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Two gigs this week. Wednesday at the rock and roll club was a good one - old friend of ours on drums who is really easy for me to lock on with, so it made for an enjoyable evening. Some people in from South Africa who danced most of the night, and were most complementary. Usual mix of stuff, with me doing what’s now appearing to be a weekly Chuck Berry medley. As some of them are so similar it’s easy to mix them up, although I seem to remember Chuck did this too sometimes so let’s just put it down to authenticity. P-bass Lyte into Hartke 3500 head / Loud 4x10 cab. Then last night I was depping with some friends in their pub rock band. Bit of a strange one as they were booked to replace another band who dropped out, and they were an Irish style kind of singalong bunch! Event was a birthday party at a nice local country pub, and when we got there I didn’t think it was going to be very good for us. First set only had a couple of dancers, but after a break the audience loosened up and we had most of them up at some point. We got a bit loud as a result, but nothing to scare the horses really. My old mate John Cambridge on drums ( ex- Bowie etc) meant a good gig for me. I love his playing and we gel really well, and he’s also great company, very funny ( although that might not be evident in the pic below where he looks rather serious). Songs included ‘Missing You’ ( by John Waite ), some Small Faces stuff and ‘Somewhere in my heart’ by Aztec Camera, as well as some other stuff you’d expect from geezers our age. P- Lyte into Rumble 500 combo, my go to these days. Finished around 10.45 pm, home by 11.30.

Thanks to the most excellent @Burns-bass I am now ready to celebrate the hootenanny!

I turned up to a local gig with my folder full of bank statements, rather than my chord charts.

Lovely 'Tiny Desk' mini set. Jerry Barnes is killing it on his Jazz as per usual.

Just because… 😆 Need to tidy up the wiring but just wanted to be sure it all sounded good. My standard set up remains much the same. I tap the sound from the Simone DI as below: TU3>4OTF>BSComp>Simone DI>CabM+ all goes to FOH/desk The full board goes to the amp via Simone 1/4” out: TU3>4OTF>BSComp>Simone1/4”>MB Comp>P&P>Funk> Thumpinator >amp 4OTF just as an always on low gain thing taking advantage of the filters. The MB is just acting as a valve stage and not doing any compression worth writing home about (I mean it can but not on this gig iteration). Getting a bit more juice from the 4OTF. P&P doubles as either drive or fuzz depending on the tune and set low gain gets a nice bump from the 4OTF too. Nice to have different drives available to layer. Funkulator just does its thing and adds a nice scoop to the drive sound for added sculpting.

Well, I had it to a band rehearsal the other night and I forgot to mention another source of cost saving in my initial blurb - absolutely zero shielding, not even shielding paint. Needless to say it did not like being in the rehearsal room very much (but the noise gate in my Spectracomp made it bearable when I wasn't touching the strings). No matter, not much cavity to shield! Also, the knob arrived... Looks even better in person - the black knob with silver highlight complements the pickup beautifully. Really pleased with it!

I made the rookie error of trusting one of my students. A long time ago I took my class of hairy rockers into a theatre pit to play West Side Story with the Performing Arts dept on stage. I downloaded the whole thing on Midi Files and then loaded them into Logic. I printed them out as TAB and handed them to my hairys. To make sure we had a safety net I had piano tracks on a CD. This was back in the day. We radically were running a silent pit with everyone on cans. There were some tidy players in the pit with 3 drummers sharing duties and everyone getting a good crack at it given numerous shows. The fight scene (if you know the show) was absolutely rocking. We ripped off a Steve Vai/Chick Corea version of it. Lots and lots of fun while they were really being stretched. Of course, not everyone was a player and there were students who needed to be accommodated with various roles. I shall call him Dave. He was clueless in virtually all aspects of the course. He was put on monitors (which were set and forget) and playback. How much of a mess could he make? We got to the quiet number before the finale of the first act. This was programmed on the CD to wind down with some gentle piano arpeggios and segue on the same track into the finale. Dave, who was chemically enhanced by then, hit stop at the end of the arpeggios. The intro the "The Jets are going to have their way tonight" etc just did not happen. That song was meant to start at 2:36 in the track. There is no way he could queue it up again even if he was operating at 100%. And he was not. So I turned to, let's call her Sue, on the keys and hissed, "Give me a G". "Huh?" she responded. "Give me a G", I hissed louder. This, while all the cast were frozen on stage. I started singing "The Jets are going to have their way tonight" acapella. The cast joined in and hammered through it. Acapella. With all the moves to the music which only existed in their minds. How we all laughed. A few weeks later. The energy levels on stage were insane, though!

