Leaderboard

Saturday night with Train To Skaville, a wedding at a mahoosive posh house outside Frome. Got there at half six, originally told that guests were arriving at 8 and we'd start at 9... turns out the guests were already there and the speeches were still going on. And then, as we thought we could load in, this 'singing waiter' starts up with half an hour of All Your Favourite Karaoke Hits. Then once we'd set up & checked, we had to wait till the happy couple were ready for their first dance... and wait... and wait... Anyway, we finally started at 9.45. I'd been a bit apprehensive, you know what wedding gigs can be like and a ska band seemed like an odd choice. I needn't have worried. I think it was the bride & groom's second time around, so they and their guests were all of the right age to have been into 80s second-wave ska, and my god they loved it. There were three or four blokes in particular who knew every word of every song and they were dancing like eejits all night, with the exhuberence and energy that only lager & champagne gives you We sounded good and played well, and I drove home with a smile on my face and wedge in my pocket and crawled into bed at 02:30... was asleep by 02:31

Had a great gig at a small festival (Going Feral) yesterday... It was the live debut of my new Royal Blood sound, with my Helix splitting a guitar tone off the bass, and both amplified separately. The sound tech took a bit of convincing to allow 2 feeds, what with us having another bass player and guitar, but it sounded awesome on stage through a Crown stereo power amp into MarkBass 2x10 and 4x10 with the ever-so punkrock Wal. And it probably sounded ok in the audience as well - a couple of blokes came up afterwards and said "you probably don't need the rest of the band!", which I took as a compliment but may have been more "you showin' off bastard you!". Still, quite a few folks came into the barn, which wasn't at all bad as we had the excellent Dead Sheeran playing on the other stage at the same time. And we got a decent bit of pay, for a change... But what made it all the more exciting was that our drummer was due to fly back from his holidays, but his flight was delayed by 5 hours and he arrived direct from Birmingham Airport with minutes to spare.

New PM, new monarch and now Lozz is ditching Precisions. I can’t take this much change in one week!!!!

NBD! (I'll probably post on that thread too, but here's the stuff you've - well I've - been waiting for) 😉 I finally picked up the bass from Jon on Thursday, but haven't had time or the pix to do anything about it until now. It's awesome! It oozes quality, the action with the brass nut is superb, the tonal range from the John East pre-amp is incredible - everything from a Stingray clank to a Jamerson thud - and it weighs... 7lb 6oz!! Jon was quite apologetic - he'd been aiming for 7lb, I think - but the Hipshot detuner I added to the spec took it over the top. Anyway, here are some pix. Enjoy!

We played Whitwell Festival on Friday. I wasn't expecting much but a massive crowd turned up from somewhere! Awesome gig! Our bassist even got on someone's shoulders in the audience for half a song. I've never seen him do anything like that before so that was very cool

