gafbass02

Same

I recently bought this pair. Not sure what I’ll do with them as I use in ears, but they were so cheap I couldn’t resist 😆

Private function for us, the lady of the hour insisting on a pic with the band. You can tell how live the room is just from looking at the pics 🤣

Very cool. Always wanted one of these back in the day after seeing one in a studio and thinking it looked like a spaceship.

I bought from there last year, it had to be returned, but he was perfectly decent throughout.

Gordon Bennett’s

Two cracking gigs for The Bridge this weekend. Hereford was a capacity crowd of 300, up singing and dancing from start to finish, paid very well. Saturday was a party in a local bar here in Cheltenham with around 150 people crammed in, again all singing and dancing all night. No drama, no calamities. All good. 👍

I used to work for a well known uk hi fi retailer where this was standard practice. It was as simple as having to offer the best prices online for browsers online to be competitive, then having an in store price related to the higher high street overheads. We would basically sell stuff and then hope they didn’t go home and look at the website. If (usually when) they did, we would offer them a refund for the difference and had usually succeeded in antagonising them. This was some years back now and the present situation with everyone having the Internet in their pocket all the time may have changed things. But that’s what the deal was. It was chancing a profit

Standard stuff last night, a local venue that’s a converted dockside warehouse, so live as all hell. Tiny stage for us all to squeeze on to, but was pleasant enough, they danced, they sang, we invoiced and afterwards I found my straplock in bits all over the floor, but thankfully, my expensive bass had somehow managed to stay on the strap!

I went on tour in Germany with the school choir in the 6th form. My best mate played guitar and he and another guy who played spent the whole week sitting together on the bus talking about guitars, leaving me alone with my hangover and Walkman every day. I knew my big brother had a guitar in the attic, so I asked said mate if he’d teach me when I got back. Sure enough, upon my return, I dug out my brother’s ancient guitar, it was a Kay SG with four strings which I enthusiastically took to school to show him. (He owned a stunning fender elite ultra, a 60s gretsch and a 70s SG and was surprisingly supportive.) Much of my time was then spent hanging around the music room and youth wing where my mates band would rehearse and, although I knew nothing about guitars, I knew that one particular type of guitar was way cooler than the others I saw there, and so was the guy that played it. The guitars that appealed to my teenage sensibilities had big fat strings and chunky machine heads and looked somehow ‘tougher’, and the guys that played them always had something aloof and cool about them. Apparently, these were ‘bass guitars’ - something I’d never heard of. I watched closely and the concept was explained to me. I knew right away It was for me. It just felt right. My birthday was coming up, and there was one bass guitar for sale locally, a blue Kaman GTX 53 pointy thing for £50. My dad was very reluctant to part with the cash for a fad (to say the least), but I was determined and sure enough it was soon mine. I worked out that if I jammed the ‘record’ head in on my old 70s tape player and plugged into the mic socket with an adapter - it became an ‘amp’. Two weeks later, the bass player in my mates band quit and handed me the job, claiming I was better in two weeks than he was in two years, which was kind. I was on stage within two weeks of buying my first bass and playing full shows within a month or so, with both the aforementioned band and even depping for the school jazz band, where the music teacher said some very kind things! I started off with the usual three note stuff - wild thing, rocking in the free world etc, but the songs that really made me want to go home and get working were ‘throwing things’ and ‘kill your television’ by Ned’s Atomic Dustbin - two bass lines per song to figure out. That was the first few months of a journey that’s taken me to some of the UKs biggest and most prestigious venues and many of its dingy pub corners, plus radio, TV and MTV and magazines. 30 years, (Well) over 300 basses and lord knows how many amps, pedals, gizmos and bad choices later I’m still out gigging every weekend and loving every second of the amazing journey that I’ve been on. Some people will do karaoke once and talk about that moment for years, so I never fail to appreciate how lucky I am to get to do what I do week in week out. It’s ace. This place has been pretty cool too. Just sayin’.

Had a two night stint on solo acoustic for Cheltenham races, which is usually horrendous. This time however, it was actually rather lovely with minimal aggro and idiots. Quite enjoyed it.

HI, the compressor does add volume yeah, even with the boost set to minimum. The octave was good, but didn't track well down to e. The preamp was quite scooped and modern sounding to my ears, the DI out had something really nice about it - can't exactly say what, but I really liked its punch. Sadly mine packed up - one of the foot switches gave up the ghost so it sits in the unused pile now.

My zoom B9.1.

Mostly vacant, so my IEMs keep a good seal, but the odd gurn does happen 😝😂

I don’t use an amp, but I missed having one. A few eBay bargains later and I’m happy to own this. Not sure what I’ll use it for though 😂

Standard pub gig stuff in Gloucester. Nice sound in my IEMs, no drama, somewhat of a squeeze this venue, but was just a standard pleasant gig evening. VIDEO-2023-11-05-13-13-56.mp4

I play a HH bass, it has switches for series/parallel/single, but I just leave it in the loudest, punchiest mode whatever that is.

I tend to get lots of compliments about my playing. I have no theoretical knowledge at all, (more’s the pity), I couldn’t play a single scale. I’ve played live most weekends for the past 30 years, in many genres at various levels, from tiny pub corners to no one, to festivals on t’telly and venues like the Apollos and SECC etc. I think what brings the compliments is that I’m fast and flashy in my style. It makes people go ‘oooh’. Often bands capitalise on it and give me solos etc (which I hate). But secretly, I know that I’m overplaying and that I’m playing the same basic stuff over and over in a ‘fast and flashy’ way - which makes me feel a total fraud. It is what it is, and I’m too busy these days with my new job to think about doing much about it. With age I’ve started to play less and more tastefully (I hope), but I know I’ve plenty of room to improve… One of these days.

Country and western and the Royal Marine band in my house. No bearing at all. In fact, my music making was strongly discouraged for a long time.

Maybe, it was a long time ago, and the first comment assumed I was so dumb I couldn’t tell when strings were dead. I’ve owned around 400 basses and have a pretty grasp on what’s what after 30 years semi pro and pro playing. But tbh, this kinda makes me not want to bother contributing.

Well that wasn’t a very popular review then. 😅😥

It was ok, a local ish venue that was new to us. Nice enough folks and warm reception. Some of our lot travelled the 40 mins or so to see us. We used the in house rig and engineer, so I took a Headrush for monitoring rather than trust a stranger with my IEM feed. I’m Still ‘running in’ my new bass. It’s had a few ‘quirks and features’ which have taken some fixing, and at an acoustic gig this afternoon its issues reared their head again, despite it being fine last night. It’s going back to bass hospital for another check up next week. just noticed singer is missing in the bottom pic, which means it must have been taken during ‘figure it out’

Thank you 🙏:)