Leaderboard

It was our first time at the 1912 in Sileby and what a great sounding room, with a nice vibe too. They had a low stage in the corner with plenty of room to fit a band on, and more importantly plenty of power sockets in good working order (which makes a change!). The venue also put some effort into advertising the event. We had a room full, but probably 90% were our regular followers. I'd have hoped for a few more locals. With the room sounding so good it probably lifted our performance a little more than normal too. We started off with a bit of rock and prog, but for the last set got much more dancy and filled the floor. We had a great night and lots of compliments. Oh, I nearly forgot to mention. The guitarist brought along his old 70s strat which was his sole guitar when we were all poor in the 80s and only had one guitar each. We played together for about 10 years, him on his strat and me on my Aria SB-1000. Well tonight, after much anticipation, he said it left him cold. He struggled to get it to sing and ended up playing the Vintage (brand) thinline tele he'd brought as a spare. He thinks maybe he's just no longer a strat guy, although I did mention he hadn't got the old Marshall combo he used to lug around. At least he still loves the guitar I built for him - a super-lightweight LP Junior double cut copy with twin P90s 😁 And look, the lights change colour 😂

Playing ten miles out of Bournemouth in Ringwood. We (Otis Jay BluesBand) are beginning to hit our stride now with our new girl, and the social media reviews have been kind. Played my Sandberg VM4 through Galien Krueger MB200 and Barefaced One10. Perfectly adequate for the acoustics, though I did need active bass boost for a couple of numbers. Notable milestone - played our first band original last night, which was happily video’d by an audience member. Slight gripe - 34 paying punters is probably our lowest attendance at the venue (we split ticket money 50-50). Are people finding the new year hangover is now lasting through February? Three gigs in March, so here’s hoping things pick up a bit. The band are now ignoring my request to wear dark colours (like proper blues people) so I’m retaliating with the b/w pic!

Great venue for us last night with BLOCKBUSTARZ at The Ferry in Glasgow. Our first time there. The original band that was booked had to cancel and asked if we could fill in for them. Initially said no as they get paid half off what we normally charge. Venue got in touch and we settled on a compromise of a decent fee plus free food and first drink. Venue set aside a table for 6 just off the bar area which was the highlight for me. It was good sitting down for a meal and a blether with my bandmates. All very civilised. Food was excellent too. Anyways back to the gig. Load in 3pm sound check to be completed for 5pm to allow the support band time to do theirs. We set up and finished sound check by 4:30pm. Have to say the SE Stewart from Greenroom Studios in Glasgow was exceptionally good and even told the drummer to retune his snare and how to set the snare for optimum effect as drums sit in an alcove type thing below the upper deck of what was the old Renfrew Ferry. He really was top notch and sound both on stage and off was probably the best i've ever had. I could hear everything clearly across the stage and thru monitors. A perfect balance. Support band was GlasQuo who were all good guys too and easy to work with. Nice listening to a bit of Quo. Bass player was using my rig altho the bass was DI'd to desk and split to my amp as a stage monitor only. Normally i wouldn't do that but the guy replicated my on stage sound to FOH so all good. We don't normally play with support acts because of our costumes and getting ready for the show takes 30mins. Again SE sorted out the full stage when they finished. Two drum kits on stage so that meant dismantle one and pull our drummers kit forward to the front. Fair bit of work but he did a fantastic seemless change-over for us. This guy really knows what he's doing. He literally made our life so easy on the night. Huge respect where deserved. Gig went exceptionally well only a few mistooks (not by me of course 😉) Originally asked to do 2x45min sets or extend it if we need to depending on how change-over went. We opted to play right thru rather than take a break for a costume change from 10:15pm to 11:45pm but we had to cut a few songs out to fit it all in. SE told us we were first class and that the owners were very impressed by us and expect to ask us back. He said even the staff thought it was a great night and apparently they mentioned that the band were all very nice, pleasant and helpful with them. Fun taking the gear out at night as tide was out a bit and ramp was quite steep. Big downside was the parking in Glasgow. We could park on the esplanade area at The Ferry only to unload for approx 20-30 mins however on street parking only allows for max 2hrs stay then you need to move outside that zone so we stretched the venue parking to 4pm and then parked across from the venue on a side street. On street parking was £1:80 /15mins so we found a car park that was only £3/hr so £6 for 2hrs then free street parking after 6pm. Its only £10/day in the private car park so that's not too bad and that's what i'll do next time. Come April this year on street parking restriction will change from 6pm to 10pm so street parking won't be an option if we return as we would need to move the cars every 2 hrs until 10pm. Its a bit of a joke and not good for the staff that work there. The council are also planning to double the fee for parking. This could kill off the many city centre venues that host live music. Nice we 1hr drive home with clear motorways and very little traffic. Usual gear :- Sandberg VM4 with MarloweDK back up. Shure wireless, Keeley Bassist comp, Handbox WB-100, BF 212 cab, Platform boots being the footwear for the night. SE sent me some pics he took. Dave

