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I was lucky to be one of the few who has been pro and I say lucky as for me, I was living my dream so I look back with absolutely zero regrets. It is incredibly hard work, absolutely no doubt about it and the band have all fallen out and no longer speak to each other, arguments with the record company resulting in us suing them and winning, arguments with producers, managers and A&R guys, we've had it all. Plus its incredibly tiring both mentally and physically and even go as far as stressful and a pressure cooker environment at times. However, I loved absolutely every second of it because I was living my dream. From the many years of playing hundreds of gigs, travelling up and down the country, building a buzz and a following to then get the offer of a record deal and that moment where you go into work, stick two fingers up and say to all the doubters, you've done it and you're out of here, see ya. Then putting pen to paper and actually signing your record deal. Getting an advance and heading down to the Bass Centre in Wapping, picking out your dream bass, a huge rig, a spare bass and other bits and pieces and saying, the record company will pay just felt so good. Spending 6 months living in a studio with a top producer recording the album and b-sides while having our own chef, cottage and being able to focus 100% on music and being creative was incredible. Then going on tours to promote the album with our own crew, tour bus, tour manager was to me awesome. I loved going on tour, travelling, seeing new places, staying in hotels, meeting new people, playing new venues and being fed and watered was amazing but the rest of the band didn't seem to enjoy it as much and found it tiring, boring and a bit of a slog. Plus, playing two John Peel session, a Virgin session, Radio 1 roadshows, advert music, songs on the radio, CD and records in shops, interviews, photoshoots which I did hate, and then all the fan mail, gifts, being spotted and the attention. What's not to like but as I say it was hard work. Being locked in the studio was hard as you'd have periods of doing nothing for days and its no 9 to 5 type schedule either. For example, it's 2am and we need you to lay some vocals down or let's start recording the bass for this song at 9pm and after trying lots other ideas, its 4am and you are mentally drained. You then go to bed to then get called back 2 hours later for something else. Then, being locked in a studio for weeks or months, not seeing anyone but the same few people can do things to you. Just going out to the shops feels odd and all of the band had periods of paranoia thinking people are staring at them. Plus you don't see girlfriends or family and you do kind of get used to that so it can cause tension when you do to the point of feeling like you don't want to be there and you can't wait to leave again. Then the pressure of writing new material, maintaining an image, not just from gig to gig but photo shoots, interviews, TV etc. Keeping relationships among the band and crew can also be challenging and maintaining a positive attitude to keep selling the band and yourself to fans, promoters, radio stations, pluggers etc. can also be draining. You do live in a bubble and you can be so isolated from the real world but also living in a pressure cooker and not actually realise until it explodes. However, we were pretty smart, we knew we were all young so we negotiated with the record company to not give us our advance in one hit to last us 3 years as certain band members would spunk it all on various alcohol and substances within a year but instead, pay it to us monthly. We also set a routine which was Sunday and Monday is our day off, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we'd either stay at the rehearsal studio to write songs and rehearse from 10am till 7pm and then spend the evening having dinner and then Friday and Saturday we'd gig. If we weren't at the rehearsal studio, then me and the singer would stay at mine to write songs and the other two in the band would do band admin, promotion, tax forms etc. It actually worked and we stayed on the straight and narrow and did quite well and actually became quite savvy. So as I say no regrets. This is the moment I'm actually signing the record deal with the lawyers in London 😁 My bass corner at ths rehearsal studio.

And now back in my hands. At least it will be when it's delivered....

New bass day! 78’ Mustang in translucent wine-red. The picture does not do the beautiful ash body justice. What a find!

NBD Sandberg Lionel.

I always knew I’d never be what most people think of as a pro musician - original material, record company and management involvement, trying to find fame and riches etc. I have though been a pro bassist for 30 years, doing all the stuff you need to in order to make a living - functions, weddings, corporate events and then theatre tours with tribute bands. I left a boring and increasingly pressurised job in the early 90’s that was making me uptight and stressed, and went pro which initially made me feel the same way! However, it has turned out to be the right course for me, and am soon retiring at the age of 66. I’m going to continue gigging with my acoustic duo, and the odd dep gig that may come along. I understand it isn’t for everyone, but I’d do it all over again if I had a second time around.

