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I don't think Fender have produced quite enough minimally different variations of the Precision and Jazz basses yet, so I think they need to get on that

I don't normally do these type of posts but it's been a good number of years since I owned something with such a wow factor. A few weeks ago I had an incident that left me without a working bass at a gig. Luckily I was able to drive 10 miles down the road from the venue and borrow a bass. It was an unusual one that I hadn't heard of before, built by the Bass Workshop and it was a simple P bass with one volume and no tone control. Now I've been a Jazz guy for quite a few years now, in between the odd Stingray or Sterling. I've always wanted to like p basses but could never find anything that I liked. I now found myself in the unusual position of having to use a bass that I'd never played before, with old strings, no tone control, badly needing a set up and not even close to what I had brought to the gig - my Warmoth/Status Super Jazz with EMG JX pickups and a 3 band EQ. I found that I really enjoyed playing it. I think that I had missed the interaction of digging in and getting a more gnarly sound. It didn't matter how hard I played the jazz, it always sounded good but I couldn't get that digging in clanky growl that I could only get from passive pickups. That set me thinking so I decided to get my Squier 40th P bass out of the box, set it up and took it to the hogmanay gig. Absolutely loved it. I had one of those rare moments where the sound was amazing, not quite 100% what I wanted but close. I decided there and then that I'd like to get myself something special and maybe keep the Squier as a back up bass. I only had one prerequisite - it had to be white. After much searching I found a Japanese imported special edition 60s P in white pearl at Fender Fever. Anyway, it arrived today and I have just taken it out of the box and it's even more spectacular than it looked in the pictures. The rosewood board is so deep and rich in colour. It's probably the nicest rosewood board that I've ever seen that wasn't on an actual vintage 60s Fender

This sort of thing intrigues me too and I get lost in looking stuff up. Sometimes I just have to punch myself in the groin and repeat "Once the drums start it doesn't matter. Once the drums start, it doesn't matter" over and over again!

Several things. Obviously the features that really matter are: Its stereo. Yes, I keep banging on about that but if you have used stereo IEMs, you wouldn't want to go back to mono. Sound quality is better - no noise, no hiss, sound seems fuller, but maybe that is the stereo, although note that on my main band I haven't really explored the stereo too much, other than having the guitarist on one side, keys on the other, singer on the side of the keys, other backing singer on the other side (mostly - vocals are more centred). In general I get more clarity of sound through this than the U4, when using with the same IEMs. Mechanical. Its one self contained box which contains everything. Yes, I know, you can get a box for the XVive (I have one, although it was an extra), but this is how it comes. Its also cheaper. Connectivity - no contest here. I know, it may not matter to some because you are normally going to connect it one way, but I have two bands and I connect it different ways with both, one with a TRS and one with the 1/8th". The XLR is stereo, and also TRS in the centre, then there is a mono TS (probably less useful as you could presumably use the stereo TRS with a TS), and an 1/8th inch stereo jack which can come from an line aux source or a headphone socket. There is also a USB-C rather than stupid USB-micro socket, and it is one USB-C lead not having to remember where you have put your USB to dual USB-Micro lead. The transmitter charges the receiver. Then when you open it, there is the receiver, sitting in the case, charging. The case is also the transmitter. Handy mono / level switches and a max volume knob so you can set up the type of input nicely - hmm.. a bit susceptible to fingerprints, but I didn't actually notice that. Then you lift the transmitter up, press and hold its screen, and it gives you a mute switch (double press) or a volume (even if it takes a while) on a big metal spinny knob that isn't going to be knocked by your strap like almost every single gig with the U4 halfway through the gig, and if it did, you wouldn't be having to dive for it trying to remember which one is the volume because its the huge knob on the front! Its also very solid and metal and it has nothing fiddly on it at all, unlike those terrible buttons on the front of the U4. There is a pretty solid clamp on the back, and also a USB-C socket - I assume if you wanted to charge two receivers for one transmitter. It also shows the level coming through the IEM, so you can see if it is actually working without listening to it. I loved the U4 when I got it, even though I had to move everything else way from 2.4GHz as it splatted all across the X18s connection, but this is just another step for me, even if the sound wasn't better (and it is), and it wasn't for the stereo thing, it is just a nicer device to use, it feels more sturdy. the big caveat in all of this is that I have had it just over a week, I have used it in one practice and one gig, so who knows how it will get on in future. I had stopped using my U4s, in place of the MS-1s, as the stereo was compelling, but the MS-1s were just so cheaply built and the power switch was more than a little flakey, and the quality wasn't all that great but I still carried around the U4s charged and ready, as frankly I didn't trust the MS-1s, but I think I can probably stop doing that now with these. But maybe after a couple more gigs.

