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My first gig ever, at the age of 54. Wow, what a buzz Brickmakers Arms, Norwich

I placed this order quite some time ago, so long ago in fact that I don’t even have the original email chain with all of the details on it. I did ask Jon to ping the spec back to me so I can share it with everyone, but this beauty arrived today. It’s not the first lavish spec Shuker I’ve owned, so I know how good his work is, but this is quite something. The preamp/pickup combo is fierce, a really biting tone. Soon as I get Jon to send the spec back to me I’ll share!

Well, that's me crashed out of gear abstinence for this year and it's time for my full confession (although I'm 1 in, 1 out for the year so far, so could be worse). But I have a good excuse - this bass has been living rent-free in my head for nearly 12 years* and I finally snagged one in the finish I wanted. Black and silver ones pop up more often but I've only seen the purpleburst available two or three times in all these dozen years, so seeing as I'm not getting any younger, I decided a bit of carpe diem was in order. It's a three pickup, Les Paul shaped bass. It has three Greco T-bird-a-like pickups and three volume controls. That's it. Hardware is good quality - a Hipshot B style bridge and Gotoh tuners. It's had a life, there are some dings and scuffs in it but it's taken a polish well, the pickups have buffed up nicely and the fretboard enjoyed a drink of lemon oil very much. Lovely, dark rosewood board, yum. S'pose you'll be wanting some pics... It sounds great - I had a blast through my TC Electronic BH250 into headphones and it's got a lot of mid poke about it - might have to boost my mids a bit less when I'm playing this guy! Using the different pickups in different combinations makes noticeable changes to the tone, but it's not quite the same as having a tone knob - I might mod it but I'm not in a hurry. * TWELVE BLOODY YEARS - https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/210350-sorted-greco-3-pickup-les-paul-bass/

I got this at the weekend that I absolutely love to bits, and just wanted to share. A huge thank you to @walshy for his patience and good nature over the past weeks, as I’ve bombarded him with various questions, requests for excruciatingly detailed dimensions and pics galore. “Walshy, if the neck was an 80s pop act, who would it be? Which discontinued item of confectionery is the bass most like?” Prefab Sprout, and a Texan Bar, since you ask! I’ve been after a ‘68 to ‘73 period P Bass for a while now. I tried some lovely basses, but they weren’t quite for me, as I was after a specific neck profile. As soon as I picked this up I knew it was what I was after. Virginia Plain, Metal Guru, In a Broken Dream, All The Young Dudes, Ernie (the fastest milkman in the west), and this bass: 1972 was a good year…

Was hoping for a good gig today, my and the singer's home town and a fair few people had said they were coming. A 5:15 sunday gig. We used the venue pa but the desk does auto setup with white noise so we had a good sound (4 vocals plus drums) restof us backline only. Had a decent soundcheck. Hadn't played a gig since start of December, just two rehearsals with just four of us. Place was rammed, which was great considering we've only played Barry once before. We made a handful of cock ups but recovered well. Went down a storm, the bucket added over 50% to our fee. Plenty of dancing(!) Lots of compliments especially for the sound and our singer's voice, also loads of great feedback on our setlist. Playing songs we love seems to work. Screenshot from a facebook live...

Played at the Half Moon in Littleover, Derby last night. It's a rather odd shaped room, we're down in the bit with the pool table which sort of protrudes rearwards from the main body of the pub. @SpondonBassed lives nearby and dropped in to watch us for a while. Singer was unsure how well his voice would hold out so we dropped a couple of songs which most strain it. I managed to make more mistakes on "Make me smile" (the only song that I sing) than I have on any previous performance. And I forgot my massive floor fan. Otherwise it was all good.

