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So I've been pretty much a full time P bass/flats player since i started in bands. Ive had a few flirts with Jazzes and once upon a time a burns bison bass but always come back to the P. Over the years I've had a few basses I've always loved the look of a few others (i still think a Spector Euro in Gloss Black and gold hardware is one of the best looking basses) and had mixed reactions when finally getting hold of them. Now, my main 'always wanted' bass is an original Ric 4005 but finances just cant justify even the reissues but i developed a ric itch. Fast forward to last week and my daily trawl of the usual sites took me to Bass Bros where the had a few ricks in. I love fireglo but to me the newer ones have a sort of 'washed out' or 'bleached' look. Then i saw it - a 1998 Ric 4003 with just the right mojo and for what i thought was a reasonable price - i had to have it! Today, after being ordered late Friday evening she showed up in her rickenbacker hard case and she looks absolutely glorious. After years of P's ill need time to adjust and ill need to get her off to the fixers for a set up with my usual strings when they are in stock but here's a few teaser pics in the meantime.

Hi all, I’d like to step in and clarify things directly, as I can see some understandable confusion here. Bass Bags Ltd (the company) went into liquidation, but the Bass Bags brand, stock, and team were acquired by Strings Centre Ltd, which is now running the business. We are trading as Bass Bags (a Strings Centre brand) and continuing to serve musicians exactly as before. Like many UK retailers, we’ve faced tough trading conditions in recent years — Covid, Brexit, and wider global pressures (including the war in Ukraine) have all made it challenging. Closing Bass Bags Ltd was a restructuring step, but it has allowed us to protect the brand, keep the same team together, and continue looking after our customers. For me, Bass Bags has never just been a company name — it’s our team, a small family of people who share their expertise to make a living. We’re musicians and craftspeople ourselves, and we take things personally when it comes to our customers. That hasn’t changed, and it never will. To be absolutely clear: The same team is here looking after customers, just as we always have. No customer orders, hires, or repairs have been affected. We’re fully operational, continuing to support players across the UK and beyond. We’d always prefer people to pick up the phone and speak to us directly rather than speculate online — but I completely understand the concerns and wanted to set the record straight here. If anyone would like to talk to me directly, please feel free to get in touch: 📞 01332 840391 📧 [email protected] Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the years. We remain committed to delivering the same reliable service that Bass Bags has been known for since the beginning. David (Bass Bags / Strings Centre Ltd)

The last few gigs we have done have been belters. The band is really gelling with our new guitarist now.

We'll be having 20 minutes per hour quiet time in the main hall starting on the half-hour to fit in with the 12.30pm lunch time. During those periods anyone wanting to play can either use headphones in the main hall or go through the practice amp that I'll set up in the smaller meeting room.

IMO it doesn't matter if you are playing to just the bar staff and half of the other band on the bill or an adoring audience of several thousand. You have to give it everything. If you can't do that then maybe live performance isn't for you. I've played my share of poorly attended gigs, and you never know if one of the two people who aren't venue staff or in one of the other bands is going to be someone important who will open the doors to better gigs, as has also happened to me.

Down with kids basses, anyway 😆

Amp turned up today, Factory packaging superb , should be bomb proof in transit ! All now unpacked ,manual studied, and ready to be used tomorrow night ! Exciting, it is .

Some years ago I had a gig in a social club in North London. Attendance was practically zero in the hall. There were a few others in an adjacent room watching TV. A large venue opposite was very busy. They had something called Live Aid going on.

A somewhat unlikely combination of players and song but here you go! (I'm reminded Jeff did sub for Tony Levin on the ABWH UK tour.) Enjoy...

He was certainly board (I'll get me coat).

I was in a band that literally played to a barman, one man and the man's dog. We did sell album to the man. We didn't ask if the album was for the dog.

A few years ago we played to the barman and a cardboard cut-out of Marc Bolan in a venue in South Wales. We actually got paid - £13! That was between us... To be fair, it was raining.