snake? i dunno 🤷‍♂️

I have another spare from an unknown vintage bass if anyone needs one. I think it was a mid 70s bass but k have no idea. To qualify for this exclusive offer, you must show an empty hole on a vintage bass or one filled with straplocks (spit).

The hissing of summer lawns?

Care to test that theory? 😄

1. Anything Trace Elliot that doesn't run on Hitachi or Semelab TO3 Mosfets 🙄 2. Precisions with rounds 3. Stingrays with flats 4. Lefty players with upside down righty basses🙄 5. Righty players with upside down lefty basses😬 6. Amps with missing knobs! Phew. I feel better already getting all that irrationality out in the open. Dear Basschat, thank you for being my catharsis!

Three spare basses. I tried to go for an obscure make and model, to make it difficult to find spares and duplicates, but I still have 4 Washburn Bantam basses. Dual humbuckers, Dual single coils, dual Bartolinis. Fretless Dual bartolinis. Green. Natural. Zebra. Wacky blue-turquoise burst. Actually, they are a good thing to have - fun to play, easy to use. But I should have got rid of some of them earlier. A chorus pedal. I wonder what it sounds like - I must try it one day. A thick plectrum. I wonder what it sounds like - I must try it one day etc etc

Better now I've attached a strap to it that goes around my head

You can now button the bass onto your waistcoat when taking the dog out for its walkies.

What would be informative is a bass through an hpf into an oscilloscope. It's an eye opener. Without hpf rest your hand on the strings and the trace disappears off the screen for a moment.

That's my problem too, except I try to get every (non Jazz) Bass I buy, to sound like a Jazz Bass. I should really just stick to Jazz Basses.

It's the gateway drug to the current range of LFSys. I have to say that in reality, I could probably live with it for 80% (or more) of what I do. In blind testing against the Monaco and the Mesa cab, the "listener" correctly identified each cab every time. The Monaco punches harder and has even more clarity on the top end (compared to the BC112). The Monaco was effortless with the Laney (8xKT88 400w) and 400+. With some feedback from Stevie I modified the BC112 to accommodate the full speaker excursion. I added some 6x11 bead under the grille, Stevie gave me some of the 10mm cushion tape. What I found during the testing was that the Mesa 400+ was making the speaker cone hit the grille. This didn't happen with any of the other amps. I remember an amp builder telling me that the 400+ is designed in a way that enables it to do this (I can't remember the details but it's something to do with the big caps in there. I'm keeping the BC112 for the foreseeable future. It's off to Monty’s Guitars along with my Laney 400 to help with some pickup testing work for a while. After that it'll probably end up living in a rehearsal space and/or being used as part of a guitar rig with an EHX 44 Magnum (D Class pedal amp) and HX Stomp. Edit: I think it's worth noting here the Mesa Walkabout "cab" (i.e. combo without the amp in it), although it came in 3rd place to the BC112 and Monaco, it's really good, especially since it's a design that's well over 20 years old and is a long time discontinued. It's a high-quality product, well-engineered, light and is capable of producing some great sparkle that many modern coloured cabs can't/don't. It has a passive radiator rather than a port and can bring the thunder. So, both the Steviecabs had a quality contender and came out as superior with the Monaco taking top spot on the podium🏆

the FKT Fretless Pedal is quite good but I suggest try before buy , it looks like significant coin to get one I use one with a 2EQ Stingray fretless with flats and I think it's glorious

I learnt very quickly not to write my charts in red ink!!!! I was looking at an empty page.

