Leaderboard

She is currently with Fury, who supported Metallica Unloaded tribute at Torquay Arena tonight. I only caught the end of the Fury set. But I told her she's brilliant and that I play bass too. Yay!

Just back and having the usual tea and toast from our first ever gig at the famous wedgewood rooms in Pompey with the Phil Collins tribute. Geoff, the guy who is the main man there is such a gent! Super nice guy who has a fantastic team of people working for him. The sound lads were very friendly and professional and done a fab job for us. On stage sound was perfect and everyone said how good it was out front aswell. (11 piece outfit so not the easiest to sort out!) Got about 275 in there tonight which wasn’t bad for a first pop. Very appreciative audience and they said we are welcome to another gig there nxt year 😊. Used my GB spitfire 5 again, through my usual puma 900/ LFsys Monza rig, PA support obviously. All together a really fun experience.x

Our twice yearly date at the Ringwood Meeting House. They’ve been hugely supportive of the Otis Jay Blues Band for the last three years and we have rewarded them with four different line-ups in the past four visits! Cecilia our new singer went down a storm with 53 paying customers - a reasonable haul and very appreciative. Rig: Sandberg VM4, GK MB200, BF One10, Clarks leather shoes.

Last night, played The Railway Club in Keith with Nine Lives. Drove through a one minute monsoon on the way there - rain so hard had to slow down because even with the wipers on full speed I couldn't see very well. Then it was done. What a bizarre, angry, and incredibly small pocket of weather! So we get there and get set up - it's an odd place - L shaped, so we are in the bit round the corner from the bar. It has alcohol, we don't. So, as you can imagine, we had only a trickle of folk getting off their backsides and coming round to see us, and a bunch of folk who were quite content to sit round the corner and merely listen. Are people not curious any more? Anyhoo, I frankly don't know how busy it was. We had some people come round for a dance and a singalong, so at least there's that. Got some nice comments afterwards, compliments on our playing and the sound (which surprises me because the first half was a nightmare - just couldn't get the singer loud enough. At half time we swapped out her wireless gear for a good old wired SM58 and things improved greatly - we'll need to investigate that. We played pretty well for all that, and the Neep One got its first live outing and didn't explode/collapse in half/go silent so yay for my dubious luthiery skills? Gear was G&L L-1000 then the Neep One into the cubes of doom.

We played at a 40th birthday party last night, held in the hall in which we rehearse, so very much a home fixture. The audience was a mix ranging in age from 5 to 65. Food and drink provided, which is always good. We had been asked to provide a 'rocky' set and I decided to give my recently acquired 5 string Ibanez GSH205 an outing. I've rehearsed with it a few times and it was my back up at the Hulla festival back in June, but this was the first time it took centre stage. I don't play 5 strings regularly enough to be able to swap between 4 and 5 easily but I'd been practicing with it and was reasonably comfortable in using it. It was an 8pm kick off and we had a great sound thanks to our regular sound engineer and, of course, it being a familiar venue. I had a few senior/jazz moments, mainly as a result of the extra string throwing me and I felt the band performance as a whole wasn't as good as it has been recently. There seemed to be a lack of energy in some of the faster songs, with our encore of Dakota being particularly bland. But we went down well with the audience, with our younger fans particularly enjoying Taylor Swift's Love Story - they all gathered around our singer and stared adoringly at him as he sang it. 😀 My kit was the aforementioned Ibanez GSH205 into the pedal board - a Sine HPF, MS60b (for noise gate and tuner only), NUX Sculpture compressor, EHX Bass Clone, NUX Voodoo Vibe and into the desk via my Ampeg SCRDI. This board hasn't changed for a couple of months now (unusual for me) and I find it works equally well into an amp and speakers (last week) or DI (this week). I was monitoring from the desk via a Behringer P16m and wireless IEMs. This gives me my own mix and some protection from excessive noise levels. Footwear was the same as last week - unbranded black boots. Kit: Love Story:

A fairly long trip to Bridlington in god awful storm weather last night for Glam Viva. A great venue, the Black Lion in the old town, first visit for us. A great venue with a small theatre type arrangement. Unfortunately the weather had put off a fair few punters so it was only about half full, fortunately those that braved the onslaught were up for it and danced the night away. Only negative of the night was the outside door that let water through due the the storm and wet my clothes through in the changing room so had to drive home in 70s glam wear…… Footwear….red silver and blue sequinned converse.