Anyway, yes, we had a gig yesterday and despite polishing my DMs earlier in the day I didn't take a photo of them. In fact I didn't take any worth posting. A new venue for us in Nuneaton. This is probably the 10th place we've played in the town and it's all been organic, word of mouth - which is nice. We had a few in from another venue we play not far away, which was also nice. It was quite a large pub so we were glad of the extra people. Low ceiling and carpet made for a slightly different "on stage" sound to normal, suppressing the top end, but I've played my Rumble for long enough to trust that it will still project a good tone out to the audience. The drummer even removed some of the gaffer tape damping from his cowbell 😂 Anyway we went down well, and they did the usual trick of waiting until the last song to start dancing and then wanting us to carry on all night. At least we left them wanting more. That's our last one for a few weeks - our guitarist is off touring the UK and Germany with Martin Turner (ex Wishbone Ash) through March and April. We just have the odd gig or two in the gaps. I'm looking forward to some free weekends to crack on with the garden and my VW camper (1979 aircooled late bay).

Our regular monthly gig at the Sun Inn in Beverley with the acoustic duo. Well I say ‘acoustic’, it was really ‘half acoustic’ as I used my Sire U5 short scale electric, into my Fender Rumble 500 combo, and it was glorious! Quite a few complements on my bass sound from people in the audience (which doesn’t often happen) so it confirmed my thoughts on using an electric bass on this gig. It can get quite loud and lairy and an electro acoustic can be hard to tame, so it was fun having more freedom to play without constraint. Our usual request format included ‘How sweet it is’, ‘Dance with me’ ( an instrumental of the Orleans tune ), ‘Rehab’ ( for the lovely lady behind the bar who is a massive Amy fan, and we got fed up of playing ‘Valerie’ for her! ), as well as ‘Whole lotta Rosie’, ‘Shang a lang’ ( for a group of ladies this time! ) and ‘Stairway to heaven’ which got the biggest round of applause of the afternoon. Really enjoyed the gig, one of the best we’ve played for ages - a perfect storm of venue / audience / landlords and staff etc. Already looking forward to the next one!

Great gig last night with Nine Lives at the Tolbooth in Ellon, NE Scotland. Small but vocal crowd of folk who were right up for a singalong. Someone even came up to speak to me at half time about my bass, the Reverend having caught their eye - that's a rare occurrence! We put a new (to us) song in the set and played it pretty well, so happy with that too. Got lots of nice comments after the gig, they were a chatty bunch! Dunno if it'll come to anything (because even lovely, polite and enthusiastic drunk people forget stuff), but we did get an enquiry about playing at someone's wedding, they enjoyed the show that much. Gear was the Sire D5 followed by the Reverend Triad into the usual Markbass toan cubes. Footwear by Vans as usual, pink suede this time - sorry, forgot to photograph them!

2025 board updates Big board got the Shure wireless, custom CMC Proto Type, Origin TX-LP and Stomp XL and also now mounted to a Temple Audio Duo24. Small/Fly board is now mainly based on the Stomp plus some pedals I can’t live without.

Tonight was a private do - a 65th birthday party for a guy we've known for absolutely ages. His birthday isn't actually until April, but he rearranged the party around our availability. He's a really nice chap but it's always hard work at one of his events - backing him singing for half a dozen songs as well as doing our usual sets. The evening started with a chap playing some nice smooth, tasteful jazz/latin trumpet along to backing tracks through the tiniest little Bose combo. What a great little setup for dinner/dances or a bit of event background music. He was followed by a girl with acoustic guitar and a great voice doing some unaccompanied covers. It turned out she had got up to play guitar with our band in a pub aged 15 nearly 40 years ago! It was great to hear about the musical career she had made after that early encouragement (no, neither me nor the guitarist could remember the event, but she still did) Anyway as it was a party we dialled down the heavy rock & prog and dialled up the pop & funk. We had them dancing all night -win! The venue was a village hall geared up for the local am-dram society - quite a high stage, but a great sound The theme was beachwear, and they had hired a photographer... It looks like a scene from a Weekend at Bernie's - if you're old enough to remember that film 😂. They have also cropped out my burgundy suede Vans 😜

My current board after downsizing and sticking with bare necessities. I offloaded alot of pedals recently due to an emergency back home in the Philippines. I'm just glad that got sorted and I still have a board to work with.

