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So. After three-odd years containing knee surgery, a pulmonary embolism, torn rotator cuff, additional knee work and hand surgery, Sunday sees me back in the studio. I'm genuinely feeling energised to dip my toe into things. It's a blank canvas, we just go in, write in the fly and hit record. Old school.

Played at Thekla in Bristol last night, such a cool venue. Highly recommended!

Well, 2 weeks to the day since I returned the One10, a replacement was delivered this morning, and all is well with the world once more. Alex promised to turn it around quickly and he has, just in time for me to use the pair on gigs tonight and tomorrow. The initial mix up was unfortunate, but it's all been sorted out at no cost to me. Rob

I have taken the brave decision to launch a new print and digital bass magazine for the UK market. I've been publishing magazines in my day job for 27 years and think it's terrible that we don't have a dedicated magazine anymore. We launch the mag officially at the Birmingham Bass & Guitar Show next month where we will have a small stand and giving away a sample issue (while stocks last) - we will then publish quarterly moving forward. Editor is Joel McIver who ran Bass Guitar magazine and then Bass Player so no cheap AI generated content here! Website is here You can subscribe via the website - our socials launch on Monday. If you are at the show next month come and say hello - be nice to put faces to names. The cover of our sample issue is here for your thoughts and comments.

What a waste of talent. Beam me up and drop me in that Tube performance in 1983

So I’ve always loved the Telecaster bass shape, and I’m a big Mike Dirnt fan, but let’s be honest the Fender model he has is waaay too expensive and can be kinda heavy. I also have 2 other P’s so spending over £1k on the Fender version which ultimately will probably sound the same seems a bit crazy. This came up on the classifieds on here at a decent price, it needs some work on the neck cos you can feel a scratch and small dent on it, the pots aren’t matched either and feel all wrong, and the knobs aren’t right either. Also, and I know this will be controversial, but I CANNOT STAND tort pick guards. It has to go and be replaced with a black one (I have been tempted by other colours though……). The craziest thing about this is that it is bizarrely light. I measured it on some accurate scales and it’s 7.1lbz. My Fender P is 9.1lbs and that never bothered me so this feels like something is missing from it. Honestly I was tapping it to see if it was hollow! I might even sand the Squire decal off and put a Telecaster decal on. I’ll leave the Squire serial number on. Apparently it has different pickups on it to sound more like maybe a 1960 P - I’ll just leave them on and if they sound good then that’s perfect! As I set it up I’ll keep you all updated. (the fretboard is a lovely colour btw)

Bass arrived yesterday. I didn't have much time to play with it last night (early night in preparation for today's early radiotherapy appointment), but first impressions are good. Straight out of the box, it seemed to be set up well, perhaps too well, very little relief in the neck - almost dead flat, and pretty low action, and almost in tune! I immediately noticed the tightness and tone of the B string, even before plugging it in - this boded well. Plugged it into my little Blackstar practice amp, switched the bass to passive mode and heard a nice full range tone without any of the mud of my EHB's Bartolini's, and more top end. Switching to active mode sounded pretty much the same, with everything set flat. The EQ centres seem well chosen - the bass knob in particular adds girth without adding subby boom. I noticed a little buzz at the third fret and grabbed a fret rocker. There are indeed a couple of high frets low down, but I'm not totally surprised at this price point - my more expensive EHB has high frets too. But I'm hoping I can mitigate this by introducing a little more relief and setting the action to my preferences before I think about a fret level. The neck pickup looks a little low, too and needs balancing, but I also need to match the volume to my G&L JB2, my main gigging bass. But I'm going to wait until the weekend before addressing any of this, to give the bass time to acclimatise. I haven't tried it on a strap yet, but it appears to balance well when I held it by the top strap button. I'm not sure about the fret markers. Whilst they aren't as bad as the EHB markers, they are a little difficult to see, but that could just be my preferences. Oh, one last thing. The tuners are a bit stiff and sticky, but I see there's a solution available by adding some small bearings But I have to say, so far, so good. The small issues I have found so far are not surprising at this price point and straightforward enough to remedy.

He should put something inside the gap to avoid the risk of trapping your hand if the strings break. Perhaps a block of wood. Maybe some more wood surrounding that block of wood attaching to the entire frame of the body to keep it stable. You could then paint that wood in all sorts of cool colours and finishes, and use different types of wood to get different tones.

Had a great rehearsal with the classic rock band this evening. Keyboard player has just got himself a new keyboard and it’s really added to the sound. Went through the below and all went well.

