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There's playing 16th notes..... and then there's playing them with groove and finesse. The difference is audible.... That's the reason why the likes of Billy Sheehan sing the praises of Michael Anthony, Cliff Williams etc...

Paul Chuckle looking well after the loss of Barry.

I'll never part with my 2006 AVRI Precision. I received it as a leaving gift from the church where I had been the minister for 16 years. The pic is of the bass when she was brand new.

I don't know. Does Daryl Jones playing with the Stones count? IMO playing simple lines or 16ths on the root isn't playing beneath your ability as long as you are playing to the song. You can be the best player ever but if you're not playing to the song you're doing it wrong. Checkout James Jamerson playing Dancing In The Street and Larry Graham playing Everyday People. I see young bassists playing the pubs and clubs. They've just come out of Uni, with a music degree, and they can play stuff old guys like me couldn't even dream of, but put them in a band and they usually overplay. They can play that sh!t and nothing is going to stop them throwing in every last note they learned.

To replace the Helix:

I’ve had a look at it today. It was immediately apparent what the issue was. One leg of the cap was touching the wiper of the tone pot. I just gently moved the cap a bit and moved the leg away from the pot lugs. I did re-do that ground on the back of the pot, and I shortened and tidied up that added ground to the jack. All back together now with a new set of flats on it. Everything is as it should be now. Thanks for the input chaps. Rob

I had the misfortune years ago to experience a strange episode. We were playing in a local bar which had a stage that was only about eight inches high. Enough to raise you above most punters heads. I had just split up with a girl who worked for this delivery company. The family that owned the delivery company were, well, rough shall we say? We were playing away and this girl from said family stood on the stage with her back to me facing the pub. There was hardly any room and I was playing and singing with this girls head about six inches from my mic. Completely blocking me from the audience. Obviously this was meant to wind me up as it was an aggressive move but I had no clue as to how to deal with this. The bouncer came up and gestured for her to get down. She did and as soon as he left she got back up. If it had been a guy it would have been an easier situation but as it was a girl who was hard as f***k and built like a man my coolness left me and I was powerless to act. I just kept playing and singing to the back of her head. Luckily after a while of this she tired of this game and left. I can't think why I was targeted as my ex had finished with ME and I had not caused any problems. On the bright side I don't think their business is going anymore. 😃

On the subject of shorts scale ray-alikes, this review has just gone live: I really enjoyed this one. Quirky, fun and a bit different! Please sub to my channel too

Another lengthy story - this time about my stint in a proper, leather trouser wearin', rockin' band. It was a Tuesday night and probably drizzling outside. Not that we would have known as our lock-up was untroubled by natural light…or ventilation. But we liked it that way. We were halfway through one of our thinly veiled excuses for a wah-wah freakout, when in runs the owner of the lock up in a state of high excitement. He told us that a band had pulled out of a gig at a local venue that very night, and that there was a big rock audience there just waiting to be entertained. Excited by the opportunity to play to real people, we loaded our gear into the back of the van and set off. We pulled into the venues' car park which was FULL of expensive and opulently chromed motorbikes. While we unloaded the van, we noticed that no one seemed to be having a lot of fun – in fact there was a really sombre air in the place. Wait a minute…why are all these guys wearing black armbands? Yep. It was a wake. We’d been tricked into playing a bikers wake. No wonder the other band had pulled out. Nervously, we set up the gear. Occasionally a glass smashed and voices were raised. This was not going to be a good night for anyone, especially us. I dutifully set up my trusty bass, taking care to put it into dropped D tuning for our first, epic number. Satisfied, I left the stage and hid in the toilet for about 20 minutes. It was in there that I heard the sound of music…not ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ which had been playing on a loop since our arrival, but a Bluesy jam. I left the safety of the urinal, only to find three bikers had ‘borrowed’ our gear and were jamming away in the key of A. All apart from the guy on the bass – sorry, MY bass, who was looking bemused. I jumped on stage and told him the Bass was in a weird tuning and maybe I should carry on from here. I strapped it on and ploughed through ten minutes of aimless twelve bar noodling. After that, we had a few minutes before showtime, so I raced to the bar to get something to steady my nerves. It was there I met the erstwhile Bassist who told me the back story to the gig. Apparently, the wake was for a biker in a local chapter who had come off his bike in ‘dubious circumstances’. ‘See them?’ he pointed at a group in the corner. ‘They reckon he was killed by them’. He pointed to an equally dour looking bunch. ‘But they…’ he pointed to a third group ‘reckon it was them’. He pointed to a fourth. ‘So why aren’t they beating each other up?’ I asked, nervously. ‘Truce’ he replied. ‘Until midnight tonight’. I checked my watch. 10.50pm. Yikes. I quickly shared this information with my bandmates and we ran on stage to get this over with. We waited patiently for ‘Stairway To Heaven’ to finish as we thought we’d be beaten up if we interrupted that. Finally, we caught our breath and lurched into song number one. And so it began…. The first song had a great ‘car crash’ ending where we all played the final chord over and over, finishing off with a highly choreographed KA-BLAMM! accompanied by a heroic, Iggy-esque leap into the air. One person clapped. It was the bloke on the sound desk. We raced through an hours worth of material in 50 minutes. It was at this gig we realised that almost all of our songs had the words ‘Death’, ‘Ghost’ or ‘Murder’ in the lyrics, which were hastily changed on the fly by our quick thinking and terrified lead vocalist. After a few songs, even the sound guy stopped clapping and the only noises we heard between songs were the gritting of teeth, glasses breaking and the odd scuffle…and the occasional muted sob from our drummer. At 11.45, we finished. As the last chord rang around the room, we started yanking out jack leads and tossing equipment into the back of the van. As we were frenziedly throwing stuff off the stage, a large biker collared our drummer. He gesticulated sharply to the aged piano to the right of the stage. ‘Ay mate, d’yow play piano?’ Relieved that it wasn’t a death threat, he smiled and shook his head. ‘Y’ow can’t play the f*ckin’ drums either’ came the less than friendly retort. I have to admit that even under the shadow of doom, that made me laugh…under my breath, of course. By 11.58, we were all in the van, bloodied but unbowed and we raced out of the car park. It was a while before anyone could speak, so the usual post gig autopsy would have to wait until another, less stressful night. About two miles down the road, we passed a fleet of Police cars racing in the opposite direction, blue lights flashing. I checked my watch. The time was 12.04.

