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A lot of the gigs I have been playing recently are with my rick 5 string 4004, I thought about getting a 5 string 4003 made. i looked into it but ultimately you end up paying the same as a real s/h ric for the same price so I decided to just get a normal 4003 and see if I got on with it. So that turned up today, a matte 4003s - I have a practice tomorrow so I get to hear what it sounds like, but I need to go through my normal set and try and adapt to having a string missing. Traditionaly it has never worked, and I ended up ignoring the 4, but we shall see- its a bit harder to convert a 4003 to a 5 string with the bridge! First impressions are good, apart from the obvious lack of strings! Anyway, useless without pictures, so here we are

Great gig last night. A long long day and all for charity. 7 tribute artists across three back line bands. The event was sold out a couple of hours before doors. Line up was Bon Jovi (Jon Bovi), Alanis Morissette, Elton John, ABBA, Elvis, David Bowie (ChangesTwoBowie) & Queen (Queenage) - plus encores from 4 of them. I played Bowie and Queen plus the encore set. It's nice to get paid, but to have an audience go this nuts for the songs they love, I'd do it again tomorrow. A truly remarkable ensemble who I'm honoured to have as friends. Not sure what the final total is yet, but I'm expecting it to be lots of thousands.

We got a couple of pro shots from the night before, courtesy of Pacific Curd, so I thought I’d share one. Moving swiftly on to last night, we did a home town “Early Halloween Special” at the Cellar Bar in Devizes. Ahead of our next single, “Gloss”, coming out this Friday, we went all out on the makeup. At the risk of looking like a Temu Pennywise, I liked this pic… We were supporting the fantastic JP Oldfield who does a Johnny Cash type thing. I had my 57Ri P-bass through my board with a Boss IR2. Again, we played well and I enjoyed it. We did £70 in merch sales, which is a record for us. An hour of mostly original music, it rounded off what has been a really great weekend.

A busy week so this is a bit late. Last Tuesday Simply Blu (not my idea!) played to packed house of over 120 with extra chairs crammed into the corners and we had a great night. We normally play summer bluegrass festivals that are mostly open air and this was the first time we have played in a hall. Some debate amongst the organizers if this was the biggest crowd they have had since starting monthly concerts in 2017 so we were very happy with the turnout that included some friends and family and a whole bunch of bluegrass fans and some who were just regular attendees. We were up for it and from the opening notes of Freeborn Man until the last chord of our encore we put on a good show. We played a set of about 70 minutes and took a short break before another good hour of energetic bluegrass and the crowd loved it. The band members are scattered over a large area so our only rehearsal was on the Sunday before the gig, first time together since early August but it came together fast. These guys are fantastic musicians and I am lucky to be playing with them, I joined the band almost 4 years ago when the leader saw me playing with a jazz band and asked if I had ever played bluegrass. The answer was "no but I'll give it a go" and it has turned out to be great fun and a good learning experience. Given the setting we decided to abandon the usual laid back festival approach and went with energy and entertainment in mind and it worked. Lots of amazing solos throughout the show but the only bass solo was in I Know What It Means To Be Lonesome where I tossed is nice gliss on the G string and apparently got the most applause of the night for a solo. I'm not a great bass player but sometimes a schticky lick will fool most of the people! A memorable night.😄 Not the best photo but it's all I have now...

Great dep show last night at the lovely South Hill Park Arts Centre in Bracknell with Duran/Spandau tribute 'From Gold To Rio'. Gear was my usual (with this show) of Spector Dimension HP4, Shure wireless/tuner, Thumpinator, EHX Signal Pad, HAZardlAMPS Pre and HX Stomp (GK head/Ampeg 810 sim), straight to the desk.... then back to my KZs & Sennheiser IEM system. Back up bass was my upgraded Spector Coda 4. Apparently it sounded great out front and the audience was very receptive. A fun night!

