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Tonight! The Cantina Band's world tour of the Vaults in Knowle continued - A truly momentous occasion, as we had five (or possibly four?) new songs in the set! We'd done something on Wednesday called "Rehearsal" (?!) which is where you all cram in to a small room and try to play songs you don't know with nobody listening, so it's a lot like a gig except we had to pay for it. I don't think it'll catch on. Usual stuff - the bar was rammed, a few folk ventured to the corner betseen the toilets and the fire escape to see us., we played pretty well and those that were up dancing seemed to really enjoy it. Of the new songs, Lithium went down the best, Helter Skelter was the most fun to play and Centrefold was the cheesiest. Went for a wireless wander into the bar during Sex on Fire, which was a lot of fun and went down well. We all really enjoyed it for some reason, maybe sticking a few new ones wasn't such a stupid idea? Highlight was me being *just* about to start Ace of Spades, then the guitarist counting in to Whole Lotta Love... nearly went very badly. Sterling (my fave Bass for Rock stuff) -> small board -> Sansamp programmable -> Mark CMD121P Feet: Red socks -> Rainbow Converse. Had a laugh, got paid, home about half midnight for a curry, a Weston's Reserve (8.2% ABV) and an Old J Tiki Fire overproof spiced rum (75.5% ABV) Very different gig Saturday- female fronted pop stuff with the 5 string and the first outing for my new improved enormous pedalboard... Tune in the same time tomorrow!

Just back from an Elton John tribute gig at Butlin’s in Skegness. Simple joy of playing a vintage P bass thru an SVT rig for about 1,000+ people (and a blow up dog) enjoying a 70s weekender. An ace day out!

Maple Road 3/8 The Bend Theatre Great Theatre gig. We played 9 songs opening for Ivy Ford. We we're clicking on all 6 cylinders from the first couple of notes. Stage sound was outstanding. Daryl

Our second gig this week tonight at The Grand Theatre in Swansea. A magnificent late Victorian theatre with a seating capacity of just over 1000. Nice combination of old impressive architecture with modern facilities backstage. We’ve played here many times now and always get a great enthusiastic crowd in. Tonight was no exception, good natured heckling and enthusiastic applause after every number, with plenty of communal singing. A really enjoyable gig. ( I now have only six gigs left with the band before my departure at the end of next month.) 🙁

I've updated my main board and going down the "less is more" route..... Well I was, but I saw some shiny things with lights

In my quest to find the “sound in my head” (silly I know) from my OLP TL 5’er I’ve gone through an Audere 3 band and a Nordstrand 2 band MM preamps. Both excellent bits of kit, but just didn’t scratch my itch. As a last shot, I bought a new Stinger from Retrovibe. And as David is 15 minutes down the road from me, I thought I’d see if he could fit it for me. Went on Thursday, bass and Stinger in hand along with the fitting fee. Picked it up yesterday and, there it was, the sound I had in my head. Fat finger funky, and zingy enough for a bit o’ cheeky 80’s slap. David @Bassbadger is a thoroughly lovely chap, and even let me have a go on his rather groovy orange violin bass.

About five years ago I went into a florists in Kidderminster the day before Valentine's day. Ordered a bunch of Roses for the then Mrs StingRayBoy and nodded hello to the long-haired, leather jacketed old feller waiting for his flowers. We stood there and made "Tsch, mad this innit, what are we like?" faces at each other for a very long five minutes, while my brain played "That's Robert Plant. That's Robert Plant. That's Robert Plant. Out of Led Zep." on a loop. They say never meet your heroes, but I think he handled it really well.

Out in Paisley last night with Ruff Edge. We played in The Old Swan ,Paisley and although not packed we had a cracking night with good banter and feedback from the punters. Always made to feel welcome at this venue. Great load in at the front and we were able to leave our cars outside the pub unlike a couple of weeks back on a Saturday afternoon when the wardens were out and some poor sod got a ticket (not us lol)

No shows this weekend, but wife is down the country, so I'm staying up late with this rig.