Well, actually no, and that is where a misunderstanding as how LLMs work, which is quite common really. I am a software engineer, and where I don't have to worry too much about the future as I will probably be dead within the decade, you can't just generate code at the touch of a button (and actually there is no button, it is just autocomplete). An LLM is very good as 'boiler plate' code, stuff you do over an over again, there is a lot of it, and it is good that it farms that out, so it does save time. However, an LLM as discussed here has no inteligence, it just has things it has copied from somewhere else. Its job isn't to solve a problem, its job is to show you 'what a solution to this problem would look like', and that is a huge difference. It is a language process, not a techical process. It doesn't understand the problem, just the overall look of the problem, which is why it is good at language and music. "What would a country song about a clam sound like" is an appearance issue, it doesn't have to know about what a clam is, or how it feels about anything, or why it cares about its truck breaking down or its dog dying. When I first used it it made a complex function which seemed perfectly to do what I asked. When I looked closer I realised it would come out with the wrong results, but it is very hard to spot, and AI can't fix it because it doesn't understand how it works, just how it should look. Its shown really clearly in the 'how many rs in a raspberry' problem that chat GPT had. AI isn't writing about something, it is writing something that it thinks a song should sound like, and for 95% of music that is enough, and it probably will kill a lot of music just because people won't be able to have it as an income, because for a lot of people that sort of music is enough, meaning ultimately music will go back to a niche hobby, like it was in the past, somthing people did for themselves, not for profit, like the guy on the piano in a pub.

Holes should be pilot drilled, to the correct depth, otherwise the screw will bottom out and you will round out the screw head. Pilot Drill, correct fitting screw driver, and a bit of hand soap (block) or candle wax on the screw threads. Lots of holes.. so a job not to ne rushed Mark the hoes thru the achie head plate with a scriber or nail I use a hand pinion wirly drill and slow and steady as to clear the hole and not break the drill bit. Good Luck

Tone air, it's the newest thing.

I can understand not liking a guitar tone. (Taste is subjective, and all that.) I realise some people feel like they need to share this dislike in a short comment. Then there is Gazz. I do not know Gazz personally, but he felt the need to respond to a little 45-second video at some length: He goes on...dare I say my atrocious tone seems to have offended him quite personally... Apparently, I'm doing absolutely everything wrong..."but what [does he] know??", he humbly ventures... Ah, wait, there it is: Did Gazz actually want to offer his useful (read: unsolicited) advice, or did he just want an opening to brag about his collection of amps? (And isn't it funny how some people think that they can foghorn the most patronising screed at you, but as long as they say "don't take it as an insult," everything's A-OK?)

Absolutely agree with your sentiment and we will be covering artists and gear across all genre so that there is something in there for everyone. Come and chat to me at the show and let me know who you would like to see in there and we will do our very best.

Nope.....price @ thonamm are inc of VAT+Duty "The total price we quote you includes the relevant local VAT rate for that country and no more taxes or import duties are necessary." https://www.thomannmusic.com/faq_question_am_i_liable_for_import_tax.html Im guessing Andtertons are doing the "previously listed at" trick so they can make it look like your saving money after they adjust the price at launch...a very common retail con....

He was also a huge Be Bop Deluxe fan and tracked down, and bought, the white Hoyer Les Paul on the back cover of Axe Victim.

For placing the holes in the right place, I drop the tuners in to the headstock. Those with a nut on the front are helpful as you can secure the keys in the final position, but those that don't, like 'fender' keys, I use tape to hold in the exact postion I want the keys to sit - ensuring they are level, straight etc etc. Then I use a fat "nib" pencil that fills the tuning key screw hole nicely to ensure the dot I am marking is centred. Then I follow the same approach as above. Oh and make sure the headstock is flat and parallel to the level surface you are working on, which isn't easy with an angled back headstock, but it will help make sure the drill holes are straight. For drilling pilot holes, I measure the screw thread depth against the drill bit and pop a little tape around the drill bit to tell me when to stop drilling, so I dont go too deep! I haven't drilled through a headstock yet but I've seen it happen.