Wedding party. We played pretty old songs in the beginning while the audience was relatively young. I messed many details from simple songs because I couldn't hear a thing I was playing. But: second set was much better and the third one was really good. Mercy (that 3rd degree version) was an instant floor filler, and Disco Inferno was super. Humidity was probably +90, sweat sweat sweat. Maybe we sounded like Wet wet wet. One thing was unusual: the party was in time! This was third time ever.

Friday night saw Hurtsfall's first proper headlining gig. This was at Liquid Light in Nottingham, which is first and foremost a brewery that has a bar and occasional events such as gigs and film nights. I discovered the place as it used to be home to the best vegan burgers in Nottingham. Unfortunately they seem to have moved on and there was no food on when we played. The PA is something else - it looks home-brewed but sounds great - see the photo of support band St Lucifer: There were plenty of people about while the bands were setting up and sound checking, but only a few of them opted to come inside once the actual gig started which was a bit disappointing for opener Joshua Todd, but luckily for the us and St Lucifer it filled up as the evening went on. I don't think the location helps, although it's close to the city centre, it's on an industrial estate and quite hard to find if you've not been before. With it being our first headlining set we were able to play for longer than our normal 30-35 minutes, and dusted off a couple of songs that we haven't done for a while. While it would have been nice for a few more people to have been there, once again we were competing with a goth festival in Morecambe and some of our audience were definitely in attendance there. Still it wasn't band for our first self-organised gig and we sold a decent amount of merch afterwards. Hopefully I'll be posting some more photos of us playing later in the week when they appear on social media. Next gig is also with St Lucifer in Manchester on Saturday 27th September.

We played the 7pm slot in a new all-day power metal festival at a large social club yesterday. 6th band out of 9 on the bill, but I got there for the first band at 2 and didn't leave until midnight so it was a long enough day to be feeling it this morning. It had the usual metal-crowd friendly atmosphere, though, and the other bands were all really good with enough in common but not so much to be samey, so it was nice to make a day of it. Being a social club in Sheffield, the Stones bitter was fresh and not too expensive. Of course it had to be absolutely bucketing it down so everything got a water-tightness test on the way in, but cabs were provided so that made things easier. Said cabs were a pair of Vanderkley 1x12s that I was told were good for a thousand watts so am assuming were MNT112s. I thought we did alright, but I personally made a bit of a balls-up to begin with. I have two Warwick RB Streamers that I use for gigging - the black one was b-stock with a dead preamp so is gutted and rewired passive, while the white one is factory-spec with its preamp intact. Correct settings for the black passive is everything on 10, whilst for white active it's Bal/B/T in the middle detents and just the volume up to 10. I've been playing the passive recently, so of course picked up the active and without thinking set the balance fully forward (not a massive problem) and bass / treble boosted to max. Was a very brief line-check so it didn't really hit me how wrong it sounded until we started. Half way through the first song I twigged and had to give the sound guy a minor episode by correcting the EQ and messing up his mix, but despite that, everyone I spoke to afterwards said we sounded good. One guy commented that the vocals became much clearer from the second song... mhmm..! Streamer LX 5 (active..) -> Telepath wireless -> Fly Rig v2 -> Markbass Nano 2 -> 2x Vanderkley MNT112 (?)

Well... First, the chaos of setting up three bands well (solo singer plus band) using the same mixer with two guitars using the desk, a drum machine and an electronic kit. Somehow it worked, but the second band's guitarists did the "crank after soundcheck" thing which scared off a few punters and did their sound no favours. Their bass player (also the organiser) used my kit. Our set was as interesting as promised, despite Fritz doing his back in which made it a little tamer. In my labcoat I wheeled in the patient (we skipped the straitjacket). He shambled to the mic as Nigel the specialist delivered the narration. I handed Fritz an acoustic guitar so he could start his 'creative therapy'. He played the Fractured Persona song with us backing quietly. The first four songs I went fretless Maya P. As it cranked up the fourth song was pretty punky so over to fretted P and plectrum. Then back to fingers except for Kill the Klown, which featured a sledgehammer clown attack on our singer who reponded by chainsawing the clowns head off. The prop chainsaw was wirelessly miked up too We ended up doing our encore, largely without our rhythm guitarist who truned the volume down on his guitar and forgot. We knew some of the songs were memorable and it was surprising to see people joining in some of the choruses, so comfortable we weren't just a novelty show. Lots of decent feedback despite obvious first gig hiccups. Memorable for us and the audience.