He can still sing and play with a broken ankle. I toured with a broken ankle back in 80's. Just meant i couldn't lift any of the heavy gear (what a shame) plus i had to stand in same spot most of the night. There's a lack of commitment and dedication these days Dave

Very recently picked up some second hand bits and pieces for a bitsa P Bass build. It started with this Squier body, but as I already have a sunburst P Bass in the stable I decided I was going to refinish it. A pro told me there was no need to strip back to bare timber and that knocking back the lacquer would be enough with primer / top coat and new lacquer. I used some filler on the dent on the back and roughed it all back. Building up the primer coats slowly and flattening back each coat before the next. Until I had a nice even primed surface! Worth the patience. The final colour was an off white / grey, RAL 9002 to be specific, I'd had creams, oly whites, arctic whites on basses previously and wanted a different look, if I could have got it in good time I did want Porsche Chalk Grey, but this was a lovely colour too, and looked ace on the guitar. Not so many process photos but slow build up and flattening off between coats. Went with a satin poly lacquer so it didn't feel so glossy and after a few days of hanging up in a hot area curing it was ready to take home and add some hardware! Hardware time! The build got the following goodies installed; Squier CV60's Body Squier CV70's Maple Neck, black blocks and binding, came with stock tuners, nut, and string tree. Gotoh bridge (required me to buy a maple wood shim as it sits higher than a standard BBOT bridge. ) Aguilar AG4P-60 pickups, my new go to pickups, they are AMAZING, Kiogon loom Flat head tele knobs (which I haven't installed yet as I really like the pot shaft no knob look) New Squier neck plate and screws Red tortoise shell pickguard Comfort Strap Ernie Ball lime green strap locks (I have the same strap + straplock combo on all my basses) Cavity shielding La Bella Flats (The only strings I use these days, again they're on all my basses) Annnnd... she was done! Very satisfying putting it all together and it thankfully it sounds and plays just like a P Bass should! Gorgeous!

Board edition #1246442 Replaced the previously posted markbass with an Ampeg SGT-DI, which was then replaced with a laney digbeth, which was then replaced with a Source Audio Zio Bass - brilliantly simple but effective bit of kit! Added a naughty knock off demonfx Call76, I've had the real deal before and it was fantastic, but too extravagant for me. The Demonfx unit is neigh on indistinguishable (so long as I don't look at it or touch it; this is without A/Bing). Mojomojo and Monomyth bought at the same time with the intentions of keeping one, but love what they both do so kept both - Monomyth doesn't usually get used, and the mojomojo maybe for 5 minutes of the set, but they sound great! Board replaced with a Gator aluminium board, which is fantastic value at less than £70 including high quality soft case.

Just the one broken ankle, Dave? Hardly worth mentioning. When I were a lad, I gigged with two broken ankles, a dislocated knee, a finger gaffa taped on after losing it to a lift door blah blah... 😂

Not to mention that every time someone says they've bought a B1-Four, @Al Krow has an orgasm.

After following with interest the Basschat 112 Bass cab build thread, watching Stephen's journey to production, and reading many positive reviews I decided to pull the trigger and order the LFS Monaco cab. After a few gigs I have to say I am certainly not disappointed! The cab has a nice shape/form factor ie not too small and not too big, I am also very impressed with the build quality, and knowing the cab is fully braced and built of quality plywood and quality components fills me with confidence regarding the roadworthiness. Describing the cabinet, tone-wise: muscular, full-bodied tone (unlike some other cabinets where the bottom end has little definition and impact and the tweeters are artificial and spitty) good transition from 12 to the compression driver loud for the size of box handles power well as mentioned by others, the mid range is great, even with the cabinet on the floor Size, form factor: the quality top handle along with taller, shallower dimensions makes accessing/exiting venues a breeze smaller stages no longer a problem amps sit on top of the cabinet without issue fits perfectly in a small car (bonus!!) weight/size to output ratio is awesome Stephen is a true gentleman to deal with, who goes above and beyond with his customer service and I would not hesitate to recommend him to other bassists!! In all, this is a fantastic, well-designed cab which performs better than any other cab I have owned.

