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Hmmm, I'm the worlds worst at sharing my feelings, although I'm finally learning with age not to just suck it up, but occasionally unload and express how I'm feeling/my various frustrations/concerns/worries etc. Just my thoughts, we all cope differently. Hope you have a great Christmas break 🙂

In case you didn’t know (many already do), I highly highly recommend putting “Thrust Bearings” onto your tuning screws….. it massively improves the tuning accuracy and ease of use. Many already know, but in case you don’t, it cost a couple of quid, and is a game changer.

Sorry to hear your family have had had such a tough time. I had a year like this in 2024; Sister in Law died of a brain tumour in April, my Mum died of pancreatic cancer in July, and Brother in Law was in a coma and hospitalised for ten months with brain abscesses (he has recovered but won't walk again), and then to top it all off our dog died in December. It really made my wife and I reflect on things, so much so we have decided to retire (I'm being made redundant in March next year, so that forces the issue somewhat as at 60 I have no appetite to get back into the fray) and enjoy life. You never now when or how it might change, and we are lucky to have paid off the mortgage and have two grown kids, so it feels right. Life can throw a lot of crap at us sometimes, as the other comments attest to, but we keep on pushing don't we.

I attend a 'mass jam' in the Forest of Dean each month, and in December they have a bonus Christmas. I'm in the rainbow jumper at the back. I played bass uke most of the night through my Roland Cube Street EX, but did two solo numbers on treble recorder - "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day" - I do like a bit of 15th/16th century music

New Years Eve Daryl

I sense a competition … how about the 2026 Gear non-abstinence competition? the winner is the most frantic buyer of shiny things, with bonus points for “buyers remorse” swift offloading ? Equal bonus for donating it to charity when the dopamine hit wears off

- I was getting into #4 - slapper thinking yeh that's me... then #5 *fell off chair laughing* 🤣

That’s right that’s right that’s right that’s right …🙂

The RM800 unexpectedly arrived early today, so I've tried it out at very low home levels. I'm liking what I'm hearing so far through a Barefaced One10. The Compressor and drive are OK actually, but on low settings. Not sure about the sub yet! I'm looking forward to trying it out through my LFSys Monaco in the new year.

Mrs Zero and I ran one while the normal host was on holiday, so I have a bit of experience. People need to sign in when they get there. Some open mics have pre-booking, others are first come first served. The host does the first slot. At one that I'm house bassist for, which is pre-book, the host encourages collaborations so I have a vague idea of who might want my services and sometimes even find out what songs they'll be doing before the night (sometimes I find out shortly before going on stage, sometimes I find out when they start). Have an adequate supply of mics, mic stands, and guitar leads. If there's going to be a drumkit there, make sure there's also a drummer who can set it up there during setup time. Have a couple of music stands too. If there's a Facebook page for the event, take some photos and stick them up after the event, maybe do a little acknowledgement of who was there - for example, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578654727858 and https://www.facebook.com/groups/976913649517143 My personal opinion about running order: after a few times, you'll spot who arrives, plays, and then f*cks off without staying to watch anyone else. Put them on late. Generally rotate order for the regulars so none of them get permanently stuck with early or graveyard slots and put irregulars into the better but not prime slots.

I hear you. Yes, it’s a sign of our age I guess. All the best to you matey.

Could be a fun blindfold test to do at a future bass bash? The clip has had 172k views in 2 weeks - clearly a topic of interest!

