borntohang

We used to roll our own - samples over the orchestral arrangements of some of tunes and then the guitarist would start his intro to the first song from offstage on wireless. By the time he finished we'd be on and ready to go. For a couple tours we had video sync'd to it with a countdown so the lights would drop, then the screens would come up with the music. For our own amusement we used this Avalanches tune up to about 1:31 once or twice too, which I love. Absolutely majestic walking on as the horns swell in. For the Devo tribute I play with we always use the Devo Corporate Anthem which is about 2 minutes. Walk on as it plays, do our pre-flight checks, and then stand in the 'spud salute' until the intro finishes. As soon as the last synth fades out, give it two seconds of silence, then smash in.

The Squiers were let down by a pretty ugly preamp IMO. Played great and sounded good passive but the V in particularly suffered from a bass roll-off that cut the the low B. I was after a IV for ages, finally got one and loved the instrument but just couldn't get on with the preamp which was a real shame because I love the body shape. If I ever see a knackered one for cheap again I'd be tempted to just rout it for a P pickup and maybe a big passive bucker. That said I also played one of the American deluxes and didn't like the pre on that either, so maybe we just weren't meant for each other. Power to your arm if you like them!

And one more of Mark giving it the pose later on.

We did a festival with Ash in summer 2019 and I spoke to Mark briefly - seemed like a personable enough guy. I told him Burn Baby Burn was the first song I ever learned on bass, which was perhaps not the compliment I intended it to be. The real gem was Tim Wheeler, who was an absolute darling. He watched our set from sidestage and then afterwards came and chatted guitar nerd stuff with me for ages. I was actually having a bit of a Moment after I got offstage because the stage was directly in baking sun and we'd all overheated, so I was laying on the grass with my head under a wet towel when a very polite voice went "Mind if I have a look at your pedalboards while you're busy down there?" He took us up to where their rig was being set up so I could check out the infamous Vee and his new EGC acryclic/aluminium SG and then we watched the set from there later. Sometimes you can meet your heroes, although preferably not while alarmingly red and sunburned.

I really like those Fender HiMass bridges and have one in my bits box waiting - the weight isn't offensive and the saddles feel good under the palm. Unfortunately I have a CV jazz with the weird bridge mounting that only came on that short range of models and doesn't fit any standard 5-hole mount, so haven't got around to redrilling for it yet.

I wouldn't buy it but only because I wouldn't pay that much for an instrument; if somebody handed it to me then what's not to like? Great looking bass and at absolute worst I could cover it with a sticker or even just some tape.

Possibly unrelated to this particular sound but this is an excellent League interview where he discusses playing directly over the octave harmonic node of a note so you cancel out the harmonic, which then emphasises the fundamental and you get a natural "sub" tone. 4 minutes in, or thereabouts.

CV have been Indonesian made since 2019-ish, same time as they introduced laurel boards. They're still well made but there is a reputation for the first run CIC stuff being especially well done - the red 60s Precision in particular seems to go for a bit more than the rest. I have the same Inca Silver CIC as in the pic above and it's been a workhorse, but I also have an Indonesian Late 50s P which is just as solid and has actually become my main bass since I got it.

The iPod/mp3 approach is fine but it's really worth investing in something more rugged. We used a little half-rack Presonus interface with multiple outs (I think 4) plugged into an XLR patchbay and a headphone preamp - the FoH feeds went stereo to the XLR bay and the click went on a seperate channel to both XLR and the headphone pre which meant we could get it in ears for the whole band or just the drummer patching directly into the pre. Whole thing fitted into a 2U rack case which previously held an ABM head and still had enough space to drop the laptop in for fly dates. On the Mac I think we were running Logic but I never dealt with that side. Drummer said it was simple enough to set up routing and because we had the original stems in the session we could mute needed. We did a couple gigs as a quintet where I played keys and guitars so he was able to just silence those parts in the session and leave the strings and synths running.

They haven't put out a CV five string yet, but the necks are standard Fender fit so I haven't had any issues swapping between VM and CV on four bangers or guitars. I would say that the VM Vs should take any standard Fender fitting neck.