I've finally got my effects properly sorted, mounted on the board and the board is now in a Gator bag (£15 used on eBay). The board's pretty conservative but I don't need much in the way of synths, envelope filters, arpeggiators etc; you'll notice that there's room for an always-on compressor, though, which is probably my next purchase. Cheers, JRK

Somehow don't think he is putting the effort in:

Well it seems the Pod Express is not being pitched as for live use pedal by Line 6: "You'll notice none of our in situ photography shows POD Express on a stage or with other pedals—it's always shown on a desktop or outside at the beach or campground." Eric Klein, Chief Product Design Architect, Yamaha Guitar Group | Line 6 | Ampeg - Talkbass 8 Mar I'd love to find more beach use for my bass playing, just can't see that happening any time soon.

We have a Nate Navarro video now too 😊

Since someone has mentioned being told to eff off by Lemmy, I guess I'll mention my encounter with the great man. Twenty years ago, the singer of the band I was in had a friend at Metalhammer magazine who got us VIP tickets to their annual awards at the Kentish Town Forum. At one point I went to the bar, where I ordered a drink while stood next to my childhood hero Gary Numan and was then excitedly making a bee line for my singer to tell him about it. This meant crossing the central area of the balcony, where I was stopped by an enormous bouncer and asked for my pass. I showed him my VIP wristband only to told I needed a "VVIP" one to enter that area. As I was about to turn away and take the long route round, a gravelly voice said "It's alright mate, he's with me". I looked to see who had said this, and saw Lemmy motioning me to sit in his booth. He had a beautiful woman sat each side of him (I later discovered they had been paid to escort him all evening), and a bottle of JD on the table. I sat down, he offered me a drink and then he said "I love your jacket man". Said jacket was an army surplus East German thing I'd bought the week before at Camden Market. I ended up having a shot of his JD, before thanking him and making it over to my singer and regaling him with what had happened. The night got a bit hazy after that, but I ended up at the after party along with acquaintances who were also in attendance since we had a mutual friend who was playing in Cradle of Filth. That proved embarrassing, since the singer of CoF decided to pick a fight with the members of Murderdolls. Since they were all at least a good foot taller than the rather short Mr Filth, he got kicked down a set of stairs and a slagging off in the next issue of Metalhammer.

His children have formed a symphony orchestra.

I used to be in a band with the keyboard player from the Courteeners and a different band with the drummer out of Catfish and the Bottlemen when he was about 15. A friend of mine toured the world playing keys with Cradle of Filth, she's got some good stories! On stage, they were all evil, baby-eating monster types - off stage, they were middle-aged blokes from Ipswich who complained about their shoulders hurting. Good days!

Because they're cheap, or at least the ones you see most often are. They cross over typically between 3.5 and 4kHz, because that's as low as cheap tweeters will go. They use barely adequate crossovers again because they're cheap. IMO the best high frequency option is a four to six inch cone midrange driver, crossed over between 1.2 and 2kHz. They tend to be good to 8kHz or so, which is all electric bass needs. You seldom see them because they're more expensive, as are well designed and spec'd crossovers. BTW, you can't lay the blame for this on speaker designers. Given free rein and a blank check most of us would do it the right way. This one falls on the bean counters.

My new, itsy bitsy, teeny weeny, yellow..... Markbass Octaver pedal.

That's nuts, it's an effects pedal with footswitches, surely you use it however you want, live or otherwise. Maybe they're getting twitchy that it's been received (so far) much better than the HX One, and might make that product irrelevant in their range.