I have a number of good and bad buys. I have to say (at the risk of being expelled, excommunicated and otherwise labelled as a heretic) that the purchase of an 87 MIJ Strat from here, was one of my best buys of the year for me. Its a dammed fine guitar that just begs to be played. It's no showroom queen and it's all the better for it. It's great for songwriting so I actually play the bass more as well. A songwriting course in Kendal. I learnt so much from Ann Marie I want to do it again. Worst purchases Some crappy Fender guitar cables. Buy a decent cable from @Chienmortbb and just have done with it. The MS1-Vave Bluetooth adapter. Junk. Any purchase that I thought would short circuit me having to learn how to play bass guitar properly. I'm still learning and I expect to keep learning until the day I stop and there's nothing wrong with that. Am looking for a decent acoustic for next year and a decent precision to see what all the fuss is about. I also wouldn't mind a es355 if one fell in my lap. Rob

The Back in the Studio version of this is now out, and it shows just how well put together and executed the bassline is:

I'm going to try to do gear abstinence next year, so I thought I'd have one final swatch at FB marketplace. I was instantly reminded how dangerous it is when this bad boy appeared for a very keen price (complete with a Hiscox Liteflite hard case) and on the right side of England for my purposes. I decided to carpe that diem. 9 hour round trip, but it was definitely worth it. Basically unusued, the only issues were that it was a bit dusty in places, and there was some goop on the headstock where a clearly disintegrating stand had been cradling. Managed to get that cleaned off - it hadn't stained the finish, yay! Gave it a fret polish and oiled the fingerboard and gave it a good old setup. So, how is the "Stingray killer"? Good, as far as I can tell in headphones. My favourite finish for these basses would be Soda Blue, but this natural one is growing on me in its elegant simplicity, and the black pickguard suits it very well. But that's it! No more! I will be striving to make 2026 a fallow year in the gear acquisition stakes, so I guess I was getting one final hit in before the lockdown. FYI - no Stingrays were harmed in the making of this. Merry Christmas to me (and everyone else!)

As I went down the road to the SE Bass Bash in November I stopped off en route to purchase a bass for the hell of it, a Cort Curbow. I had always been really intrigued about them, what with their use of man made materials and I always thought they looked pretty neat in some finishes. I spied one for sale, a sunburst one and figured "what the hell?" So, I like how it looks, and I like how it feels to play. Unfortunately, whilst sounding fine in headphones, it was utter garbage live with the band. Where are my mids? This thing is so scooped by default that they're barely noticeable. I had to crank the mids on the preamp AND crank them on the amp just to be audible, seriously, it just disappeared. Well, I picked it up for a tasty low price so I figured it was worth modding. I procured a Bartolini Classic Bass soapbar of the appropriate size and shape (MK4CBC) (thanks @Bass Direct) and someone on here sold me a Glockenklang 3 band preamp for a decent price (cheers @Fettsman) and got to work on the mods. Fitting the pickup was a piece of cake, the only thing of note I had to do was accomodate 2 screws on one side instead of one. Then I replaced the stupid "slap switch" (which scoops an already inherently scooped bass some more - WHY?) with a much more useful parallel/single/series switch and fed the pickup into that. However, fiting the preamp was another matter. This body is thin, and to compound the issue, the knobs are sunk into the top. There was no effing way that Glock was going to fit in there as supplied. I mean, I was modding it anyway - don't need a blend control on a single pickup bass after all. First problem - the body of the push pull volume control was just too tall, even if the shakeproof washer was eschewed. So out with the drill and the forstner bit to remove some material from the cavity to sink it down enough so the lid will go down... Just made it! Not a lot of material left, but this luthite stuff seems sturdy so I think it'll be OK. Then onto the main board, which was way too tall. So, to scheming. Thankfully, while the control cavity in the Curbow may be shallow, it is thankfully quite wide. Lots of dead space above where the bass pot would go... So to cut a long story short, I turned it through 90 degrees. The pot legs wouldn't bend enough while it was mounted, so I had to desolder the pot, bend little 90 degree nubs on the ends of the terminals then resolder it thus: >>>>> Did a test fit (the small board attached to the mid pot was able to be bent sufficiently with the pot in situ)... Yas, the lid closed. So I soldered up the rest of the wires... Cheeky little single connector block thing for the myriad ground wires I had to connect together... Great success! It now has mids when the preamp is flat! I took it to a subsequent band rehearsal and praise be, I was able to hear myself with the preamp set flat. MIssion accomplished! I hope you enjoyed this shaggy dog story and if you only take away one thing from this, is that it's usually true what they say - where there's a will, there's a way...

