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When I was watching Lockdown Licks with Guy Pratt back in 2020, I had this idea to put a truly outstanding bass together based on things that I love and things I really loved in a lot of Guy's basses. I decided that now was the time to get myself a Status neck, and I'm glad that I did, I don;t think anyone saw the end coming so soon for the production of Status necks. I've had 2 Warmoth basses in the past and they were exceptional in terms of quality and fit and finish so I decided to go with a chambered alder body Dinky jazz bass with a mahogany top with 70s pickup spacing and routed for a double battery box. After watching many Warmoth videos, I settled on Taos Turquoise but not gloss - the satin finish. The rest was easy - EMGs, BTS 2 band EQ, Fender Hi mass bridge and neck plate and the humungous Gotoh EB=P3 strap buttons with Fender rubber washers. Once the bass was put together I played it for a few years and loved it, except from about the middle of 2023 I had an unexpected issue - I had lost lot of weight, going from a mighty 19 stone down to 13 and a half and the bass no longer sat right. I tried other basses and they were all the same. Eventually, I got fed up one night and decided to resurrect my Harley Benton 75 thing with the heavy ash body - that was it, the extra weight made it balance properly. For some reason, after 30 years of playing, I couldn't play unless the headstock pointed upwards. Level was no good to me anymore, I needed the headstock to be higher than the body so I began designing Lockdown Bass #2. It had to be heavy so I decided to go with solid maple and specified somewhere between 6-7 pounds and omit the truss rod trench as the Status neck adjusts at the top and I didn't want to have a scratchplate. I tried many different finishes until my wife saw one of them and said - That's the One! I wanted to do something slightly different so have this time gone with EMG X series pickups and the BQC 3 band EQ but used the same bridge and neck plate. Anyone with a weak back or a fear of heavy basses might want to look away now as I weighed it once completed. The body they sent was 7.4 lbs and the whole bass, considering it has Hipshot Ultralites fitted weighs 13lbs! That's nearly a stone. Luckily I am in great shape and train three times a week so the combination of that and a really good neoprene strap should see me through many a wedding gig. Anyway, here it is in it's original form followed by the new and improved (and heavier) version in Holoflake:

On Saturday Hurtsfall played at the OxJam festival in Beeston. Over 100 acts split across multiple venues, this is the 3rd year we've been asked to play. This time we were on at 3.30pm at The Berliner, the second band of the afternoon at that venue. Not the easiest of load-ins with the venue being very busy so there was nowhere really to leave our gear where it wasn't in someone way. However it turned out that lots of the people were there specifically to see us play which was very gratifying. Just about enough time between bands to get set up and line-checked. Technical problems of the previous weekend were behind us and we played well, and even felt brave enough to open with our newest song which most of our audience wouldn't have heard before. We're taking a break from gigging until the end of November to work on new material and for recording the album.

Apologies but I had to try (I'll keep practicing)

I'm in. At first it was not a real choice: i was playing at home with a Fender acoustic CB60-SCE, and was really happy to be able to play without plugging anything, at correct level to follow music from my stereo. It's 80 % of my playing time; at one hour minimum rate per day. But i'm getting older now and a pain started to arrive in my right shoulder and prevent me to play my acoustic bass due to shoulder position with the acoustic body thickness. My osteo-therapist explained my shoulder has 30 years of bad position playing when seat and advices to change it to the classical guitarist position: bass between my legs, laying on my left leg, 45° angle neck, shoulder without any tension. Problem is with my 34" basses, weight it not comfort and F note on my E string become hard to stay on for my left shoulder.. So after small search in the internet bass galaxy, short scale idea popped in my head. So i looked a lot of vids and listened sounds, read reviews, etc; and finally gone for a Sire U5. I quickly changed tuners for ultralite hipshot ones; that removed completely the slight neck dive. I just had to file a little fret edges : The Sire process for rounded frets is very good but let some small rawness on the edge sides And what i can say: it's the best bass for the price i never had... This bass is ridiculously good, comfort and playability awesome, a really good tone with stock pickups. I have it since May, previoulsy dedicated to my house playing only. Few months after i can say she's entered in my A-Team and took the first rank. I can't wait to rehearse and play outside with. It's really a shock for me that sounds like a before/after moment. When i think i've paid 437 euros + 102 euros for hipshot licenced tuners; and she sounds like a 1000/1500 euros bass; this is the best money i spent for musical instrument since 30 years.. And to welcome her in my A-Team, i even build her a ramp So i think my 34" basses will get out less.

