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My p Basses now 58 p original 64 p original 78 p original Moollon crazy Finish

I checked with moderator Ped if posting this is okay. Thank you Chris for the green light. The Best sounding bass pickup of all time is the Gibson low impedance stacked humbucker that was used in the Les Paul Bass between 1968 and 1979. At least in my opinion. 😉 I really think they're amazing. Extremely silent. Magnificent dynamic response. Tight low end. Chrystal clear top end. And very versatile. For years I roamed Ebay and Reverb to score them to put in various bass guitars. But last few years they've become as rare as hen's teeth. And when you finally do find one the prices are astronomically high. Many times I tried to find a pickup maker who can replicate it. And many of them said they could. But in the end they all had to admit they couldn't. Until recently! I joined forces with Mike Rose from Gemini Pickups in Wales. I sacrificed an original and carefully dissected it. The pickup revealed its very unusual architecture. And step by step we reverse engineered it. The Brooks Gemini was born! I installed the Brooks Gemini into my Epiphone Jack Casady Signature bass. The bass previously sported an original Gibson lo-z humbucker. Here's the video demo of the Brooks Gemini bass pickup: a faithful replica of the low-impedance stacked humbucker that Gibson used in their Les Paul Bass between 1968 - 1979. Bass played by Dutch rock royalty Ivo Severijns. Straight into the desk. No compressor, No amp, No speaker, No speaker simulator. Just an honest registration of the sound of the pickup. What you see is what you get! Enjoy!

Just been offered yet another charity (i.e. everyone bar the musicians gets paid) gig. Support a good cause, "exposure", etc, etc. As we're not completely heartless bar stewards and the good cause in question was a reasonable one, we suggested we might be paid expenses, so that, whilst we give our time and effort for free, we don't actually make a loss on the evening. Petrol still needs to be paid for, we'll need a drink or two plus something to eat and so on. Cue pearl clutching on the part of the organiser, "but it's for charity, etc". "We realise that", we replied. "We don't expect to profit. We just don't want to lose money". They were not happy, so we said we'd pass, thanks. What is wrong with these people? Are they wealthy dilettantes who don't have to worry about where the next penny comes from? Do the think everyone else is in the same privileged position as them?

An early 60s sunburst would be my dream bass. Unfortunately I can’t ever see me owning one. This 62 copy is probably the closest I’m ever going to get to one but I’m more than happy with it.

I like the harshness of it this year. "I walked past a shop and saw a nice bass in the window." "Get tae f**k, yer oot!" 😁

I’ve done charity gigs. They cost me money, so I expect to be paid. I object to the expectation that it's OK for musicians to give their time for free and no one else is expected to. They don't use that line on the bar, venue or catering companies!! I guess being a musician isn't a real job, so it doesn't matter! Giving your time for free for charity? A neighbour used to be a senior executive in the Red Cross. You wouldn't want to know what his salary was, and pension now is!!!

Must make an effort to finish this winter project. (rubbish photo)

And, I'm sure I've posted this a few times over the years, going back about 15 years ago a band I was in used to get paid >£1000 or more for doing British Heart Foundation, CF Trust and other big charity fund raisers. The mentality is that if you have quality entertainment the punters will part with more cash.

Started on the second cabinet today. This is a dry run fit, so no glueing. So much faster when you have done one before. The panels were all cut a few weeks ago, though I found one end was at an angle. Suspect the circular saw was poorly setup by some idiot. Rather than cutting the batons in advance, I cut them as I needed and used a mitre saw and block rather than a home made table saw. This was a far better way of working and wasn't much slower. This means I cut to the right size as things may be out by 0.5mm or so. Just under two hours to get to this, I do now have frostbite, but well on the way to getting a second cab, so completely worth losing a finger or so, who needs a little finger for playing bass. Front and rear faces are also cut and fit, but I haven't done the holes for the speakers, handles etc yet. Rob

Dubbin' Ya Boots - sounds like a reggae band from Keswick.