Sometimes things are beyond your control. I played a venue (dedicated band space in the basement of a pub) which was usually well attended. That night, the audience was just the guy we had collecting money on the door and a young couple. We spoke to them after the gig - there had been a massive fight in the pub upstairs and they'd come down to avoid the chaos. In the duo we were often asked to play in pubs on a Sunday between 5pm and 7pm - the intention being to try and stop punters heading home for their dinners. It rarely worked and they were mostly poorly attended, with those watching largely the ones that had been drinking all day. The main problem with the duo (and trio when we added a drummer) was that we got gigs booked through an agent, which could be anywhere in the South Wales area (up to 2hrs drive each way). It meant that the usual way of guaranteeing some kind of audience - by supplying them ourselves - wasn't an option. We managed to develop a following of sorts for local gigs - perhaps 8-10 people would usually turn up to a pub - but it was dependent on the weather, time of year and what other events were on. The mistake we made with the local gigs is that we didn't vary the set enough and so people started to drift away as they became bored with what we were doing (as did I, eventually). My main band now only plays private functions (the dream of guaranteed audiences 😀) but when I play with other cover bands in music venues, we are very much at the mercy of the publicity that the venue provides. Most of them are pubs with live music and few people come to see a specific band. Instead they are there to start the night off before heading to a night club and will leave according to their own agenda and not the end of the gig. So the pub concentrates on advertising the venue, the offers on drinks and fact they have live music rather than the individual band itself.

As G&L are purportedly an innovative brand, it could be a route for Fender to bring out its own headless range and enter the latter part of the 20th century.

Played a gig in Hinckley to the proverbial 3 men and a dog and I've done gigs where the crowd is standing on the bit of floor that passes as a stage it's so busy. I was in a fairly successful Bowie Tribute band for 5 years and we usually got great crowds, but that's because we were pretty good and it's the draw of Mr Jones himself. I imagine most decent tributes get the same lift in attendance from fans of the original band or artist being tributed. I'm now in a Country Rock band and we get pretty good crowds, including 130 at a ticketed event in Melton Mowbray. Again, we're not too shabby and Country is hot right now in the UK. On Daryl's point, it is soul destroying to play to thin air. I get upset if the venue is full and I don't see heads nodding and feet tapping. However, as has been said, the show must go on and there's no excuse for not putting in 100% (or for wearing shorts on stage unless you're the drummer 😂)

But none of those are directly in competition with Fender, whereas G&L by the very definition are supposed to be the guitars and basses that Leo would want you to buy over those from his previous companies. My feeling is that fender will have bought them to reclaim the Leo Fender heritage. They'll pay lip-service to the brand for a few years and then everything will be quietly dropped. As we've seen over the years, Fender's core user base don't want any developments to their instruments since the pickup positioning on the Jazz bass was changed.

The general feeling is that if Fender does buy it, it’s to gain the right to use Leo’s name & image, rather than to continue the G&L brand. Time will tell, I guess…

Typical of the G&L story...now they've closed they're getting the advertising they always needed 🤷

First proper rehearsal (after the initial meet and jam session) with the new covers band went really well, and we've very easily agreed on a couple of simple rules of engagement; [1] we want to make the singer sound as good as possible, so we'll play it where he needs to sing it and if it ultimately doesn't suit then we won't waste time on it, and [2] nobody has to play anything they hate. Plan is to get an initial set together and do some open mics to see what response we get, but the main drive behind it is that we play what we like and have fun doing it. With that in mind we went down the initial list, booted the couple I just wasn't going to have anything to do with, swapped some others with better suited songs by the same band, added some to look at which are my influence and they'd never heard of before, self-assigned some homework which are their influence and I'd never heard of before, and even chopped up and reordered a tune on the spot to get rid of a keyboard solo and make 'our' version. We have a better list for next time and it feels like everyone is pulling in the same direction. It's been ages since I've had to explain my odd (so I'm told) musical ways to new people, so that was fun, but they had to understand that keys / notes / dots / tabs / chord charts / number systems are all meaningless to me - I play by ear, have no idea which notes I'm playing, 'know' a song if I can literally hear it in my head, really don't care which key you move it to.. etc. It felt like one of those initial dating conversations where you start to question whether it'd be easier to just stay single than go over all this again, but at least they know now!

You'll have heard of Mayones though, Fame is their more budget friendly line and only sold through DV24/7 😎 My pal John has played a Fame Baphomet for a good few year now, swears by it 👍

They probably enjoyed it more than Marc enjoyed our performance. He didn't clap once!

It's nice when any of us play a venue with what we call a " built in " crowd. The Zeigler Winery put a lot of thought and resources into establishing themselves as a music venue. Not live music as an after thought. Daryl

Ah yes followed by This is Amazing Grass 😅

I'd say 'some things could be improved'. Get them to film a gig and then watch it. That usually irons out problems.