So after 3 months of waiting it’s arrived, I custom ordered a Precision Bass by Luca at Alnus Basses. (Insert joke about name here) There wasn’t an awful lot of information about them on the web, so set about tracking down owners across social media outlets, general consensus was he made lovely basses. I’ve always wanted a lime green metallic P Bass but Fender custom shop prices were out of reach for me especially when buying blind. I contacted Luca and gave him the specs I wanted and went through step by step with him in regard to colour shades/pickguard colours etc. I liked the fact he made the necks and bodies out of raw materials rather than pre made husks of the shelf, all paint/relicing and pickups were done in house and I liked the thought of a bass being built in a lovely Italian village (My family originates from Italy so this was a little piece of Italy). So for the result, it’s beautifully made and very resonant! The colour may not be to everyone’s tastes but I’m really happy with it, it needed a little setup to get it how I wanted it and it’s lovely. Just waiting for amp to warm up before plugging it in, if the pickup isn’t my bag I have a couple laying around including a Fender PV60 and Seymour Duncan Quarterpound. I will more than likely fit a badass 2 bridge to it aswell which I have spare.

I bought my 'Orange' VS soft aged from them this year. Great to deal with.

I wouldn’t discount professional counselling. Yes it costs money but 4-6 sessions can really help. (Disclaimer, I’m training to be a counsellor but speak for persona experience.) Sometimes having a space to share ca be really positive.

My mum died from Dementia Jan 2nd, and it basically kicked off an extremely traumatic 2025. I had a knee replacement in Feb, which was way harder that I thought it would be. My best pal declined rapidly after a two year battle with cancer and lost the fight in October. We buried him in November. Our drummers wife had a heart attack. Their little granddaughter found her on the floor, and remarkably the emergency services saved her, but she’s been left with severe brain trauma and is a shadow of what she was. But she’s alive thankfully. I dunno man, this year…. I for one will be glad to see the back of it. As always, stuff like this makes you think…. do the stuff you want to do, be with the ones you love, live every day to the max…. You know.

Thanks. As it's a separate signal from each board, no issues with phase, so the XLR summing box Stofferson mentioned above seems sensible. As the signals cannot have their levels set at the desk, you will need a way to set the levels from your pedal boards. Presumably there is a way to set the output level on one or both boards, but if not, the Sonicake Portal seems like a good option.

The bass came with rounds which sounded great but I do love LaBella flats on an ebony board. New set arrived today so on they went and set up. Everything I wanted from this instrument and more. Delicious, fat, warm tone from it. One happy chappy. So you see, Santa does exist after all.

Trouble is with elderly parents, the child has to grow up and take over the responsibilities, as the parents regress into a childlike state…. both mine did anyway, maybe it isn’t the same for everyone. Also my brother didn’t cope well with it all. So I definitely felt like I had to toughen up and support everyone, even though I was the youngest. Similar with my mate in many ways, I definitely became his big brother as best as I could. You’re right though, you still have to think about your own state of mind, and talk to loved ones about the whole thing, something I’m crap at. I definitely hold it all in.

First two singles I bought were 'Tiger Feet' and Hurricane Smith's 'Oh babe what would you say'. And yes I used to do the thumbs in belt dance, while drenched in Brut 33.

I worked in a music shop that was selling Tanglewood Curbows in the late 90s - red or blue with ebanol boards, singple pickups with slapswitch and matt hardware. I definitely didn't see any Cort branded Curbows until a number of years later. Read that the UK model was initially branded Tanglewood and later changed to Cort which would explain the situation. So Tanglewood being "pre Cort" is about right from my experience even though worldwide they were likely released at the same time, just not here in the UK.

