basexperience

The Reading Costco is my local, it's a good one for cakes! Maybe a tray of those delicious croissants for anyone coming in from London? 😉

Last night was the Victoria pub jam in Wokingham, which I think has been running on Thursdays for more than a decade. An enthusiastic group of core musicians - which is expanding - maintains house band duties and rotates, which means it feels fresh, and it's starting to attract - gasp - Gen Z (!!) - I know, I can't believe it either, until fairly recently all the jam nights I went to were pretty much my age (I can still pogo at 55!), but there's teens and twenty somethings taking the stage, and I'll tell you - some of them are excellent. Reading has a pretty active prog rock thing going on, and they're all young as anything! Anyway - I got pulled into 3 bands for the night, which is damn good, some great tracks. Highlight as ever was Let's Dance by Bowie - I LOVE the bass on that track. Bass was the Maruszczyk 5-string, and it absolutely nailed it, sounding amazing after the truss rod replacement earlier this year - this thing is now perfect! Effects was a cheap little AnnBlackBox from M-VAVE with the chocolate 4-button wireless controller - and you know what? It worked pretty well, especially as a quick setup system. Total cost of that system? A stripped down version of the Stomp HX for £75 all in including the 4-button switch, all running on batteries so no need to hunt for a PSU or use a full sized board. I'm warming to it for jam nights! Weirdest track I played was "the stealer" by free - check this bassline out, it's bonkers: The landlord has invested properly in live music - the pub's had a new PA this year, new bigger desk and speakers mounted on the walls which saves a lot of space. The venue also owns good kit for bass, guitar and drums. I think that makes a huge difference to the musicians running the event.

I didn't know this topic existed, so I'll post one of my old videos - everybody has to do a Dean Town at some point... 😄 This was back before logic was splitting stems - I actually bought them on Bandcamp. Clever guys, the Wulfs.

I live about an hour outside London, so there's stuff there, but even so, when I found out a local guitar place in swindon was closing, I was sad about it: In terms of bass-centric places, when the bass cellar closed in Tin Pan Alley, I was really sad about that: magical little place, I've bought 2 Warwicks there over the decades. I've been toying with popping up to bass direct, I've been to the bass gallery. Relating back to the OP, central London wouldn't be local from here: it's a very similar kind of trip to the 100km you're describing, so I tend to visit if I'm in London for some other reason, although... I do have some holiday days to take... 😄

This is a moral question which applies to any asset someone buys, then sells. They're buying with the express motive of making a little money. That's what some people find offensive - now, that's the interesting thing to dig into. Personally, I think any transaction is atomic - it's what happened, right there, right then. The seller agreed to sell. The fact they might find out they could have sold it for more when they see it listed and sell for more is actually irrelevant - and feeling aggrieved on their part as a third party seems pointless. We know some platforms will get more - basschat, reverb - and some less - (maybe) eBay (depending on who listed it - again, the person listing it has listed it at whatever for their own reasons!), Facebook, etc. People sell stuff for varying reasons - could be a distressed sale (can't make the rent, bills to pay, etc). All those are valid reasons why someone gets a bargain. That they decide to flip it, is entirely their business - they bought the bass, it's theirs to do with as they will. What makes more sense is to educate. Give people the confidence to research what a bass is worth - even if it's as trivial as knowing how to filter on eBay for sold items (I always do this before I sell anything) - you can get ideas of what you should be paying for something (or indeed, selling it for). Caveat.... everything, I guess! I know it sounds terribly dispassionate, detached, etc - but you're not going to alter the sociopaths by pointing at them and saying "but it's wrong" - better to starve them of their exploitable population. Which goes for a lot of stuff outside buying and selling at the moment.

You're selling basses through fbook? You're braver than I thought. Surely you just get a constant stream of DMs and comments which make no sense, all in caps with no punctuation, and endless halfwit tyre kickers asking if you'll take £10?

Oh wow, me too! I've exchanged some DMs with Harry in the past and have a spec in mind... very keen to see it in the flesh, also only heard good things.

True that. My wife has had so much stuff go missing with Evri. Anything I ship now, I just use Royal Mail.

I’ve got a spare Scarlett 2i2 I work on with headphones, but I’ve bought one of the really cheap little M-Vave blackbox FX units, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what it can do for £50.

Bloody excellent idea. Thanks mate. Literally exactly what I did at that gig before using the LWA500 as a backup.

Here's a weird little habit of my RM 500 I've just discovered. I haven't used the amp in over a year because it "stopped working" at a gig (I had a backup amp with me) - and I placed it aside after being unable to figure out what was wrong with it at home. Symptoms were the amp had no volume and just a quiet, distorted tone from the speaker cab (8 ohm Markbass traveler 2x10, good cab). Left the amp aside for months and months, yesterday I looked at it again thinking I'd get it fixed and wanted to recreate the failure condition (which it did). Then I thought - is there anything I haven't looked at, like the back panel? Headphone switch engaged. Turn it off, and the amp is absolutely fine. So: with the headphone mode engaged and no headphones plugged in, this amp will seem like it's broken. If there was no audio at all, I think I'd have checked the mute, then looked elsewhere, but it was the fact it actually sounded like it was "broken" (tiny highly distorted sound was made). Silver lining, the amp works! I thought I'd share here - no doubt others have seen this and will have a good laugh 🙂

Ooooo a streamer Stage 2. Is that the P-pickup one?!

OK, I may just bring a bass or three which have curiosity value 🙂

As a n00b, what's the process here? Do we bring as much gear as possible?! How does that work?!