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Morning everyone, It's 365 days since Nick passed. I wanted to share my favourite photo of him and thank you all for your support in 2025. He gave us 19710 days of LOVE, LAUGHS and RIFFS ... Shine on brother 💫🎸😇💚🤟

I've done something foolish... The Brooks EXB-12-QB - the construction of which was already completed in August 2024(!) - is finally completed and ready to ship. The installation of the electronics took about a year and a half for all kinds of reasons that I will not bore you with. I solemnly promise that I will never build a thing like this again. 😵‍💫 Anyway: Here it is! - Mahogany body. Explorer shape - Quilted Maple top. Sunburst. High gloss - Body back, sides and neck: Clear gloss - Pearloid Binding - Neck through, mahogany/maple/purple heart five piece laminate. - Two spoke-wheel type double action truss-rods. Plus one carbon stiffening rod. - Ebony Fretboard. Pearl dot inlays. 12th position circle - Sintoms Jumbo frets. Nickel-silver - 32” Scale - Buffalo horn nut/ string guide - Custom made 12 string bridge and tailpiece. Inverted triplets. Gold - 4 x Gotoh GB 350 bass tuners. Lightweight. Gold - 8 x Gotoh ST-31 Octave string tuners. Lightweight. Gold - Custom D’Addario string set - Gotoh large gold strapnuts - Pickup 1: Ubertar Sliding Pole Piece pickup - Pickup 2: 2x Nordstrand NM4 - 1 x 5-pin XLR. - 2 x Volume. - 2 x Tone - 2 x On/off switch with led light for each effect - 1 Master volume trimpot - Weight: 5,1 kg Custom made electronics: - Built-in effect 1: Frog FX1 pre-amp with sub-mini tube. - Built-in effect 2: Aguilar TLC Compressor. - External power supply I will post pics of the build process in several separate posts below.

Mine arrived last week

The gear was interesting on that video, but the bass faces were hilarious!

Point of view from the other side. I'm on the committee for the Necton village charity music festival and have been for four years My job is to find and book the six acts. All the profit from the events is split between three charities. Noone working on the day is paid EXCEPT the bands. The committee chairman would like me to find at least five free bands to increase profits. I refused the first year and someone else did the bookings. The disaster that followed (on a par with a very bad open mic night) made them see sense. Since then, every act gets at least £150 expenses. I'll usually try to get the headliners to drop their fee down to maybe £500 but one, has actually refused payment and just taken the expenses. Our bar is run by the committee and village volunteers do the parking We pay for security, medics tent, the stage, sound system and engineers and the 50Kw gennie. None of the organisers and helpers get paid. Bands also get a free burger each and a drink. I would never expect a band to play for free AND be out of pocket.

Sorry it's taken so long to come back. I'm having to juggle major birthdays, holidays, exams and work to find a day that's best for everybody. It's Saturday April 25th all day. That seems to meet most people’s requirements. I've booked it for that day . Thanks Rob

In August 2024 I handed over the bass to the guy who always did the electronics for my builds. He was going to build the tube pre-amp and modify the Aguilar TKC compressor to fit into the effects cavity. We had already discussed this back and forth with the customer and myself. The electronics guy had also built a Frog FX1 as a test case for this project. But all this took way too long. I started to fear this bass would never see the light of day. After more than 14 months I asked the bass back. The electronics were not completely ready yet. But my patience (and faith) had run out. I brought it to a friend of mine who has a degree in electronics. He checked the electronics and cleaned up the mess. Now it is finally ready. Everything works.

These look stunning! Very much aiming at the Rob Allen style of bass. RRP of around €3,500.

I went to buy some of the Tesco sausages, checked the 'use by' label... and, they're off.

Prefer it personally, better balance across the strings. Got this one, and another on the way

The main thing for me is thinner strings further from bridge/thicker nearer the bridge must make for a better balance. I often find that the D (and G should I ever use it) lack depth in comparison to the E & A.

The Diamond - Sutton in Ashfield. A great live music venue with a lovely family feel to the whole thing. It was an early Sunday afternoon gig but there were still 70+ Cheap Trick fans in attendance despite a £10-£12 entry fee. Taxman.mp4

It's........