Because I clearly needed another Jazz Bass.. 😬 This lovely thing arrived from the folks over in Leamington Spa, BassBros this morning - it's an '04 and is is near perfect condition. They'd done a lovely job setting it up although I've done a few minor tweaks to get it just where I want it. It feels great, it sounds great and looks fantastic. ❤️

Ladies and gentlemen; I proudly present a new Brooks Bass! The EXB-12-SA. A semi-hollow twelve string bass. - Mahogany body. Chambered - Quilted Maple top, bookmatched - Nine ply laminated Mahogany set neck. Glued in - Cherry Burst finish. Naturel Mahogany back and sides - Pearloid binding - Ebony fretboard - Abalone position dots. Aluminium ring in 12th position - Jumbo frets - 34" scale - Buffalo horn nut - Custom made twelve string brass bridge set, gold plated - Two spokewheel double action truss rods - Carbon reinforcement strip in the neck - Lace Alumitone Bass Bar in the neck position - Lace Alumitone Bass Bar in the bridge position - Pure Tone output. Gold plated - Toggle switch (single coil/humbucker). Gold plated - Gotoh GB 350 lightweight bass tuners, Gold plated - Gotoh Stealth CXB-01 guitar tuners. Gold plated - d'Addario EXL 170 - 12 strings - Weight: 4.1 kg Serial number: 2025001 I'll post pics of the build process in separate posts below

As you know I've joined a U2 tribute Here's another Adam Clayton bass It has such a low action Weird passive bass and treble controls. What should I do with them, leave them fully up? I'll gig it tonight with a mates band that I'm depping with

got this general disaster in a trade for some pedals i wasn’t using and it turned out to be a beauty! the neck is too narrow, the electronics are a mess, the bridge is a joke, but i love how it feels, sounds and it’s super inspiring every time i pick it up… i love the other basses in the house as well, but never expected this to become such a thing, i guess you never can tell…

I think there's just a weird sense of entitlement around free shipping. Places like Anderton's and GAK can offer free shipping because of the volume of stuff they shift allowing them to get better rates with DPD et al. The minimum order is to make sure they are still profitable; because of the volume of sales they just need to be a little bit profitable and rely on huge volume to stay afloat. Somewhere like BD (and I don't pretend to know their numbers) I imagine it doesn't make sense to offer free shipping as it would just eat into their (again, not claiming to know, just a guess) fairly small profits

Last night I was engaged in a little light piracy with the Punk Pirates in Fareham. Crazy set. Crazy crowd. Many scary women. All good fun banging through a bunch of punky covers with not a great deal of concern and many Eric Morecambe moments. Loud and fast were the main objectives for the nigh. Decent wedge at the end of the night as well as only a four piece with no extra costs for pa/soundman etc.. 🙂 Guitarist from the main band came down for support and pointed out that the song I struggled with most we used to cover - in my defence it was in an earlier band and probably 30 years ago. Took the Hartke LH500 and only one BF BB2. I had considered a second but didn’t bother in the end. The second cab wasn’t really required, as one made a righteous sound 😁. I don’t normally get to be that raucous but it was fun and solid as… I am coming to the conclusion that I should probably sell the second BB2 I picked up here last year (or maybe the year before) as it only really comes out as an alternate for a run out and never as the full rig (only been done twice in all the time I’ve had it) that would free up for a Three10 🙄