Deadlight Dance returned to the stage last night, supporting the excellent Sun Machine at The Tree House in Frome. Prior to the show, I took my 57RI P-bass into Kempsters in Swindon, to replace some dodgy pots. Amazing service as always with 80s style pricing, although he did “have to tell me” that he didn’t like my neon green strings! 😹 I also picked up a Pennywise stage mascot at HMV. Despite the AD200 Orange bass rig, I am actually running through just a board with the Boss IR2 as my “rig”. The Orange sounded incredible when Sun Machine were on and having owned the exact same setup, I didn’t miss it during the first floor load in. In fact I had 4 separate people ask me about my bass sound! I was also compared to Peter Hook and Simon Gallup, which for an originals based set is either a massive compliment or I need to get better at stealing! The sound guy Chris was amazing, Sun Machine were fantastic and there was not one diva style ego in the house. A respectably full room and everyone showed up to watch both bands. Coupled with the age friendly 10.30pm curfew and the competitively priced Guinness 0%, a superb evening. Nice to be back “home” on the bass too 😎

After a few weeks off while the guitarist was touring, we were back at the Railway in Countesthorpe last night. Unfortunately nobody told us about the Indian streetfood kitchen set up in the carpark, and I'd turned up with a bellyfull of Chinese takeaway. Moot point anyway because they had packed up and gone by the time we'd got the kit in. Slightly quieter night than recently, which was good because we could actually set up. Normally it's a right scrum. It was hot! It went pretty well considering I hadn't picked up a bass since the last gig. Lots of compliments on both sound and playing. Stingish bass through the GT-6B, and then via my new deluxe big muff, into the Rumble. DMs

A great little gig last night for jagged little Alanis. A fan of ours wanted an extra special birthday… so we played a full gig in their kitchen! great little event. Drum kit was a scaled back cocktail one, the vibe was excellent. my gear was the usual pedalboard plus my stingray HH, which sounded great. I used a little Roland bass cube RX as a monitor at head height, worked quite well but I reckon I’ll use my own in-ears if we do this again 😂

We (Weeds) played at a small and rather intimate venue in Chester (G21)... It was our first gig as a full band for nine years so we'd spent a couple of days at my house rehearsing and drinking tequila. We don't really rely on any guitar solos - guitar is mainly rhythmic noise - and our singer uses a vocal synth to make weirdness. After being fine in rehearsal it packed up, so some improvisation was called for. So first song was a false start due to laptop sequence mismanagement, but once we got going it seemed to work reasonably well - cock ups were mainly guitar based which was good as much of the set is drum, bass sequence and vox. And vox coped very well without vocal synth, all was generally groovy and I even managed slap bass plus improvised jazz funk solo. No cans were thrown so we could take down the chicken wire after the first song, and towards the back I could see our own @lurksalot pogoing about. It's possible we may be asked back in the spring to play in a larger venue... Gear was ACG-Helix-BBE& Crown amps- Markbass 4x10 with pedal distortion and autowah. Shoes were zebra creepers.

Very good gig tonight. Very successful in every sense - 19 new followers on the Instagram, swathes of posts and stories and the owner of the bar (before we'd even finished, mind) emailing us offering us 9 dates over the next year. Crazy stuff. Rig was the new (to me) fender MIM standard P bass (I'll do a NBD on it, maybe), over Swiff Audio 5.8ghz into the TC Electronic BG250 combo. No pedals, no nothing. Simple as anything set up, and I got compliments from bar staff and audience members on how clear and punchy the bass was. *footwear were the same pair of puma suedes I always wear.

Nice little gig at a wmc just outside Barnsley last night. Nice audience but numbers were a bit down, this was our first visit so hopefully it’ll be higher on a return next year based on the favourable comments. That’s it for 4 weeks as we always take a break at this time of year to recharge and get ready for the pre silly season stuff. Normal gear set up, Markbass with the EBMM shorty Ray which I’m now managing to tame sound wise with a few eq adjustments. Footwear - silver converse.