I think there's some nuance that's being missed here. Trained neural nets absolutely have an application in all sorts of areas, and tools that use this technology are often capable of doing things that were previously unachievable - I'm most familiar with the audio world (see stem splitting, reverb matching, etc) but we can lump in things like image uprezzing, spotting cancer, etc. There is no "intelligence" at work here, it's very effective pattern recognition. These tools have undoubtedly made my job easier, and the results I provide to my clients are better as a result. I also very much view keeping up with the latest and greatest tools (assuming they are, in fact, the greatest, rather than marketing hype) as worthwhile professional development. Generative AI, however, is a wholesale power grab of creative outputs by corporate forces (the creative inputs were provided by anyone who's imagery, writing, music or audio were part of their training data, whether they consented to that usage or not). To me that is very different from a "tool" - it's handing over the reins of creative production to the rentier class. Who stands to capture the value of this? There are reasons to be optimistic, however: Most creative people want to work with other creative people. I respect talent, and the creative achievements of my colleagues are what make it worthwhile. So I think the creative industries will persist in a different (perhaps diminished) form. Part of adapting to the new reality will be forming networks of likeminded professionals. Despite the constant noise that AI is going to take over everything, some more-intelligent-than-me computer science types believe we're already at the point where models won't get much "better" at stuff. There simply isn't the volume of training data available, or the cost of accessing and processing that data is too high. There future may well be in faster, more efficient, more targeted models that swing back to special purpose tools. AI generated output is rapidly becoming a marker of low effort and therefore low value of the resulting product. Or do you buy all those scammy lifehack products on AI generated YouTube prerolls? Even with gen AI not everyone can be an effective art director. We're due a massive market correction once the circular accounting between the AI pushers and Nvidia reaches critical mass. As well as wiping off a huge chunk off everyone's stock/pension portfolio, it will be the morning after the night before for the AI optimists.

I bought my first Panda FI Mk1 off a fellow BC'er back in 2018 - he and I have stayed mates ever since meeting up at a service station in time honoured fashion to buy/sell the goods! But I never quite gelled with that or the subsequent several later versions I bought and gave up on! I always thought that this could be a great product (and fed my thoughts back to Peter) as and when: - they improved the tracking (done - v4) - came out with a more compact pedalboard friendly model (done - v4 VIP) - made this user friendly for bassists who wanted some great usable sounds out of the box and allowed for better on-board editing - looks they've cracked that with v4.5 The MXR Synth provides much of that too (albeit 8 out of the box 'song' presets, vs 22 'song' on the FI) and has demonstrated the level of demand for the above features. Why choose the FI v4 over the MXR bass synth? Well for an extra £20 the FI v4 provides: a more capable synth engine (including FM synthesis); a better display; many more presets; midi capability; and the ability to deep dive with a bespoke computer editor for those who would like to have that option. Feels like a no-brainer to me! And it's great to be able to support a home-grown product championed by one of our own. VIP just ordered 😊

I'm an unreformed fiddler, nothing I ever do get's finished. I always have mods I want to try. In this case I thnk you could set a limit/tolerace of 2% of cab volume and be perfectly safe and maybe 10% would be liveable with. There's always more mods I want to add so I'm finding publishing designs and seeing them live on as a stable design a new experience. I decided early on that designs had to be built and tested before publishing and nowadays I have to refer back to my own designs on BassChat to answer questions

Hi Dave, The reality is that lots of people still value a printed mag (including me) I've spent a lifetime making magazines and they are still so important for so many people - print will never die! Unlike the last owner of Bass Guitar Magazine we can operate on much smaller margins and hopefully we can make this work.

You don't get these problems at Fairport Convention gigs. Though if you are sat at the back you can be blinded by the lights reflecting of the sea of grey hair in front of you.

I had been saving up for my one bass to rule them all. I got on the train with all my specs sorted to go and comission my very own J5. No way was I going to have LEDs. So vulgar. So useless. When asked if I wanted side LEDs I could not say yes fast enough.

Hi all, This was my bass, absolutely gutted that it went missing. Hopefully we can get enough eyes on it can be found. Mark has been amazing throughout the experience and really helpful as anyone who's worked with or ordered from him will testify. Thanks again all!

Hmmm...not really. You tend to pull the cover from one side - at the most breaking the pull of two magnets as one half of the hatch lifts up with the other two acting like a hinge. But, even with that said, they are surprisingly powerful for such teeny things. 👍

Definitely go via music store as you won’t get any nasty tax surprises.

@Woodinblack's post really nails where both danger and opportunity lie in industries where LLMs and other gen AI are taking hold. In some ways humans are a lot like LLMs - we use prior experience to apply a quick solution to a novel situation, and it's often "correct enough" to be effective. But our biases - our personal data sets - can misguide us. We're also intrinsically lazy (energy efficient, in my case) so we will tend to take the easily available shortcut if one is available. Good enough is good enough. The key then is to continue to cultivate the skills that an LLM can't replicate: programming needs critical and logical thinking, the ability to incrementally problem solve (<-- non-programmers take), so we will still certainly need those with a programmers skill set. The AI takeover has a feeling of inevitability because we can't see past the neoliberal world we've all been living in for the past 50 years or so. It's catnip for the >=management class because the "logic" that market forces and efficiencies must rule over everything else is unquestioned. This is why it's hard for me to separate generative AI from the larger picture of political economy.