I did up until I was in a band with a record deal and did a UK tour, I then realised music was my hobby and trying to make it my job ruined it for me.

Along with getting signed as posted above, about 5 years ago, I was semi-pro from playing in a club band. I still kept my day job but I was also earning really good money from the band, enough to buy a decent German second hand car. However, to earn that amount of money was the work of doing between 100 and 123 gigs a year and if you think there's only 52 weekend's in the year, you can imagine how busy we were and how much time was put in travelling and being away from family. As with the band that was signed, I absolutely loved it and have zero regrets and if family life quietens down, I wouldn't mind going back to it. In contrast to being in the signed band, it felt as if there was more responsibility on you to perform to a higher standard and conduct yourself in a much more professional manner. You were entertainers, a show band that had been hired in, paid a good wage and it was your responsibility to entertain to a certain standard. So making sure your suit was clean, shirts ironed, shoes were clean, your gear was all working and you were on time was essential. So in my head, I just kept telling myself, I'm just following in the footsteps of Jamerson, Babbitt, Scheff and the other club musicians from the 50's and 60's and it's my responsibility to do them proud as I follow in there footsteps. At one gig, I had some old guy come up to me and start talking about my basses and he seemed to know what he was talking about and he said to me, "you're the only person I've seen play the bassline to Elvis's Burning Love correctly". Turns out he was a session bassist back in the 60's and used to back a lot of the American artists when they came over to play the UK. When I got home after the gig, I'd put all earning in a little Irish tea tin and each month I'd pay it into the bank which kind of became a routine. These day, I'm just playing for fun and I still put money from gigs in that same tin but instead of paying it into the bank, I'd go to the local record shop and spend it on old Jazz records. It's like pocket money to buy sweets and is a really nice, warm feeling 😁 So two very different experiences of being pro where one was carving our own future, being more in control of our destiny, the record company working for us and having a very acute spotlight on us constantly. The other where we were hired entertainers, in more ways like a business and had expectations to deliver to a very high standard. What I liked about being signed was the freedom to be myself as bassist, perform and act how I wanted and write bass lines and craft songs from what was in me. What I liked about being in a club band was the feeling of being a entertainer, the responsibility of having to know your shit and play absolutely perfectly and seeing the dance floor rammed. Both amazing, both very different, both very hard work and I wouldn't change a thing.

My new Lionel...

I was going to be in a signed band at one point. Unfortunately it transpired that the A&R mam was just interesting in grooming the 17 year old singer. Who told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn't into men. Well, that and I got thrown out of the band because I wouldn't grow my hair long because my day job required me to look smart. 🤣 My dad was semi-pro and out playing every weekend and he told me to get proper job and play music as a paid hobby. He was right.

It's the first layers that normally go wrong. So far, so good. Both printers running, just changed the filament on them so they'll now run through the night. Thats the idea anyway. I'm normally up around 06:30 so will check in on them. if these go OK, then two more to go, similar times to print. I'll set up the webcams on the next lot so I can do time lapse recordings. Rob

Shellac and french polishing is such a joy. No drama, no drips and a low gloss finish is achievable very quickly. This is 6 very relaxing sessions of 20 minutes. I skipped the 'polishing' part of french polishing and I'm leaving it like this. Assuming the guitar doesn't explode once I've strung it up, I may go back and polish it up to get it high gloss.....

OK, I've done the various little bits that needed doing -- having said everything bar the battery clips was perfect, it wasn't it needed a damned good clean and a fret dress & polish, and the action and intonation needed sorting too (once I'd found an allen key that fitted), but now it's all good. Still need to sort that case but the bass itself is fine. Living with it... well, it's surprisingly heavy, and I thought I'd get on ok with that, but actually it's an issue. Remarkably it's introduced me to something I never thought existed, i.e. body dive that makes it impossible to play on my knee. It does play beautifully however, a nice low-but-not-ridiculously-low action and a fast, comfortable neck. The sound is classic Status, and that is a very, very good thing. It's definitely scratched an itch I've always had, but... and I feel like a traitor saying this... I don't actually like it all that much. Well I like it yes, but nowhere near as much as my Spector or Sire and waaaaaay less than my Shuke. And I definitely preferred my old wood neck Status Series 1 5-string from way back...