To help me "get my groove back" after losing my gear in the fire, the BC family was wonderfully generous in helping me out ... it's all about the bass! I've received a couple of older Zoom effects processors and they are going to form the core of my signal chain (All the elements of the Phoenix Rig were gifted to me by generous BC members ... I cannot express how grateful I am!) The Zoom units are quite powerful in the processing they can perform and can sound quite good, however there are a couple of "challanges" to the way I setup the effects and gig. Configuring patches This is done on the unit using the small display and controls. I came across a free application called Tonelib that makes the process of building and configuring patches significantly easier; it's a funky bit of software! Selecting patches when playing Sadly this is suboptimal! With one or two footswitches, it is hard to go directly to a patch, there is support for scrolling through a list of patches but it is not ideal. After some research I found that a few clever folks had figured out that the Zomm processors accept MIDI commands to select and reconfigure patches and effects. And so I am building Stompz. It will be based on the Raspberry Pi that did not get baked in the fire. Yesterday I went into my makerspace and spent several hours starting the physical assembly. The enclosure is the back of an offcast of an outdoor light a bit like this Is is almost perfect for the job. I drilled and filed a few holes for the foot switches and an expression jack socket. Stompz has 5 footswitches, an expression pedal jack input and a small OLED display panel (I've yet to figure out the best way to mount this so it's currently just sticking out the top) It will be based on a Raspberry Pi that did not get baked in the fire and, apart from the foot switches, is made up of items that I have been able to salvage from the flat or are offcasts ... super economical! The finished Phoneix Effects Chain will look like this At present the only thing in Stompz is a USB battery that is powering both Zoom processors. The foot switches are laid out so that it is easy to press two adjacent switches, so from a UX perspective it will be possible to have 5 x Switch press 5 x Long switch press 4 x Pair switch press 4 x Long pair switch press. This will allow for some quite powerful manipulation of the unit during a gig, either turning on/off individual effects, selection of preconfigured pedalboard layouts and snapshots. The OLED display (I might add another as it is quite small) will display what Stompz is up to and indicate what each switch will do. Stompz connects to each Zoom using a USB cable, which provide both power and will carry the MIDI data; The Zoom MIDI message format is not officially documented, but there are various resources on the web from which I should be able to build a full list of available commands. At present I have successfully been able to change patches on a Zoom but I believe it is possible to reconfigure patches as well as the various settings for each of the effects in a patch. I'm hoping that I can do this without killing any audio tails as it will allow me to drive some of these changes using the expression pedal. With the two Zoom processors connected in serial the rig will support a total of nine effects in a chain; I'm toying with the idea of running them in parallel which might allow for some splitting of frequencies for different processing ... not totally sure how I would wire this up yet. I'll be writing some bespoke code to allow for: Defining the action of the footswitches. Configure/manage/select "Pedalboards" (A collection of effects and their settings used in a particular song) This will let me configure which effects I want to use and their settings and (hopefully) link the expression pedal to the desired effects. Ideally I'll be able to treat Stompz as a single effects unit and it will decide itself which effect to place on which processor. Configure/manage/select "Snapshots" (A group of the settings for all of the effects in a pedal board) Access to all of this via a web interface (Or maybe also a smartphne app) over WiFi. The idea is that I can setup my pedalboards and tune the settings as I desire in advance and save them. During a gig I can use the foot switches to select a particular pedalboard for a song and switch between snapshots as I play, to load the settings for the verse/chorus/bridge/etc. All of this will be run on the Pi which will send the MIDI commands to configure the Zoom processor units. With my EffektLada project (Now put on ice) I had intended to run a MIDI synth and sequencer on the Pi which could be driven by a MIDI keyboard; this will allow for the generation of sophisticed drum tracks as well as being able to produce the occasional "special sounds" that we have used in some of our numbers (Like shakers, cow bells, xylophone ... even some horns or organ snippets). I've a couple of salvaged microcontrollers that can do button/motion sensing and send MIDI over Bluetooth to the Stompz allowing for small handheld battery powered units to produce effects. This will require the addition of an audio output from the Pi so is definately a Version 2 or 3 feature. Other possibilities are to use Pi based effect plugins in the signal chain and even record on the Pi. Now the basic physical assembly is complete I need to wire up the innards and start designing/writing/testing the software to achieve all of this. Hopefully I can make a start on this later today ... I am starting back at work tomorrow and I need to sort out some shoes that will help me survive the 12.5h shift on my feet (I am so looking forward to being back bedside nursing, it feeds my soul) so my time will be constrained. Stompz may not look as elegant as the all in one systems from the likes of Line6, Moddevices or the current gen Zoom units ... but it will get the job done and then some and I will be able to craft it to behave exactly the way I wish, which cannot be said of an off the shel unit which are generally very configurable, but only in the way the manafacturer determines. And the things that makes it all possible is that the cost is mostly effort, the various elements have been donated by the amazing BC family, have been salvaged from the fire or scavanged from castoffs ... no significant financial burden and the time I spend to bring it all together is free! More to come ... S'manth x

I finished work yesterday morning at 7am and drove an hour to Bristol for a support slot as part of a cat charity gig. Amazed how on it I was considering my levels of tiredness. Pleased I brought the small rig as load in was a bit of a challenge but the whole night was worth it as an old mate I haven't seen for 20years came down especially for us.

I think lots of us are sleeping with your wife

Played at a local acoustic showcase. This was our first set played as a new band. We were OK, but the audience was mainly family. We hung around for a couple of other acts after playing and then left, taking the bulk of the audience with us. Was a good gentle way to get started.

This is gorgeous and seen in the wild at Guitar Summit. DIngwall announces tomorrow the new electronics in it.