Did a bass swap before the New Year and picked up this Aria SB 1000B re-issue. Always wanted one and was a little scared about picking up one of the older ones reading so much about them having pick up problems. This one is a joy to play, love the ebony board and the low pass filtery type pre-amp. having the 2 octave neck is also nice. Weights in a fairly comfortable 4.4kg. Hopefully I can get to use it in anger... Got practice next week, think I'll take it along. Anyone else out there got one of these?

I am intrigued also, but not cross-country level of intrigued It's just this does make me wonder as its not really a subjective thing. Latency is latency, and I think I remember reading a very geeky post on TB or perhaps on reddit about someone actually measured what it was at a specific fret on a specific string from the waveform and it came out at something silly like 2ms, which of course isn't perceptible! I think my Shure wireless is double that, and again that's just not something you're ever going to notice. Given that it is digital though, I feel like it must vary somewhat depending on the input signal, as opposed to the analog OC-2 type circuits that just flip whatever comes in back at you . So its an interesting one, though perhaps one for the Dull Mens Club on Facebook 😅

Lovely Sunday Evening service this week. It was Epiphany so officially the last on e of the Christmas season. That meant we were huddled together in one corner as the altar area and stage was still set up for Christmas nativities and the like. Not ideal for foldback sound purposes or band sightlines but it worked out OK in th end. It was a nice meditative service with a lovely song list including some old favourites, a blast from the past and a couple of songs I’d never heard before. Unfortunately with Christmas and New Year we didn’t have the final list and keys until Thursday but “needs must” and all that. Thankfully, most of the songs were pretty straightforward. The setlist was: Great In Power Noel Here I Am To Worship Manger Throne This I Believe, and The Blessing. I’d not come across “Manger Throne” before but what a powerful song - Phil Wickham in uncharacteristically mellow and philosophical mood. I guess I always think of him as a bit of a praise rocker, or maybe that’s just the tunes of his that I’ve played. The band was small but perfectly formed… keys, (shy) acoustic guitarist (who doesn’t really seem to want to be heard), saxophone, bass and drums (not played with that drummer before), and two female vocalists. It’s pretty much one of the two regular groups I play with at church so it was all nice and familiar. It was a nice opportunity to give the Sandberg a rest for a week and remind my (more festively coloured) Wal Pro bass that Daddy still loves it. 🤣 it does have a lovely round and plummy tone which you ca roughen up at the flick of a switch if needed - but that wasn’t really the tone of this week’s service. Listened through on the stream and it sounded OK. Next time up is end of the month. https://www.youtube.com/live/1vZbSY2Z_2I?si=LrTLSrBfpkxDrOyz

We didn't adjust the output of the HF driver, but there didn't appear to be any lack of treble. I've been asked more than a few times to produce a cab without a tweeter/crossover to act as a "sub" for LFSys cabs. When I tried it, there was more bass - as you'd expect - but the overall sound quality was noticeably inferior. I'm pretty sure this is because the second bass driver doesn't sound great when it's unequalised and operating above 2kHz: most large cone drivers have resonant peaks at or above this frequency that my crossovers deliberately remove. Adding a crossover to equalise and roll off the LF driver might fix this, but then you might as well go the whole hog and fit the compression driver and horn as well.