Forecast for Friday night is -31C and Saturday night will be -30C. I'll be going through a lot of firewood in the next few days with daytime temps between -15 and -20 C and lots of wind. Not starting a contest or trying to prove anything but this has been a cold week, don't think I'll be doing any skiing on my trails for a couple of days.☹️

I like the look of this: https://dingwallguitars.com/bass/jacob-umansky-signature/

Is the answer X=y^2 + 23 ?

Hi Dave, Here’s a little more info on the tipping culture over here. While we command a nice fee for a 4 peice, the tips just make the gig a little more lucrative. Tips can turn a $150.00 a man gig into a $200.00 a man deal. Tips are acceptable, actually expected by the venue and the punters. Here are our exceptions. We don't use the tip jar at Theatre gigs, charities or private events events. Obviously the Tips are much better when you're playing to the more affluent clientele. If you’re playing at Freddie's on Martin Luther King Blvd and Cherry St. there won't be any tips. You'll be more worried about if your car will still be there at the end of the night. Lol I'm getting my hair cut today and trying to figure out how much I can afford to tip my barber.lol The pic is my new AI band . Lol Daryl

Another friend of the band rocked up with his trumpet, jumped in for a couple of songs and absolutely blew the roof off. He also stood on the end of the line and hogged the camera angle! Here's a quick clip:

It cannot possibly be a whole year my GOD, where does the time go. Still much missed. I hope he and @OldGit are having a proper laugh and some good jamming up there.

We rehearsed Sultans last week and it was so fast that I was blown away by the dexterity of nailing the solos note for note. I believe that a lot of songs "breathe" better at the right tempo or within a certain tolerance. With Sultans I found that my bass line sounded too busy at the tempo we played it whereas playing it at the "Alchemy tempo" sounds fine. I've found that vocalists struggle too when songs are rushed, their breath control goes completely and then their performance drops off. In a previous band I used to nag about playing songs too fast all the time and was ignored, not even a conversation. I clocked Living on a Prayer at 151 bpm off one gig recording (it's 123bpm on the record), others were similarly fast, then one gig we had a dep drummer who played everything absolutely on the money and afterwards the other three wouldn't shut up about how well we played and how much a great groove we had, how we didn't make any mistakes etc.

I thought I should elaborate. At 300 watt, with two Fane 225s, in theory you will be close to 120dB plus the low end 6dB boost @phil described earlier. It will also be louder than one theoretical 4 ohm drive running at 225 watts. The reason is that running a 225 watt speaker at full power will incur power compression. This causes a +3dB loss* in power due to the rise in resistance of the voicecoil. So 225 watts into a 225 watt speaker will give roughly the same acoustic output as the same speaker powered at 112 watts**. *Based on data previously published by Beyma. Beyma used to be the only company to include power compression graphs, but clearly it was seen as a commercial disadvantage and they no longer do it. **There will be some power compression even at 1/2 rated power, probably 1-1.5dB.

An update, and a correction. I called Leicester Crown Court (0116 222 5700) and quoted the usual reference (33JJ0821825) and answered the usual questions, and was given the date of the trial. "It's the week commencing 8th February 2027" - not 2026. I am not sure where 2026 came from - apologies.

I thought I was not going to make a video demo. Because I wouldn't know where to begin. 😉 But I finally succumbed and made a (very short) video demo. Showing all options woulld take up a whole week. So this will have to do...

My customer asked for a neck of the highest janka number possible. I did not want to ruin my router bits and saw blades on something too ridiculous. So I came up with a compromise: A five piece laminate of Khaya mahogany, Maple and Purple heart. Here's the neck blank: Plus Khaya Mahogany body wings Routed the slot in the middle for the carbon reinforcement strip: Drilled the holes for the position markers in the ebony fretboard: Made the ring for the 12th position marker: And glued in the mother-of-pearl dots for the rest: Sanded them flush, using the 16" radius block: Prepared the fret slots for the frets. By filing with a triangular file I get better results with seating the frets.

There's a song about that. "Mustang Sarnie".