Both gigs were good with nice responsiveness crowds. The Ziegler Winery gig was moved inside due to the rain. The,Cedarburg Wine & Harvest Fest was another win for us. The stage and sound was very good. Daryl

Not long got back. Played a local venue for the second sunday in a row, this time with the Fortunate Sons. Unexpected gorgeous sunny day meant a packed audience and plenty of dancing. Again played best part of 2 hours and 35 songs(!) We were much tighter than our previous gig. I'm getting more comfortable on bvs, so joining in on more songs. The singer caught me out by shoving his mic in my face during Moni Moni... Went for a sunday lunch with my partner beforehand. A pint of coke, pint of Guinness and a bottle of becks zero on top, with two hours of bouncing around and I have a fine stomach ache. Lots of people I know there which was nice. I loaded in from the front. The other guys were less lucky. The route to the back is like a scene from the evil dead...

Today's gig was at the street fair in Charlbury, doing the usual jazz-ish originals. A strange gig as our sets were between those of singers/acoustic guitarists doing covers in the beer garden of the pub on the other side of the street. We could hear but not see them, so we had to be ready to go at the appointed time as soon as applause was heard, just in case they slipped another song in. They were similarly ready when we were playing. A video of some of our performance is available, though the intro was missed as the person filming was trying to move out of the rain. As the video shows, some kitchen sink/shelf units were out in the yard where we were performing - apparently the venue was undergoing some refurbishment. These turned out to be a convenient place to stash my bass bag and amp cover when not playing.

I reckon there's a big difference between calling out other social media influencers on youtube as opposed to inserting yourself into a situation that involves alleged criminals, the police, lawyers and at least one ongoing court case. I can't imagine he'd go anywhere near it.

I’ve made drawings and had these made by a toolmaker out of aluminum. Then I found someone who anodized these in black for me..

I got the Montypresso and left it on for 24 hours after cleaning the fretboard with lighter fluid (I need to use the bass today so couldn’t leave it on for 48 hours). A remarkable transformation, exactly as hoped for. The Pau Ferro could now pass for rosewood. Thanks for the recommendation.

Well, those who know me will find this surprising..... I just ordered a Sire bass ! This is the one, a P5R in natural - https://www.thomann.co.uk/marcus_miller_p5r_alder_4_nt.htm It will mainly be for jams and to carry as a spare on gigs. Fingers crossed it's not too heavy. Rob

Private wedding in Llangollen town hall. Big boomy space, but we had a big pa. all fine from that pov…. but….my amp / cab died after just as we were about to start the first set. i was using my Peavey mini max 500 into my BF retro 2x10. the power light on the amp briefly went from blue to red, then i smelt something burning…: I was literally running both gain and master vol at a little over 1/4 with all EQ flat, so nothing loud at all. also using keeley compressor and boss oc 2, but that wasn’t being used at that point so I can’t see that I’ve overdriven the preamp or anything…. the amp still powers up etc but no sound. A bit confused really…. 2 gigs next week so may be looking to buy an amp or cab, depending on what I find later…. i just turned it all off and as i was in the pa via my sans amp, i just used a powered wedge for on stage monitoring to get though the gig…. ive brought it all home so im shortly going to try some fault finding…. I have a TE head and cab here also so can try peavey into TE cab and TE amp into BF cab to try and workout what’s broken. Hassle I don’t need.

Getting excited, huh? I've been ordering and collecting parts as the graphite necks are nearing completion, and my walnut body by @Silky999 is also nearing completion. You can see where I'm going here...

First layers of polyurethane are on Headless’s walnut body that will be paired with Kiwi’s graphite neck.

None whatsoever. Get another of the same 210 and stack tall. The tower of power doesn't comb filter your mids into a muddy mess like a 410 does. No strain loading in and out. Much win.