Here we go

Been kidding myself I'm still a young 'un Richard, but upstairs gigs remind me I'm definitely not 😖 Young at heart tho, still 20 in my head 😜 Full 63 in my knees tho 😆

Last night was probably the biggest and best gig of the year so far. We played "Twisted Firestarter" which is the InFest Festival warm-up party at Rebellion in Manchester. Six bands all in a post-punk/Goth/Electronica style from various parts of Europe. I did this last year with the other band I was at the time and with drums and noisy guitars we were very much at odds with the rest of the line-up. This time we were the only band that wasn't all synthesisers, although my Bass VI is pretty heavily processed, and musically we were definitely in the right genre. We played second and I was a little worried that the event wasn't going to be as popular as last year when it was noticeably busy from when the doors opened; but this time the venue looked a bit sparse during the first act. However by the time we were ready to come on the bar area was heaving, and there was a noticeable rush of people to the front of the stage as we launched into our opening song. Excellent sound from the foldback and the large stage allowed our singer to really get into the performance. Even though our set was heavily biased towards new songs that have yet to be released, the reception was excellent with plenty of people down the front dancing and singing along, and even managed most of them to light up the room with phones and glow-sticks during "Calling Out". Surprisingly we didn't sell a lot a merch afterwards, which suspect was partly down to the fact that most of the people who liked us already have CDs and T-shirts and the strange decision for the merch table to be cash-only; this year the vast majority of our merch sales have been paid for by card. The promotor seemed to be impressed so hopefully we'll get some more gigs from him. There were a couple of professional-looking photographers in the audience so hopefully some shots will surface soon on Facebook. Next is a bit more down-to-earth as we'll be playing a small-scale multi-venue "festival" in Newark in just over a week's time.

My homemade pedal board with built-in power supply. The perspective is a bit skewed as all the pedals are level with or inside the edges of the pedal board. For anyone that knows the mic mechanic, I don't use those settings. Just for info, the power is from two 550mA discrete switch mode power supplies. The IEC input is on the right-hand side. The two left-hand power sockets to the Zoom and the Thomann wireless system are connected to one power supply, and right-hand sockets supply the Mic Mechanic with one socket spare. I designed it that ways as on the usual cheap power supplies, there is noise induced from the Mic Mechanic to the Zoom.

There was a plectrum thread on here a while ago and I bought a whole different bunch, just to end up right where I started. At least it wasn't a big outlay!

Yes, they've got modified cattle prods in the ear pieces, but shhh, don't tell anyone!

Value has just doubled…

My Laney Nexus went and has recently been replaced with this big lump of pure Rock 'n' Roll... (or should that be Tuck-'n'-Roll)? The sound and build quality is way beyond what I expected. The head has absolutley everything you need and nothing you don't.😎

Yeah I think it'll really show off the wood nicely - but will see what the luthier says. I'm only interested in it because it looks so nice but the more I read about it the more I'm leaning towards leaving it alone - if it needed some work anyway then I'd be leaning towards it but as it is - I'm not 100% sure. The material varies so much so I'll see what Steve says, what he has experience using, and go from there. Currently the relief is about right but I'll wait until it's finished to put my favourite and slightly heavier strings on it, and the new bridge. These strings are OK but I've forgotten how 'grabby' non coasted strings can be. All in all I'm really glad that the main parts function so well before the modifications/corrections take place. It also needs shielding, badly. Lots of hum when not touching anything but silent when you do. So: - Bridge is on the way - Neck needs coating - Musicmaster decal to be applied - Pickup surround on the way - New wiring loom being discussed (likely pan/tone with series/parallel option and possibly second capacitor mode - Shielding - investigate using original tuners (maybe) - Learn to play

I'm guilty of that one too - Kept an early Warwick Alien for over a decade and probably used it for two one-off Jazz gigs. It's now gone and after a few trades, has been replaced by an American Performer Mustang. Better. And if a Jazz job comes in, I've got Double Basses, or plenty of Jazz Basses to palm mute on.