Last gig this year! 🙁 Booked back in May for a mate's 50th so a gig with a guaranteed crowd, two sets of mostly originals. Our few covers are from Tom Petty, Whitesnake, AC/DC (of course 😄), JJ Cale, Rory McLeod and T Rex. Chris, our guitarist, found the backdrop from the band's pre @super al era so I pinned it up on the pub window curtain rail 👍🏻 Could probably do with an iron. Great crowd, mostly people I've known for 20-30 years so there was definitely a good vibe. Great comments after, love the word to describe our sound from one mate - seventiesness 😂 (he was drunk). Airwalk trainers on my feet, they are wearing thin on the sole so may have to retire them and just go with the various colours of converse I have in the future. Have been using the ibanez 1205 lately but as this was an end of term gig I went with my PPI bass, the Lakland 55-02 (the swiss army knife of basses 😄). It's a shame there's no more gigs in the diary but we haven't recorded any new songs in almost a year so we'll use this time productively...I hope 🙂

With the Bonnevilles at the Wagon Load of Lime last night - a bit tight for space with the bikes around us (that's a T140V Bonneville behind the guitarist and the front wheel of a pre-unit 650 Triton poking out in front of me). A bit more visible in this shot. Tablet is for the set list and brief notes on a couple of the songs. The all-important glasses. Should be getting more bookings next year, and some for my other band too (if we can negotiate a better fee). Same rig and footwear as last night. More relaxed as I don't do the PA. No pale ales in the pub. Sharp's Doom Bar and Sea Fury only, so resorted to Madri.

Another visit to the Spread Eagle in Polesworth, as always rather tight for space. Advertised as an 8:30 start, then we were told it was 9:30 to 11:30, so we went with 9:00 to 9:50ish, long interval, 10:30-11:30. A few fluffs in the first half but no major car crashes and the second half went well. And the landlady was dancing, which was a good sign. Could see through a passage into the other room, and there was some dancing going on in there too. Looks like we'll be getting some Saturday gigs next year, so less of a rush for the 50% of the band who aren't retired, and also the pool table gets moved out of the way instead of just being covered over. Sei Flamboyant -> M-Vave wireless -> Zoom MS-60B+ -> Tecamp Puma 900 -> GR Bass AT212. Normal footwear.

Good one last night. I used the TC rig rather than my usual Ashdown, and it sounded great, lots of clout via the 4x10. The P bass was magnificent as always, but it was a lot of fun using the Hohner B2 for a D tuned number. Cool venue and a very lovely audience.

On Saturday Hurtsfall played at the OxJam festival in Beeston. Over 100 acts split across multiple venues, this is the 3rd year we've been asked to play. This time we were on at 3.30pm at The Berliner, the second band of the afternoon at that venue. Not the easiest of load-ins with the venue being very busy so there was nowhere really to leave our gear where it wasn't in someone way. However it turned out that lots of the people were there specifically to see us play which was very gratifying. Just about enough time between bands to get set up and line-checked. Technical problems of the previous weekend were behind us and we played well, and even felt brave enough to open with our newest song which most of our audience wouldn't have heard before. We're taking a break from gigging until the end of November to work on new material and for recording the album.

A fun one at The Golden Lion in Bristol last night. Our friends from Motorik Road Trip added us onto the lineup with some other doomy bands, and also brought up our Cornish friends, Tüsk. The main annoyance of the evening was getting across Bristol. With the massive amount of roadworks across the south, one accident combined with the rugby ending had the city backed up for hours. It took about an hour and a quarter to get my band mates and get to the venue. It should have taken about half that. We had a few mistakes, but it was a fun gig nonetheless! Gear was my usual Dingwall Combustion, Boss GX-100, Laney Digbeth head and then into a misc 410 bass cab. The first act was a guy just playing bass and synth into three valve amps (Thunderverb, Matamp 200w hobby, and a big Fender bass tube head in a big cage). Big Sunn((())) vibes. Knackered now after being woken up by my daughter at 5:50 😴

Played in Sevenoaks on Friday. My new amp had developed a fault and its replacement didn’t arrive on time. As such for the first time ever I had to go straight to the PA and use in ears. The gig went very well, but I found it a strange experience not having an amp behind me. Ours is quite a basic PA and so we could only put a bit of bass through it, but it all seemed to work OK and the crowd all seemed to enjoy it.