Made some noise tonight with my first proper bandmates from 40+ years ago. We have been getting together every few months since lockdown just to make some noise and play through the songs from back then but haven’t managed to do so in over 6 months so there were quite a few senior moments. Took the Darkglass Anagram, Barefaced BB2 and Baby Sumo plus Frankenjazz, Hard Puncher and Status S2 along with my regular amps as backup as the Baby Sumo had played up previously but tonight it was fine. Much fun and noise made for few hours. We might not have played for a while but we worked together long enough all those years ago and are still damn tight when we remember the songs structure (knowing nods help). Always good to get together and blast through some choons, maybe a little slower than in the 70’s.

OK, enough of all this talk about blues jams (go and create your own thread for that boring nonsense) Dany rules, and this is our new logo!

I tried it today. The first strange thing was my Kaka ukulele bass just doesn't play nice with the AH300. There's a high pitched interference that sounds a bit like RF interference. My other instruments don't do this, so I'm thinking it must be the Kala's pre-amp circuits. Anyway, I switched to my Squier Jazz which is a much better choice anyway. I actually didn't like the 15" on its own much, the sound was too muddy and felt like it was reacting slowly. I loved the sound of the 2x10" cabinet on its own though. That's definitely the one to take.

In these situations the guys in the bands are the biggest contributors. It's not something I get involved in. You're effectively donating. I used to ask if the bar staff were working free and if the beer profits went to the charity but now I just say, "Sorry, we're booked for a private function." There're plenty of bands that'll play it. And, a good standard response I keep in case I hear "that phrase", is "Yes, I know but we get all the exposure we need at paid gigs".

Nothing wrong with having a difference of opinion. If we all thought the same, this place would be far less interesting. However, differences can be expressed gently and respectfully...

Three hours of rehearsal yesterday to work up an acoustic set for tonight and finish writing the latest album. The acoustic stuff always sounds good, although yesterday sounded slightly under rehearsed (a good sign ahead of a show). I dug out my P-bass and we officially finished writing our third album. On a personal note, I was particularly pleased with my vocal last night as it has always been my most challenging area and I have really worked hard on building my confidence and voice.

Playing at a local Wassail this evening. I'm right in front of the camera.

So, I may have just wondered over to Bass Direct online. Been wanting another 4 string super light for a while different to my current TT SL for a bit of variety…got the royal approval then this just happened below (under 6lbs)…Monday hopefully! Probably sell my 5 string SL TT - don't want to but I really don't use it…and someone out there will need that beauty.

I’ve done a couple of charity gigs recently for the Teenager Cancer Trust. The organisers, a mod/scooter club have asked in advance what our expenses will be and have also made sure we are well watered (beer or soft drinks), plus they provide PA & backline, which makes it much less of a faff. This is ok with me and we don’t have to do it of course. I think expecting folk to play for free, without some sort of expenses is taking the pee.

That seems to imply that we should feel guilty that we are not paid minimum wage and feel obliged to play for nothing. I am reasonably comfortably off and I don't object to playing the occasional charity gig, but, as I point out, I will not actually lose money. I could afford to throw in the cost of a few gallons of petrol, but I won't, because I am already giving my time and effort for nothing. I feel it's disrespectful to expect me to actually pay for the privilege of playing for free. That's just me, of course and YMMV.

Initially I found him intolerable and typically clickbaity as is typical with modern social media. However after listening to him a bit and some back story, he seems very humble, and a working class lad with no pretentiousness, also he says what he thinks without any brown nosing. I'd happily have a beer with him.

This is my bitsa Jazz; it has an unknown body which was previously a manky brown sunburst, a CV neck and tuners, Limelight pickups and a big green Russian tone capacitor. I painted the body in CAR using rattle cans and it turned out pretty well. Although it's a bit heavy it plays well and sounds awesome, so overall I'm well happy. I could have just bought a CV, I suppose, but I had way much more fun doing this.

Couple of rescue fretlii for your perusal folks Both rather nice in their own way, the Jazz is VERY jazz in an upright kinda way, the other thing is rather Wal-esque, surprisingly so in fact. Nordy PUPs are OUTSTANDING

This example is a T1 for me - it's going on a bass pedalboard. It's being used with a bass. There is a certain "spirit" to this challenge which should be upheld, and use case is an important factor otherwise we'd have everyone claiming that every pedal which is not specifically marketed as a "bass" pedal is a T2. Nah, I'm not having it. People gotta be honest with themselves. If you fire bass signals through it, it's a bass pedal. Come on, you're fooling no-one I know this is a bit of fun, but that is a principle I am going to stick to in any of my adjudications. Yes, Neep is the mean judge, the one you hope you don't get, the one with the gavel worn down to almost the handle...