Coooool, baby! 😎 And remember- Jaco only needed 4ºC

Right, part three. Making the neck. So the first step in this part of the process was that the maple neck blank went up to my wife's workshop so she could bandsaw it out. Unfortunately, on that particular day one of my wife's students had messed up the set-up of the bandsaw in a novel and exciting way (undergraduates man, they have talents). This caused the blade to drift off track and irrepairably damage the wood around where the headstock would be. There is perhaps a parallel universe where this didn't happen, where the last piece left over from the maple board I bought back in 2016 was actually used to make my bass along with the last of the body wood. In that world I might have finished my bass, said "well that's that" and walked away from luthierie forever. In this timeline though, I had to buy another 2.4 metres of maple board, setting up the body-wood/neck-wood nacho cycle that will likely keep me making instruments for the forseeable future. (It's also not the last you'll hear of that ill-fated neck blank – there's a reason why my fretless bass is headless). Anyway, back to the actual process. After the correctly bandsawed neck came back from the shop, I set to work. First thing was to drill out the holes for the tuner pegs (using the janky-ass drill press from last time), followed by the truss rod channel. Because of my aforementioned beef with routers, I do my truss rod routs using an old-fashioned Stanley router plane. This really doesn't take very long (probably quicker than doing it with a router when you factor in making the jig, setting it up, sweeping up all the dust, etc.) and is good exercise. I wholeheartedly recommend router planes. They're great. After that I glued on the fingerboard using some little alignment pins though holes around a few fret slots and – as is tradition – every clamp in my postcode. The fingerboard on this bass is a pre-slotted one that I'd bought from StewMac a few years earlier. I generally cut fret slots myself, because it gives me more options when it comes to scale length and wood choice, but I was happy for the opportunity to skip that stage here. I then planed/rasped away the excess. You'll note that I've still not carved the neck; this is because I find all the other steps in the process easier to do with a flat-bottomed slab. With the fingerboard attached, I got out my slightly smaller plane again to properly level the glued fingerboard. It was pretty flat to begin with, but I didn't want any bumps to get introduced by the glueing and clamping. This also revealed the lovely colour of the wood. Here's the board after I'd added the dot-markers and sanded it with radius blocks. I'd originally intended for this bass to have blocks and binding, but I decided that this didn't really fit with the aesthetic. I also didn't feel like dealing with the hassle of cutting the recesses and the channel for the binding. Here's the neck after the fret installation (done with a big hammer and earplugs). I go through and shape the fret ends after I'ver finished carving the neck. With all that sorted, I got to shaping the slab neck using rasps and a spokeshave. You can see the neck from the OLP in the background here because I was measuring and comparing to get the dimensions and shape more or less the same. I don't have any gauges or guides for this part of the process; aside from the occasional check of the overall thickness I primarly work on feel. You know how I mentioned the router plane is good exercise? Well, it's nothing compared to this stage. I'm still not entirely sure whether Rock Maple is a wood-like rock or a rock-like wood. I don't know if you can really see the shape of the neck heel in this picture, but that's something I'm particularly proud of. I carve them to exactly follow the curve of join with the body, so they go straight to playable thickness with no Fender-style chunky section in front of the joint. Here's the finished neck, next to the old OLP neck it replaced. I was going to try and wrap up this trilogy here, but I once again find myself talking too much. It will have to be a Douglas-Adams-style trilogy in four parts.

Is this the model that goes down to minus 11?

Yes, that's the one and I completely missed the post. Thankfully @skelf is a complete legend and gave me the heads-up.

An hour ago courier delivered 2004.Yamaha TRB 5p ii - Bubinga. Sounds superb. Bought from reverb, Australia.

It Must Have Bin Love - Roxette

Nope. The couple of CD/Albums I played on were a painfully tedious affair. I've played with some amazing musicians, many of whom were an absolute pain in the derriere. Can't beat going out and having a bit of fun with some mates and coming home with a bit of cash in your pocket.