Great gig at Ye Olde Butchers Arms with the Fortunate Sons. Got compliments from the band and audience members on my £10 Temu lighting rig 🤣 Really great sound with loads of low down thump. Did have a minor crisis when the hi-hat unscrewed itself ...

Strange bass gig for me! INXS UK seated in a little sold out gig playing a rubber band bass Uke! https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Cqb8hgpFP/

I have autism and prefer e-mail or text messaging to phone calls. I've been using Bass Direct since before Mark had a shop, and I've always received exemplary service from them. I've been using Bass Bros for the last two years. Again, I've had nothing but exemplary service from them as well. I think people should remember that both are small shops, staffed by knowledgeable, but small workforces. They don't have 24 hour call centres or customer service centres. They probably receive dozens of emails and telephone enquiries each day. As such, it's easy for them to miss one or think they've replied to an email when they haven't. It's also a simple matter to follow your enquiry up with another email or a call if you don't get a reply. We should be supporting these fantastic businesses, rather than criticising them over silly things.

On a slightly more constructive note, rather than naming & shaming at this stage or threatening legal action, why don't you politely email him with a link to this thread on Basschat and ask him how he thinks you should proceed?

@neepheid and I have just arrived back at Chez Clapham. 278 miles, one stop. Four hours and 30 mins. Thanks to all. Great day out. More thanks to follow when brain is working properly.

Over the years, I've commissioned nine custom instruments, and not all were perfect on arrival. Those that were not, were quickly resolved by the builder, becuase thier reputation IS their business, and they know, meeting expectations is half the game. The amount of money you've paid here is a reasonable sum for any mid-very good Luthier and not an amount of money to be taken lightly. For that cost, you are you paying for a finish that far outstrips an off-the-shelf bass from a mass market maker (Ibanez, Yamaha - with a few exceptions). The finish you have here is in no way something a reputable Luthier should be happy to send out, and I'm pretty shocked that they sent it, let alone tried to argue that those scratches, marks and finish issues were in any way acceptable. The edges of that scratch plate as well - looks like they did that with a hacksaw and forgot to sand it. If this was me, I'd be telling them how disappointed I am, and asking them to make this right, or for a refund if they can't. That looks like amateur hour work.

Next step, the wax cylinder! Enjoy the sound of noise...

Thanks everyone for the kind words. That said, I'll come here on a daily basis as there is no PianoChat.co.uk ... yet, and I really like this community too.

My Thunderstangbacker and Musicmaster J-fretless (need a better name!)

Wow. What a day. So many incredibly nice people. Tried lots of 'first time basses'. Cracked up with the absurdity of that bass synth that turned me into Eddie Van Halen 🤣 Brilliantly organised, wonderful nosh. And then I won the bass... I think I was in shock for half an hour! On my way back, I stopped to call my guitarist brother and he was 30 minutes before a gig at the Earl Haig. Only 15 minutes away, so I decided to watch the gig and give him the bass. He was absolutely made up and says it's stunning and "It’s the bass I would have chosen!! Colour and spec". He promises a photo soon... Thank you everyone, what a brilliant day. Three requests for next year: 1 a compressor workshop to explain how to set them up properly for different purposes. 2 more vegan lardy cake. 3 can I win a left hander for my other brother? 😁😁😁

Live from the bass bash, a photo of the gear while everyone's at lunch...