I've been playing in reggae bands for most of my music life, both on bass and guitar. For 2026,. I don't mind doing deps in that genre but not joining another band in that genre or ska for that matter. I looking to see if i can move into a band that is more jazz based or a band where there is more adventures to seek on the bass. I also want to be able to grasp theory in a practical way that I can consciously and intentionally apply on the fly (improvising), or to develop a solid bassline for a song or piece of music. Re-start double bass lessons and ideally play similar percentage of my gigs on bass guitar and DB (eub).

Just finished soldering the last few cables for this board for a new tour that starts in Feb. Signal chain is: Instruments > Quad Cortex MC3 handles instrument switching and muting. Grape is in one of the QC’s FX Loops. The Peterson is on the Send from the other FX Loop in monitor mode so it’s always active and gives visual feedback of instrument tuning/intonation at all times. All Ins/Outs are fed through the Mod: Ins: Upright Bass mic > Mod XLR in > QC Input 1 (XLR with Phantom power) Upright Bass piezo > Mod 1/4” > QC Input 2 (1/4” Jack) Electric Bass > Mod 1/4” > QC Return 1 Outs: QC XLR 1 (Electric Bass) > Mod XLR Out 1 QC XLR 2 (Upright) > Mod XLR Out 2 QC Output 4 (TRS) > Mod 1/4” (mix of all 3 signals (mic/piezo of upright and electric) to feed my Porter and Davies Gigster) Power: Everything powered by a Cioks DC7, with the Crux powering the Quad Cortex. I bodged the drilling a little bit, but I installed one of these nifty Powercon In/Out units allowing me to daisy chain power from my board to the rack with the P&D Gigster in it. All jack plugs are Squareplugs

Welsh pickups bringing THE TOOOOOOOOOOONE!!!

Not a bass, so I figured I'd put this here rather than in the repairs/build-diaries forum. The weekend after New Year's I headed out to the countryside to collect this old East-German mandolin from @bass_dinger. I've been a mandolin dilettante for years (family of folk musicians) but I've never had my own one, not really. (I have an electric mandolin I made out of offcuts while working on something else, but I don't play it much). I figured the price was low enough to be worth a punt, and it seemed like whatever work it might need would be well within my skill set as a luthier and tinkerer. (Please excuse the cat, who wanted to be in my picture of the action). As fairly described by Robert, the neck was pretty bowed and the fretwork worn down. It was never a fancy instrument and it had lived a long life. I put in an order with my luthier supply shop of choice and set it aside. The following weekend, the first job was to take the frets out. I sat down with my special ground-down end-nippers and started the painstaking process of levering them up. No pictures were taken of this process because it only took about a minute. It turned out the tangs on the frets were not only 1.5 mm deep at most, but also completely smooth – no nibs, no little spikes. I could have probably lifted them out with my fingernails. I clamped the body into place and prepared my special heating tool. This may look like a crappy old clothes iron, but I promise it's a high-tech piece of equipment. I used a pallette knife to get under the fingerboard after it was good and hot and pinged the whole thing off, perfectly intact. I then routed a channel and stuck a length of carbon-fibre rod in there. Not the neatest job because my router plane was being difficult and it took me a while to remember the quirks of the adjusters on that particular tool. Fingerboard clamped back on with the rod in place. The rod is the same size as the one I routed into the (thinner and longer) neck on my electric mandolin, so I'm confident it will hold things straight for the foreseeable future. If I'd been more inclined to take my time with this, I would have spent a few hours planing a backward angle into the fingerboard (it's pretty thick and the neck is dead flat to the front of the body, which isn't great). I decided I couldn't be bothered – if nothing else, I explicitly don't want this instrument to be loud. I had to recut the fret slots because even the finest fretwire I had to hand was much chunkier than the stuff that had come out. I didn't take any pictures of the fretting process – just imagine someone smacking an instrument with a nylon-headed hammer for half an hour, swearing the whole time. Here's the finished job. I recut the nut and bridge slots, and reshaped the bridge a little, but left it otherwise unchanged. As you can see, the action has come down a lot, and the fretwork is now level and even. It plays beautifully and I've already lost several hours to noodling around trying to remember various fiddle tunes. At some point I'll replace the dot markers that melted during the heating process. It sounds like, well, like a £40 mandolin – which is what I expected and what I was hoping for. A fun thing for plinking away at on the sofa and during teams meetings (pro-tip! A mandolin can be played without showing up on the laptop camera if you hold it down low).