It was a good night despite my last minute gear swapping. It was a well attended local version of the Caravan and Camper club, with about 50 people in a smallish rugby club lounge, which made the atmosphere good. We did a mix of oldies and rock n roll as the audience were largely of retirement age. I don't like playing to backing tracks but the ones we used last night were of good quality. The singer uses them for his solo act but I've only played to these once or twice, years ago so the endings were a bit hit or miss. But the atmosphere in the room was good and it didn't seem to spoil things. I had planned on using the Bass VI for some of the lively rock and roll but the backing tracks had a prominent bass to them so the VI sat largely unused. It did arouse the interest of one punter and we had a chat about it as he'd never heard of the model before. We did about a quarter of the set with just two guitars and no backing. I was pleased with my backing vocals - I could hear them through the PA without in-ears, which is a rarity, and I got complimented on them. I went with this pedal combo in the end which went into a BAM200 with the tone set as neutral as possible (thanks to info supplied from people of this parish). This drove my Basschat designed home made 12" cab. I took my Zoom B4 for the drum machine as an emergency back up (I've played with this singer when his laptop with all the backing tracks has just died) and we used it for one song. It was ok as a back up. By the end of the night we had picked up a garden party gig for the band, another duo gig for the Caravan club, a band gig for the Caravan club's Christmas bash and a booking (to be confirmed) at the rugby club. We were paid a little extra (which is always nice) and we had bacon! How many gigs pay in bacon? 😃 I tested it this morning:

A little update; I got to use the Monza at a rehearsal for the blues band I play in. For rehearsal it was the Monza/Warwick Gnome iPro/Flyrig 2 combination with my Boss wireless. To say I was pleased with the Monza’s performance is an understatement. Although this is the loudest band I play in, we tend to avoid ear-ringing volume at rehearsal. Still loud enough for a small pub. Anyway, I had the Gnome with Gain around 11 o’clock and Master between 9 and 10 o’clock, with the EQ settings following @Phil Starr’s recommendations. I could hear myself so clearly that I thought I must be too loud but I took a wander around the room and the balance was perfect, with the bass cutting through clearly. What really impressed me was the amount of low end coming through. I play a Maruszczyk Elwood 32” with this band and the Monza was really letting it shine. Unfortunately, both the bands I play in are currently suffering a gig drought. We haven’t got anything booked until June 😭, so it is going to be a long time until I can hear what the Monza is like at a gig. On current form though, I think it is going to be brilliant. The only thing is my rig looks comically small alongside the guitarists’ 2 x 12 combos. That will be their hernia though 😀!

If it does what you want, then surely you can use it however you want.

Yeah - we've all gotta get our pumped up kicks somewhere 😅 It's going to be the MS-60B+ in 4 months time, I suspect.

My first bit of outboard processing was a Bass POD and despite the naysayers, I still have a soft spot for Line6 kit. There's something about the (Get Offset) type of You Tube review posts that probably do more damage than good for a product like this; while the editing is generally OK, the whole apologetic approach to the way it works (pressing the buttons/rotating the knobs), her playing in general, along with the audio quality makes it unwatchable beyond a minute or two.

You are Simon Gallup and I claim my prize. 😆

I've had to force myself to put it down as I need to go to bed (up early tomorrow). I've only played it on my headphone practice rig, but so far I'm really impressed with the Neve pre-amp. The bass sounds decent enough in passive mode, but I can't say I'm ever going to gig that way. The controls are: volume/4 way pick-up selector (bridge solo/bridge middle series/bridge neck parallel/neck solo)/master tone/bass/treble. There are centre detents on the bass and treble, so that seems to be cut and boost for both. The master tone control is the one where the magic happens though and not a hint of hissiness when it's wide open. It's a lovely full sounding pre and combined with the extended scale on the E and A it produces a sweet punch. I can see I'm going to have to buy a few sets of the nickel Dingwall strings for future use. The case, or gig bag, is actually of nice quality. It's pretty close to the standard of my Mono bags. It's the first 4 string Dingwall I've owned (I've had a 5 string before) and I honestly didn't even notice the fan frets. It's slightly different with a 5, but I'd say anyone considering a fan fretted 4, don't be put off. All in all, I'm very happy with it. Anyone else received theirs yet?