I was in a prog metal band for a relatively short time. We wrote and recorded enough for a 40 minute set and then had a meeting about getting ready for gigs. At this meeting, the front man brought lists for each band member with specific items of kit each of us had to have. This wasn't little things like leads etc, my list included Ampeg SVT Classic with 410 cab, the guitarists list included a HiWatt amp and a load of pedals. After a relatively short argument, we all quit. The front man contacted me again recently claiming he's a bit more chilled out now, I told him to get stuffed.

We normally practice on a Friday after work in our self christened “Bela Lugosi’s Shed”, but due to a child related commitment, pushed back until Saturday. This meant promotion to Nick’s house as the whole family were out. We demoed two tracks for the new album and worked up a song idea of mine. Nice to bust out my big board in what was generally a very productive day.

So i used Bill's suggested approach to great effect. Instead of playing an open A i set up a new patch in the anagram with no blocks and connected to both my amp and the mixer. I set amp eq flat and removed any eq on either the channel or main out on the mixer. I then used a pink noise generator and used the sound analyser app to listen to the pink noise through my amp and cab. I took a screenshot and then sent the pink noise through the PA. I used the global eq in the Anagram to get the PA sounding as close to my cab as possible by matching the graphic eqs as closely as I could. It was quite surprising just how much mid and treble I had to add to get them close. The greenboy cab is definitely not lacking in the mids / high mids and highs. I had a gig tonight and ran the Anagram into the PA. I used a preset without a cab sim and it sounded much better. Our guitarist mixes and he noticed a considerable difference. I think it still needs a bit of fettling but its definitely much closer to what I want now.

Most top acts tend to over-use subs as well. I'd say three out of four FOH mixers have no idea how to mix bass. The fourth is a bass player. ☺️

If others are volunteering to organise in Derby then I'll let them. Otherwise the hall I know of appears to be available on 20th June and I'll ask about the cost.

Having arranged on of the very distant previous bass bash events… I’d rather just show up and enjoy the day

Derby is an ideal location, set one up.

That makes things a lot easier. Here's what you'll need – – Two or three long-opening clamps. I used a pair of clamps I had lying around with a 12.5 cm depth – Various grades of sandpaper (up to like 400 grit) – a very sharp and quite small scraper – perhaps a scalpel or craft knife – tools for making simple camping cauls (saws, rasps, etc.) – decent masking tape (like frogtape or similar) – some cheap chopsticks (ideally PTFE rod or something like that) – Some offcuts of shelf timber or something for making cauls. – a round needle file (can be cheap and crappy) – Some double-sided tape (the weaker the better) As for glue, you could certainly use hide glue, but it is a pain in the arse to work with. I've not touched the stuff in a long time. When I did the bridge replacement, I just used standard, red-label Titebond, which is what I use for all my instrument building work. The first thing you'll need to do is carefully clean up the area under the bridge. This is what it looked like on the guitar I was working on after I'd heated and levered the old bridge off. You'll want to mask off the area of the finish that isn't under the bridge, and then carefully scrape and sand away the old glue and any finish that's under there (you want the bridge to go onto bare wood). You don't want to go too hard, because the wood is thin and pretty delicate. Here's an "after" photo from the instrument I was working on. You'll also want to do the same for the underside of the bridge, being very careful not to sand a curve into the base. I didn't have to do that on the instrument I was working on, because I made a new bridge from a rosewood blank (the old one was mangled by having been originally right handed, then adapted badly to play left handed, then adapted slightly more competently to play left handed and in tune, then finally adapted badly to play right handed again). To glue it up you'll need to make two clamping cauls. One sits on top of the bridge and has essentially the inverse of the shape of the bridge carved into it, the other sits inside the body on top of the bridge plate (the solid piece of wood, usually maple, that supports the bridge. I don't have any clear pictures of the top caul, but you can sort of see it in this picture of the gluing up process. It doesn't have to be perfect, just roughly the right shape to make solid contact in the middle and at the ends. It has some cork sheet glued to the underside to spread the force more evenly. This could be replaced by anything soft really – a piece of an old tea towel, some carboard, etc. The inner caul is a maddeningly fiddly thing to make and fit. It's a little triangle of wood that you need to keep the clamps from crushing the x-braces that meet just in front of the bridge. I made mine by shoving a piece of modelling clay into the back of the x-brace joint and using that to very roughly guess the angle the braces meet at. The whole process of making the caul, stucking masking tape to the inside and then sticking the caul to the tape is fiddly and frustrating. It helps to have a mirror or to put your phone inside the guitar with the front-facing camera turned on. You'll end up with a lot of pictures on your phone that look like this. It you have some PTFE rod you can cut some short lengths to go in the outer string holes to line the bridge up prior to clamping. I remember lining things up using some chopsticks, but I can't remember if I kept them in (cut down) during the clamping process. If I did, they would have been liberally smeared with wax or vaseline and possible wrapped in baking paper to stop them getting stuck. After brushing on a fairly generous layer of glue on both surfaces, clamp it in place (wiping up the squeezeout) and leave it for a day or two. Once it's set, get a needle file and clean the excess glue out of the holes, taking care not to get over-enthusiastic and stab a hole in the top.