As opposed to what? Making pottery? 😋

Having been a short scale ‘fan’ from afar without having played many, I recently made the leap after experiencing an unhealthy obsession with upright bass. Just to be clear I wanted to obtain as close a tone to an upright to my ears without having to resort to buying one, which would have proved to be highly impractical. The bass I chose was a Duesenberg Alliance Dave Landreth Model, which I liked both aesthetically and tonally after I swapped out the stock round wound strings for some Pyramid flats. In the lower registers it sounds close to spot on for my reference at least, although it becomes a little less woody on the G string, something which can be tamed by using the tone control. To date I am really enjoying the experience of owning and playing this instrument, everything about it screams quality, it’s built exceptionally well, sounds and looks stunning (even the case is a thing of beauty), it’s also light and very comfy to get around on. They are not exactly commonplace, but that said they are played by some well known musicians, Dave Landreth, Curt Smith, Rob Mullarkey, Dave Bronze and Chris Chaney for example.

I received a couple of these in the run-up to our last gig and thought no more of it - they were trapped as spam and a quick look through the source code uncovered quite a few red flags. I thought it might have been a one-off, but I've had another one today from some more supposedly big-shot US lawyers. This one's a bit cruder than the earlier supposed missive I had from Cravaith, Swaine and Moore, but it's still a scam. It's a nasty one, though. For one thing, both those companies really exist and they genuinely are large legal firms. Everything apart from the alleged 'infringing video' link resolves to real URLs and email addresses. I've been on the Internet for 37 years now and thought I was wise to this sort of crap but it still gave me a jolt. It is designed to do one thing and one thing only - panic the recipient into clicking that supposed Facebook link. It looks like it's been shortened just to fit nicely on the page, but in this case it really has been shortened. Here's what it looks like under the bonnet: <p style="margin:0 0 8px 0;font-size:15px"><strong>Infringing Link:</strong> <a style="color:#0b5b7a;text-decoration:none">https://www.facebook.com/<wbr>108692607419559/videos/...</a></p> In this case, it's dead - clumsy work on the scammer's part - but in the earlier one, it led to a shortened URL. Hovering over it displayed the actual link - bit.ly/something_or_other. Expanding the shortened URL - you can find plenty of sites that will do that for you - showed it led to a page stating that 'Unexpected traffic has been detected from your computer' with a link to click. Click on that link and you'll be asked to log into 'Facebook' - it's actually a fake login page. If you take the bait, bam - these scumbags have your login credentials. And just to add insult to injury, Faceache took the post down and restricted my account when I uploaded these annotated screenshots. Let's be careful out there!

Rhino is now selling albums on reel to reel to make it even more of a hassle https://store.rhino.com/en/rhino-store/special-edition-shops/reel-to-reel/?pdshow=true&eml=2025October10/6909709/6134371&etsubid=223450362

Many thanks to @scrumpymike for organising and also for lunch. Also to @Sean for giving me a lift to and from the train station as well as letting me play his Laney amp and Spectors which were brilliant. I might have to try and find myself an Epiphone Les Paul bass after playing @neepheid's. It was fantastic. I think that after properly playing through @stevie's Lfsys cabs with a bass setup that I've recorded a lot, I think if one were to be in the market for new cabs his would be top of the list. Sonic fidelity in spades and frankly beyond any insane definition of "lightweight" you might have. Ultimately, it was good to see familiar and new faces. If anyone is going to the SE Bash, you may have to put up with me again. I was disappointed at the cab shootout replacing the cage fighting. I felt this was a missed opportunity for the community as a whole.