The C64 and other reissues come with the original plexi-style printed plate rather than the raised version. Wiring isn't factory. The channel route is accurate. I haven't seen enough of the new single-truss models to have an opinion yet. If its a faker it's a significant jump above the average. Only thing that would really put me off is considering how few guitars Ric makes a year I can't see them prioritising a C64 run in the short time since they went to single truss. Have you sent Ric the Serial number yet?

Pretty sure that guy has had the collection on Facebook marketplace for a while. He doesn't live too far from me but the prices are always really high. Shame because I'd love to try that EB6.

Jacks/Tiny Tone are good. I got my custom Jazz guard there which I'm gratified to see is on their example page...

I think we've had this convo before in my tour thread because I remember the photos! Ross is still using that guitar - I cleaned it up for him the other day and found muck under the pickguard that is old enough to be in that shot... It's seen some use for sure. We have a little project going for his writing outlet still, but the gigging schedule has eased off considerably (to my relief).

Love IOW. We opened main stage 2018, and then Big Top on Friday the year you're talking about because we were going on a tour next day and they persuaded us to squeeze it into the schedule. The band had played something like 5 years in a row on gradually larger stages before I joined so they had a really good relationship with the festival team.

It's funny how these things go. I played in a band that got a little label interest as a teenager and luckily didn't go anywhere (they shouldn't let 18 year olds ruin their life like that) then kicked around casual bands for the next decade or so happy to play the occasional interesting show. Turned 30 and decided I was 'retiring', then immediately walked into a session gig with a label band and within a year we'd done Wembley twice, two months on a bus round Europe, festival main stages, etc. Quit the day job to join the band full time and within another six months lockdown killed a couple tours plus a second label deal and I realised I hated everything about being in a band that wasn't playing music. Gracefully stepped out to do other things and like most recovering musicians ended up as a touring tech - turns out that people will actually pay you to tell them how not to make the mistakes you did first time round. I believe this is what the industry calls "a roller-coaster" of a career path. I have a day job now but it's not exactly a 9-5 and I get to do some interesting music related things plus gig at the weekend. The wages of sin have not been particularly lucrative but we do alright between the two of us. I've been extraordinarily lucky really because all these opportunities have just kind of drifted into my lap and while I'm a competent player I'm unlikely to end up making any Bassist Of The Year lists. Being polite and not making waves on the bus has been far more important to my career than being a shredder.

Nyatoh is actually a different species with a similar name. If I was doing a bit more gigging and could justify a third bass I'd have one of those desert sand P's to match my Late 50s sunburst. Only new instrument I've bought in years (as opposed to the many many used ones...) but glad I did.

Cathy Dennis also wrote a top flight of cheeseball pop tunes with 'Toxic', 'I Kissed A Girl', 'Reach For The Stars', and 'Sweet Dreams My LA Ex'. They might not be stone cold classics, but I bet the residuals are nice. Rob Davis was in err... Mud. In fairness he also worked on Toca's Miracle which is a bit of a banger.

Gibson has already had a set of London offices and extensive showroom (with a venue underneath it) for a good few years. Agnesi was working out of there when I went. It's not open to the public though so I guess they see the value in having that collection working as advertising too. I can't imagine the M&M store in Leicester Square makes much of a profit either, but it's good promo.

With festivals (or any show too big for the stage amp to not be in the room) I always went DI to FoH, then IEMs for direct monitoring and whatever backline amp was there just for rumbling the floor a bit under my shoes and rarely turned up enough to trouble the front row. Even with good gear and crew you can't trust house amps or mic'ing to be consistent so I wanted whatever was travelling to FoH to be as self-controlled as possible. Aguilar 410s and Ampeg fridges seemed to be the rigs of fashion so I got fairly good at dialing them flat, or at least knowing what colour they would introduce to my monitoring sound. I always used a VTDI so your Tone hammer would work, but if you need your amp to get that tone and you can physically carry it with the rest of your gear then personally that would be the route.

Worth noting I had a Mastotron clone which hated my Spectracomp. Wouldn't play nicely with it engaged at all and presumably didn't like the impedance it was being fed.

I suspect being after the Spectracomp is flattening the peaks such that it won't trigger consistently. Try it without the comp engaged and then again with the comp volume boosted above your normal level (not sure what toneprint you're using but an easy fix in the app).