Highlighted the problem for you there

Stripped and re-waxed the body… cleaned all the hardware…. The neck has come up lovely…. Ibanez definitely put the money into the neck materials, because the body is a right lump of low grade mahogany. Anyway, it’s taking shape

Almost forgot how absolutely amazingly magical Portishead are, this had me cry:

Danny’s highlighting of the Giaccamo Turra debacle went way beyond the bass community.

Great result for me this weekend darkening a pau ferro fretboard with Monty’s Montypresso. Cleaned the fretboard with lighter fluid beforehand and left the Montypresso on for 24 hours. Before and after results below.

My feeling is that we’re all thinking about this too much. Art is organic. It shares its DNA with other art, and evolves. just be respectful of the art and its sources.

Must keep away from the Gardiner Houlgate auctions, they're a dangerous place for me, or at least for the integrity of my anatomy if I keep buying basses and can't manage to sell any. Went down to near Bath to pick up this lovely Shuker Uberhorn today. Body: African blackwood topped mahogany body Neck: seven piece wenge/mahogany with CF strengthening rods, 35" scale Fretboard: phenolic resin Electrics: concealed EMG pickup system and Graphtech piezo saddles All in an original branded Hiscox hard case. There's also a card from WM Guitars whose hands it has obviously passed through giving the specs (and the price they sold it for). The strings are described as D'Addario tapewounds in the WM Guitars description, and that's still what's on it, looking a bit worn, especially the long thumb rest string. It will be getting some nickel rounds. The action is ridiculously high, mainly (I think) due to the relief being absolutely huge. The battery is in quite reasonable nick, should get a bit of use out of it. There's a couple of little dings around the edge but nothing major. For some reason, it hasn't got straplocks on it, which I see as a significant omission to be rectified very soon. Pictures are from the Shuker website and the auction website. When I summon up a bit of energy, I'll take some more.

Oh great, that's what we need - another southerner Only teasing, welcome from the NE arse end of civilization.

I don't expect anyone is out there looking for this one but I did it for me! I saw a Drumeo video of this track on YouTube and thought it sounded incredible. It was only when I went looking for the players that I discovered it was a Laurence Cottle performance and that it was also Laurence who did the big band arrangement. The track is from Gavin Harrison's album, 'Cheating The Polygraph' and is Cottles's arrangement of the tunes 'Cheating The Polygraph and Mother And Child Divided'. Just great playing from everyone. I have been a fan as Laurence since I used to see him in and around Cardiff/Brecon etc when I was just starting out on my Jazz journey. That rhythm section of Laurence and drummer Ian Thomas always delivered. https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/cheating-the-polygraph-mother-and-child-divided-gavin-harrison/

I would love a Mesa studio tube amp to blow away the pf20t/50t b15 or ashdown little b@stard. A 40+ (instead of 400+)would be perfect for home practice, small pub gigs or studios. Matching/flip top 1x12?

Mine should be here on Tuesday. Gives me a few days to put it through its paces at home before taking it to rehearsal next weekend...

An almighty trip to the other end of the country for an Eagles tribute show in Newbury. Beautiful venue, and an appreciative crowd. Nice to bump into BC’s very own @alant!