Moustaches. I can accept them on WW2 fighter aces, but now they just say "sexpest" to me at least

Heres mine

The biggest difference as the decades have passed is that drugs that were once prevalent in the music business to some extent or another are now widely available in society at large, and are commonly used by people in just about every walk of life, but particularly by people from lower social classes. The experience has been democratised. There are far more street drugs available on Britain's sink estates in 2026 than there ever was in the music business in any era. Drugs like cocaine that were quite elitist as recently as the 1980's/early1990's are widely available in Britain nowadays. Opiates the same. How musicians use drugs has become far less of a totemic issue because the rest of society has superceded them and established its own drug culture. No one is looking to musicians for an example of whether to use drugs or which drugs to take. Rather, musicians who use drugs are merely an analog of wider society nowadays.

That M6-5 in black swirl will be very tempting.

A quick audio clip, I realised after that the battery in my bass was pretty low and breaking up a little.

Today’s experiment with zero practical use but a ton of fun at home: I’ve wired up the OC5 so the Direct Output goes to the Dirtfixer Input and the Output goes to the Longsword > Model FeT and back into the Dirtfixer return. This lets me blend in some +1 octave with a tone of distortion with my normal bass tone. Sounds filthy!!! Disabling the Dirtfixer also bypasses the OC5. As fun as it is I think I’d rather have my normal drive tone.

Those are super cool basses. You know when you can tell something plays well just by looking at it! Folllowing on with the basses on the carpet theme here’s my herd - I tried to take a picture like yours from above but I couldn’t get high enough! I’ve got the Musicmaster (fretted) pretty bang on, setup wise, now. Labella flats (.050 - .110) and some truss rod fun and it’s playing really nicely.

Prefect for a bit of Toto's "Africa" you'll blend right in to the savanna....needs Zebra pickup covers though....

Personally, I think there are a few parameter-based things rather than modelling, that make the Anagram sound arguably "better" than my Helix LT. The default settings on the Anagram usually sound great. As has been mentioned before in this thread, many of the Helix block defaults are at "what were they thinking?" settings. Almost every effect block in the Anagram has a clean blend. The Helix often requires you to insert effects on a parallel path just to make them usable for bass. The anagram's parameters are pretty self explanatory for each block. The Helix replicates real world devices, including sometimes misleading parameters, or strange behaviour, and they take a while to get your head around. The cab blocks are usable without much tweaking. It took me years (literally years) to get a usable tone out of a cab block in the Helix. I do wish the Angram cab blocks had hpf/lpf in them, though. PS. Now that DG has demonstrated they can build amp blocks that do drive when pushed, I wonder if they'll revisit the Peggy block or make a new one.

A new band means a new bass. I usually build them myself but that's been on the backburner since my son came along so this will have to do! One of my favourite things about building my own basses is coming up with new body shapes, so I'm perversely intrigued by the fact that Spector have felt no such urge since the 70s! I must say, they did rather nail it, it's very comfortable. Bought as new from Bass Direct, but it's a slightly older one with the Tonepump preamp in it - a curious little thing that is unusably hot until you get in there with a screwdriver and turn it down to half-way. It's still nothing special, but my addiction to tinkering means it'll be getting swapped out anyway. But what a lovely bass it is. Sounds fantastic through my Darkglass pedal (but then I think pretty much any bass would). It's booked in for a pro set-up to see just how lovely I can get it, but in the meantime it'll be put through its paces at band practice on Thursday. Oh and it's my first 5 string - I play metal in B standard so wanted the 35 inch scale. Not a lot of 4 strings out there that fit the bill (with a handful of notable exceptions, of course). Spector do a multiscale 4 that goes down to 36", but I wanted a Euro so here we are. After a few minutes of panic and buyers remorse, I got used to it! Can't fault it really (apart from that preamp). The CST series has an ebony board, which was tempting, but there isn't a finish/hardware combo that I like. The rosewood on this one is nice and dark, so I'm more than happy with it. If I was building it, I would have recessed the control plate, but that really is my only gripe so far!