Nonsense, it's the tonewood neck, stainless frets, and the tonemetal skeleton of the guitar body. And the toneair between the tonemagnet tailpiece and the tonemagnet "bridge".

Did he not explain what a time amp is? If it's a device for making your day longer, I might be interested in one but I'd need to check in with Gazz to see if I should get one with valves and what modulation goes best with it. If you do see him, pass on my regards and tell him I said, "See you next Tuesday, Gazz."

Nah, Colin Furze would have attached a flamethrower to it. Nowhere near dangerous enough as it is.

I was going to just order a black pick guard but I’ve just seen this vintage mint green colour with a wide bevel, this could work couldn’t it?

I've been an Ashdown fan for many years. I love their customer relations, I love the visual side of their amps, I love the philosophy of their creations - although their ideas are not always intuitive. I had one of first hundred of Little Bastard 30, although I've decided to mod it and later let it go to get my first real vintage bass I missed being part of the family. I briefly had ABM300, which I stupidly sold. Recently I got myself a little present ABM 400 NEO was briefly made around 2014, I guess in quite limited quantity by Ashdown UK Custom Shop. It is equipped with EVO III Preamp and class-D power amp combined in full size rack mountable case with around 8,5 kg of weight.

I think the Acorn Amps “Epstein didn’t kill himself fuzz” trumps them all. See what i did there? 😁 🤦

I'm increasingly teaching ethics and AI in a University. I use music as quite a good example. We need to see AI as a tool, and like any tool it can make some work more efficient, but we must not mistake quantity with quality. Generative AI in particular can create large quantities of music etc. very rapidly, but that doesn't mean it is any good. Conversly, in the right hands, AI can help creators generate really high quality work - for me the main benefit of AI in music is more in recording/remastering than composing (for instance). There's plenty of aphorisms about this but I quite like: "Those who are carried to a goal should not think they have reached it" regarding AI - it's one I use with my students and coursework!

Thanks for the clarification. I shall stop trying to calculate the difference in volume caused by the port wall increasing from 2mm to 12mm! David

Very interested in this, an actual magazine much better than online for me.

A MK Series2 was my first decent bass back in the early 90s and for about 12 years it was my only bass. So it kind of set the standard for what felt comfortable, wide bodied basses fit my frame well.

Wow. Great stuff Mark. I'll look out for it and hope it goes well pal

Airbourne in Frome tonight. An hour and a half of big dumb riffs and rock & roll stupidity and a really great crowd. Even Thatcher couldn't shut down that pit! Im battered. Superb

Anyone needing a fat fingers mod, you can get these from thonk and they work great. You can either honour the original colour scheme or go rogue, your choice!

I prefer a bit more helium in my tone air, for the high frequency response 😂

That's a great question and I had to think about the answer. Part of this is that I rely on experience, I've spent a lot of time building and modifying cabs. When I build pairs of cabs I'll often try modifications on one cab and then A/B them next to each other so you do get an instinct about small changes The first thing is that the efffects are slight. First of all most of the 'sound' of the speakers is what goes on above 200Hz and the box modelling is about the response of the true low end below that frequency. The other David has tried the cab out as a sealed cab andit 'works' and it probably sounds OK, even though he will get 3db of boost of the low end with a port plus a lower roll of frequency. Secondly the calculations give incredibly percise answers but in real life it's a bit messier. Manufacturing tolerances mean measured speakers vary and the published figures I use can't always be trusted. Thre are always air losses from a cab which are allowed for in the calculations but I use a 'standard' value of Ql=0.7 which is middle of the bell curve. Importantly I then build the cab so ay significant error would show up. I'ver no control over how accurately people build the cab so calculating port sizes to 3 decimal places doesn't make much sense. You can build the cab successfully even if you make small mistakes, which should be reassuring Anyway I've looked at the responses with the same tuning and the box sizes increased and decreased by 10% but tuned to the same frequency. This is the box you are all building with the Fane in blue. You can see that increasing the cab by 10% (red) gives you a bit more bass but reducing the cab 10% makes a smaller difference. The red trace gives 1db extra at 60Hz and you'd hear that with the cabs next to each other but only just. You wouldn't be able to detect the difference with the smaller cab in this case. This is a 2l shift in volume and the increase in port size is only 0.2l so insignificant. It looks like my instincts were good in this case, Phew

Back in the day when they did the 'heavy' version of Matty Groves it could be a bit wild.