LFSys will indeed be there, as usual. I'm currently trying desparately to get orders out and build some demo cabinets for the Bash. It looks like I'll be bringing a Monaco, a Monza and a Silverstone II. Together with a Classic Vibe P-bass and a Trace TE1200.

I may have over-ordered on the filament....Thats eight boxes which is 32 rolls and there's another 16 rolls elsewhere. I may have ordered twice by mistake. That should see me for the next 6-8 months, so it's actually good I ordered it when it was cheap. I'll keep telling that to myself.

Further info here

Forgot to post an update: I wired it the way it's been shown in the above pic and it worked bed because I forgot about swapping hot and ground wires from one of the pickups and it was comb-filtering and sounded thin. After fixing that, it's done. Honestly, the difference between both PUs in series and in parallel is negligible despite output DCR being doubled in series. The volume boost is barely noticeable, but the tone has a bit more oomph. Sound thicker and darker, and seems to better open envelope filters and make fuzz pedals more angry. In other words, the series setting seems to be more influenced by the middle pickup while the parallel setting takes more from the bridge pickup. Overall, I'm satisfied with this modification and like it more than the Jazz Bass style wiring I had previously since it was inefficient. The middle, bigger chickenhead knob is the rotary selector.

Sounds like the plot from a John Cusack movie, @pantherairsoft

23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam.

Absolutely, huge improvement, much clearer and natural sounding 1 octave up effect (the 1 octave down for that sake too, which for me is straight out unusable on the Sub'N'Up), and without any kind of glitches or odd digital artifacts. Also try listening to the other test I just added to my previous post. I focused on the 1 octave down in the above demos for the sake of comparison, but what I predominantly actually use myself is the 1 octave up effect, which I think, blended in with dry signal, and the dry signal being dominant, pretty much sounds perfectly natural.

JMJ and an American Performer with Labella flats for me. The JMJ is my go to bass played through a Sansamp Di - Tc Electronic Spectracomp - Genz Benz Shuttle 9.2 - Barefaced 15" and 12" cabs.

Our duo is at our favourite gig in Scarborough this coming Sunday….

We had a Weeds rehearsal yesterday... We haven't played together as a full band for about 9 years, though we did recently make a 5 track ep via the internet... Which actually got us a gig, so we had to rapidly and remotely write 5 more songs (we're spread across Europe, from the west of Ireland to the south of France). So we played 'em together for the first time. And surprisingly, it actually sounds pretty good! We're continuing today so we'll be a bit more polished though 2 full days of rehearsals takes it out on my fingers... Then tomorrow we bimble up to Chester - hopefully we'll get another gig sorted in less than 9 years!

Jumping in here - it's an incredible pedal. Similarly, I paid for mine, so no spin from me. Proper exciting pedal. Had chats with @lowmid early on in the development, and have been anxious for it's release from the first peek. If you can bare me wattling on for almost half an hour, I put what was intended to be a quick video together here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/botmadte9s3tanj39p9e0/BFF-Demo-Manual.mp4?rlkey=hzkmpppncumlkkuikwqqeox8g&st=6if3icnw&dl=0 It ended up being a fairly extensive video-manual type thing, trying to explore as much of the pedal as I could. Hopefully this will be helpful for people. The expression input has so many possibilities within, and I plan to do some more videos exploring that side of things more. It's very easy to use the expression input to have easy access to two different sounds as well - e.g. with upward envelope modulation you can have a squelchy/synthy sound with expression at heel down, and then with the expression fully opening the filter you have a more standard/straight-forward fuzz. Does the synth thing very very well with an octave before. I'd encourage exploring modulation before the pedal too, as the way it interacts with the envelope follower can be really rewarding for some very animated tones. The Peak filter is the secret sauce as well - really sets the voice of the pedal. Peak gain at minimum will help for exploring those low gain tones, but you can also boost the peak frequency to bring out higher harmonics, or just get things super slice-y. Happy to try and grab basic video/audio of anything people want to see/hear as well.