We played 2 nights at the Chorley festival last year - Friday and a Saturday. its a multi-venue thing across the town. first night peaked with a ukulele orchestra and by the time we played, one couple and 6 people who I knew arrived. the second night in a more “prime” venue - was absolutely rammed… it’s a venue problem as well as a band concern.

Good rehearsal tonight. Boys of Summer requires a lot of concentration! I took a five string which was just as well as we ended up playing it in multiple keys. For the himass bridge fans my stock Flea Jazz had no difficulty sustaining the notes when we played Em. And for people who worry about flabby b-strings, my Harley Benton Marquess was sounding awesome. We ended up settling for Bm but I'll probably use an octaver (as does Tim Schmidt when playing it in Dm on a four string). Aside from four new songs, most of the evening was tidying up arrangements.

I used to be obsessive about this sub forum. I have relaxed a bit about it more recently. But it still brings the same emotions up for me. "I did this Then I did this Then this happened Then I did this And then this beautiful bass appeared." How is this even a thing? How can people get wood and turn them into playable instruments? Crazy madness.

Agreed. On to the next one. Daryl

It’s taken over 40 years but, as I now almost exclusively play shorties on gigs, does this make me ‘down with the kids’?

Even Billy Sheehan is getting in on the short scale fun. Took inspiration from you @ped 😅

Friday was with The Bonnevilles at the Gate in Sutton Coldfield. It's a pub on two levels - last time I played there we were at bar level, this time (as a few times before) we were at front door level which is a metre or so lower. It's OK for space. All went well, most of the punters stayed there and there were a few dancers in the tiny area available. Fortunately the singer (with the PA) and I managed to get parking close to the door, it's not a great place for access. Sei Flamboyant 5 headless -> Lekato wireless -> Zoom MS-60B+ -> Tecamp Puma 900 -> GR Bass AT212. Caravelle memory foam trainers with socks. Saturday was with Dirty Roses at the Wheatsheaf in Atherstone. There is a reasonable amount of space there (though I should have got them to put the pool table at the side rather than the back). Load in and out is crap, you have to find somewhere close by on the street to leave the car and then get the gear through a narrow passageway leading to the rear of the pub. Gig itself went OK - did seem a bit fraught at one point as two big blokes (I only came up to their shoulders) seemed to be squaring up right in front of us, but someone cooled them down a bit and separated them, and they were back to being besties an hour later. It's one of those transient pubs where people move on, and by the end of the night the audience had dwindled from about 50 to about 20. And I forgot to take my glasses and my phone - fortunately the only small writing I have to make out is MIDI IN and OUT and I could manage that, the other small (and faint) writing is "Transmitter" and "Receiver" on the wireless and that's now labelled with a big "Tx" and "Rx" that I have no problem making out. Same gear and footwear as last night. No phone so no photo from me. David Bailey quality photo from the drummer.

Seems Gear4Music have actually done something with the Eden brand. There's a whole new range of amps and cabs called the Novatone series. They look good, and they're very keenly priced. I particularly like the cabs - the rounded corners are very reminiscent of the old Nemesis stuff. No idea how they might compare to the old World Tour heads or D-series cabs, but it's nice to see that they've actually been given some attention. This is more than Marshall ever did with the brand! https://www.gear4music.com/Bass_Amps/Eden?page=1

thoughts ? 😁

Epiphones, despite having lower quality hardware, pickups, electronics, etc, were a lot more consistent than US Gibsons. You got some great Gibsons, but a lot of bad ones. A friend of mine was after a new Les Paul and tried out at least 20 in order to find a good one. Supposedly they've got that under control now though.

If there's that cap, I stronly suggest you to replace one with a bypass switch pot. Bridge pu is unnecessary thin if the cap is there as always ON.

Sad news. As well as the brand, all those people out of a job! Whatever you think of the headstock the technological steps forward: MFD, active/passive tone shaping, locking bridge, 6 bolt neck are worthwhile. I'd really hope that Fender might incorporate some of that into new models if they are the buyer.

Many moons ago I was working as a stage manager at Nottingham Playhouse. On the night Forest were in the European Cup final we had an audience of two. But the show still went on...

I once played a duo gig in a bar with just one drunk customer. He started howling like a dog over the music and I couldn't take it any more. So I went over to him, picked him up (he was only little) and threw him into the street. He, did eventually, crawl back in to his seat at the bar. ...we weren't asked to come back 🤣

That colour definitely looks better on my sock.

Move to a different part of the country