What a sequence of events, but to cut it all short played Three Compasses in Clydach with just one, dep, guitarist. He'd done a lot of prep so only two big cockups... used a capo on the wrong song (I eventually figured out my bass hadn't gone flat and played up a semitone), and left out the key changes in one song where we play a different version. Great pub venue with playable(apparently!) Instruments on the walls, nice stage area, lights and excellent house pa so ours stayed in the van. My rig boomed a lot (near a corner plus hollow wooden stage) until I cut bass and boosted top and middle. Appreciative audience with some dancing, all a bit chaotic but great fun.

Last night, played with Nine Lives at the Balaclava in Fraserburgh. Quite an odd night of two halves. First half was pretty busy and we had some dancers up. Second half got a bit quieter, and everyone seemed more reserved, although I did note some head nodding and singing along. So we got finished, and then, to my surprise given the relative tumbleweed which was the second half, got 4 different folk say to me how much they enjoyed the gig, we were amazing etc. One fellow bass player too praising my performance - always nice to have one's ego fluffed a little! Gear was Ibanez ATK200 then G&L L-1000 into the usual cubular black and yellow trouser flappers.

Some of you may recall that I bought a 1973 Rick 4000-to-4001 conversion from Gunnar of this parish (aka @Studio GC) a few years back. It was cool AF, mojo'd to heck (with Crue carved crudely into the top) and seriously modded. I ended up selling it on eBay to an enthusiast who wanted to convert it back to a 4000. Well, it eventually came up for sale in 2026 and I have snaffled it back. The seller did a superb restoration job on it (only missing the original wavy Grover tuners). The work he did included: adding new old stock pickguard, original pots and pickup, Hipshot USA machineheads, filling in and making good the extensive additional routing under the pickguard, and repairing the paintwork to remove Crue and to cover the newly fixed area under the pickguard.

Bit of a bitter sweet one for Glam Viva last night at a very nice local private club. We’d played this venue back last November and one of the audience requested we play the same venue for her birthday in February. This was booked, sadly she died over Christmas from a massive stroke. The family asked if we would go ahead with it as a tribute to her memory. We were unsure but it turned into a massive party with lots of happy revellers and even a nice fund raiser for a local animal shelter. The buffet was top notch too which pleased our drummer no end. Thats it for a couple of weeks as next weeks gig has been cancelled through lack of ticket sales….we’ve all agreed we won’t take anymore gigs where the organisers are relying on ticket sales to fund.

Full house at a relatively local club for us. Shotton Comrades last night, easy load in, great crowd too 👌🏼 Zoom B2 four is working well with my simple two settings - basically it's an uncoloured Vigier tone with compressor only, and identical compressor and chorus for any widdly bits 😆 my Cliff Bordwell fretless just goes straight into the desk.