First of two nights for me. Main band tonight at a favourite venue that did not disappoint. Not rammed but busy and well up for it. Sets were mixed up and worked pretty well including the new songs. Crowd well up for it and singing (loud enough for me to get a feel for it through the IEM ambient mic) & dancing all night and three encores so that was good. Drummer was tired from lack of sleep with family problems chasing round to help out with one of his sons pregnant girlfriend who had problems and had to go to hospital, so fingers crossed for that, also I missed rehearsal last Monday so we both had a few moments through the night, but nothing that couldn’t be caught. Plenty of compliments in the break and at the end of the night, and a reasonable wedge from the bucket in addition to general fee so that was good. First night with the Sennheiser G4 IEM which went well, though I should have completed my tests and properly read the manual beforehand. Running into it mono but didn’t seem to have switched something and was only getting signal one side for soundcheck. A bit of poking around in menus before first set and managed to fix that enough for a good night and pleased with that acquisition - anyone need a barely used xvive system 😁 Tried the C4 synth with a Gecko midi switcher, having spent a while setting/tweaking patches on Thursday. I need a new pedalboard and power supply as there was a horrible buzzing of a ground loop I am presuming was the separate power supply running them. No time to tinker so just took them out of the chain and that seemed to fix it. Used the FrankenJazz acquired from @Beedster late last year. Still loving it over the S2 at the moment and only occasionally thrown by the missing string and D-tuner. A bit of soundcheck - https://fb.watch/y2eOQVwafA/? A bit more - https://fb.watch/y2eUzC4GNi/?

Well folks, that's me bowing out. I have just taken delivery of a bass which has been living rent-free in my head for about 12 years. A Greco LGB-700, three pickup. More pics later, but it needs a bloody good clean, new strings and a setup. There will be mucho bass fettling tonight. And in case you're wondering about how I know about the 12 year thing...

Had a mostly good gig on saturday. Haven't had a gig since last month and no practices either, so my fingers weren't match fit! Not too many mistakes from my part, although a few in general. It was a pub that has just reopened, but a short way out of town, the last few gigs we have done there have been as a dead as a dead thing, but they did say that last week, their opening night they were really full, but there were a lot of things going on in town, so I was surprised it wasn't dead, there were quite a few people there, but it is a big place so it seems not too busy. Anyway, we had quite a few dancers, and it seemed to go alright, so was quite happy with it. After loading up and getting the car ready, was talking to the guitarist while the singer and drummer went to get them money. Turns out the drummer decided that the fee that we had agreed with the pub was too high and he would just say to take £70 less, so that went down badly, especially with the guitarist who relies on his gigging money. I am not really that bothered about the money but feel like decisions like that should be a band agreement. Hopefully we can get some practiced done as we have some songs almost ready

Good morning! Well, what a weekend! Absolutely brilliant show! Like others have said its such an improvement from last year. I'd like to think I had some input on the event, from the day after last years event I email Jason the organiser begging him for our own space again and he wasn't sure it would work or if people would be interested. I started various posts on some Facebook groups and the feedback I got was a midlands based Bass Show would be welcomed with open arms from the bass community, and I think its safe to say it was! I email Sheldon, SBL and more asking them if they would be interested and when they said yes I passed this onto Jason and sure enough he cracked and put the show on. Yesterday as I was leaving I saw him in the hall and he told me it will 100% be on again next year, so thats great news! Personally I had a great weekend and met some awesome people! I wish I had the forum logged in on my phone so I could have updated earlier but alas I forgot. I want to say thank you to everyone who managed to stop by and say hello. The feedback on the pedals was awesome. Sold a few bits and can safely move into the next development stage. Thanks again, Matt.

