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Late posting… Saturday 28th, 4 Play 😫 Drayman’s Arms, Spalding. Wife and gang of friends in attendance, and the locals who had been in since opening time. Old drunk folks and the obligatory 7 year old wandering up to the mics etc. but we played really well overall. Here’s (hopefully) some Elvis: I made some schoolboy errors on some well trodden songs but overall I played the bass nicely I think. This band has come a LONG way from when I joined two years ago (new singer’s transformed things) and I’ve now gigged in 2023 more with them than my ‘main’ band. Fresh D’Addario Nickels > Fender Dimension > GK RB700 > Barefaced BB2.

We had a busy weekend of gigs including one on Saturday afternoon that was Halloween themed, so we couldn't resist having a go at Michael Jackson's Thriller!

We recently made a huge investment / upgrades to our sound and lighting which includes smoke machines stage left and right. I'm totally into it. Daryl

I saw the Stones at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry a few years back. A friend of mine had scored super-cheap tickets so I went along to sneer at the old geezers deluding themselves. They were superb. Jagger was on top form - vocally and physically. it was a two and a half hour show and apart from two numbers where he went offstage and let Keef do the heavy lifting, he was faultless. The band were great and the setlist was a well thought out combination of hits and fan favourites. My preconceptions were completely eviscerated. The point is, they can still do it. Others (all the usual suspects who have been named and shamed in this thread already) can't do it like they used to do it. And yet they're still playing to enormous crowds. Punters go to shows for a variety of reasons - one of which is to share an experience with a bunch of like-minded people and be transported to a time in their life where they didn't have to deal with negative equity or sciatica. Musical excellence isn't at the top of their wish list. They want to be present at an event. About 15 years ago, I saw three gigs in succession: Neil Young, Motorhead and The Searchers. Sadly, Young and Motorhead sounded tired and lacklustre and I swore I'd never go and see them again. The Searchers were fantastic – great singing and playing and a healthy dose of good-natured banter and self-deprecation. Around the same time, I went to see Brian Wilson. He basically sat at an electric piano and did the occasional, semi-audible backing vocal. The band and the songs were brilliant of course and I thoroughly enjoyed the gig. And I can say that I've been in a room at the same time as one of my heroes. Sometimes, that's enough. Attendance isn't mandatory at these events. You can either hang on to your memories of young men and women in their prime, or you can dive into nostalgia, suspend your critical faculties and enjoy the moment.

Hi All, Been keen on the DG stuff for a long time now and been hovering on what exactly to go for to meet my grindy, fuzzy needs. While I like the pedals (and ADORE my Darkray), I liked the idea of an amp that kinda does it all (and doesn't need two blokes to lift it), even more. I was tempted by the Tech21 VT500 amp for that very reason (still have a VT Bass Deluxe) but kept missing out on them when they came up for not silly money. The DG options just seemed to tick a couple of more boxes for me so when an AO900 came uo for sale I couldn't resist. Previous owner hadn't used it much and has a couple of other DG heads he preferred and it was a good price. So it arrived yesterday morning. Couldn't pump it through any of my big cabs at home and thrash it after work as we have a 1yr old, so took it round to our rehearsal room where I've got a Behringer 810 stashed, hooked it up and plugged the Aria CB1000 straight in. WOW!!!!! There's a lot going on here. A lot of tweaking can be done and it takes a bit of getting used too. Once I'd got the clean sounding the way I like it, I jumped into the Distortion channel and gave that a good run. Again, just wow!!! So many different tones on tap and they seem to give me exactly what I want. Lots more adjustability and that growl switch really adds some low end girrrrrth! Just waiting to give it a solid run with the band on Wednesday night and see how it cuts through. Will bring dUg with me too, just in case 😛

An interesting story from today’s BBC website, about a folk duo who toured on foot carrying all their gear. Not for everyone, but well done them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67219848

So I took a drive from Bromley up to Cambridge to a meet up and buy from Mike. Lovely chap. I am now the proud owner of my 2nd Walsh Bitsa P bass! What an amazing bass. Thanks Mike!

