Leaderboard

And so 'Frankie' is done all bar the set up ... but I'm letting her settle in and get used to being a bass again before going mad with the action. I brought her up to concert pitch with the nervousness of a bomb disposal officer sat astride a ticking World War aerial mine! Fresh in my mind the first imploding Chinese biscuit material bridge. I needn't have worried. Plenty of graphite in the bridge slots and she was a good'n. So from this to this And how does she sound? Well I'm gobsmacked by how loud she is, I mean the Superior Bassworks Dirty Gut Deluxe strings are not known for huge volume, but the power and projection the old girl has is quite remarkable. I'm getting rather fond of the way she appears jet black in some light and dark brown in others 🙂 Yep I need to cut the nut slots a smidge deeper, and the action could come down a good 4mm at the bridge and still be 'slap worthy'. The oil varnish needs to harden a while longer before it can have a good polish ... and I need to buy a rubber chicken to put inside the bass ... so that when folks ask 'what's the little hatch for?' ... I can reach in and produce it! So after a set up I'm going to look at pickups - ideally something that I can use an adaptor to plug into my Shadow Rockabilly Pro preamp - thus saving on buying two preamps to have both basses gig ready.

Live Aid was on my eleventh birthday. I remember watching it and thinking "They're going to have to do something BLOODY spectacular for my twelfth..."

How is that going to fit onto a card?

I was trying my hardest Terry. Soz.

The TE-1200 and LFSys Monza are a match made in heaven. As @Phil Starr says, it's the amp I use, and I arrived at it having tried a lot of different heads over the years. Because of the high power of the Trace, you have to be sensible with the volume control, but your ears will be ringing before you overload the cab.

Live Aid for me was the start of me taking up bass and getting into music. I had just turned 15 and was aware of music due to my two sisters constantly playing all the big groups of the 80's like Duran Duran, The Police, Level 42, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet etc. My dad was also into his big band Jazz and my mum was into her singers like Barry Manilow, Val Doonican, The Carpenters etc. So my childhood was full of music constantly playing in every room of the house. I hadn't at that time really gotten into music of my own as I was more into BMX and computer games but I came in from BMX'ing and sat down and by pure accident turned on the TV and saw the U2 set. I was blown away by it but mostly by Adam Clayton, strutting around the stage, with his black DM's, looking super cool, playing this beaten up Jazz bass and at that point I decided, that's what I want to do, I want to do what he's doing, I want some of that. From then on in, I got into music, took up the bass and the rest as they say is history.

Feeling fancy with this one:

I'm a lil' late with this but my main squeeze (Felis Leo) had a gig on Saturday afternoon. A bit of background...the only promoter who will offer us a gig in town offered us a gig at a village pub, seven bands starting at 3pm. The gig was offered and Paul deals with it, we all say yes after a day of back n forth. Paul gets back to the promoter with a yes and gets told the gig's been offered elsewhere as we took too long. Paul takes umbrage at this and we get the gig, we're the first band on and we've got 30 mins! Paul is a quiet fella and slight but he don't do flaky. I've promoted the hell out of this one as I always do and we get the occasional comment about how much we promote our gigs, I usually have a day off work during the week and post loads. I get to the venue and the rest of the band and our 1 fan are there saying "we're not sure if we're playing" 🤔 they then show me the poster and our logo and the band after us have been removed and these posters are all over the pub! Jon, our singer, said we're not on the Salisbury Gig Guide either! Brian the SE said our name was on his list so we started to set up under a tiny gazebo (the only shade in 30+° heat 🥵). The 3pm start time also came and went as the guys were still setting up, there was a pile of cardboard next to their van and it was pointed out to me that the PA speakers were brand new (and big!). Quick soundcheck, everything good and away we go! The sound on the tiny stage was just mash potatoes, I was stood next to my cabs so found it hard to hear myself. There seemed to be a humming noise coming from a new speaker and Brian was fiddling with the back of it. I looked at the (sparse) audience and they seemed to be enjoying it, nobody was covering their ears or wincing so it must be ok. About 10 minutes into the set Brian goes to his van and comes back with the instructions for the new speakers! I kid you not, proper Spinal Tap moment... I'm looking at him reading and then looking at the band and...it was just a weird, tense gig, difficult to explain but you don't know if there's a problem or not and you're just trying your best to get through it 😂 Anyway, the gig went great! There were some small teething problems but our 1 fan who filmed some of it said we sounded really powerful (big, new speakers), the bassist of another band said we were really tight (should've bought him a drink but didn't 😄) and other comments were really positive. Maybe the tension and playing by your wits is the way forward 😬 We broke our RnR rule by wearing shorts I'm afraid, Darrell the drummer is allowed shorts but we're not...it was hot though! I used my lakland 55-02 through a TC electronic BH 550 into a pair of Barefaced one10s propped up on one corner due to an uneven stage surface (dead grass 😂).

