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What a great place Basschat is. A goldmine of information, support, conversation and of course GAS. I’ve been on here a long time, like many of you have. Some of you may be new, if you are, you’re welcome. I’ve had a lot of help here, parts, advice, insights, opinions and all given with a real sense of a community, even if we don’t always agree with each other, which is often part of the fun, as long as it’s healthy disagreement and not nasty, which it rarely is here. There is no better resource on the internet for all things bass. Ask for help, you will get it, ask for advice, you will get it. No questions are stupid, all answers are welcomed. No opinions are ignored, all views are observed. Thanks to everyone who run the site, long may it continue.

Played at The Sun Inn in Beverley this afternoon with our acoustic duo. We do it every couple of months and it’s a cracking music pub. Loads of familiar faces and plenty of requests, mainly dad rock stuff but also a few we haven’t done in ages including ‘Harvest Moon’, ‘Bartender’s Blues’ and someone wanting some Bay City Rollers stuff. Of course we obliged with ‘Shang a lang’ resulting in mass audience sing a long. Finished by 8pm, just as well as I was knackered after 3x45 min sets and some fingers on my right hand were complaining. A good gig though, really enjoyable.

Another Sunday afternoon/early evening gig for 4 Play at Riverside, Sutton Bridge. The glamour of it all! Went well. Turned up to see the guitarist heading home to get his pedalboard. One hour round trip 😝 Meant the PA and back line got setup properly though 😃 Played well: singer was driving so not on the usual barrage of rum and coke, which made a real difference. Good feedback, booked again for later in the year. Home by 20:30!!

Die By The Thawed ～ Thlayer

I love these little things!

I've been here since the early days of Bassworld, i.e. about 23 years. There was a time when I would post a lot but nowadays I just like to browse and rarely comment. It was through here that I had the idea to start my cable business as there was a need that wasn't being fulfilled. Making and selling cables showed me that there was life after retirement, kept me busy and I made many friends in the process, so thank you one and all. There is no doubt that no matter what the topic, if you ask, someone will have the answer. Long may it continue.

I’ve just picked this up a couple of weeks ago. I’m now on the lookout for a 1980 fretted version in great condition if anyone wants to move one on.

You know you're in trouble when Dave Mustaine is the most reasonable guy in the room.

Its been a while, was just checking the new HX Stomp patch levels with the BT to make sure nothing I'd set up has gone completely bonkers and thought, that needs a wee piccie that does

Can't stand any of ya, useless bunch of argumentative, talentless b*st*rds.... 😜 It's a fine place, well run and well regarded.

Last night I had my first ever paying gig as purely a soundman. A friend of mine is in a band that was hastily put together to play one of their other friend's 50th birthday party. The entire band were amazing musicians, but they have about 4 gigs total experience between them. I was asked to come along and provide some direction and a lot of plugging in advice as well as sound duties. Rig for the evening was an Allen and Heath desk, Martin Audio PA, lots of Sennheiser vocal mics, an e609 on the guitar amp, Radial stagebug on the bass, and whatever drum mics the drummer brought. PXL_20240127_222727719.mp4

Hold/freeze is one of my favourite effects. I wanted it on my gig board to replicate the setup i have with the future impact on my bigger board. I was deciding between the TC electronics infinite or the EHX freeze. Then i found they recently released this pico line. This deep freeze is apparently their freeze pedal and their superego in one. I figure the extra superego feature are just a bonus. And it is so small. It will fit perfectly on the gig board. Will wire onto board and post pics of that later

Here's my Sandberg TM4 Hardcore Aged in Roquefort Blue 🙂

Taken from FB.

I owned one bass guitar only for thirty years or so, then started coming on here for some double bass info. In the last year I've bought two bass guitars, thanks to the amazing wisdom of this forum which has taught me that buying more and more basses is an entirely normal activity.

It has arrived... I shall report back in a few hours once home from work...

Thanks to @casapete I have this on the way. second one I’ve owned… And this one’s staying

Playing at "I'm getting paid a shitload of cash so let's see how far I can push them" I suspect. The bit where he's playing the flamenco guitar part and James is like "oh shit, he's this good at guitar as well" was hilarious.