"Can you give me a strap button for my Kay?" "Aye, that seems like a fair swap..."

I agree. What I will say is that the bookers don't do any means testing and I've played in bands with a lot of folk that do work that is paid at a similar level to bar work or not much above minimum wage. I've done a few of these gigs over the years and without exception, they've been poor experiences where the bookers don't value the bands, don't treat them in a civil manner and seem to completely forget that you're giving up your time, paying to be there and also blocking your calendar for a paying gig. For context, I do around 500-700 hours a year of charity volunteer work for a (not at all musical) cause that I'm passionate about, it costs me money but I get appreciated, I expand a wide skill set and it does a lot of good for those receiving the benefit. The concept of giving my time/money for a good cause is fine with me but I'm not dragging others into it and unless it's something I know a lot about, I'm turning it down. I've got a story about one gig I did years ago to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust that makes my p155 boil but I'll save that for later.

"You've put on weight, Virgil." "F.L.A.B. Scott."

Update, I took the combo over to a mates house this afternoon, the always lovely @Tmg, with the intention of swapping out the preamp valves, and the amp was not making any strange noises at his place, nor his place of work around the corner, which he assures me has dodgy electrical wiring. We even set it up right next to an old tower PC running 3 monitors and could not get any unhealthy noises out of it. And once back home it was still behaving itself. So, with the lack of interest when I had it up for sale last year for months, plus a possible intermittent issue (although the only place this has happened was at Ainsleys' place as discussed in the original post) I think I might as well hang onto it as it really does sound glorious especially when cranked up. In the words of my late granddad, Well, bugger me, boy.

Ask what the CEO is on a year ? and offer to do it for 1% of that..

... then I shall cancel my strongly worded letter to The Times 😉

Celebrating the old ways! Pouring cider over the roots of apple trees and singing songs to bring a good harvest, scaring away woodland spirits by banging saucepans, drinking mulled cider and Morris dancing!

Still really happy with the steal of a used buy of my LTD (ESP) B4-JR. Just 28.5" scale length, maple neck, with rosewood fretboard and a basswood body, 24 frets. Perfect for A standard, tenor bass, tuning (that is as in the 4 upper strings of a 6 string bass in regular B standard tuning). Strung with Elixir Nonoweb guitar strings, which got the perfect length, of the gauges .068 - .052 - .038 - .028. Sounds no short of amazing with the stock pickup swapped for an EMG Geezer Butler P.

The mxr bass synth is finally on the board. The chameleon preset is so good I'm just going to leave it there. Something I have found, is that the phasor gives the synth sound a different twist with an extra vowel like quality.

Why the ironing board?

That's an awful introduction to live playing and commiserations for having to endure that. There certainly are some guys who are happy to be a big fish in a tiny pond. Good that you came through that and weren't disheartened. I would hope the organiser banned them from playing.

I've played charity gigs for nowt and thoroughly enjoyed being part of them. I find that having some connection to the charity or knowing the organiser helps. In my last band we had a formula - everyone in the band gets to call one freebie per year, and this was usually a charity gig.

@Silky999 just received the graphite neck today, so now the build starts in earnest. Within a week or two we'll hopefully have a complete instrument. The specs will be: Single piece MGCS Basses Walnut Jazz Body AUROK Graphite Jazz Neck (courtesy of @Kiwi) Fender Pure Vintage 66 Single Coil Pickups Gotoh high mass black vintage bridge Gotoh black lollipop tuners Black control plate/hardware with 500k pots Possible additions will be a John East J-Tone control plate/preamp.

Looks like this will be the pro version of the MC3:

£200? Is it the 1970s?! 😂

Yes, Mike's channel is chock full of interesting stuff, and the live chats are particularly good IMO. Suffice to say that, by contrast, there is some content from UK bass YouTubers that confirms the urgent mental health care crisis in this country. I don't mean Scott's Bass Lessons, though. That's more of a mental hair care crisis.