Groove as ‘micro-timing’? 🤔 - ’Micro-timing is in the heart’ - ’One nation under a micro-timing’ - ‘Micro-time me’ - ‘Get into the micro-time’ Nah 😊

Year started playing: 1991 Number of basses: 7/8/9 (Depends what counts as a 'Bass') Music theory: 10 Technique: 10 Groove: 10 Modesty: 10 😃

You haven’t seen the Alpher, Bassmods Cort, Dusenburg, Enfield, Fender, Gibson, Hartke, Ibanez, Jackson, Kramer, Labella, Musicman, Nordstrand or Overwater rooms he also has first

OK, here is some of the Peaveys.

Down a third from a few years back. Bottle crashed as I neared @cetera heights, there can be only 'One' and I couldn't handle the pressure 😀

There’s singing and playing and then there’s entertaining and it’s the latter is the must have skill for a frontperson

Simple Perfection and sexy to boot

So 24 hours after the initial website enquiry I received an email from Dave Green requesting that I sent her back to them. She’ll be on her way tomorrow, arriving in Essex on Monday. Outstanding customer service again from the guys at Ashdown 👏👏😎

11

Just a quick message to let everyone know that John of Noise Works did a fantastic job of fixing an awful banana neck on an eBay-acquired 1979 Shergold Marathon bass. I bought said bass a couple of months back and did everything I could (truss rod, low tension strings, filed some proud frets etc) but the bass was virtually unplayable - looks like it had sat in its case unplayed for years with high tension Rotosound steels. I tried the Shergold forum on FaceBook (thanks @ash for reminding me of this forum) and some peeps recommended John. Eventually I went with their advice. Over the course of a few weeks, John heat clamped the neck, fixed the dents and bumps on the back of the neck and levelled/polished the frets. The result is a slick playing, low action bass with loads of 70s/80s cred. Very reasonable price and friendly service too. Recommended!

The dreaded Lead Singer Disease in full flight

Without wanting to derail anything, OldGit's Shuker 5-string P was utterly gorgeous. I played a whole gig with it once and the thing was just alive in my hands. When he had it built, there was no such thing as an off-the-peg 5-string P.

Back in the 90s I auditioned for a band in Swindon... it quickly became apparent that their original material was utterly dire, so I slapped my way through one of the songs in an attempt to deliberately fail the audition it seemed to work

had a rehearsal with the Church Band last night (we're not really a church band, it's just that the vicar lets us rehearse in our local church - who knows why as none of us are at all religious!)... Drums sound great in there though, wot with it being large and Norman! Annoyingly, singer couldn't make it as she currently has no car and being rural, public transport is non-existent (we'd go and pick her up, except she's 1/2 and hour away!). It's slightly alarming as I may have got us a charity gig (our first gig!)organised by a local Actual Rock Star next month and she's only done two rehearsals with us. However, we seem to have got over guitar-man's inability to be funky and his constant pentatonic noodling - now there's far more rhythm and solos actual stand out. I've also settled on a slightly overdriven envelope follower sound on the Helix which makes things even funkier. Not only that, but we've done a blues GoGo song in the style of Trouble Funk, and a Sly Stone style blues.

Got through 2 ½ hours of rehearsal with the originals band tonight. Finalised arrangements for three songs and started tidying up a fourth. Quite chuffed as two of the songs I'm using a plectrum and my technique is starting to tidy up - the P sounds awesome through my gigging rig. For one song in Bb I use my tuner as a capo on the E string... Have tried to apply a bit of music theory to my basslines and it's starting to pay off with some non-obvious melodic lines on the quieter songs. Have confidence I can survive gigging this weekend.

