Leaderboard

We played at The Sugarmill in Hanley (Stoke) on Saturday night. It's our first headline gig here and the local venue so it felt like there was a bit more pressure than usual, that plus the lack of gigs since November, and it would be my first time on BVs, all gave me some nerves When I arrived, I greeted the soundguy. We're on first name terms and I thought we were pretty friendly, but the first thing he said is "what ridiculous gear have you brought this time then?". I explained it's just my usual stuff but he seemed really annoyed for some reason. I set up the kit and the whole band were ready to go in 10 minutes as usual. Then the soundguy spent 30 minutes plugging everything in. While he was mic'ing the kit I showed him my nice new cymbal. He's a drummer so I thought he'd be interested. He said "oh, so that'll be dominating the whole room then!". I said "not really mate, it's the way you play them" to which he replied "Yeh, which is F&*KING LOUD!!!". I asked if he'd ever done the sound for us before, and he confirmed he hadn't, so he'd have absolutely no idea how loud I'm going to play my cymbals. I just let it go. So, all mic'd up, he tried to get sound. He had the main outs from his mixer routed to the centre vocal wedges. I explained that it all sounded weird and that my drums shouldn't be feeding back but he just cracked on, sweeping EQ on the drum mics for a solid 15 minutes. Bass was checked just fine, but guitars (just DI'd) sounded weird and kept feeding back. I asked him to turn the stage monitors off just to check there wasn't an issue, and this is when he finally figured out the mains were routed to the two centre wedges. Half an hour to who knows on the phone and he reckoned it was sorted, so we went back on to sound check. All fine except the lead singer can't hear himself. There's sound out of the centre wedges, but it's quiet and muffled. The soundguy told me I needed to play the drums quieter. I explained that it's never an issue and we play similar sized venues all the time. He finally came up to hear the vocal in the wedges and agreed it sounded wrong, and so after another long phone call figured out that he should have used a different cable for these wedges. FINALLY everything worked and we did our check in less than 10 minutes, but from setting up to completing sound check was pretty much 2 hours. After this check the soundguy approaches me to tell me that my bass drum is a nightmare. "oh, what's the problem?" I ask and he complains it has "no top end". I screwed up my face and said "we're not playing metal mate". Then I went home to change and try to forget the sound check The actual gig was awesome, loads of people in, loads of people singing along, an encore... just an awesome gig all round. A couple of my mates were there, and they said it sounded OK but that my vocal mic was muted! All that practise and all those nerves for nothing!

After a few months of chopping, changing and general indecisiveness, I finally have my pedal collection all sorted and ready to go onto my Classic Junior board with Cioks DC7 power supply. The collection includes Dunlop Mini Bass Wah, MXR Bass Envelope filter (Blackout version), BCC Custard Factory compressor, Quint octaver, Tech 21 MP40 Geddy Sansamp, TC Electronic chorus, phaser and flanger modulation pedals and the SGT-DI. Here’s a mock-up in Pedalboard Planner. I had to use a lookalike BCC pedal as the app didn’t have the right image for the compressor. Looking forward to putting it altogether at the weekend.

I just took delivery of my Masterbuilt Alusonic J-Supreme. These are outstanding basses and definitely worth checking out! It has a great modern hifi sound and doesn’t need lots of tweaking with the 3 band eq. You guys have the luxury of going to Bass Direct to check them out, but I took a chance and totally relied on many discussions with Polly the owner of Alusonic to get the custom spec I needed. I’m going to sell my Sadowskys to finance another!

Gordon Bennett these prices! Makes Andy Baxter’s look like Poundland

And STILL someone's left a drink on it!

Of particular interest, the new MS-60B+. Bax have the guitar version, listing here. I imagine the operational description will be common to all the new + units. If those 'scroll' buttons do what I'm hoping they do, they will be a massive improvement on the current unplussed version - its patch cycling is its real Achilles' heel. @Dood, if you can get your hands on one of these for review, I will be all ears. Eyes. Whatever.

Amazing guitars, amazing money. https://www.christies.com/en/auction/the-mark-knopfler-guitar-collection-29972/

A rather cathartic rehearsal for my noisy two-piece (bass and drums) last night. Our first since the drummist (also my best mate of some 25 years) found out his Mom is terminally ill. Even well into our forties, just bashing the holy hell out of your chosen instrument still really has a place.

Crusoe Vain Carly Simon

Pirelli got me. Kinks

The greatest aphrodisiac known to man ... the smell of money.

There's a statement in the sale room notice. Knopfler intends to donate at least 25% of the total hammer price received to the British Red Cross Society and the Tusk Trust.

Can't wait to see how much they get when they finally auction Mark Knopfler ...

Black pedal is a cheap black Russian muff clone

Happens to the best of us @SuperSeagull I'm worst with Musicman basses as the batteries seem to last forever and I forget how long they've been in. Had the LED battery go in my Status once but that was no biggy.

