: SAABBA

IEM’s save me from digging in too hard, though that does require whoever is handling FOH to be on it else you’re fine but the crowd is thinking “what’s that bloke doing on stage?” 🤦🏼‍♂️

Well that was fun.

As I don't use an Octaver in any of my patches I have the HPF at the start of my patch chain. I only use 8 patches for the covers bands I'm in. 6 are for specific song types made up of compressor, drive and amp SIM. The 2 other patches are just "Always on" HPF one at 30hz and one at 40hz. To get as close as possible to emulate a Thumpinator I use 2 HPFs in series in each of the patch chains as I understand a single B1FOUR HPF has a 12db per octave slope , so by using 2 HPF in series the result is a 24db per octave slope. Seems to work for my needs by tightening up the low end. I know some of the amps I use (Fender Rumble 800 combo, Fender Rumble 800 HD + BF Super Compact, Mesa D800 Subway+ BF Super Compact, Peavey Mini max 500 + BC110) have some form of HPF built into their circuit designs but using an always on HPF before the amp simply provides a "belt & braces" approach to tighten up the low end. Having a 40hz & 30hz HPF patch makes it simple to toggle between the two to compensate for room and stage issues. It's probably worthwhile taking a look at the Zoom B1FOUR patches thread that @Al Krow started to see some of the ways players configure their B1FOURs.

Well I think it’s fair to say the doubters were wrong and that that audience absolutely loved it. Just my humble opinion but in the mid nineties they made playing guitars cool again and I’m grateful for that as I bought their first two albums, bought a nice fender strat with a work bonus and started playing again which led me to taking up bass again and playing live in several bands which had always been an ambition. They are making a lot of people happy at this moment when the rest of the world is a bit of a sh*t show PS My 23 year old daughter and boyfriend have tickets for London. She wasn’t even born during their heyday.

Finally managed to salvage a video from our gig on June 22nd. There's a minor glitch in it, but not as many as there are in the other videos from the day!

Saturday evening saw Rascallion return to our spiritual home of Anderby Village Hall. The atmosphere was a bit subdued, partly due to the heat which had kept a number of regulars away and reduced the size of the audience, but also in the knowledge that the RNLI and Coastguard were engaged in searching for a teenager who was missing in the sea just a couple of miles away (sad to report, his body was located in the early hours of Sunday morning). After being fed and watered (copiously!), we launched into our usual opener of CCR's "Green River" with all due respect to John Fogerty who'd played the same tune (as well as several others of his / ours) at Glastonbury earlier in the day. Apart from a) forgetting to un-mute the amp as we kicked off (fortunately I was in the PA too, so nobody noticed the lack of bass apart from me and Mr Drums, and I managed to sort it a couple of bars in!), b) the usual couple of curveballs courtesy of Mr Singer (including an almost complete trainwreck in Steve Miller's "Rock'n' Me" which we somehow managed to salvage), and c) a few more minor incidents caused by sweaty fingers, we got through the evening OK, and even the new stuff we were debuting went acceptably well. Gear was my 1997 CIJ Jazz, Trace AH200 head (acquired from @Deedee on here) and Trace BLX-110 cab, the usual Micro Thumpinator > NUX tuner > Ampeg OptoComp > Ampeg Scrambler > Ampeg Liquifier > Ashdown 12-band Graphic EQ/DI > Behringer DI600P DI, with charcoal Converse AllStars taking care of the footwear department. Now, let's see if I can get a phone video snippet to load... AnderbyVH MJLD.mp4