ezbass

You’re OK with Pino, he has used his quite extensively with his recent collaboration with Blake Mills.

In To The Valet - The Skids

I have been described by friends as a bad man in this respect too. Living vicariously through other folks’ purchases is a legitimate way to avoid personally acting on GAS I find.

I’d love to, his family do sounds like an absolute hoot. However, word is that we’ve been booked for next year already. That said, after I’d left a couple of aggressive, coked up boys came up to our guitarist and said, “You were shite!” Our guitarist is a big lad and, unbeknownst to them, a former kick boxing champion. He just said, “Don’t do it,” and they took his advice. After that, I might just kick it into touch next NYE. What is with some folk, you’re perfectly entitled to not like us, but don’t come up and actually say it. The mind boggles 🤦🏻.

Just home from the dreaded Hogmanay gig. We have to do this as a 3 piece as our keyboard player always spends NYE with his extended family and fair play to him, I’d rather spend it with them too. Not a terrible gig, always interesting playing with more space in the mix, but I do miss the keyboards. As ever, some idiot insists on trying to speak with you whilst you’re playing, always a request that you can’t/won’t do. However, this was balanced out by a nice guy, who was interested in my bass (he was a guitarist, it turned out) and he looked up my bass, a Maruszczyk, while we were playing. Who says bassists never receive any attention? Anyway, we played OK, although the drummer is really starting to become clumsy (lack of home practise I suspect) and the groove often takes a break in these instances. The thing that gets me is the amount of folk repeatedly going to and from the toilets, with only moments spent in there. Who are they kidding? Perhaps they had bad colds, but I suspect the red nostrils were courtesy of Colombia’s finest marching powder. I’m not a prude, but a little moderation wouldn’t go a miss. Glad it’s over, only 365 days until the next one. At least it was an easy drive home. Rig as per Saturday’s gig earlier in the thread, with the side by side setup, which worked a treat again. EDITS: OK, maybe it was because I was tired (I wasn’t) but just read my post to find numerous autocorrects that made it seem that it was me on the illicit substances. ‘Have to’ became autograph () but more amusingly, groove became ‘groom’ .

Hogmanay shenanigans imminent. Going sideways again. Same rig as Saturday.

I made another year sans nouveau basses (I don’t know why I’ve gone all French). I hope to not repeat the performance for 2026.

The very reason I learnt to tie my own bow tie, although not Daniel Craig necessarily (I learnt way before Casino Royale).

Works here.

🤞

I think it’s a Musicmaster with that bridge and control plate.

Needle & the Spoon - Lynyrd Skynyrd

What is this might? Intriguing 🤔

This could be a theme for the photo competition.

The smaller ‘head’ section has 2 up-firing speakers, which seemed to help with on stage monitoring. That said, when stacked, it’s not exactly very tall, so I suspect that there’s some floor coupling going on too, with this arrangement.

Mmm, a Waluszyczk.

Yep, my JMJ is my heaviest bass, which is odd given it’s the smallest. Lightweight tuners definitely make a difference (certainly more than the just the numbers suggest). My love affair with the JMJ may now be over, after nearly 5 years. I’ve gone back to my 33” scale, customs. Will probably move it on.

A signature sound? No. However, a sound that I’m currently really happy with and can’t see a reason to change is my passive, MM type pickup, fretless bass, into a Sadowsky SBP2 preamp, then into an MXR M87 comp (Dr Pepper type setting), then into a Tech21 VTDI which adds some grit and high end sizzle. These are on all the time and I ride the tone control (0.1uf) for smooth or a bit more aggressive tones (I’ll also use a pick for more attack when required). This seems to work with the 3 different amps I’ve used the set up with (EQ set flattish). My own rig is a Phil Jones Flightcase into a powered PJ cab.

Thank you. It is my original, Maruszczyk, custom build (33" scale, passive). It fell out of favour for about the last 3 or 4 years, as I was not digging fretless (except upright) at all, especially that MM fretless tone. However, I took it to rehearsal as I was feeling a bit sorry for it and, in a band mix, with some drive, it sounded awesome, bordering on Ric like. Since then I've used nothing else live. It's the easiest neck to play of all my basses and with the drive always on, I just ride the tone control for different tunes for everything from reggae and Motown, to full on The Jam, treble heavy, aggressive tones. I'm (currently) a very happy bass player.

Ah ha, it was you who suggested the side by side set up. You, Sir, are a genius! It worked a treat!

Really wasn’t looking forward to tonight, but it turned out way better than expected. We were told that 44 tickets had been sold beforehand, but clearly some folk just turned up on spec and I counted about 70 bodies. A promoter for a local event came to see us, stayed for both sets and seemed genuinely impressed. A couple of senior moments, as ever, but mostly on point. The last time I played this venue I couldn’t hear myself and had a good old moan about it on BC. Some bright spark (on checking, it was@Beedster ) suggested this set up, rather than stacked, for potentially better monitoring: Absolute genius! Whilst not crystal clear, it was near enough - I thank you 🙏 way of the future. As you can see, it was my usual Phil Jones rig, Maruszczyk Elwood L fretless plus pedals (mini Pitch Black, Sadowsky SPB2, MXR M87 & Tech21 VTDI). EDITED for set up credit.

Going for some sideways action tonight to try a facilitate better on stage monitoring. Addendum - it worked a treat!

Very much this^^^^ and who knows you from seeing you play in other bands. That is not to say that advertising on Join My Band, etc doesn’t work too (I got my current gig through JMB) but the ‘network’ is where a large percentage of gigs come from.