Resist, resist. Just another day to wait. Better that than be asking for details of a competent repair person for a blown-up valve amp, no..? Wise advice for any electronic equipment, really, but for an amp which will, by its functioning, heat up cold glass rapidly, it's a 'no-brainer'. Patience, young grasshopper; patience.

People. Mostly.

Some years back Spector introduced bridges that weigh around 180g compared to the older bridges that weighed 500-600g. It was a quick way to drop almost a pound from the overall weight of the instruments and I've seen no discernible change to tone. I posted about this a couple of times in the big Spector Fans thread. The consequences of this on a light bass is that it's going to make it neck/headstock heavy. I have an early Euro 5LX that is /was quite a heavy beast and when I replaced the bridge with a new light one, it did change the balance but it's a heavy enough pair of wings that it doesn't dive. Newer instruments tend to be lighter and some are "weight relieved". If neck-dive is the problem, we either need to lighten the headstock or get some ballast loaded on to the body. There are other options like moving strap-locks or adding extensions but that tends to be anathema to the Spectorati and it affects resale. Solutions to either cure or reduce neck-dive: Using a wide strap that has a suede/raw leather inside surface so it increases the friction Lightweight tuners - make sure you compare the weights of what you're proposing to change out with what you're going to put in. If the new ones weigh 50% of what's coming out, see how the bass balances with two of the old ones removed so you get an understanding of how it'll balance before you commit to buying the new light ones. Get an old bridge. This is obviously going to add at least 400g to the overall weight of the bass.

It is….

Pretty much yeah - It's that awkward shade of grey that shows up any and all blemishes like you've drawn a circle around it! It's my own fault, I should've know better... I'd say it's the amp models and cabs, Al... as seems to be the story of my morning it's a feel thing, they just seem to have more life to them without needing parameters like "sag" and "hum" to dial them in. They're closer to captures than models though in that the SVT won't drive when you whack the gain up; but sticking a vintage microtubes and compressor in front of it does a cracking approximation. The cab sims feel more musical and less dramatic once the amp blocks are EQ'd to suit. The can go into the typical more dramatic IR thing if wanted though The fuzzes are also brilliant, I find fuzz to be a really difficult thing for digital modellers to get right but the 3 fuzzes available are great. The noble block adds something more than low end, some of the newer models like he Orange and EBS blocks will give tube like saturation at low drive settings The pitch shifting is decent - using the pitch shift to do an octave up is nice and clear and sharp, the oc2 approximation is decent as far as digital goes Even little things like the tuner seem well thought out - Long press to access, a footswitch for mute on/off and tap tempo at hand on third footswitch. There were a load of updates before xmas too, Darkglass do seem really invested in this so it feels like an investment in the sense that you know most things will be incrementally improved over time. Everything just feels more premium. The best way I can explain is that to me, the HX stuff always felt flat and 2D.. like a really good drawing of what it as supposed to be, where as the the Ampero felt more like a less accurate sculpture of what it was approximating. The Anagram feels like the best of both. I'll be honest in that most of my concerns come from a) the price tag, b) previous experiences with digital and c) Only hearing it in anger through headphones so being unsure how it sounds in an FOH mix or through my amp. I think I've just talked myself into being happy about keeping it though.. thanks Al! 😄

As it happens I realised last night a p!$$ed punter at our NYD show slammed a drink down on a nearby table and it's stained the case - so I won't be returning mine regardless now 🤦‍♂️. I'll add that workflow wise it takes the flexibility of the HX stomp routing and the intuitive UI of the Ampero Stomp II (my only modern multi fx experience) and improves again. Sound wise I'd also say it's a big step up from the Stomp and Ampero (as it should be for the money). I'd say if you've got genuine interest in the unit and you're more open minded to digital than I am I think it's worth a look but I'd buy from somewhere with a good returns policy just in case

My main aim for this year is to get a decent number of gigs done with the new line-up of the band. We have a month off in February when our guitarist expands his family and I intend to have an album of my own either ready to go on CD at that point, or to get an amount of it recorded in our down time (more likely). Whether it sells any copies or not..... I'm not deadly bothered about that. I also want to get a bunch of instruments sold off that aren't getting used. I have published part one of our Slade discography book just before Christmas. Part two is out in February and we have another book due in April which I need to get back into working on - lots of tedious image restoration work is involved. And a publisher has asked us to do a Slade book for them and I need to read the contract and map that out. Busy busy.