If you have a bass and rig that you've used for "years and years" and you change one link in that chain, as you've discovered, you'll get a totally different sound. That was to be expected. The cab was probably limiting the sound of the amp. With it gone, you're hearing what the amp actually sounds like. If you want a 60's "dull thud out of a modern lightweight neo cab, buy a bass and amp that gets that sound and the cab will faithfully reproduce it. Maybe buy a 60's preamp pedal. I get a pretty good 60's sound out of a Mike Lull PJ5, with flats and foam, an Aguilar TH500 and 2 Barefaced 112 cabs.

Throw a blanket over it. If that's not enough throw two blankets over it.

Where to start, I've got so many that I've modified in one way or another. Apparently the beginning is a very good place so this is the first bass that got some serious work. It started life as a black Line6 Variax 700. This isn't mine but this is how it looked. Changes to headstock shape, tuners, fret markers, colour, binding, f hole, pickguard shape and bridge cover. Ended up like this, Build diary here if interested but unfortunately most of the pictures went missing when Photobucket decided they wanted paying.

Band rehearsal tonight and this was my rig I expected to be blown away, sadly the sound was very lacklustre despite much knob twiddling. Still, must be £3,000 worth there at new prices.

Does the phrase “it’s meant to be a joke” mean anything to anyone?

You Wheelie Got Me - The Kinks

We see it all day, every day. It's all around us.

Some serious money changing hands here, his four nominated charities will do well from 25% of the proceeds. Christies have announced they will also donate £50k to each of the four charities.

I've been at a few auctions at Christie's and they are testosterone fuelled pugnacious affairs. Big male egos behind the hammer and swaggering in the room. Horrible environment. (I'm well aware not all auctions and auctioneers are like this though) This is very refreshing. As you say a charismatic auctioneer. A relaxed vibe, where everyone seems to be enjoying proceedings and blimey aren't the prices soaring! Over half a million after fees for that one a few minutes back!

Wait, not that I’m decreeing that anyone has to do such a thing, but Mark has a few bob and is a good sort, I just couldn’t see any info on that link, just a few rusty guitars and battered acoustics, meh…

Currently clean but having a massive wobble, over either a Sandberg Lionel or commissioning another ACG. Aiming to stay the course, don’t hold yer breath though 😂

I excluded myself, so was never in. But had I been in I would still be in. I can see a Dano longhorn arriving at casa S before the spring equinox, mind.

Just arrived! Sorted the routing thanks to @MrDinsdale Just waiting for my board so I can put all my pedals together. Initial thoughts, even though I barely scratched the surface, but there's something saucy about the gain that I really love. Easily dialled the tone that I like and works well with the stuff that I do. More than that, it reacts so well when you stack it with other drives. I love it!

I had a three pickup Hodad. Super light, super weird, kinda wish I kept it - but at the time I didn't know how to get the best out of it and was on a mission to consume as many basses as I could.

The thing about Metallica in the 21st century is that they keep releasing albums that should have been EPs If the last four albums had been cut back to about 20 minutes, they'd have been fantastic. Well, so long as they didn't ruin them when mixing/mastering them

Racism isn't a trivial matter and accusations of racism shouldn't be so casually thrown around as it badly dilutes the importance of the message. You've gone from slandering all of them, including Filipino Kirk and Cliff, to just some of them. What did Kirk and Cliff do which lead you to accuse them of being racist, out of curiosity? Sure, Hetfield was a tool and I'd imagine him and Rose in a room together at that time was hardly a shrine to enlightenment, but do you really think a band who have been paying Mensch and Burnstein, their jewish management, 20% for almost 40 years really believe in National Socialism? Think about it for just a minute.

Sancho! My armour!

Don't think it's neo magnets. Pjb do neo (neo-powr) and ferrite (piranha) drivers allowing a direct comparison and it's the ferrite ones that sound brighter. Fashion maybe? If you have a full range, flat response HiFi cab you can always take some frequencies away. If you have a "dull thud" vintage cab it's harder to put stuff back? Can you not get the sound you want by tweaking eq ...and still save your back on physical weight?. Or do the "vintage" cabs "add" something (like the distortion and octaving you can get out a valve amp)?

One thing about these that can come as a surprise is that they fit perfectly in any case or gigbag made for a telecaster. I have a peardrop-shaped hard case that I use for my telecasters, but it also fits my danelectro longhorn like a glove.

I'm sorry for Rex who is an absolute legend, but I can't watch Anselmo for another second. Talk about your "white power" crying racist b!tch.

I'd want to see the condition report first. If the neck has been repaired, that might diminish the value.

You guess correctly.

This is fairly heavily modified. An unholy marriage of an Encore short scale double cutaway body, a Hondo II H1015 32" scale neck (Yum!), set back a bit, Wilkinson bridge, Entwistle PBXN pickup, Roswell MM syle pickup, 3 way selector and jack moved to the side. It's a bit of a monster! One day, if I feel frivolous, I'll stick some black Hipshot Ultralites on the headstock.

I have had one with a tort plate that red before. I'm a dyed in the wool Fender Japan Precision fanboi. Never known a bad one and bought every one without trying it.

Beard twitcher here! But I'm able to do so as someone who was lucky enough to see Pantera a couple of times back in the day. There must be plenty of younger fans eager to hear that music live but for me, nah. And also, Anselmo.