Hi Folks, Here's a shout out to @ped @Sibob @obbm @WalMan( and anyone else who was there that day) . I found these very low quality photos today in an old Photobucket account I set up years ago, but haven't looked at in at least 10 years. They're from the very first South East Bass Bash in Guildford in August 2007, organised by @obbm IIRC. It was a great day, made even better by the fact that I bought the lovely LPB Lakland DJ5 you can see in the photos from @P-T-Pwho very kindly delivered it to me at the Bash (now there's a bass I wish I'd never sold...). Does anyone else who was there have any photos or recollections from that day? If so, please share... 😊 Nik

So… I have been a bit quiet on here, mainly due to the endless sanding and chipping, sanding and chipping. I actually found that I was able to chip the sealer coat of much easier and quicker than sanding (that was slow and hard work) but sliding a sharp chisel under the sealer coat, it just seemed to chip away. This saved me a lot of hassle and sanding around those corners! Finally, I get all the sealer coat chipped off and clear the white base coat to be left with (what I think) is some lovely wood and once oiled and buffed, I think is going to look great! quite a bit more sanding to go, got to clear the white base coat on the sides and the progressively through the grits to get it baby smooth. Then onto the slurry and buff!

Putting aside appearance for a moment, it's complicated; more so depending on the process used. There's 'torrefication' where timber is baked at 250C for 20 hours, heat then gets turned up to 400 degrees. It gets cooled down with a fine mist of water. Another is 'thermally modified'. 4 or 5 methods of this, steam/pressure/nitrogen/oil. Some of these processes take between 3 and 7 days to complete. Finally there's 'roasted', has none of the cellular changes the other methods introduce but the wood is nice and brown 😀

Last week I sent an email to Jamie Body, the author of that Stage piece, giving him the background on Mr Mason and have given him links to this thread and the other Mason-based one. The auto-reply I received said that he'd be back in the office today, so I wait to see whether he responds or not.

Unless you’ve a lot of time on stage then the singer knowing what they’re going to say between songs & how long that takes (and between which songs so the rest of the band knows) is part of the rehearsal process. Otherwise you can easily run out of time.

Poison Aero ～ ABC

A little update on this because a lot of my gear has changed but not the Gnome. My main amp is now an Orange Terror Bass 500 Mk2. I sold one of my BF One10s but kind of regretted it recently; needing the extra grunt of a second speaker but not always having enough space at gigs for my two OBC112s, I bought a used Two10S off a fellow BassChatter. Arthritis also forced me to go short scale with my basses. During all this change of gear, the Gnome has been a constant. Subjective I know but I think it is a great sounding little amp. Definitely more “modern” than the Terror but good in its own right. It is surprisingly loud through the One10 @8ohms, even louder through the Two10S @4ohms. These two combinations are loud enough for rehearsals with both bands I play in (Dad Rock and Blues). In fact, with gain at 12 o’clock and EQ flat, I rarely have the volume above 9 o’clock with the former. All this in a head that costs around £130 for the basic model I have. It gets used much more than my main gigging amp, doing home practice and rehearsals. I use it nearly everyday and so far, not a hint of trouble. The fan comes on pretty quickly but it’s not loud and despite the hours of operation, hasn’t started to rattle. All the pots are still good, the knobs still in place, nothing has come loose. I always though it was built like a tank and it does seem to be living up to expectations. It fits neatly into a gig bag pocket, or in my case goes into the bag with all my leads, etc that I take to gigs, so it’s there just in case. Drawbacks: the only one so far is the jack out instead of speakon connector. This means I have to carry a jack to speakon cable with me to gigs. Not a big issue IMO. Some people would want an Aux in socket and the headphone out is full sized, rather than miniature but personally I see that as a plus. Apparently the USB socket is bidirectional on the “i” version and the Pro has another 100 watts as well, which I guess gives it more headroom. I’ve never run mine at the ragged edge, so I don’t know how it performs at full chat. Maybe the extra headroom is worth the cash. I don’t know how this compares to an Elf, or a BAM 200 but it seems like good value to me. Definitely worth considering if you are in the market for a miniature head.

Most recent incarnation of my "amp-less" pedal setup (If I recall right the main difference from last I posted my pedal setup is that I swapped the TC Electronic Shaker vibrato, which I used as a chorus, with a custom Toneprint, utilizing a triangle wave vibrato blended with parallel clean signal to obtain a lush chorus effect, for a Valeton Aquaflow Vintage Chorus, which is an all analog take on the legendary Boss CE-1 circuit) : For full signal chain description see my forum profile: https://www.basschat.co.uk/profile/50585-baloney-balderdash/?tab=field_core_pfield_1

Suspicious Heinz ～ HRH Elvis Presley

Invited to a jam in a local studio tonight with a noted pedal steel player. Wow, what a difference it made to our sound ( 3/4 of our band could make it too). He's called Mark from Suffolk and was playing in Dorset yesterday. We need a pedal steel in our lineup too!