Never been pro, nearly signed to Polydor in the mid-80s but that fell through ('sorry lads, we're really only interested in your young, hot singer'). I do think of what might have been, but to be honest there's the niggle in the back of my head that only a tiny, tiny percentage of pro-players (or jobbing musicians) go on to make decent money and most wouldn't have anywhere near the level of lifestyle I have now. Weigh in that I would never have met my wife etc. Could I be a pro? That's another question entirely. About a year ago I joined a band that had what is colloquially referred to as having 'a known front man'. I genuinely liked the guy, but a musician he was not; I honestly thought that association would somehow be a step up to better gigs, better circles of musicians, better riders and getting paid (being married, I had little interest in the prospect of being surrounded by loose women). Even in his early 60s, he was still carrying the insane dream of making-it. If my experience is tantamount to being a working musician, then shove it really; the weekly Zoom calls analysing performance at the previous weekend's gigs were just awful, the little tantrums, the persistent tellings-off, lack of fun and endless repetition of the same fecking 13 songs were just nails in the coffin. God knows what it would be like working with someone really famous. George McFly punches would fly.

Not sure what the difference will be here as the body is plastic and there is a plywood back. I've just had a blast on the 3d printed six string and compared it to my Telecaster, its different but the sustain feels the same. Now I am not a good guitarist, I'm not even sure I'm good enough to be even a bad one, so other people will have a different opinion. I'll bring all my guitars along to the NW Bass Bash so people can play and find out. The bass might be finished by then (I hope). Rob

sound clips (with a variable XO frequency @matybigfro ) of my pedal at various settings... sorry for the bad playing - single takes late at night

I think I might have found it with the help of Mr Cringean. I'll let you know as soon as I see some pics... Unreasonably excited about this.

Looks great in Olympic White but I would consider changing the black plate for tort 👍

It's rather nice being in a 'power trio' with some licence to improvise and the space to jmp around while the 'main attraction' is largely tied to his mike 😁 We enjoy some coordinated instrument wagging too!

Finally managed to sell my 6x10 cab as it’s a bit too heavy for me to manage and have now downsized to a Barefaced Two10 to pair with my Ashdown ABM 500 Evo head. To say I’m very happy is an understatement, can’t wait to try it out at practice on Monday 😊

Even though I'm in a great band I occasionally struggle with " is the grass greener on the other side" syndrome. Especially when I see the some of the top teir local cover bands playing the high end stages with high end production, great time slots and higher pay. I'll try to attach a link to the band I wanted yo audition for. But I'm always told by my close friends " Daryl, You already in the best band for you". And after I do my research on these bands I find that it's not all peaches and cream. First of all after they pay for sound and lights the individual members are making no more money than me. All their gigs are not high end and they don't always have large crowds. At the end of the day if our 2024 summer schedule continues to fill up like it did this week I'll probably feel like a pro anyway. Daryl

Had a phone call from BD today. Not long now

Your man just sent me this

Might have underestimated the printing time a wee bit This will take 28 hours <gulp>. No embedded nuts so fire and forget. This one is 37 hours 82MB of g-code, hoping nothing goes wrong. Lots of embedded nuts 18 hours in, so around 09:00 tomorrow morning.

There were never as many lawsuits as people think. For most of what people call "lawsuit" instruments, there was no lawsuit. It's another misued and abused term like "vintage" to try to make FS ads seem more intriguing and appealing 😉 It's more a Japanese cultural thing - Kaizen, continuous improvement. You'll notice most Japanese brands, not just Ibanez, make a particular model for a year or two, then release a new model and make that instead of the previous model. On it goes. They continually try to refine their instruments to incorporate manufacturing, electronic and ergonomic progression. Churning out the same thing for 70 years, with the occasional rebranding exercise and perhaps slight paint shade change, is sadly a business model our American friends embrace once the innovators sell out to bean counters and shouldn't be accepted as the norm.