In truth, there are so many hilarious things about that film and so many awful ones. All of them (Newsted excepted) come across as awful people. Kirk especially comes over as a passive aggressive tosser. Plus, he can't write lyrics either. Frankly, they're an awful band. They've had some great material, but in every case it's mainly been ruined by crap production decisions and ludicrous egotism. I run a book with some fellow producers as to "How will Metallica ruin their next album." I won for Death Magnetic as since they're generally 8-10 years behind trends (plus they got Rick Rubin in) it was always going to be brickwalled and digitally distorted. The best one was Lulu when one of my fellow producers said, "it'll just be awful." He won that one. 72 seasons has the whole "stupidly attacky drum samples." Nobody needs that amount of 10kHz on a kick drum. It's so obviously samples. How very 2011. They're so far behind the times.

A really interesting thread. I seem to have come to some conclusions Maybe basses have come down in cost when you consider the quality basses out there for between £300 - £500 I don't need another bass I still want an Ibanez Musician though, for sentimental value, but am not willing to pay the current price

Posted this is my NPD thread, but posting here for posterity. New config with ehx pico deep freeze

They were around during the Glam peak era 73-74 and almost every Glam band will play their songs so i'm gonna say yes. They were more Tartan than Glitter tho but for a Scotsman that's the same thing. We already do 2 of their songs and about to add a 3rd as they are very popular especially up this way. There were a few other bands like Kenny, Mud and even Showaddywaddy were all classed under that Glam umbrella. All about costumes and pop songs i guess. Its a very grey area. For me Glam was more T.Rex, Bowie, Sweet and Slade. They were the classic ones but that's just my own view on it. Dave

That’s exactly it. Well done and thanks to mods and (pretty much🤣) everyone who posts!

Whilst I've not made a lot of progress over the weekend, beyond what I put above, I have started to understand more about the Vref potentionmeter on the little driver sticks. These drivers slot into the CNC board and controll the stepper motors. You can control the stepper motors directly from an Arduino but its better to control the drivers and let them control the stepper motors as thats what they are designed to do. The Arduino was designed to allow physical components called shields to slot on top of the board. These shields provide additional functionality such as Ethernet, WifI, Real Time Clocks, stepper motor drivers, connections to sensors and so on and so on. I'm using a sheild called a CNC shield, see below which is really just a simple way of adding in stepper motor drivers which are the four chips around the side. CNC Shields are about £2-£3 each and are made in bulk. CNC shields have no programming capability, they just present a simple and uniform way to get stepper motors connected. You access the stepper motors using a standard and uniform coding libraty as well on the Arduino. So instead of making complex calls to pins and timers, all of that complexity is abstracted away. Thats the theory anyway However to get the stepper drivers to work, you have to do some low level coding to enable the stepper motors which appears in documentation that is hidden in a file cabinet in a cellar in the local planning office with the stairs removed, the lightbulb out and a sign saying "Beware of the Panther" on the door. It's only two lines of code, but it's an important two lines of code as nothing works without it. Once thats done, you can connect your PSU up to the blue terminals on the bottoms left. The input is 12V to 36V which is way beyond USB so a dedicated PSU is needed. I used this as an excuse to buy a decent bench power supply This little beauty has one key feature. I can restrict the amount of current that can be drawn. So I set it to 12V and 1A plugged it in and immediately the CNC board and stepper motors started to whine. It turns out that the DRV8826 stepper motor sticks have a little potentionmeter on the top that determines the maximum current draw. I initially set this to 1A so I didn't blow anything up. I didn't understand how this worked so decided to keep increasing the allowed current to see what happened. I got to 12V 4A and still nothing worked. Turns out that the potentionmeter was allowing around 8A per driver to be pulled and if I didn't have a decent bench power supply, I would have fried both driver sticks and the stepper motors. I only really noticed I had a problem when I touched the heat sink and promptly burnt my fingers. So I put a multimeter on the potentionmeter centre point through a screwdriver and a crocodile clip, and the black to ground and turned Vref down to 0.6V from 3V. The whining stopped and the stepper motors started to work. Also the temperature dropped to non burning temperature. The moral of this story is "Dont mess with things that you think you understand but really don't, because it could be expensive and you literaly do get your fingers burnt". Thankfully I didn't blow anything up, and the only damage was my singed fingers. I can see the burnt marks now. Now I have the pots turned down, time to see if my Arduino coding actually will work and drive real stepper motors as opposed to simulators. Rob