Sometimes I miss my Wal MK2. Sounded incredible, looked fantastic. But it was one of the most uncomfortable basses I've ever played. Horrible neck profile, horrible pickup thumb anchoring, horrible distance between strings and body. If I was rich enough to order one, I'd change almost everything about it (though I think the 5 string version solves a lot of it), but the sound is my favourite raw bass sound by a country mile. For the price? Nah, they're just daft now, and many owners are toxic AF about protecting their value as well (the FB group was a horrid place when I left), I've heard of some actively messaging people selling Wals "cheaply" to tell them to ask for more, so as not to damage their investment. It's a very shrewd move to continue to refuse to sell the electrics separately, as without that exclusivity, I don't think the market would be there.

Do you want to start a new thread with your list? Would be cool to see how much overlap there is between people, especially those who have massive collections. I'm happy to provide my list as well.

During a rather sleepless night last night I decided to make a list of all the pedals I’ve owned over the years. I thought it would be an interesting post, maybe even its own thread, a “what stuff have you owned” type affair. But as the list grew, and grew, and I checked photos of old boards and gigs to make sure I didn’t miss anything, I realised this was not a very good idea… in fact, it ended up being a painful wake up call to the financially crippling power of GAS! I think I ended with 205 pedals on the list, and while many of them were trades and not purchases as such (and specifically only stuff I’ve owned, not tried, borrowed, etc), assuming I paid for even a quarter of them at RRP makes me want to cry. I love pedals so much, but I really can’t recommend this exercise!

I remember when all this was fields....

I’m building a fretless 5 string at the moment and yesterday I placed the luminlay dots on the side. They light up directly in the dark! I bought the original ones from Japan. never a problem anymore playing fretless on a dark stage! Much easier and cheaper to install as LEDs!

A couple of demos of the Boss XS-1, dialed in to seek to emulate an effect somewhat similar to an 8 string octave course bass -esque effect: I feel the 1 octave up effect works best for this, since the dry signal will be dominating, as the bass strings would on a real 8 strings bass, compared to the octave strings, and so the fake octave can kind of hide behind the real bass signal. In any case, a huge improvement over the TC Elextronic Sub'N'Up I used previously, even with a custom made Toneprint, with pre and post octave engine EQ filters to improve tracking, minimize digital artifacts and make the 1 octave up effect sound more natural. Here we go: Sound test of the new Boss XS-1 pitchshifter, testing octave down and octave up respectively blended with dry signal, on my 28.5" scale tenor bass (reverse orientation middle/bridge P pickup), tuned in A standard tuning, seeking to emulate a somewhat 8 string octave course bass -esque effect. Octave Down: 0:00 - 2:30 Octave Up: 2:30 - 4:21 Sound test of the new Boss XS-1 pitchshifter, testing octave down and octave up respectively blended with dry signal, on my 5 string 28.6" scale tenor bass (bridge J pickup), tuned in E standard tuning, seeking to emulate a somewhat 8 string octave course bass -esque effect. Though I avoided playing the low E too much, as it is already pretty floppy sounding on the short scale as is, and E0 is insane, however I did hit it a few times, just for the sake of the demo. Octave Down: 0:00 - 6:10 Octave Up: 6:10 - 9:44

My very last pedal: Keeley bassist. It became the only pedal i put between bass and amp; so it's really my last pedal. After a life switching from pedalboard with pedals to multieffect unit to new pedalboard with other pedals to new multieffect unit to ..etc etc ; i've reached the end of this road with this pedal. It's just adding some extra-clarity to my tone, something magic. And i don't need anything else. I've build this mini-pedalboard to protect her from our crazy guitarist which jump all over the place without paying attention to anything. . But i don't use it anymore, as i finally put the pedal on the top of my amp as it's always ON.