Here's MK's board 😉

A load of Telecaster type parts have turned up. Further examination of the design, shows that the distance spacing between the hexagons wasn't enough to allow countersunk bolts and hidden nuts to smooth the design out. I want the design to be clean and fastenings to be as hidden as possible. This meant throwing away everything with a honeycomb and starting again. The joys of product design. Redone again and now printing the top left part at 0.2mm and 30% infill but with a lot of perimeter walls. This is 20 hours of printing and has circa 10 embedded nuts inside to screw things together. This allows it to be easily changed in the future. Here's in the cross sectional view in Fusion 360. The Telecaster Bridge will need far more design work now I have a telecaster bridge to use. The sketch at the left is the mounting hole for the guitar strap.

the gift that never stops giving Dave

Only $3199... EBMM Retro ’70s StingRay Bass https://guitarbomb.com/2023/10/31/retro-70s-stingray-bass-musicmans-nostalgic-ode-to-a-classic/ 31

Little Boss board: This is probably about as far as I'm gonna go with my Boss fad. I've got the AW-3 for sale, a C4 will cover for this and an OC5 that @Al Krow kindly let me borrow. The C4 will ruin the Boss aesthetic but gets the job done in one pedal. My Amp has decent EQ/Drive/DI so I don't really need those things as a pedal, would be nice to stomp on some distortion though so perhaps an ODB-3 or a BB-1X at some point.

Own up... Who voted for me? I thought I'd managed to make my entry so unpleasant that folks wouldn't be able to listen to it! What does a guy have to do to get nul points round here? Just wait till next month...

It certainly is when it comes to band fees 🙁

You can never have too much Steel Pulse...

I think this is brilliant.

Some bands should have never started let alone stopped.

Don't get me wrong. I love seeing a smoke machine at work, but not when I have it pumping cr@p at me while I have to sing for two hours.

Got home at 3am from a wonderful Katy Hurt gig in Sheffield at Greystones, with the wonderful Joe Martin in support. Last date for 2023, we started messing around with 3 new songs in the green room and they point to a bright 2024 if we can finish them off. Receptive crowd, singing along to all the songs, even found myself signing things at the end which is a bit novel for the “new bloke” but very cool. Zoot Funky 4 was the weapon of choice, through my TE1200 and a pair of Two10S cabs. Sounded blimmin marvellous. Knackered now after a day at work and a hard yoga session just now 🤣