Back rehearsing with the Hulla band last night after a short swerve into 6 string territory. Nice to be back without those two confusing extra strings. 😀 Several newish tunes and it literally and metaphorically took us about an hour to warm up - the hall usually heats up much quicker but we'd been fooled by the mild weather and forgot to put the heating on. As for the music, I think we were all just a bit jaded after a long week. But once it got going, it was good. We jammed (ha ha) 'A Town Called Malice', which went well enough to make it into the proposed set list for our next gig in Feb. I was using a different rig for in ear monitoring last night. The band has a Behringer X32 fro FOH and I've got a P16m - a small personal mixer that links to the X32 via Ultranet (a cat5 cable) and gives me channels 1-16 pre-fader from the desk. It means I can mix my own monitor feed - something I have found the need for recently as I take cues from different elements of the band for different songs and the singer's guitar is not always helpful in the mix. I'm also hoping to record a stereo version of the mix in the future. It's taken a little while to get our heads around the P16m, but the sound guy is good and we've finally nailed it. This is our singer, our guitarist and me all crowded around the tab for 'Town Called Malice'. It is currently the subject of a caption competition within the band. 😃

We weren’t sure if the request for some Bay City Rollers stuff was a Mickey take or not TBH, but decided to give it a shot anyway! Were the BCR glam though? 😆

I think this is quite exciting, I tried a Sterling Sub Stingray 4 HH recently in a shop and was not impressed with the build quality, was priced locally at £469.99. As an owner of a Sire M2 I am a fan of their stuff and feel like these might make a better budget option, especially with the extra jazz pickup. Originally thought they weren't for me, even though I love the sound, but I picked up a 90's Stingray with a very slim neck last year whilst visiting someones house and really liked it and it completely changed my mind. Which StingRays have the jazzy neck vs chunky? I dunno ..... Regarding the Sire Z7, a little disappointed the neck is not slimmer, although i understand this is entirely personal preference, if they bring out a version with a neck like the one on my M2 (38mm) and once we confirm it can do a good impression of a Stingray growl, I will deffo get one This clip suggests it sounds pretty good!

We all have a secret Glam side Mart. Some of us are happy to admit it and others are still struggling to come out of the Glam closet. Its a hard world we live in. 🤩🤩🤩 Dave

Didn’t realise you had a ‘Glam’ side Pete 😂

Trujillos audition was amusing when he suggested playing Battery and Lars questions whether he can play that fast without a pick, it's just obvious that he's worried he can't drum that fast any more.

Yeh, it’s a great one. Not massive but a very old place with coal fires etc. They put on loads of music and have recently started doing gigs where they have an admission charge. Coming up soon are Tom Robinson, John Verity and ex Beautiful South singer Briana Corrigan. http://www.suninnbeverley.co.uk

Dunno about that. I've seen many instances of apostrophe errors and even some occurrences of regular nouns written with capital first letters. Admittedly, the rest is OK enough. (Only the best forum I've been a proud member of.) Thanks, folks! b

An awkward stage area to get a good sound in. With an amount of fiddling about, we did our best. The crowd had been slightly worn out by an afternoon of karaoke which finished at 8pm.

I should have started this thread a week ago - but I thought I'd take the cab out to a few rehearsals, and try it with Upright and bass guitar first. I bought the cab from Richard Jinman on this very forum. I wanted something that suited my BSX Allegro upright, and I'd wondered previously about the Acoustic Image Upshot - which appeared to be a different approach to amps & cabs. Though I didn't get around to trying the Upshot - this cab came up and I decided to go for it. As soon as I plugged my bass into my amp head, and connected it to this cab, i was utterly blown away. It's THE sound I was after for my upright - it just seems to have captured that natural, acoustic tone perfectly. I was a really happy man indeed, especially as its so compact & lightweight. For bass guitar players who may not be familiar with Acoustic Image - these amps & cabs are held in very high regard among upright players indeed. I wondered how it would sound with a bass guitar, and in a very different genre, so I took it to rehearsals with a loud, 5 piece rock covers band, plus a rather punkier band with guitars, drums and brass section. I'd heard good reports of AI amps in any settings and again, I wasn't disappointed. It's a 4 ohm 600w cab, and being so small, I wondered if it would be loud enough to cope with the different bands. I needn't have been concerned at all. It was indeed plenty loud in the rehearsal studios, using my Peavey MiniMax 600w head. Moreover, everyone in both bands said the bass sounded great and cut through really well. Both drummers said they could hear me better too. So that unusual design, with a 10" driver firing each way, plus a forward facing tweeter really works well. Of course, this isn't a "gig situation' so I'm not sure if it'll cope with the 5 piece, in a larger venue - but I'll be taking my usual rig to the next big gig, plus this cab, to at least try it out.... The only slight snag, is the cylindrical cab has 2 rubber feet for the AI Clarus head to sit on, and my Peavey head is small, but not small enough to sit on those feet. So I'll have to do a minor cosmetic mod - maybe attach a wooden block, or some velcro? In the last week, I've got this, and got a Danelectro longhorn bass that I'm really pleased with - I am a very happy BC member indeed 😀