Bass is through finishing and curing this week ready for final assembly next week. Here's a little tease of the finished top. Now radio silence until it's in my sweaty hands.

Very tempted. It reminds me of aspects of some other pedal's I've loved over the years, most namely the Tech 21 Red Ripper, and the Fuzzrocious Croak, but certainly has its own flavour. I sense a purchase incoming.

Great interview, and some seriously tasty tones! There's a clip in the "PBass solo" section which comes from this original clip. I had to dig a bit to find it but here it is:

Any interest in having your valves tested? If so I’ll bring my Orange Valve Tester. It tests most types of preamp and power amp valves commonly used in guitar and bass amps, but not rectifiers.

What's the worst thing about headless basses?

It really projects on 'spin', but craps out on 'rinse'. 😁

Maybe you should go and see some different bands 😂

A lot of the gigs I have been playing recently are with my rick 5 string 4004, I thought about getting a 5 string 4003 made. i looked into it but ultimately you end up paying the same as a real s/h ric for the same price so I decided to just get a normal 4003 and see if I got on with it. So that turned up today, a matte 4003s - I have a practice tomorrow so I get to hear what it sounds like, but I need to go through my normal set and try and adapt to having a string missing. Traditionaly it has never worked, and I ended up ignoring the 4, but we shall see- its a bit harder to convert a 4003 to a 5 string with the bridge! First impressions are good, apart from the obvious lack of strings! Anyway, useless without pictures, so here we are

Hi @Mike Brooks, Obviously, I can't speak for the organisers of this Bash, but from a punters perspective, It would be great to have you there on the day if you can make it. In my experience, the South East Bass Bash has massively benefited over the years from the contributions of a wide variety of professional players, who have shared some of their unique experiences and insights... So a talk /presentation by your good self on the day would be absolutely amazing. All being well, I look forward to meeting you there! Cheers Nik

You know it’s bad when you look at images of boards you were using on gigs, or in the studio, and you think, “what the hell is that pedal?” Or “I have no memory of that!”

You waiting for it to be delivered huh? That would be good. I will also bring the my bass board, thats always entertaining.

But I do now. It wasn't a 'live' one, t'was this'un...

That is really just a normal ric with the bridge put on in the wrong place isn't it!

No, no, bring the porcelain figure. Then inevitably someone will steal it and then photos will mysteriously be posted of it at other bass bashes around the country.

Our own @Andre_Passini is making an excellent headless tuning system.

I got one as well, I found some pretty awesome sounds on it relatively quickly and most importantly… it’s pushed the doom 2 off my board 😵 which I was surprised as it’s been a mainstay since I got it whenever they released, but the BFF does the things we all love about the doom and so much more. I prefer the feel of it while playing, soemthing much more even feeling about the bff. Dave

Saturday night it will be Chris Difford at my local venue, The Sound Lounge in Sutton. I, Doris are supporting and they promise to perform their take on Up The Junction from a female perspective, The Girl From Clapham, so this should be fun 😄

Last nightwe got together and spent two hours watching the 49-minute video of the originals band's first gig and critiquing everything from the lighting, what we wore, where we stood to what we played right and wrong and how we can tighten up dome of the arrangements. We agreed we meed a 'script' (more of a set of prompts) for the brief between-song bits to develop a more structured narrative. We also need to split the role of narrator and weapon-wielding clown... It's turning into a crash course in writing, producing and performing a musical!

Another one for the Sean and P bass fans, I haven’t seen it all yet as I’ve got to go out but will watch later , love it

I have been advised not to discuss the guitarist’s extensive collection for fear of burglary😮