Another story, from many years ago so the details are quite hazy. My first ever band, mid nineties, from Canvey Island. I must have been around 17 years old at the time. Me on bass (plugged straight into our cheap PA - not even a DI box - yes we were quite poor), my brother on guitar (with a Vox AC50 he bought off a mate for next to nothing) and my mate Kelly on drums. Our PA was an old, very basic, powered mixer - (like those ones in rehearsal rooms, but worse - probably only had about 4 channels) and a couple of Wemm 4x10 columns we acquired from someone for free. Anyway, we were hired by a local impresario to play at his street party. It was apparently his way of thanking his neighbours for putting up with his noisy comings and goings at all hours. He told us that he knew Peter Green's family (another Canvey native) and that Peter's niece was coming along. She approached us after we played and said our version of 'Albatross' was one of the best she had heard in years. Unbeknownst to us, someone had recorded it as well. Fast forward a couple of weeks later and my brother bumped into the same girl. She told him she had played the tape recording to her Uncle Peter and he was very impressed and started reminiscing. Not long later, Peter came out of his self-imposed hibernation with his "Splinter Group". I'd like to think we had something to do with that.

Now gained a High Mass Bridge thanks to @Raslee... and lost the Tone Pot for a blanking bung...

Would be a plan Dave, but our guys all have different needs outside of working with us. PA in one van, lighting in another, backline in another and then the band in our Merc splitter bus. Also just to make things worse we all come from different areas!

The exchange rate fluctuates wildly depending on how hungry you are. 😃 In this case it was additional to the agreed fee so it was hard to tell what financial market they based their figures on. 😃

Our band is considering the same Dave. Four LWB vans really cane the ULEZ fines, and some of our tech guys work that area more than once a year so theirs gets doubled every time. Crazy.

@hiram.k.hackenbacker - interesting you say the tone control is the secret. I've modded my combustion to have a master tone control. I rather like it!

Isn’t it about time we de-funded the Apostrophe Police for being a total PITA?

Second half of this video is a bass demo, although done by a guitarist 😅

This was the first gen Apple Airpod. Customer feedback was very positive on bass response, pretty good middle, not so good on the treble. A number of people reported some difficulty in putting them in their ears. Noise cancelling was excellent though that may have been due to their ears being shredded by the bass response. The big issue however was battery life, even with the 24 full size lead acid car batteries, was reported as poor. Rob

It reminds me of emails I used to get when I worked in the civil service from people who thought that big words, official sounding phrases and jargon all wrapped up in a formal setting made them appear important. The really decent manager/leaders (there were a few) never wrote like that so it was easy to spot the pseuds. But in the context you're quoting, it may well be artificial. Intelligent - nope! 😃

Spent the last 2 days in the studio recording with this setup 😍 Ampeg V4B into the 810av. Thankfully the V4B is already mine but playing through that cab has really made me want one, but my back says no.

That's even before you get to the basses. I recorded a band whose bass player had a Saint bass. So, I had a go on it. It wasn't great. I said he might like to use my Fender 50s classic precision instead. So we used that. An infinitely better bass. Which ironically is almost 300 quid less. I mean, to me that's a pointless niche to try and get into. There's so many manufacturers at that £1100ish price mark that they're never going to get many people buying them unless they're diehard Ashdown bods. To me, the bass played okay, but the pickups were nowhere near good enough considering the competition. I kind of feel the company as a whole is slightly backwards looking. Geezer has retired, Mark King left, John Entwistle died, James Lomenzo and John Myung are nearly 60. Even the Biffy Clyro lads are closer to 50 than 40. The point is, they could have went after a whole generation of upcoming players and didn't. I'm not saying get every Instagram influencer they can manage of course. However, nothing really appears to be as cutting edge as one might like. Is an ABM with 9 sliders going to do it for you if it still weighs 15kg? Probably not if you can get a lighter amp for the same money that you can pick up with one finger. In a way, it's quite sad.