Norris

Good point and one that I hadn't considered. It's 3/4 scale bass, but I don't know if that is a standard measurement 🤷‍♂️

The Ibanez looks lovely 👍

Doffs cap and kowtows into the gentlepersons' lounge that is the EUB and Double-Bass section... I'd quite like a drop D tuner on my Stagg EUB. I know the tuners are basically the same ones as on a P bass, but with slightly different posts. I wonder if anyone has found the best Hipshot Xtender model to use, even if it involves some part-swapping? Is there one that will fit? I've seen the 5-string Stagg conversation thread from a few years ago btw. Also the rather lovely 5-string NS in the classifieds. Both are a bit beyond my budget though.

No, not for me I wouldn't want to play along to any backing track, let alone one with the bass on it. Special "signature" sound effects, maybe. Miming, no (unless I'm being paid a substantial amount of money)

Last gig I got a load of... What's that? It's an EUB ... An electric upright bass ... A bit like a double bass but electric ... Oh, right

It's the drummer way. Get your kit in from the car and arrange it as a barrier in front of the stage so that everyone else trips over it carrying their amps, guitars and cases

It was a bit of a strange one last night. The pub is quite small and gets quite busy, so they take a lot of the chairs and tables out when they have entertainment on. We've played there quite a lot over the years and have recently started doing the "acoustic" thing to better fit the room. We don't do a lot of Saturdays though, we normally do Sundays, and it turned out it was quite a different crowd. Instead of half the room being musicians, it was a load of younger people getting hammered. When we arrived the place was already fairly busy. By the time we'd set up I was starting to get getting fatigued from the volume of chatter - it was so loud! There were a larger proportion of ladies than our usual audience (old men!) so the chatter was also quite shrill. When we started playing, rather than shutting up and listening, they just talked all the louder! By the end of the first set we were starting to wonder why we were even there. We normally have a bit of banter going between numbers, but couldn't last night. It did get slightly better as the night went on. The crowd thinned slightly so that it was a bit more comfortable. They got a bit more involved with the songs and were singing along loudly. We also had the inevitable drunken dancers, one of whom got a firm shove in the back from the guitarist's right foot after persistently getting too close to his mike stand (to be manhandled out of the pub by the landlady a little while later). Anyway enough negatives. We really like playing "acoustically". It makes for some interesting arrangements. Playing my EUB makes me want to mess around a lot more, with silly slides and fills. We actually had a great laugh performing. "Rocket by Stagg" EUG in sparkle black, straight into my Fender Rumble v3 500 combo. Treble rolled off on the amp because it was feeding back through the piezo because the amp was up on the seat. Solovair boots

It's over a year since we last played at the White Hart in Ashby de la Zouch. It's usally a really buzzing town, having at least 6 pubs within a couple of hundred yards of each other on the main road, and a constant stream of itinerant drinkers. The cold February drizzle reduced the number of young ladies wandering around in next to nothing, but didn't stop them completely 😄 So the pub was a bit quiter than normal, but a more challenging load in due to the number of cars stacked up outside the surrounding takeaway outlets, making it nigh impossible to park up outside. It's always a place where we debate if we want to carry on playing there... until we do. We had a great night, managed to retain a crowd, got so many compliments and only had one instance of a drunken dancer trying to knock the guitarist's teeth out with his mic stand. We're back there in June - the night before we play another pub in Ashby! We wouldn't normally book gigs that close, but the other pub is off the main drag and we'll be doing it acoustically, for a completely different audience, so no conflict there. Usual kit: Sire & Rumble + DMs and elderly drummer On another note, in a recent post I mentioned that I have 6 weeks off. No I don't. We have a smattering of gigs over the next month or so, but then 5 weeks off. Still, it's a bit more relaxed gigwise and I might be able to get some spannering done on my old VW camper

My P7-5 (version 2?) is lovely and comfortable. Great pre-amp. Looks fabulous in black & tort too imho. It's been my workhorse for a couple of years. More expensive basses stay at home

Plenty of gardening and spannering to do. It'll be nice to have a few weekends to myself

I've got two this weekend! ...and then about 6 weeks off while the guitarist goes on a proper tour of UK & Germany 😀

I bought a Roland PK-6 midi pedal from Ash. Great communication. It arrived promptly, well packaged and in perfect working order Thanks Ash

Vaughan Williams?

It's a few years old now, but my Roland Boss GT-6B can do pretty much any effects. They are cheap to buy used now (<£200). Obviously a lot more than just a compressor (actually a choice of several compressor emulations), but can also do that weird synthy/flangy/ring-mod/echoey sound you need for that one-off song. I mostly use mine with a "flat" pass-thru for most songs, but then on the odd song I'll use up to 4 different patches. It's also handy as a mute between sets and a tuner

My favourite noodling guitars were a Hofner violin bass and a nylon-strung classical guitar. Both of which my son took with him to university. Ah well, I guess they do belong to him 😂

Most of our "breakdowns" were actually just running out of petrol because we were too skint to put more than a fiver in at a time. We'd be running on fumes a lot of the time. The number of times I was roused from my post-gig slumbers by "Norris wake up - we've run out of petrol" doesn't bear thinking about The heater never worked so we were always freezing in winter. We had a piece of carpet that we used to put over ourselves to keep warm. Why we didn't keep a blanket or two in the van goodness only knows. Stoopid youths, eh? Then there was the night we pulled into the motorway services for fuel and the engine wouldn't start again. Then it was a ring-round of people to find someone with breakdown recovery cover to be "driving" the van. That was a long night! It turned out that a piston had blown

Absolutely when we started out. A 4th member would need to add a lot to a band to justify the others taking a hit on the pittance wages. There's also no excuse for not throwing in some backing vocals at least. Even better if you can lead a couple of songs to give the main singer a break

Did you watch it all? Screen grab just after half way, bottom right...

TV rule number 6357: Whenever there are twin guitars in a band the camera should never be on the one playing the solo

It's years since I heard of any restrictions on numbers of performers, and 3 was never one of those numbers iirc. We've always been a trio, because it suits us. We've always filled out to sound bigger than you'd think, and never been afraid of arranging songs that were originally done by much bigger bands. Three is the magic number

Back at the Piv in Nuneaton for another Sunday 4-6 slot. It's one of our favourite gigs, with a nice laid back vibe. They seemed to have the heating turned up to 11 though, so it was darned hot! There again it always seems like a "proper" gig when you're sweating, so I threw a few bass stances for good measure. I'm normally a reasonably tidy player, but this time had a rare melt down in the 2 octave riff in the middle of Frankenstein. Ah well, it gave my bandmates something to laugh at. No photos this time, so you can have another punter photo from Friday which I quite like because it shows how much fun we have playing together 😁

Like this?

And they were probably never asked back again "I just hate it... it really, it does disturb me, but I'll rise above it; I'm a professional."