My work here is done - for now. Having considered putting an HX Stomp on my board I finally opted for an HX One on the basis that I rarely use effects and then only one at a time. Also swapped out the Mooer baby tuner for a Boss TU-2. It all runs from a battery.

When I'm bored, I do a new build. This is my latest. Poplar P-Bass body (i was inspired to use Poplar when I found out that the new Pino Stingrays would use this wood) Rothko and Frost Paisley Paper (over £33 for each sheet for the front and rear!!! Aaaagh!!) Custom wound pickup CTS pots Roasted flamed maple neck - i used white mother of pearl side dots to make them easier to see against the darkened maple when gigging. Nitrocellulose lacquer used on the body and the neck Lollipop tuners I aged the body except for under the pickguard, to mimic the way older basses look when the clear guard protects the topcoat from UV ageing.

The green is the colour the Shoreline Gold became when the yellowed lacquer was applied

Year started playing: 1999 Number of basses: 6 Music theory: 2.0 litres Technique: 4x4 Groove: about 5.5 seconds

Good for them, that messing about was the most blatant prima donna behaviour, just because the whole World was watching. Live Aid wasn’t meant to be about ‘look at me’ - a total dick move and boring to watch/listen to. Contrast that with Simple Minds.

It sure is and I will admit that I am a big U2 fan, or at least up until Achtung Baby. Certainly the music they were releasing throughout the 80's is for me absolutely incredible. There was also a bunch of bands that were universally liked at the time by young people. We all had our favorites but bands like U2, Simple Minds, The Alarm, Big Country were grouped together and then there were others like Echo and The Bunnymen, The Cure, INXS, Tears For Fears and to some extent The Mission were also very much liked by the same groups. Being a huge U2 fan, I was fortunate enough to work with the producer, Mark Wallis when we signed our record deal. He was chosen to produce our debut album and he was the mix engineer on U2's Joshua Tree album. He also produced the B sides on the album. I would spend many an hour discussing U2 with him which was also interesting. The one thing he told me which really stuck with me is something he said about Adam that sadly Adam is criticized for by other bassists. We were talking about Adam just playing 8's on a lot of track but he said there is no other bass player who can do that in time with as much consistency and drive that Adam. If you analyse each note, it is spot on in perfect time. Most other bass players waver in time but Adam is so accurate with his timing, which is why he does it so well. He is the same when playing 16's, for example on Where The Streets Have No Name. He said no other bass player he has worked with is as accurate or in time as Adam Clayton.

Well I've just bought it. If the signatures are legitimate and done by the likes of Alice Cooper, Geezer Butler, BSC, Ian Paice, Kerry King etc. then it's a steal and I'll very much enjoy having it in the studio! If they're not legit, then I still think its a decent enough price for a Gibson Studio Les Paul with Gibson hard case. Roll dem dice!

Fuzzrocious Grey Stache with tone-bypass mod….gigged mine the past weekend and it is proper! Creamy Muff vibes without that mid cut that Muffs are famous for. The GS does have a mids control to be fair, but I’ve now found that I prefer the tone stack bypassed altogether. Si

3 of my 5 bass guitars are fretted ( counting the acoustic one) but it's one of the two fretless basses ( and my double bass ) that get 90%+ of the playing time. Took my fretted 5 to a jam session last week and found I'd forgotten how to play it.

For washing it down in the shower.

Had my SP1 almost 2 months, the B string is outstanding (just not quite as good as a 37), however the multiscale means the higher strings still have warmth and aren't at all 'pingy'. I still have my D-Roc for the heavier side of things.

First I added a bridge cover. I've not had covers on any of my basses before, apart from a really cheap thing as a kid which had threaded bolts sticking of the body that you spun a knurled nut on to. This made the cover much more easily and quickly removable than having screws through it. I was discussing it with some friends and started looking online. We came up with the idea of threaded inserts in the body, with knurled top bolts that screwed into them. This would avoid having two prongs of death sticking out of the bass when the cover was off. So, off I went (as gingerly as I know how) with my trusty Makita. I was worried about drilling too far into the body so think the thread was only about 4mm deep. It worked great but if I had my time again I would have ordered a longer insert and kept the 4mm bolt as I had to add some foam as a spacer to the pickup cover edge to allow it to fully tighten against the body without rattling. (Pics of that later).