You know what, it's very reminiscent of Californication to my ears, but I quite like it, great to see John playing again and he has THAT guitar tone going on still. Nice work by Flea as usual, looks like he's playing the jazz in the video. Much better than I'd feared !!!!

Just the best I have ever owned, each and every thing is spot on.

Robert Trujillo.

John Frusciante is an absolute guitar god. His playing is just on another level to anyone. IMO.

I recall hearing on a podcast a while back that a player like Marcus Miller doesn’t get the majority of his work because of his brilliant chops but because he turns up on time, is nice to people and plays only the notes the song demands.

Many moons ago when I lived in London I had some bass lessons from a guy that could play up a storm on the most complex jazzy fusion stuff. He was light years ahead of me in every respect. He invited me along to see a band he was playing with (at Ronnie Scott’s I think) and I was very surprised by how simple and elegant his playing was in that context. I was expecting a chops-fest, but he didn’t play anything that would have even stretched my ability. It was quite heartening really.

Technical ability and musical ability are very different mistresses.

Pays to do a bit of research before you post. Less chance of making a fool of oneself.

Like a broken pencil. Pointless.

Some of those bassists may have been capable of more but chose not to add more and to instead serve the song in the way they thought best, I.e. by keeping it more simple. It’s not just about being held back by someone else, although I’m sure that does happen.

I have an SRHF, and its pretty fabulous IMO. Quite lightweight and very slim neck, typical Ibanez neck, but that suits me. Mwah with tapewound flats is plentiful, though i have removed my LaBella Deep Talkin Black Nylon flats for some Deep Talkin whites

I was thinking more about the time he boasted about sex with underage girls.

Love this. Her voice is fantastic.

Love how you think he'd sit in a studio and accept the take if it was off in any way. It's his style, man! One of the most iconic styles ever recorded.

Here's the Jag bass I thought I'd try a ply pickguard but I'm going to try and get it roughly the same colour as the fretboard? But I'm not sure if I'm even going to have a pickguard? ....... 👍🏻

Not bad, unfortunately the guitarists lead playing has not improved, his lead work has always sounded disjointed to me with lots of inaccurate string bends.👎

It took a couple of weeks for Bass DIrect to get them - I think they were just added to the next Hipshot order they were getting. Dead easy to fit - just swapping 1 bushing for another. If there is still a bit of room then you can use plumbers tape to fatten it up even more. Job done.

I think inoffensive hits the nail on the head. I'm not a massive chillies fan, but this seems to just plod along nicely and wouldn't make me go out and seek more if it was my first exposure to them. Does Kiedis look a bit Chuck Norris there?

It's begging for something. Fire maybe.