Always wanted the cort. never actually owned one. The fretless 5 in “bubinga” on here a couple of years ago would’ve been perfect. missed out. BAH

… for anyone wanting a decent software synth, and not spend out on hardware just yet, the Moog Mariana is ace 👍🏻👍🏻. It’s currently on sale at the moment from the Moog website. The iOS version is £15!! Bonkers for what you get (but maybe easier getting a signal out of a laptop if wanting to use live??) https://software.moogmusic.com/store/mariana

Also the Hudson Project bass

The "Pre-Cort" version would be those made by Greg Curbow in Atlanta. Greg teamed up with Cort to gain a wider audience for his ideas on ergonomics and synthetic materials. His own place was only building 10 guitars/basses a month but Cort's facilities could really ramp up production 🙂 That was around 2002. Greg passed away 2005 and Cort kept production going for a couple of years longer. I don't know how Tanglewood ended up with the design, they did a bloody good job, but it was post-Cort 🙂 Thought I'd a photo of my two together but nope. Cap on the Tanglewood was nuts 🙂

Boss LS2 patched in before your DI Boxes, set to A+B Mix mode. Take the output to one of your normal DI boxes. Done!

I used to do panto every year. The set up varied but the md ( on piano) and drummer could see the stage. I was underneath to their right. Other musicians on the opposite side of drummer and md or sat with their backs to the stage. The songs and musical interludes were set pieces so any deviation from the script was in between and so didn't affect the band. We all had a cue sheet with our music and you learned when things were coming during the band call ( rehearsal for band only ) and usually the technical rehearsal held on the same day. The songs came thick and fast so generally you just kept your eye on the md. View from the stage looking out. Id be under the stage to the left. View from inside the pit.

Funnily enough, this thread has had me thinking about how for so long I had to sell my main bass to replace it with another one, and never had more than two basses at a time. I was always looking to get a "better" more expensive bass than the one I had and that was the only way I could afford it. That was probably true for the first twenty years of me playing the bass. I expect lots of folk have followed the same route with similarly mixed results. Nowadays I just like a bass that I can have fun playing, and that could be at any price point. The problem is I'm one of those people who has been cursed with good (expensive) taste, but I've also got a Sire and a Harley Benton that I do most of my day-to-day practising on and they are both very satisfying basses and amazing for the money. I think when I reached the stage in life where I could comfortably afford more expensive basses it took away the imperative to "upgrade" before I missed the chance. That realisation helped me concentrate more on practising playing bass rather than putting time and energy into trading up to endless,"upgrade" basses and then discovering their strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time I was just swapping one dissatisfaction for another. If you've got a relatively inexpensive bass that has certain things about it that annoys you it's easier to live with than if you have paid upwards of three grand in pursuit of perfection only to find disappointment.

I too had a Musicman Sterling HH as my main bass for a while then assembled my Warmoth/Status Jazz bass for a change. It's a heavy maple body, EMG X series pickups, BQC system and a Status jazz neck with Hipshot Ultralites. It comes in at a hefty 14lbs (I can hear some of you groaning at the thought of that 😂 ) A couple of weeks ago I changed the batteries after sound check and it stopped working. Turned out that it was the connection between the batteries in the double battery box so I had to get the back up bass. It's a 2010 Fender Japan '75 reissue with US pickups in old candy apple red with matching headstock. It couldn't be any different to the Warmoth but I absolutely love it. The short version is that both basses are more than capable of replacing my Sterling and it gives me an excuse to post pictures of both of them.

