Stub Mandrel

First time it took a couple of months. Second time I put a post on FB and the guy who sang for my brother's first band 35 years ago got in touch the next day! Then we had to wait three weeks as one of our guitarists is recovering from ten broken ribs.

Not a gig... but we had a rehearsal last night to try out a new singer for new band Benricks Rock. Went really well... most significantly we got through loads of songs and all enjoyed it. Sadly won't rehearse again until new year but first gig lined up for 2 March.

Thrres huge variation in how acoustic basses sound. Thst must be impressive just to condider using it with drums unamplified. I got an acoustic-only tanglewood, which by definition had to have a decent inherent volume. I fitted a cheap piezo system which is a bit harsh and may get upgraded, although some nylon tapewounds tamed it.

Well it should get you more gigs than "Ribs and Balls" 🤣

Allex Harvey reference?

Saw local reggae band Palm Tree 🌴 Antics featuring our own @choob.squeemer. Always a great evening with these guys. Getting a delightful tone from his CESys cab sat atop a Vanderkley. first time I've seen one in the wild rather than at a bass bash.

Becuase it needs a flautist:

Orange Terror?

The first part of this medley is called 'The River Head' for a reason only bass players will understand.

Indeed. And the things that are sold as stand alone tuners aren't tuners at all, they just tell you if your instrument is in tune or not.

What do you call the things on a violin then? They ain't machine heads as they gave no gears. They are tuning pegs. By extension mechanised tuning pegs can also be named tuners.

Over ornate or pointy bodies, so Jaydees and Alembics are out for me. Not attracted to rics either for similar reasons. Heavyweight bridges on traditional basses. White bongos with black scrathplates. PJ precisions (ok on other basses) Basses that have non-p body shapes but are really just p copies.

Holy poo. You're lucky you didn't get lung damage.

'Wooden ring clamps' are good when access is limited https://atoztoolsonline.com/cdn/shop/products/708010-Wood_Ring_Clamp_425x425.jpg

My mate had a 5kW pa in 1983 and it sounded awesome. Remember listening to Dark Side of the Moon on it...

I think no hot food us reasonable, if there's somewhere people can heat and eat a pasty or whatever. A studio day can be very long without a decent bite to eat. Drinks are problematic, especially singers who might want something on hand to sip. Trouble with 'energy drinks' is it's very specific... do you ban coke, iced coffee...

Sunday's venue posted some lovely words and this photo.

Our sound guy wanting everything miked and setting up a video camera is a frustration for me. We should start on time not wait five minutes for the video to get started.

Interesting views. My experience of hearing plenty of 60s/70s pros who are now with local bands on the pub/club circuit suggests that either they have vastly improved or, just maybe, they were pretty good back then. A few weeks ago I saw the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. No sign of any iems for click tracks, in fact the guy runningvthe back projection was synching it live on his phone. But one track, Space Captives, is historic in being the first commercial track recorded with a drum machine instead of a live drummer. For that one track the drummer was like a human metronome. Worked in context, but didn't have the same groove. Quantisationnis mainly driven by bands/producers who want to be DJ/dance friendly.

Exhibit one: Deep Purple.

They were good basses.

I have a B2 and a Jack Custom V active. So the top and bottom of the range. Love them both but the B2 is my favourite.

My fretless is nearly 50 years old. It has a poly finished maple fingerboard. It has been gigged on and off over the years, usually just a few songs. So not heavy use. It has a couple of minor marks. Probably from falls rather thsn wear.

Well... today's 4-6 venue turned out to be huge, but the audience wasn't. We were not expecting much but the audience we had were great. Two of them came because they've seen us before a few times. We kept up a constant good-natured banter with the soarse audience "get ready, I'll do some crowd surfing in a minute". At one point we greeted a three year old and sang happy birthday to her baby sister via a phone. And we did a couple of requests. They were apologetic about numbers and desperately want us to come back. Shame for them as it was a good paying gig and they did a lot of publicity. Just looks like sunday matinées wontwork for them. To our surprise we all enjoyed the gig and ended up playing an 80-minute second set uncluding encores!

Not read all the posts. PMT had an annoying and trading standards worrying policy of not displaying prices and looking things up online if you enquired. I think they have been 'encouraged' to price their instruments but still do an online check before selling so you should get the website price. It's worth doing an online check if you know what you're interested in. When I wanted an AVII it was hard to find places with stock, but the best price I could find in the UK was actually a fairly nearby store in the valleys (A Strings) who are brilliant at customer service so big win!