Well, it’s here… came home this lunch time and discovered that they’d delivered it early - fortunately they’d stashed it behind our bins - not taken it back to the depot. Phew. I have to say that I love it. It looks and sounds great and, of course, the feel of the neck is wonderful. It’s the all-paulownia version but none the worse for that. The sound is in just the Jazz territory that I like with bounce and spring in all the right frequency ranges. Lovely. I’ll be using it at church tomorrow evening and then again at the Weekly Monday Jam on Monday so I will report back on the sound… but I do not expect to be disappointed. Oh yeah… and the number you all want to know… 2.8kg / 6.2lbs which is daft but it still feels great on a suede backed leather strap. No neck dive discernible at all. Love it so far!

Well this is nice, I get to report a new bass acquisition without fear of Tier 1 infraction. This Sandberg California TT4 SuperLight arrived today and is LOVELY!!! Great active Jazz sound and only weights 2.8kg / 6.2lbs too. I ordered it back at the end of August so I understand that means it’s not in scope for this year’s challenge. Yay!!!

I did my first gig with the covers band last night at The Whitmore Tap, Clifton/Redland, Bristol. It was quite stressful overall especially being the first time with a very established band. The footprint was so small and the layout so weird, we didn't have space for monitors, lights or my mic stand. I had my pedalboard on my amp and had to stand still to not hit walls, drummer and 2nd guitarist with the headstock. The pub has waist-high wooden screens that form booths and the sound was muffled everywhere. The load in/out was horrible too. No parking, yellow lines everywhere. The radiator behind us was red hot and didn't seem to respond to the valve adjustments we made. I was sweating and my fingers were slipping, more than you'd expect for a February pub gig. I told Guitarist 1 that he'd have EQ issues with his cab in a corner and guess what? No one seemed to know what time we were supposed to start, we had conflicting info from the agent/promoter and the pub and we went on in the end at 19:30. Finished up about 22:10 with a short break. 33 songs in total. That's as many as I've ever played I reckon. The punters were annoyingly all over us and wanted a go on the drums, guitar, they wanted selfies with the band, they thought it ridiculous that we don't do random requests. And of course they all stood in our way when we were packing up and unloading to the cars. It was like a greatest hits of pub gig niggles rolled into one! There were some tyre-kicking wedding enquiries that might or might not lead to decent function money but who knows? One bloke told me that my bass was the nicest Warwick he'd ever seen. Second time that's happened in the last 6 months. If you know, you know 😉. I kept my cool, did my job and went home only to find the road for last 3 miles of it was closed and I had to make a 9 mile diversion up the M5 to get home. Considering everything, I think we did well. If you can deliver the goods under those conditions, you're doing alright.

How it used to look, when I sold it:

Definitely the above, but remember although hitting the right note at the right time is best, hitting the wrong note, but at the right time is often quite acceptable 🎶😁

Well - this is interesting. Firstly, 'Custom' was a Netherlands importer brand, I think for a specific retailer - somebody on one of the Facebook MIJ guitars groups found the name but it's slipped my mind, annoyingly. They sourced from a number of different manufacturers including Moridaira, Matsumoku & Chushin - so they probably just bought in whatever their supplier had, rather than contracting to specific manufacturers. Customs turn up in the UK pretty regularly, very often in Scotland, which has led to some speculation a Scottish retailer was bringing excess stock over from the Netherlands - no evidence as yet but no-one would be surprised if it turned out to be the very entrepreneurial Jimmy Grant, who had Glasgow & Edinburgh Grant Music shops, his own range of Grant guitars (with UK distribution) & was also UK importer/distributor for Canadian hand-made Odyssey guitars & basses in the 70s & 80s. As for the bass itself - that's really interesting - and this is why: Had this back in 2011, and I could never pin down what it was. This had a plain, oddly home-made looking neckplate & the body was a not-quite right P shape. Came with no hardware, and I pretty much concluded it was likely European, not MIJ, based on the Eko-esque inlay patterns. I have never seen the same neck before today. I think the finish had been stripped under the rattlecan black & it had no hardware or electronics to help ID it - but seeing @Shabbs's pics I'm confident it's the same bass. No logo on mine, the head having been stripped & re-finished, probably with Ronseal! I'll speculate & say this might have come from an organisation called Matsumoto Gakki Seizou Kumiai, the Matsumoto City instrument manufacturers' co-operative. They bought in bodies, necks, electronics & parts from various small manufacturers & assembled instruments from an order-book system, where a customer would choose necks, bodies & parts, and instruments would be built up & branded to their specifications.