It's like a big family. You can put up with most of them, as long as you don't have to meet too often, except for a couple of cousins, who you would rather not see ever again, and a mad uncle or two.

What a lovely post/thread. In a world which appears to be focussed on what the individual can get out of it, it's nice to have a place like BC where, while it's not perfect (what is?) at least tries and succeeds in the most part to nurture a community spirit and celebration of what unites us (duh, it's bass). Lang may its lum reek! (That's "long may its chimney smoke", you sassenachs ). I know I sometimes put my foot in it - in my defence when I'm being sarcastic, it's usually coming from a place of humour. I know humour is subjective and mine can be an acquired taste sometimes that no-one wants to acquire. Let me take this opportunity to apologise to anyone I've offended or ticked off because I chose the wrong moment to make light of something, or took something the wrong way and ran headlong with it through the nearest brick wall. I've been here since just before it transitioned from Bassworld to Basschat, and it's always been a great source of info, cameraderie and wallet draining opportunities. I disappeared for a while - I guess I was just getting a bit bassed out. What brought me back? Someone had a question about a Gibson bass, and someone here remembered that I might have a thing or two to contribute so took the time to DM me and ask if I'd chip in. That brought me to my senses and rekindled my appreciation for this place as a community and source of support and knowledge on our weird little enclave in a world filled with guitarists. All the best to you and yours, keep holding down the low end, and I'll see you at the bar.

That's some super attention to detail in the EBMM aping then

I Wanna Be Your Dog - The Stooges

@TheGreek you must have the pyjamas, duvet set, everything of this, surely?!

I've learned so much about bass playing, gear, and etiquette/performance from reading this forum that I count it as part of my day's practice time!🙂 Thanks everyone.

The black strip is a temporary measure as he has a little box on top of his bass drum that picks up his kit sounds and he just mics his snare up now. It's picking up other ambient sounds as it seems to be a bit too sensitive. I don't like the strip of black stuff either, but hopefully his work round material is coming this week. Glad you liked the vids.

There definitely some interesting things said in it. Like when James is complaining about decisions being made overnight in his absence, and Kirk candidly reports "well now you know what the last fifteen years have been like for me". Robert Trujillo had some fecking stones on him to walk into that mess, even if they threw a big pile of cash at him.

I’m fortunate to go the the most fantastic jam night every Monday in Woking. The have the most fabulous house band - headed up at the moment by the phenomenal jazz/rock guitarist Nicolas Meier. How good is he? Let’s just say he played in Jeff Beck’s band a while back. However, it’s an absolutely ego free affair. The house band will do a couple of songs but the main priority is ensuring everyone gets plenty of chances to play if they want to. The music ranges from jazz to Latin to rock to pop to soul… just depending what the punters want to do that night. The jam has full backline and a sweet bass rig… a Tonehammer 500 into a pair of MarkBass 1x12s. Very nice! The house bassist if a fabulous player called Ana-Maria Lazar but there’s no hint of hogging the light. She’s happy to play if nobody wants to but would much rather have folks getting up and having a go. Here’s a vid I took a while back which gives you an idea how good the house band are. Nick and Carl Orr on guitar, Ana on bass and Adam Bond on drums. So e photos from a typical night here… https://www.facebook.com/100092387225241/posts/pfbid0phhRubD7m4uqENxThosDW5CT4e7z5FjQsEBNaWafzejNDkZqDW2dYEK1jtB8B7wwl/?