Nope. As part of my day job back in the UK I travelled all over the UK living in hotels for about 6 years. Not something I ever want to repeat. I can't imagine anything worse now than being dragged around on a bus from city to city and never being at home. Truth be told I can't even be arsed with gigging at all. Unless it's something local with an early start and early finish like a support slot or a nice afternoon party. I'm happy at home with my feet up. I also can't imagine anything worse than being famous. I'll take the money. But you can keep the fame.

If I had artistic freedom, yes. I wouldn't want to be a pro bass player if it was at the expense of my artistic/creative freedom. So, yes, if it was in the context of being in a democratic original band, where I loved the music we were making, where I largely had freedom to come up with and play my own bass lines, and having overall influence on the composition, and we were on a record company that gave us artistic/creative freedom, then yes. To be honest though I'd much rather be able to make a living as a composer. I have seriously pondered on making an attempt to get my foot in the door of being a film/television composer. As it is currently though my mental health wouldn't allow me to live up to deadlines and to handle all the general stress involved, so think it'll have to remain a dream. But yeah, I am really more of a composer kind of musician than an instrumentalist. Don't get me wrong I think I am decent at playing both bass and guitar, but I am genuinely great at composing.

for me its the line in the intro to war pigs

I like it. I mean given the choice I would rather have a bass in matte black or dark green finish, but I can think of several other finish options where I'd much rather have this. Also I really appreciate Ibanez has got the guts to experiment as much as they do with their guitar and bass models compared to pretty much every other big cooperate guitar/bass brand. Ibanez pushes innovation forward, whereas it seems like most other brands/companies their size do their best to kill innovation.

I'd have liked to have done it in an originals band, but before I'd settled down, bought a house, got a cat and started my family. For everyone in my current band, it'd be very hard to cover equivalent wages with doing it full time. I'd need to win the lottery to make it work now. It'd also need to be the right group of people. In the band where we did a couple of (self organised) tours, I couldn't have coped long term. On our short UK tour: We ended up getting a parking ticket on one of the vechicles because I didn't have enough cash, and no-one else thought it was urgent/would help me get the change together The drummer put petrol in my diesel car The drummer didn't bring his counterpart licence, so I had to drive the van all of the time After drving from London (and getting a bit lost in London - hate driving there!) to Brighton following a gig, I couldn't convince one person to have a pint with me at the youth hostel we were staying at Plus I don't think we were prolific enough to maintain a decent song output. The guitarist was a total perfectionist and nothing else would do, so it'd take MONTHS to finish a song. I think maybe the one I'm in now would be better at those sorts of things. Not sure I'm tempted to find out right now, especially after writing that down!

I studied sound engineering, worked in a studio for a while, produced a few bands and thought it would be a nice way to earn a living. However, I realised that having to work on music I simply didn't like removed all the joy from it. Having bands in who I couldn't click with turned the thing I truly love into an excruciating chore, so I choose to do music for love and a "regular" job for money. My taste in music has always been a little too niche to make a living out of playing and fame is something I would run away from with surprising speed. Covers, weddings or sessions playing music I don't like are of no interest at all. Being an anonymous schleb who plays what he wants when he wants, and enjoys every second of it, sits just fine on my shoulders.

Yep I hear you. I've always been too partial to my own bed and toilet to ever be away from them for too long. Besides, I only like playing music I'd choose to listen to and could never bring myself to be a hired hand, whether in someone's band or as a sessioner. Then there's the stuff about being away too long getting in the way of lurve and a good social life. Playing in bands as a hobby has been enough for me..

1996 blueburst. I prefer unlined if I'm honest but I can live with it in this instance.😊

Depends what you mean as pro? Not many make it as artists/ famous bands. I wanted to be a session musician until I really understood what that meant, travelling the length of the country to play a wedding, corporate gig, Christmas party ect. All for a moderate living and unhealthy work/ life balance. Then I found that a lot of bands out there require BVs and there’s no way anyone would pay for that from me.

NFD

I didn't see this thread until I googled us to find the link for the tickets to our gig haha I'm the bass player in this band (Invisible Airwaves)! Thanks for all the nice comments guys. Lovely to hear. And can confirm, Tamas is a very cool guy Maybe see some of you in June!