I know I'm playing with fire here, but I thought I'd document my feeble attempts to build a 3d printed guitar. Initially I looked at building a bass guitar but I wasn't sure what I was doing and whether it is even possible to build a 3d printed bass guitar, so I thought I'd try and learn about it and what might and might not work on a six string. Other people have built 3d printed guitars before, probably the most well known is the Pruscaster https://www.printables.com/model/398795-the-prusacaster-a-3d-printable-guitar. You can head onto Thingiverse and see quite a few different models, that are very similar. So why do another one? I downloaded all the files for the Pruscaster and worked out how long it would take to print and how much it would cost. I run a very small business as a sideline doing 3d printing, mainly for astrophotography, and if you think GAS is bad for bass players, I can assure you that we are playing in the fourth division here regarding costs, astrophotography eats up a lot of of money, I know people in the USA who have spent £60K+ on their setups. Anyway, back on track, the costs of printing the Prusacaster is a lot and it uses a lot of filamanent. To do a decent job, it's around 11 days solid printing and uses around £50-£60 of filament. You also have the cost of the Telecaster kit from Thomann. If you priced up each of printing time as well, there's another £100 minimum there. I have two Prusa's so there's less cost but it's not free even to me 1. The telecaster kit is £87 from Thomann. £77 + £10 delivery. 2. The core is approx £20 of filament plus just under 5 days of printing. Yep five days at the right quality level. 3. The piece that holds the control panel is around £10 at 30% infill and 37hrs. 4. The orange middle is 40 hours and £12.50 of filament 5. Odds and sods another 24 hours and £10 of filament I have no idea how they can say its a cheap thing to make as it's not. The amount of printing and filament is ridiculous and I thought it's just designed to sell filament. So I had a long think about this and was prodded by @Owen who is wholly to blame here. After a lot of thought I worked how to significantly reduce the amount of printing and still keep the strength using a 15mm plywood backbone. I also set myself some other objectives: 1. All my own design so nobody can claim I'm stealing their design. 2. No glue. I hate glue, it gets everywhere. 3. As there is no glue, all fittings most be as hidden as possible. 4. Must be modular. I don't know which bridge to use yet, I don't know which pickups I want and, importantly, I might want to change them or add three pickups without having to print everything again. 5. Must be able to take different necks. I don't have a neck I can use yet, so not sure what I'm going to get. I'm looking for a thin telecaster neck but not found one on eBay I trust to buy yet. 6. Must be playable. 7. Must be easy to print and fit on a 220mm x 220mm print bed. The Prusacaster one takes four days to print one part. No doing that 8. Must be able to use different controls as I have no idea what I'm buying, Telecaset and Stratocaster wiring is easily available second hand on eBay so thats a good start. 9. As few as possible supports for 3d printing. This has zero supports needed at the moment. I'm delighted with that So after a lot of scratching my head and thinking about things, I cranked up Fusion 360 (a 3d design package) and started work. Everything is based around a 15mm plywood backbone This is the end result of playing about and once my coping saw turns up from Amazon, I'll be cutting this out. As I wanted to be able to use any neck, this is the neck section I've designed. Its easy to print (3-4 hours) for a wide variety of necks. Here's the module for the neck pickup. This is wide enough for two pickups and has the routing slot cut out on the side. This is the last module and its going to hold the bridge. Currently it's based on a Telecaster Bridge. The holes are not string through, but to bolt the bridge down. The plywood base bolts upwards to these three moduls. We also need something to hold the controls The cable routing is sorted out for the bridge pickup, but I need to work out the cable routing for the neck pickup(s). This is still work in progress and I want to get the amount of printing right down so a good chunk will be honeycomb and it will be in two parts. Of course we now need the rest of the guitar body, so this is where the honeycomb comes in. The honeycomb is in three pieces and is bolted together using fairly hidden bolts. The honeycomb also bolts to the bridge, neck pickup and neck modules And lastly we need a pickguard in place. The pickguard is the largest I can make on my Prusa print bed of around 215mm. It's shaped for Telecaster controls but thats all I have to go on at the moment. The pickups will be suspended from the pickguard. The bridge pickup is suspended by the bridge. Now it's easy to talk about, so here's some of the modules I've printed off to check for fit. Looks OK, so far, but until I can get the bridge in my hands and find a thin neck, I can't go much further. Some various bits have been brought on eBay, an awful lot of countersunk M3 screws, telecaster parts but not a neck at the moment. So if anybody has a thin neck with tuners they wish to donate or sell me, I'd be grateful. Nothing likely to change until the end of next week as things turn up. Rob

Another attempt at Thriller! Happy Halloween! https://fb.watch/o12qqXc22f/

I'm selling almost all of my pedalboard and exchanging for an HX Effects tomorrow, but keeping my VTBass DI. I used to hate the idea of multi-effects units but here we are, and I'm really excited. Probably won't be very excited once I start to try and use the thing. I've been advised to get HX Edit, as much as I'd like to just do it all on the unit.

Ha, that's nothing on The Proclaimers !

I don't believe the cost of a band setting up or 'increased competition' has anything to do with it. If anything, there used to be MORE live bands on the circuit. The difference is the perceived value of music to venues.... and punters. Not so many people go to pubs for live music anymore, indeed not so many people go to pubs full stop. Supermarkets do the drinks cheaper and people have so many more choices of entertainment (games consoles, netflix, social media, etc etc). As a result, pubs don't consider live music to be such a drawer and certainly aren't willing to pay the sort of money we'd all like to see, allowing for inflation...

I appreciate that Basschatters have to post about something .... but really .... when should threads such as this old topic just call it a day?? It's embarrassing when everything has already been said and yet we get the same old topic, on tour again, every few months, or every year at the least .... Please .... It's had its time .... enough is enough. No? 😜

I'm sure this thread can do without smartass answers (now removed) to questions that weren't actually asked.