For all the oldies like me who were playing before electronic tuners were widespread, how did you used to tune your bass and ensure all the band were in tune? I used to use an A440 tuning fork; I'd whack it in my knee and hold it over the pickup so it comes through the amp, and play a 12th fret harmonic on the A string, listening for the 'beats' to stop as I turned the A string's machine head. Then once the A string was tuned I'd play the 5th fret harmonic on the E string and the 7th fret harmonic of the A string and similarly listen for the beating to stop as I turned the E string's machine head. Then I tune the D & G strings similarly with 5th and 7th fret harmonics. Then I'd give the guitarist an E or A 12th fret harmonic for him to tune in a similar way. When there was a keyboard player it was even worse. It was a hassle, sometimes took a long time, and often a bit hit & miss — especially when changing strings. My modern tuners (TC Unitune & Boss TU-3W) make it a lot easier and quicker and it is easy to forget that classic 60s & 70s records were probably recorded with the instruments tuned like this. The rolling stones (or their road crew) used to use a Conn tube strobe unit to tune up backstage - which is currently for sale on reverb.

The gas monster has been satisfied. For more info and gushing see: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/show-me-your-compact-pedalboard-setup.891222/page-563#post-29490999 But in short I’ve finally found what I’ve been searching for, I’ll still be using the Anagram for most things but there is a core setup I’ve been chasing that I’d use in the studio or on a gig where there was a competent soundman and provided IEMs. This board is that, aspirational in terms of the gigs it would be used on but perfect tonally and something that if I only use at home I’ll be fine with. One of the issues with digital is I feel you still need a good analog (pun intended) to make sure you’re not drifting to close to crap, an issue that’s easily possible when you have a unit that can do anything. Maybe I’ll capture what I’ve got going on here, maybe I’ll add in the Camden and capture all that, but one rig is plug and play and the other is plug and play after about 5 hours of programming and comparisons. Anyway enjoy the board with 3 xlr’s and 1 effect 🙃

Recently sold both of my Berg 2x12s and went for the Schroeder 410L. Thinking the mid nature of this cab will suit the DB750 better. The DBX I put in the rack a few hours before last night’s gig. Just used the setting suggested on the manual and it works a treat.

The mere fact that he’s even asking this question shows he isn’t a secret guitarist the use of grammar and punctuation are also strong indications 👍

Id definitely recommend in person lessons. On line lessons are fine but you'll get no feedback at all. You need someone to tell you if you're technique is a bit off. The online lessons also don't put enough emphasis on timing and because bass is a rhythm instrument, timing is extremely important. Bad timing can make a good band sound terrible.

This is my 1980 Wal Pro 2E, it had been sat in its case for the last god knows how many years in need of a good going over. The pots were knackered, the jack socket was shot to bits, it was basically unusable but I had other working basses and so it wasn't a priority. Eventually I came to my senses and gave it to Paul at Electric Wood to do his magic. I was expecting it to take ages, which I was fine with, but he turned it around in only a couple of months and then apologised for taking so long . He ended up doing a whole list of other stuff that I hadn't realised needed doing, but to his credit he stuck to his original quote. And oh my god, it sounds incredible -- I'd forgotten just how good. It'll be coming with me to the various Bashes this year, so you can see for yourself. And it'll be getting its first gig for at least 20 years at the end of this month, at a dementia research benefit with the ska band.