I know someone who's bagpipes were blown up by the bomb squad. That didn't help sustain but made their least unpleasant sound.

Have you tried throwing it in the river? Worked for my bagpipes.

40th Anniversary Squier P in matt dakota red

It popped up as being in Coventry when I checked a minute ago. Hopefully that means it turns up tomorrow! 🤞

Could you please add a reflex test to the great OC5 latency investigation meetup @pantherairsoft, @thisisswanbon? The one where you catch a ruler as it is dropped through your fingers should do it.

Intonation is down to someone just spending time with a screwdriver and a tuner.

Was there an ant infestation on the floor that everyone apart from Dawn spotted? 😅

An animal like a dog, but worse, and to be called a cat.

It wasn't the most comfortable of instruments to play and the neck on mine had suffered from a serious break at some point which what been reasonably well repaired but then hidden under a much better re-finish so I didn't discover it until I stripped the finish off with the aim to have a more interesting colour... IME it doesn't really matter which way around the octave and main strings were. It only matters when playing with a pick if you only pluck in one direction - all up or all down stokes. And as I'm quite a physical player it was easy enough for me to pluck both strings even when playing finger style, although I preferred to play mine with a pick.

I remember seeing that post about how long it takes to process the signal... I've got no idea what the cause is but it's definitely something I feel and it can't be a fault with it being two pedals multiple years apart. I'm just waiting for someone to come and tell me at a gig how relieved they are that I'm back on my 3Leaf and I'll know this was all worthwhile... As much as we don't agree on the great octave debacle - I'm also partial to a bit of dull men's club and consider it to be my greatest online find of 2025! 👏

They were very good friends with Ox, Squire and Lemmie. 😉

Marshall to make an exact replica of Lemmy's Murder One and sell it for a price I can afford. A portable guitar stand that doesn't fall over regularly. A budget range from Rickenbacker with the same electronics as the full price models but cheaper woods and a bolt on neck.

My blue sparkle

I'm thinking Fretless 5 string - hopefully a Stingray continue my seemingly lifelong quest of blues in any key , minor blues in any key , rhythm changes in any key etc Piano Practice Ear Training Transcribing (dedicated listening) get a couple of promo videos done and get my music online

If I have time: 1) Learn how to use all the gear I have including the Polyend Mess and the Akai MPC1 that has been sitting on my desk unused for the last 2.5 years. 2) Get the fingerboard replaced on the Vigier 3) Finish building the strat that was tone chasing Phil Collen's rather more exotic and expensive Jacksons. 4) If economic conditions pick up, sell more stuff. 5) Set up the bass pedalboard for the arpeggiation and manual bass synth lines...I will need a second bass synth pedal for that. I have BC, Aurok, study for a PGCE and a social media channel to take care of plus a day job...

Your doctor will prescribe some cream for that.

I suspect that the broad glamourisation of drugs in music is down to journalists making things more fabulous than they are. "Ooh look at then being naughty, they are getting away with it and are epically cool. I wish that was me". Ask anyone who has experience of heroin (other drugs are available) addiction either personally or within their family, and I can guarantee they will not be saying "yeah, but the songs made it all worth it". Have some people produced interesting stuff while using drugs? Yes. Would they produce interesting stuff anyway? More than likely, this was just a different flavour of whatever would be. We only read about the tiny percentage of people who have "done the thing" and " produce the thing". The rest of the people who have "done the thing" and produced "not the thing" are not eulogised by those who write about it - the tastemakers/gatekeepers.

The original song is much better, you are right though great bassline