A Gibson Thunderbird, which looked the bogs dollocks but was uncomfortable to play and had a very thin neck at the nut end. Flogged it on evilbay and bought a Mike Lull M4V

Not really a review, rather a shout out to RightOn. I've got 3 of them and find them excellent. However, the reason for the post is my most recent purchase. I emailed them late Sunday evening regarding a custom strap design. Nothing too elaborate, but they don't sell one I wanted. Had a reply 1st thing Monday morning saying that they could make it, no problem. Payed, and had an email confirming. It arrived this afternoon. From Spain!! In a lovely box, and purple tissue paper. Thats what I call good service. Many thanks RightOn.

Me too - ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquistion !! Oh b…..er’

Well you learn something every day. Interestingly, wiki says 'double bass, possibly part of the violin family' and under viol 'Gamba contrabass, not to be confused with the double bass'. Possibly a good discussion for another nerdy thread. However, wiki does say the electric bass is the lowest pitch member of the guitar family.... and we all know that wiki is the font of all knowledge! PS I'm going to say that hating people not knowing their history is irrational just to get keep this post in topic! PPS I would say that hating people who hate people who call the electric bass a guitar is irrational except that it's entirely rational to call it a bass guitar.

Yeah Im sure that was on here too, I have certainly seen it doing the rounds.The colour is lovely but it's a bitsa at best. It may still be a very cool bass though and @Beedster I use a '63 pick up in my '72P and I swear it sounds better than the original. Of course I may just be willing it to be of course 🤣. Its probably worth £2k in parts though for the pick up, tuners and bridge

I suppose without knowing where the body came from and who did the change over of the fretboard and electronics etc. it makes the value hugely subjective. But, I cannot see a day where it can be fairly called a '62 unless the replacement body can be verified as also a '62, which I'd doubt! If the body/fretboard were hand crafted by a known and respected luthier (Shuker, ACG, Sei etc.) then maybe 2k might be not crazy high. But for all we know it could be a far eastern replacement (probably not). It'd be good to know why all these changes happened, where the new parts came from and who assembled it. With that, the price might be more understandable. I think asking 4.5k for it as it sits regardless of who did what is a joke.

Touche Dave ❤️ one of BCs most regular and well read contributors, always enjoy your input and experience on here 😜 We are back out playing tomorrow, first gig in four weeks. So the bum notes, general forgetfulness and totally wrong lyrics will entertain the venue if nothing else. 😆 And that's before the other three banc members chip in! 🤭 😎

I’ll be back in a few minutes …

Not giraffics?

Don't think it makes you special

Have you got a Sidewinder speaker in there? 😎

Updated pic with fretless neck attached

Our sound guy is our keyboardist, but our "soundcheck" usually consists of our singer wandering about the venue with his wireless mic checking if he can hear us OK. Keyboardist and drummer have monitors which apparently all sounded OK, but some sequenced bits need remixing to make them more prominent. I'm thinking I might need to invest in one to give myself a fighting chance.

Anyone else tempted to buy something because they read about it on this thread? 😂

This is THE pedal for fretless, simply called The Fretless, by FKT Audio, an Italian company: https://www.fktaudio.com/articolo/the-fretless/

I’ve just got me a secondhand Florence, which is awesome fun to play. A kind chatter on here sent me some worn in flatwound La Belles which feel great. The only downside is that the tone pot needs replacing, it’s not working at all. What surprises me though is the cheap, made in Korea, pots that Sandberg use, I don’t understand why they don’t put a few extra quid into the kitty and put CTS pots in there?