Pretty chuffed with this little compact board. It does everything I need...

We played Silja Rocks last night, my first gig on a cruise ship going between Helsinki and Stockholm. We were first on in the starlight Bar opening for Michael Schenker. I was travelling light using my Ibanez shorty and a Zoom B1 four using the house rig. I’d been picked up at 0120 to get a flight from Heathrow at 0730. Travel all went without a hitch. When we arrived we were disappointed that what was provided didn’t match what had been promised, main worry being no backup instruments. I risked it and Del managed to blag a Les Paul from another band. I ended up going through an EBS Fafner 600 and a Markbass 4x10. I had a lovely tone but I had to seriously crank the volume to get loud enough which again leads me to blather on about how loud my Bugera 1001T is. Our drummer was struggling as he had a seriously crap kit to play on which was a shame. On the plus side, stage and FOH staff were all fab and we had a great stage sound and apparently FOH was epic too. We had an absolute blast and went down a storm. We made a point of watching a part of Schenker’s set. He had a great band behind him and they were on fire. Finished with a raft of UFO numbers and I was in my element. Currently sharing a bus back to the airport with his band (minus Michael) and they’re all great guys. Still pinching meself about how this is all going in my retirement, honestly! Caviar for breakfast and as many Maoams as I could eat - heaven!

Having become quite the p-bass guy in recent times, have been loving the flat-mute thing and spotted a YT video a while ago with Sean Hurley and a strange mute thing on his precision. Having googled it, it appeared to be a Fender Jaguar mute, added at some point. There were some posts on other forums and websites so, whilst I was on holiday over the past few weeks in the States, I ordered one to bring back, avoiding the postage and import taxes. Here's the bits and pieces.... So, made a start, using the good old dining room table. Here's the before shot... Strings came off, marked the screw holes and I measured the spring/plunger to find out what drill I needed. Found it was 13mm so had an emergency trip to B&Q. Deep breath, drill out and here we go..... Plunger in and tested the depth, needed to drill a little deeper that the guestimated 34mm from the guide. Screwed into the body, mute pads on, strings on and some tweaks and it's all together. This shows it pushed up into mute mode, bit of settling in and realising I don't need to fully push it down, the muting is variable based on how much I need. Looks really good, works great.

I think I saw them once at a function I did a gig at… they were the headline act!

Funnily enough, I never really thought of the bass player with the Undertones as being a top session player...

Something I have been accused of on occasion 😂

If @Stingray5 and @stingrayPete1977now chime in and say "Stingrays are not all that ..." I will have an attack of the vapours

My 2008 Jazz

In a gig what a band does between the songs is as important as what they do during them. Both should be practiced.

Some may be. Personally I get shell shock if a band is just rattling off tunes one after the other. It gets very waring. Particularly if they have their amplifiers set to stun. I just think performances should be a bit more considered.

Double Shot - The Residents

You might want to see this. Looks like things are finally catching up with him. As this is a register to read page i've also copied to PDF to make it easier https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/booking-firm-owes-us-tens-of-thousands-claim-tribute-acts Mick mason stage..pdf

Yep, I'll also recommend the protection racket case. I used to have hard cases for all my basses but now I use these. And they're not expensive... around the 100 pounds.

I had a white Combustion and did exactly the same! I loved the look of the black hardware on the white. Gutted, another bass I was forced to sell I was very fortunate to be on the Dingwall testing team and was one of the first to test out the prototype SFII and the FDV pickups. I'd already had Bothe the FD3n and FD3a pickups, so it was a lot of fun testing each! (I still have the NFR's, so when I can get a Dingwall again, I will definitely be using them!)

Dear Friends attached a few picture of my visit @ Guitar Summit 2022 Mannheim. What a blast to meet Jonas Hellborg

The Dangerous Kitchen - Frank Z

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Played Glastonbury again last night. The King William pub to be precise.

A standard pub gig for me last night. Not played there before (a hotel on the Oxford road just out of Swindon), we found a genial host, and a small but appreciative audience. A bit of a schlep for some of the band , mitigated by an afternoon gig en route to the venue, twice the money for the same journey. At least it would have been if the passing of the monarch hadn't (bafflingly) caused the cancellation of the afternoon event. However, I made a goodly bit of cash during the jubilee celebrations so I can't really complain.

Indeed. Fortune favours the brave it seems. His luck cant last though. The longer he carries on, the nearer he'll get to ripping off a psycho, and that will do what the police and FB failed to. In fact, i hope he does find that nutter. Sooner rather than later.