A new venue for us last night, Ruskins Bar in Kendal. A nice music bar in the heart of town, eerily quite at 9pm, but we waited until 9.30pm to start and the place filled up nicely, with lots of people dancing by the end. We used the house PA, which apparently isn't considered to be all that great, but we made it work pretty well for us. They want us back later in the year, and the fee will go up too! I really could have used the 3x10 last night, but I was travelling with the drummer and compromised because of space in the car. It was nice to meet Ian ( @Pirellithecat ) who travelled an hour down from Ulpha to see us. Cheers! Rob

Glad you did the show @martthebass nice thing to do no matter how difficult it was to play there. Huge respect guys. Dave

I tried Scott's Bass Lessons. Didn't get on with them at all. I found them quite uninspiring and too much based around jazz and blues music. The biggest problem was the lack of any feedback until I got in a room with other musicians who were honest enough to tell me that my timing sucked

Youre misunderstanding- I was joking that you must be a bass player mentally because you can do that stuff. Your average guitarist would not analyze their goal/progress in this way. “It’s loud” and “where’s the fuzz pedal?” Being the extent of must of their musings.

Restored Ric 4000 that I have reacquired The story behind it

What a great name for a tribute band! 😆

A bassist who plays a simple part perfectly in time is far better than one who plays a complex part with sloppy timing. Understanding when to stay simple and when to go for it is also an important skill and a skill no guitarist has.

Yes, thats called jazz get some in person lessons to get your basic technique right. Bad habits can cause problems further on down the road

You say that as if it's a bad thing...

Something a little jazzy for a change, inspired by BlueNote Organ jazz, a bit of Wes Montgomery and possibly Pink Floyd and Pat Metheny for good measure. Many thanks to Phil Beavis for the Hammond Organ part, really made it, for me!

I own the van and the PA. I've got them by the nadgers!!

For me it was by ear to my fave album - get the G in tune then match the rest. I found it easier with the G than the lower notes back then.

What you want to play will also determine whats most important to learn. If you want to play motown, there's no point learning to use a pick or if you only want to play covers then you won't need much theory or if you want to play funk you won't need to learn to change strings.

Your female vocalist in black is the spitting image of Geri Halliwell.

I love Sir Horace, but 20k is crazy money, eSpecially for a bass he got rid of.

GH I’d full of quirky stuff. If you’re considering bidding I’d encourage you to get a full condition report or (even better) to go and visit. The chap their (Luke) is really nice and you get a lot of opportunities to see the items, unless they’re super expensive stuff like the 50s or 60s Strats that are locked away. Sometimes the descriptions aren’t always incredibly accurate. I bought one bass there described as in excellent condition with lots of corrosion. I’d been to see it so I knew what I was buying. When you’re dealing with thousands of items (which they do) it’s understandable and it’s not a criticism.

There are some interesting basses if you scroll through their full list. https://auctions.gardinerhoulgate.co.uk/catalogue/lot/135be4c15f8b071ca793be3fc3888e73/63b778f7668dabe928d3800924a99077/the-guitar-sale-four-day-auction-lot-278/ I'd never play that one, but it has a certain quaint charm. And this is definitely a stage bass: https://auctions.gardinerhoulgate.co.uk/catalogue/lot/a68be14b572e9e7993cfb63bb1dc5076/63b778f7668dabe928d3800924a99077/the-guitar-sale-four-day-auction-lot-267/

Then maybe a nice pre and a pickup, have it refinished and...

https://on.soundcloud.com/dodnjMxBAi7P8xpfqu Well, it’s been a few months… And I still can’t do the link thing. Anyhow - a little ditty. Not sure why I chose this; think the breakdown in the middle represents the painting part, the higher paced ending, just the freedom of the newly painted cow… That’s about the most tenuous explanation of what it means… Guild Baritone 8 string Fender baritone Strat Gibson Les Paul Gibson Ripper Garageband. “The Life Of A Cow Painter”