Can't help but agree with the above. If the builder has pushed back - which assuming the photos and description are reliable is pretty much indefensible - it might be worth naming them, it not only puts pressure on them but allows them to state their case here should they wish to do so..... But looking at the photos on my desktop as opposed to on my phone earlier, even if that was a £250 Squier I'd have sent it back, when you pay for a new instrument at any price point it should be exactly that, new

When I was watching Lockdown Licks with Guy Pratt back in 2020, I had this idea to put a truly outstanding bass together based on things that I love and things I really loved in a lot of Guy's basses. I decided that now was the time to get myself a Status neck, and I'm glad that I did, I don;t think anyone saw the end coming so soon for the production of Status necks. I've had 2 Warmoth basses in the past and they were exceptional in terms of quality and fit and finish so I decided to go with a chambered alder body Dinky jazz bass with a mahogany top with 70s pickup spacing and routed for a double battery box. After watching many Warmoth videos, I settled on Taos Turquoise but not gloss - the satin finish. The rest was easy - EMGs, BTS 2 band EQ, Fender Hi mass bridge and neck plate and the humungous Gotoh EB=P3 strap buttons with Fender rubber washers. Once the bass was put together I played it for a few years and loved it, except from about the middle of 2023 I had an unexpected issue - I had lost lot of weight, going from a mighty 19 stone down to 13 and a half and the bass no longer sat right. I tried other basses and they were all the same. Eventually, I got fed up one night and decided to resurrect my Harley Benton 75 thing with the heavy ash body - that was it, the extra weight made it balance properly. For some reason, after 30 years of playing, I couldn't play unless the headstock pointed upwards. Level was no good to me anymore, I needed the headstock to be higher than the body so I began designing Lockdown Bass #2. It had to be heavy so I decided to go with solid maple and specified somewhere between 6-7 pounds and omit the truss rod trench as the Status neck adjusts at the top and I didn't want to have a scratchplate. I tried many different finishes until my wife saw one of them and said - That's the One! I wanted to do something slightly different so have this time gone with EMG X series pickups and the BQC 3 band EQ but used the same bridge and neck plate. Anyone with a weak back or a fear of heavy basses might want to look away now as I weighed it once completed. The body they sent was 7.4 lbs and the whole bass, considering it has Hipshot Ultralites fitted weighs 13lbs! That's nearly a stone. Luckily I am in great shape and train three times a week so the combination of that and a really good neoprene strap should see me through many a wedding gig. Anyway, here it is in it's original form followed by the new and improved (and heavier) version in Holoflake:

Or this lovely thing??

I'm on a course to learn to refret and fret level and general setting up of guitars and basses it's 3 days long I've refretted a squier strat and fret levelled a couple of my basses including a Harley Benton PB50 One of my bitsa P basses didn't need doing but one has been quite a problem as the neck won't truss dead straight (this is fairly common apparently) Final fret polish and set up this morning, so we'll see how it turns out It's been great. I've learned a lot of things but also talking to and watching the other students with their instruments and problems They do full build courses and all sorts My luthier is in his 70s and is retiring so I wanted to know how to fret level just in case I need to I might go back for a custom build course (apparently a lot of people do)

You sick weirdo … you’ll be “experimenting with chords” next 😳

Terry it's certainly not a competition to who's the biggest bass shop, it doesn't matter. Everyone seems to be doing ok so that's all that matters, so no more go under. We (Bassbros) offer the same returns policy, as required by law. On the email issue, I'm sorry if you haven't had a reply, we have had ongoing issues with our account which we're always trying to get on top of. Most emails seem to come through as we usually receive a large amount a day which we reply to, but it seems some may not be coming through (sometimes the 'sell your bass' page) . If you don't get a reply feel free to call us to check. Also we work flat out, there's only a couple of us here, so always doing the best we can working long days every day and just expanding the showroom currently on top of all the usual things. We sell around 1500 basses and guitars a year and ever growing so we have a massive turnover of instruments, with only a couple of us here it's a lot of work so aways doing the best we can. Thanks, Will - BassBros

Mostly because it’s involve a trip to Leicester! These victims have suffered enough already…

Here's my fretless Musicmaster, now complete. It sounds fantastic 😎