Skinnyman

I’m old and grumpy. Complaining about The World Today is a civic duty.

I don’t really have a problem with her - it’s his faux outrage that I find irritating. And increasingly common all over social media.

It seems like YT and Insta and all the others these days are just this incestuous circle of “influencers” calling each other out and getting artificially outraged for some perceived infraction or other. Grifters the lot of ‘em. People around the world are dying in conflicts, children are starving and none of this sh*t matters one iota. None of it is worth the server space it takes up.

And of course there’s the classic rookie error of forgetting that one’s playing a fiver and playing it as if it were a four string. Doesn’t sound wrong as such, just really odd. Er, so I’m told by people who’ve done such a thing. Not me though. I’d never be that stupi…..

I ended up carrying a supply of “gender benders” for that exact reason. £8 a pair on Amazon and saved me many times from having to recover all the cables and swap them the right way round…

Forgetting that I’d strung a bass with BEAD strings (as an experiment prior to buying a fiver) and trying to tune it as EADG. Wondering why the PA was dead and, in the process of trying to track down the issue, turning up every gain and volume knob to max before spotting that the master Mute button had been pressed and….

I have recently (re)acquired an SB301 from the friend that I sold it to a good few years ago. It's dated '91 and the electrics have really had their day - I don't know what he's done to it but the wiring is pretty brittle and a lot of the soldering is pretty poor. EDIT: And now that I've checked, the rest of the bass is pretty rough too. There's a massive bow in the neck and it won't tune at all. I think this needs more work than it's worth (or that I'm able to do) so I think I'll just strip it for parts - it has a Roland GK-3B, some nice Entwistle pickups, the Gotoh tuners still look good and I daresay someone might appreciate the body and be able to do something about the neck....

I’ve been through this dance with every band I’ve been in. In general, it seems to be that the less skilled the guitarist is, the louder they need to be. I’m sure that deteriorating hearing is part of the issue but a big challenge for at least two bands was the drummer’s volume - so loud that the guitars “had” to turn up, which made the drummer hit harder…. IEMs and a quiet stage are, in my view, the only answer. Sadly, the last guitarist I worked with didn’t see things the same way - which is mainly why I no longer gig*. Hats off to the OP for doing what I wish I’d done many years ago. *well, that and the fact that I’m no feckin good

Your daughter could announce that she’s swapping to guitar as the keys player has the bass parts covered. The guitarist will have conniptions because of the competition for volume as will the keys player who now has to learn the left hand parts properly. At the subsequent band meeting, your daughter can graciously agree to stay on bass but ask that the keys player write proper keys parts that don’t occupy the same sonic ground as the bass and kick. Or just sack the keys player

Bought an Ampeg Scrambler off Marty. Great price and great condition. It was posted really quickly and packaged really well. All in all, the perfect BC transaction! Thanks, Marty 😁

I stopped gigging a couple of years ago and have been slowly clearing out all my stuff ever since. I’m now down to my last bass (a Ric 4003 that will never be going) which I use for noodling and a bit of home recording. Logic plug-ins are okay but I do like recording audio direct and doing minimal work on it in the DAW so, after much research I’ve just got an MXR M80 DI+. It was a toss up between that and the Sansamp and in the end I was swayed by an Amazon price of just £150 on the M80. I’m very, very impressed. Deep and rich and sonorous - and then i hit the “colour” button and it’s even more so. The distortion is okay - not really my sort of thing anyway, plus i have a new-to-me Ampeg Scrambler on the way to do mild overdrive duties - but the core sounds I can get from the EQ are excellent. Of course, i’ve now started to wonder whether i shouldn’t get a cheap, second-hand P bass to complement the Ric….. and so the GAS starts again!

Ryan just bought my Pedal Train(s) and, just like everyone else, i found him super easy to deal with from start to finish. Thanks Ryan!