I've heard, and played with, a load of cover bands who claim to play exactly like the originals, and I can safely say that absolutely none of them ever actually have. Some get close (usually the ones who have everything charted), but most are quite a way off. But, you know what? As long as the important parts are there, it's not a problem.

So finally got time to reshuffle and with a bit of Jiggery pockery, managed to fit another pedal on the board. So in the synth loop, after the Frantabit I have put a Copilot Orbit - Frequency Modulated Fuzz- An outrageously cool pedal which has 2 sections and a blend to move between them. On the left is a Gated fuzz, in the vein of a Mastatron/Wooly Mammoth. The right hand side has a VCO/ Ring Modulator, which just makes these mad, synthy laser gun sounds, which can also be controlled with an Expression pedal (must get one, no two). This version appears to have been modded with a clean blend, although I don't use it as not needed.

We did a support for Carter the Unstoppable at the Marquee many years ago... It went down so well that the Marquee offered us our own headline, which was nice, and in the week before Christmas! So we thought we'd make it special, we gathered our painters (who would paint both a backdrop and our white overalls in fluorescent paint - my Wal still has some blobs of it!), rehearsed to within an inch of our lives and booked a "festive surprise" for the audience. After our first number, our singer let slip that the surprise was due to be a stripper, which really got the male members of the audience going - you could virtually see huge clouds of testosterone condensing on the ceiling. 2 songs before the end our singer shouted "who's ready for the stripper?"; the (male bits) of the audience went wild, which he milked for every penny. When the much-hyped stripper finally came on there was a stunned silence, for it was a he... Not only that, he was a rather portly though not unattractive Father Christmas! Luckily the audience coped with the Noel-ish nudity and we finished the set without a single can of piddle thrown at us. But when we came off stage we found the singer's girlfriend snogging Father Christmas in the dressing room!

I used to book bands a number of years ago for our local "traditional" festival; gigs were to take place in a 500 capacity village hall. We had a wide variety of bands ranging from The Wurzels to Wilko Johnson and The Oysterband... The village hall committee were at best, difficult; one year (when Wilko was playing) they chained the kitchen cupboards shut so we couldn't use plates or cutlery! They also insisted on the use of a limiter, set at 90dB C weighted with the mic about 6 feet from the left PA stack. Not only that, but whoever had wired it in had only 2 sockets on stage, both connected to the limiter. This meant max possible on-stage power was just over 6kW,to include PA, backline and lights! This was before the widespread use of LEDs so the lights were more than 3kW on their own! And our PA was about 10kW too - we were believers in a quality sound, not loud but very clean, which meant headroom. However,just an unamplified gentle tap on a bass drum would set the limiter off... So we mentioned the lack of facilities to the hall comm- they said it was a council requirement,and their tame electrician pronounced our PA "too bloody loud, shouldn't need more than 1kW in there!" (for he knew all about these things). We actually asked the council, who said that they didn't require the limiter, as it was a historic thing based on a number of rather noisy and violent raves many years earlier. Comm insisted we used the 2 supplied sockets... So we agreed. However, both the sound engineer and I were electricians; we ran a length of 10mm SWA cable directly from a 63A RCBO in the consumer unit (it had the capacity, and was 3 phase), gave it a test and removed it at the end of the evening. We did this for all 8 years I was involved in the festival without the comm knowing, and without any complaints either from inside or outside the venue!

It's begging for an upside down headstock though, isn't it?!

Pretty much verbatim conversation a while back with the BL: 'What time are we setting off tomorrow Pal?' 'Get round to ours at about three. You can follow my car.' 'Three? What time's the wedding?' 'Normal time; arrive for six to set up, bugger off for the speeches, we're starting the first set about half eight.' 'But...it's in the New Forest?' 'Yeah?' 'And we're in Manchester?' 'Yeah? It's only Stoke way.' 'You don't know where the New Forest is, do you?' 'Stoke way?' 'Look, to get to the New Forest, you drive South till you can see France, then turn left.' 'You're kidding...hang on...' The sound of some worried Googling... 'Oh hellfire...I've not charged for mileage...we can't go in two cars, it'll cost a fortune in petrol. Can we fit it all in yours?' Cue some Olympic-standard Tetris packing at nine the next morning; we got the three of us, the drums, the PA and all stands, the lights, two guitars, two basses and the amps into my car...and people ask why I always drive large estate cars...

If you take a look at his career to date and philanthropic work, you realise the world would be a better place with more Blunts. And fewer Nugents.

If what you want to do is (a) learn to play 5-string and (b) remain married, then this would seem to be the simple option. At that price, you haven't 'spent' £199, you have converted £199 worth of cash into £199 of bass, and you can convert back again at any time.