Great to see Alexander Technique get some kudos on here. I trained as a teacher of AT and practised for a number of years before training to be a psychotherapist. Both kinds of work are closely related, in my view. I taught many classical and jazz musicians in Glasgow and Edinburgh, which was very satisfying work. I also had stints as a dep AT teacher at Wells Cathedral School and St Mary's in Edinburgh. I co-pioneered AT in Japan, with a colleague, back in 1986. I have left it behind me now, but I think the effect on my playing and musicianship, as well as my attitude to music, is incalculable. If anyone is struggling with playing or performance issues, I heartily recommend AT to them! If anyone on here wants to talk more about this I am very happy to engage.

Hi @eloisa great to see a new contributor on here, and thanks for putting the artist and title in your post. Makes the thread so much easier to search, unlike when I compiled a playlist from some of the earlier posts - you can find over 17 hours on this Spotify playlist Sorry @Reggaebass, no, I'm not going to update it 😎

You think 55 is a cut-off point for anything? A more realistic cut-off point is when no one will buy your tickets and when the phone stops ringing.

Buy an amp. You will have gigs where you cannot take your own PA and the one supplied is crap. Pick something reliable from the classifieds on here for a good price.

I'm in a 3-piece blues/classic rock covers band (what can I say, we saw a gap in the market 🤣) that mostly plays around the North-West of England. We usually get around £250 for two 45 minute sets. Some places are strict about the time so they get exactly that. If they're not bothered we'll play longer if we feel like it. We've all got day jobs so the cash is just split between us for a bit of extra pocket money. I wouldn't do it for free though, on principle. I've done my time playing original music to empty rooms and a gig is a fair bit of work when you factor in rehearsal, setting up, etc.

Not to mention never-ending.

"Sadly"? He's either still doing it because he loves it - which is awesome. Or he's doing it because he needs the money - which is just like any other job. Legacy is a nonsense argument. Every single act has done something at some point that some people say ruins a legacy.... and it never does, because the listeners get to decide what they want to hear and are under no pressure to listen to anything else. Legendary acts remain legendary even if their skills diminish with age. We should be celebrating their longevity, not criticising it.

Our BL's just bought one of the new gen of smoke machines, and I was initially alarmed to see he'd mounted it on one of the lighting rigs, and yeah, it is a daft thing to do, but despite flooding the stage with its effects, it wasn't like the coughing nightmares of the past, in fact it was barely noticeable...apart from the fact I couldn't see the drummer for a while...or the audience, come to that...

Sssssshhhhh ! I was trying to break @spongebob in gently!

Can confirm it sounded pretty damned thunderous through my headphones on the videos! Hopefully next time you're up in this neck of the woods I'll have some cash and can sort a babysitter so I can bring the missus as she loves a bit of country.

Yeah. The “78” is getting there…

I'm sure you're worth every penny 😉

With the Alexander Technique, less is more! Not strenuous, not about fitness, but about paying attention to detail of movement. Among other things.

We are booked into a well know Glasgow pub in the middle of January, 3 x 45 mins sets for £280. It is our first time there and if we go down well, the next time the money will go up. Most places in the West of Scotland pay £250 to £300 but some only pay £200 and are taking the p*ss. When I started gigging in 2005, we were getting the same money as we do now, it must be the only industry where inflation seems not to exist.

Back in 2009 when I was in a covers band we used to get £250/£300 per gig. Fast forward to the start of this year when I was briefly in a covers band and the fees were the same.

I've never heard a difference in tone or sustain from fitting a shim, however whenever I shim a bass I always use a thin piece of card in the bridge end of the neck pocket. This will increase the angle of the neck rather than just raise it. A thin shim applied like this will have as much impact on the height of the string at the bridge as a much thicker full pocket spacer like a credit card.

We Care A Lot - Faith No More

Your point has not been missed at all. Whether or not anyone can "still do it" is irrelevant. So is the reason that people continue to go to see them. If they wish to "cling on to their youth", that's their business, not yours. If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to buy a ticket. There are plenty of things I don't like (including acts that were popular 30 years ago who are still cranking it out), but I don't call for them to be stopped. It's a free country.

Nice to see a Streamliner , Walman !