Had this delivered from Bass Direct today. Very happy so far. It's the first Spector I've tried, but from listening online I thought I'd like it and it's exactly what I hoped it would be. To my ears, it sounds huge compared to my other two basses (Andertons Eastcoast PJ, which I actually really like, and a Sire M6 that is going back), the pickups seem to have loads of clarity. I'd like a little higher string tension but I'll likely put some flats or half rounds on it, no rush though. Maybe the IMA super polished. The black plastic knob caps look a bit cheap compared to the rest of it IMO, so going to add some gold ones It has a little bit of neck dive, not terrible but I might try weighting the bridge end of the strap Then I'm going to 3D print a finger ramp to go between the two pickups It doesn't have a passive mode and I didn't realise that it doesn't appear to have a battery access door...removing screws to get to the battery isn't my favourite. But for how it sounds and plays, whatever, it's not going back.

I'm not averse to changing bass lines if I can come up with something better than the coked-up indie halfwit who played on the original.

We played at Artisan Tap in Stoke on Saturday. It was absolutely rammed, "sold out" and then some! Ace night with everyone singing along. We played just the acoustic songs but that was still over 1hr45. Still, the quieter sound means it's an easier gig for me on drums. At one point I noticed the gate on the acoustic guitar fluttering and had to ask the sound engineer to turn it off. To be fair he's always fantastic, but I wonder why anyone would put a gate on an acoustic guitar in a live situation? They want to strum a chord and sustain it, and a gate will always kill that.

I've always been a CT fan. They're hometown boys. I was going to their shows when they were still playing bars. Stood right next to Rick Neilson at a Jeff Beck show at Turner Hall. Daryl

A friend from Alaska said it was cold when you spit, it hits the ground, then ‘cracks’. They said it’s really cold when you spit, it cracks and then bounces 😂

Did Salvador Dali play bass?

Said BL sounds as mad as cheese.

I'm afraid not. The Ubertar was provided by the customer. I don't think I would have chosen the Ubertar myself. The sliding pole-piece pickup that 13 Ghost (Thorsten Behrens) made seems much nicer to me. https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2024/12/30/bass-of-the-week-meet-the-anachronist-13-ghosts-handmade-marvel-from-germany/

I think it ended in the best way. Pick up and carry on, no more time wasted on histrionics. My motto band wise has always been ‘if it ain’t fun, why do it?’.

I don't think anyone has ever used Satan's claw for doom metal so there's your solution. No one is going to tune down half an octave and then put on a capo

Glued the pearloid binding in the channel: Route the big cavity for the sliding pickup: And the other one for the Quad Bucker: Test fitted the Ubertar sliding pickup system. This pickup contraption was provided to me by my customer.

Prepared the frets. Cut off the fret ends with a tang nibbler: Hammered the frets in: And cut off the excess on the sides: Routed and cut the slots for the two spokewheel truss rods: Made the truss rod cover in the 21st position: Routed the part of the centerpiece where the Quilted Maple top should go later in the build process. Also made sure this part had the desired neck body angle of 1.5°. Also sawed the headstock angle. In this pic I had not planed it nice and smooth yet. Worked on the neck jont area. With some chisels and scraping steel: The neck taking shape: Made the side position markers: And worked on the neck profile:

Just needs an upgrade, coz the one that's on is shite..

It is a lovely preamp however the EQ is very limited. If you are looking for surgical EQs or ‘flat’ response then you will be disappointed. Essentially it sounds nothing like the graphic EQ solid state amps to my ears. The general tone however is awesome, especially with a passive bass. I would never sell my V6.

Yes, it came with a PSU, I was curious to try the USB power feature. I am very surprised at how long it lasted - got tired of waiting for it to indicate even 25% usage after 90 mins.

At some point I'll think about logistics like paying the balance on the hall and how to setup in advance on the morning. Volunteers very welcome. I'm not as organised as Scrumpymike who has already taken advance payments and sorted out jobs for the SW bash in October!

Ernie Ball Flats are highly underrated and are definitely less stiff.

Should be more than enough.

It subtly changes the sound, and gives people yet another thing to endlessly debate the virtues of on an electric bass

I've played in many bands where the band leader hadn't bothered to learn the song properly. Trying to get them to change just causes grief, so I shrug my shoulders and play their version. I played with one idiot who couldn't get the arrangements right from one gig to the next! Several times his " impromptu changes" caught me out and it was very annoying to be told that I needed to learn the songs!! Apart from him it was a good band, with good songs and good players, so I stuck it out. In cover bands I prefer to be playing the original because IME they never rehearse, so it's better that everyone sits at home learning the original arrangement and it's easier for deps to seamlessly fit in.