I had mentioned a while back that I am working on a new bass with Mark. A good friend here in the US had hipped me to Mark's work - and I was blown away by the quality of the builds he's doing. While the basses are not inexpensive - Mark's work is priced very well below what a similarly built Fodera or Smith would be. I've always wanted a custom neck-through as I've been a bolt-on guy my whole playing live - but had gotten to the point where Alembic, Fodera, and Smith were just outrageous in terms of price - and I had some interactions with one of those companies that really turned me off. When I reached out to Mark - our discussions were so positive that I decided to take the leap. While I originally was interested in a SM2 - I opted to change up to the MK2 body style - as I think the positioning of the neck / strap button will work better for me in terms of "reach" and playability. Mark has been great to work with - very collaborative, very helpful with ideas and feedback on my thinking, and most of all very accommodating to my focus on weight. I'm 65 years old - have been playing for about 52 years, and only read use basses that are 8.5 lbs or less. Mark is undertaking a chambering approach for my MK2 and is confident we'll hit or beat the weight target. The specs are a quilted maple top, walnut "core" (where the chambering will occur) and a maple neck with walnut stringers. Some of the neck will have flamed maple - and some plain sawn as well with the flamed walnut stringers. Will use his standard electronics - not the larger pick-ups with the filter preamp - and it's a 34" 5-string. I've attached some pics that he's shared of the wood selections we've settled on and I'll share more pics as Mark progresses the build. The pic that has weights written on the wood pieces is how Mark has figured out target weight. The "block" is how much weight we'll remove from the core with the chambering.

What a weekend! So much better than last year. I won’t mention Fridays M6 closure for 2.5 hours. Was ace to meet so many of you. highlight for me was finally meeting @cetera after so many years; talking like old friends straight away. met loads of great people - sold lots of dangerously good basses. Played less than last year…but, that’s probably best for everyone’s ears. Lovely time with @walshy Happy to say home journey was uneventful and under 2 hours…got bless the Passat’s Motorway manners. and… a STOWAWAY! Curses…

Picked up this 2013 recently. It's not a Fender so I think it's just staying with me temporarily, but nevertheless it's a stunner.

Same four singers - two brothers do the Everlys, one older guy does Buddy Holly, and another does Jerry Lee Lewis with all the stunt piano stuff. Add to all that the Bass and Drums and you have a nice regular six piece for a combined Live Show. (Players typically come from all over the country - Brothers and myself come from Derbyshire, Buddy from Norwich, Jerry from Ross-on-Wye and drummer from Milton Keynes!) Case of the best players for the job! I'm a classical Double Bass player by trade, so I could use upright, but I use Fender Jazzes for these jobs (even though the Jazz wasn't technically born until 1960!) The "Headless" part comes from one of my two Status basses and a Cort Space Bass 5 that I use on other jobs.

Short Facebook video from yesterday: Bendricks march 2025.mp4

I really wanted to give a big shout out to GuitarGuitar for putting on a free Sandberg/Yolanda masterclass and showcase last night. I mean, it was a big old marketing event with the founder Holger Stonjek on the Cajon, but the four-piece they had was very listenable and it was really good fun to hear from the guy who started the company. Yolanda though, what a talent and such a communicator. Really enjoyed hearing about her work touring with Hans Zimmer. One person in the audience even won a Sandberg California bass!!!! Anyway. I'm not on the socials so this is the best way I can think to let people know that it was a really good event, well organised, huge fun to be at, and I am proud to support an employee-owned company that seems to be doing well selling guitars on high streets around the country in a very tough market.

NPD for me, a Sushi Box FX Neptunium. Love what its doing. I'm using it in conjunction with a Quad Cortex in such a way that the QC chain is running into it, and the XLR output is running back into the QC before being sent out to FoH/IEMs. This way, I get the lovely tube warmth and magic with a quick on the fly adjustable preamp, with a fallback DI available with just a couple of cable switcheroos. I also use the QC as a recording/practice interface, so keeping the Np within the QC workflow is necessary. As shown in the pic, im getting great results by boosting the bass and flicking the cut switch to really thicken stuff out without adding the boom, and the treble brings back some sparkle absorbed by the tube. Instantly sound better, love it!

