Silvia Bluejay

It was great to see you on both days, Kevin. And we left with such a huge amout of MB GAS we didn't need to use the train to go home, we just floated!

There was a person walking around holding a sound meter and marking the quiet and noisy periods of each hour with an air siren. Having said that, once you've yelled at a stand telling them to turn down, unless you stay there all the time to check, they'll turn up behind your back. When I say 'they' it may very well be YOU (not you personally, EZ) who crank it up because you want to hear yourself and you don't realise how loud you are, even in the absence of volume wars (which is an often-used excuse by those who actually start them, rather then being drawn into them).

Makes sense in theory, but probably not easy in practice, unless the company is relatively large. If the company is just one luthier, or a handful of luthiers, who do almost everything by hand, the prices of their instruments will be boutique. To offer a cheaper range they'll need to decide to have the components shipped in from, say, the Far East, get a dedicated person to assemble them in their workshop, do the QA and sell them at a lower price. That leads to a different business model, so it has to be a conscious, calculated decision not every luthier is happy to take. Edit: and perhaps then they'll start having even cheaper models built from scratch in the Far East, etc. That shifts the focus from low-volume, hand-made to a larger, more mass-produced business, and will need a restructuring and the influx of exclusively business-minded people into the company.

Undoubtedly to everyone's utmost surprise, I've got a pic of the whole bass. Edit: click on it to see it in full resolution.

Plus a lot of money to develop them, if you didn't do it yourself (which I only did for B&W on my Dad's home-built equipment)

The field for entering discount codes is on the ticket page, at the top of the ticket choice list, and you have to enter it FIRST. Having said that, the online ticketing system only worked in advance of the show, so now it's door only.

I took 800 (eight hundred) photos of LBGS 2018 Day 1, which comfortably beats my NAMM record of a month ago. I'll be there again today, with Happy Jack, who won't tolerate staying for the whole day, but will be around for a few hours. Say hi if you spot me/us!

There is a Basschat table in the entrance hall, next to the Chowny stand (which was empty today but hopefully not tomorrow).

Excellent! The show is already busy but probably busier tomorrow.

Also @skelf, will you have a presence at the show? If I don't see either of you guys - or indeed your stuff - I'll make sure to re-post the photos I took at NAMM.

Oh no, Steve! Will you be there tomorrow maybe?

I've just received an email confirming that the show is going ahead. Most importantly for out-of-town visitors, they add: " If you hold a Saturday ticket and wish to use it for Sunday instead (or vice versa), you are welcome to do so."

[Off Topic] Vixen were a good band, but they ended up bankrupt because nobody - rock audiences or record companies - appeared to take them seriously. Things began to change when Courtney Love and Hole crashed on to the scene. Never liked that band, but she was so defiant and in-your-face that, in the end, the music world was forced to get used to female musicians, and from then, there was no stopping the process. [End of Off topic]

I think it was just a matter of ignorance or mental laziness. Until a few years ago, there were a lot more (musically clueless) mothers of male bassists than there were female bass players, especially middle-aged ones, and sweeping generalisations in shops and society at large were rife.

I had that in my late 20s - early 30s when my normal clothes were jeans, leather jackets and a few studs here and there. At the time I wasn't a musician, just the girlfriend of an equally metalled-up guitarist, but the attitude in those music stores that saw themselves as 'upmarket' was exactly as described above. (Slightly OT, when I bought my first home in this country, 20-odd years ago, we had to scrub up and look 'smart' to go to the estate agent, even after paying the deposit: they otherwise simply didn't believe a word I said and couldn't take me seriously - and I was a cash buyer!). After getting into playing an instrument, my main problem used to be sexism in music stores. 'Middle aged female looking at basses' almost always triggered either the dreaded 'Is it for your son? Can I recommend this/that?' or 'That's a *bass* guitar, are you looking for one of those with 6 strings instead?'. Thankfully, I haven't experienced that anywhere in the last few years, and I was never patronised at Wunjos in Denmark Street, for instance.

Currently it's snowing in London, temperature around -1°C. Transport for London has a website and an app you can keep an eye on, and at the moment it's not looking good: https://tfl.gov.uk/

I didn't see him last year or the year before, and if he was around, he certainly wasn't to be seen/heard slapping at any stand I checked out.

What he said! They usually have a couple of lefties among the myriad righties.

All will be revealed! There's something new about that uke as well And the usual million photos will be taken and published.

LOL thebass uke and Takamine have been at that bash before, and are welcome! Long scale they ain't, though. We must find a way to bow the Takamine properly, and all will be well in the world.

All long-scale aficionados welcome, whether electric or acoustic! I'm looking forward to the meetup.

Last year's Herts bash was scheduled for the weekend of our wedding, so we couldn't help with organising or spreading the word, or indeed attend ourselves. Maybe, for the slightly smaller bashes (as in, compared to the South East one), the optimal frequency is every two years rather than every year. Leave 'em wanting more, and make 'em positively long for that cab/effects/strings shootout!

Ah, sorry for immediately starting to gripe, no prob at all.