Broadband duly restored, even if the wiring for it has all but been condemned (full fibre to be investigated), and now I have recovered from opening the case, here is my new Overwater headless Progress. Feels completely at home in my hands and is a joy to play. Martin nailed the neck profile I wanted and I do love a headless bass. Thanks to Martin Lee, Chris May and everyone else involved in the building of this marvellous instrument. We will be very happy together for a long time. Three piece ash body Three piece maple neck Lined ebony fingerboard Hipshot tuner/bridge John East Overwater preamp

Or this - the MIJ 'Noir' at 1/3 of the price :

We have 50 in stock and they FLEW out the doors... More coming in the new year! This must be the product of the decade (or longer) for MXR Merry Christmas everyone!

I'd buy a Sandberg TT4 above a Fender.

A little video, not much good but it gives a good idea of what the bass might sound like in better hands!

I don't EQ front of house other than to get a flat response with pink noise before I start (actually it isn't flat but check out Michael Curtis on Youtube for a good curve) I eq each channel. I have eqs preset for most things and don;t normally eq mic'd amps, bass di or synths. All resets are a starter for ten. It's just vocals, anything with a microphone and acoustics. I try to sort out the eq in the mixing not once mixed in FoH. I don't send eq or compressed signals to monitors and rarely send reverbs to stage (feedback beckons if you do). I have some favourite presets - maybe that's another thread. - I found Attaway Audio on you tube made excellent eq suggestions. Seems the US churches run more live music events than anyone else; don't be put off, they have great experience. i do tweak eqs on individual channels and polish compression and gates too during a gig. I run instrument groups together using DCAs. Generally don't use buses except monitoring and fx. 'Verbs are normally eq'd to trim the top and bottom frequencies so they sound like a natural space. I've found the best way to polish FoH is a multi-band compressor. It's almost the most fun you can have doing sound after all the heavy lifting and herding cats at sound check. You can get the vocals to float over guitars and then have a lead player come to the fore, all by what's loudest in the mids and upper mids range. Add some brilliance to the cymbals etc in the high band. Tame the flub n mud in the lower mids. You can even out the overall kick and bass volume if you like to sound full and punchy and consistent. I run Behringer and Midas mixers and these have a good multiband called a combinator. The stereo one seems to work great. Again there are some good youtube guides Cheers

Some clips from our weekend gigs. Fri night Cambusnethan Club. http://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=25683119331329350&set=pcb.2256881974820337 http://www.facebook.com/100001739064740/videos/pcb.2256881974820337/736660958963532 http://www.facebook.com/100001739064740/videos/pcb.2256881974820337/1372059424701274 Sat night at the Dreadnought. http://www.facebook.com/100000315642844/videos/pcb.2257398474768687/1614815816554452 http://www.facebook.com/100000315642844/videos/pcb.2257398474768687/4324524834499098 http://www.facebook.com/100000315642844/videos/pcb.2257398474768687/3830380380600210 Dave

Dave Pegg plays mid level Ibanez and loves them.

Pretty simple formula for me. What will it cost me in parts, materials and timber from the sawmill to build. If it's another 100% more to buy then it's expensive .

If it has to be a Fender then for me a Geddy Lee sig. Japanese would be pre-loved, but you can get the US ones new I think.

I've just had flashbacks after watching this. Some songs and videos should have been buried and forgotten a long time ago. That dance with the blokes takes me back to the village hall in Tupton and watching older kids doing it. It looked shite then and hasn't got any better now. Oddly enough Ballroom Blitz isn't one of the songs to be buried and forgotten about (at least to me).

Thanks! Another recommendation: https://oceansize.bandcamp.com/track/walking-in-the-air It’s absolutely epic when the band kicks in.

Yeah it's mad! This is a potentially stunning new piece of kit that's been 18 months in development; appears to have fab tracking for 5 string basses, has some totally usable bass synth sounds straight out of the box and a very compact form factor. Not surprising that it's making so many go weak at the wallet! Sure usb, midi etc. would be really nice to have - but I guess we've got something to look forward to in a Mk2 in 3-4 years time. In the meantime, is it going to give a bunch of us bass-players, who aren't also part-time keys players (and very likely have no wish to be!) a better synth sound? Just maybe 😅