An article in the BBC about 'super rare' 5 neck guitars from Hutchins being sold at auction... oh yeah, well I had a SIX neck version so 😝 If it has loads of strings, I've probably owned it!! Appreciate this is a completely pointless post... feel free to move along! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjevveglx88o.amp

Aaaaaargh Jim lad ‘tis Anchorface Al 🤣

A very late end to three hard days, after two days away teaching in the Cotswolds/Wiltshire, I continued onto Petersfield in Hampshire via a night in a Travelodge at FourMarks near Alton for a gig at the Petersfield Festival Hall with the three tribute act live show I play for. Excellent gig, sounded fantastic in the Festival Hall, but a long 180 mile trek home to Derbyshire afterwards. Getting home at 3am isn't getting any easier now I'm getting older.

Ready to go

In a studio yesterday. I noticed a Sandberg hanging on the wall, black with maple board, active P, 2 band less expensive Electra series. Asked the artist if they minded if I used a different bass to the ones I brought, and they were fine. Well I have to say, I loved it, despite the poor set up. Very comfy and well made neck and even though I’m not normally a fan of active basses, the 2 band eq was very useable. Although I ended up keeping t&b on centre indents. Sounded great recorded too. I now have gas for Sandberg but have absolutely no money. Don’t see many come up for sale on here, but I may be keeping an eye out. Sandberg, lovely surprise.

This thread is surreal today 😂

Hi Martyn, Ash here from Bass Direct. We appreciate your comments and honesty about your experience. We’re really sorry to hear you felt that way—it’s never our intention to send out an instrument in less-than-great shape, and we definitely wouldn’t set something up badly on purpose. We don’t remember hearing from you directly, but we’ll check first thing tomorrow to see if there’s anything in our system. If you ever have any concerns, reaching out to us directly is the best way to get things sorted quickly—we’re always happy to help! Regarding the Dingwall, we provided the info we had at the time. Based on our stock flow, we’d assume it’s a 2024 model, but we can double-check if that’s important to you. Dingwalls are great for low action thanks to their even string tension. As for returns, we don’t see many, and we don’t recall ever having this model come back, but we can check if needed. We understand that the £15 delivery charge might seem a bit off on a high-ticket item, but it’s there to ensure safe and secure shipping, and it’s only what it costs us to ship the item to you. We’ll check the emails in the morning, but if there’s anything else we can help with in the meantime, just let us know! Best, Ash

Would you feel better if what you bought added up to £705 with free delivery? My point is: there's no free anything.

This weekend's rig of choice was based around some old school Ashdown kit. A big mag and a wee mag. The wee mag 200 is tried and tested, and was brought along as a back up to the big mag 600. Reason being, the big mag was bought as a parts only unit a few days ago. Both are UK built, and the big mag 600 only needed some minor repairs to get it going again ( new input and output volume pots, a new sub harmonic pot, and lastly a new VU meter bulb). Serviced and fully cleaned. Did its first gig in alledgedly years, sounded brilliant and performed brilliantly. I've owned a few mag 600 evoII before, but never bonded with them. This old UK built one sounds so much better than any other MAG i've used. The only real difference is that the UK ones came with very high quality and high output Demeter transformers instead of the generic PRC ones. Bass and pedals - same as it ever was. Cab is my 4 ohm Laney R210.

I have to declare a tier 1 fail. I'd always envisaged that when I failed, it would be for a significant and worthy cause e.g. a vintage p-bass. However, it's ended up being for an entirely frivolous and low-level reason. When I put together my bitsa p-bass over 3 years ago, I ended up with a hand-fashioned acrylic control plate as a temporary solution because I couldn't source a steel/chrome one. I always said I'd address that later if and when the right part came available. Well last week, a chap in the Netherlands posted on another thread saying he was making them and I couldn't let the opportunity pass. So, I bought one and it arrived this morning. I'm happy that I've managed to go well over 2 1/2 years without any significant purchases, so I've proved to myself that I'm reasonably GAS resistant. I'm sure I'll be back on the wagon next year and I'm hoping I win the lottery this year so I can get a vintage p-bass during this outage. 😉