Stub Mandrel

I hope I didn't piss off the neighbours, I turned it up and played along from Like A Hurricane... Mind you I expect they were watching so they probably just think his bassist is a bit crap 🤣

I've never seen Neil Young live. I always thought he could never live up to Live Rust, especially as he grew older. Feck. I was wrong. That's real festival music. And his last two songs...

That Tom Peterson White Falcon 😍

I sometimes play 'fingerstyle' like that, but usually 2 or 3 fingers (sometimes 4 for trills)

Many decades ago I found this case second hand in the Birminham Bass Centre. It has a label saying Howson with a union jack and a phone number. Not seen another one like it ever, it's excellent though.

I like using my fingers to hit the strings downwards for a percussive sound that's more subtle than slap.

I'm prioritising gigging my AVII Precision, my most expensive purchase, but it stubbornly refuses to do acquire wear or battle scars... I used to use my Performer for every gig in the 90s. For some reason I'm reluctant to use it of late. Must get it out there soon. Edit: I don't deliberately abuse my basses. My choice for gigs is always led by what playing experience I want and what sound I feel like having. On the original question, if you have great looking, easy playing and excellent sounding instrument, it seems churlish never to let a band and audience benefit from it. One could argue you should always use your best bass... but I'd say use the one(s) likely to bring out your best on the night.

Excellent

I'm trying playing some stuff with a pick. The originals band has a couple of songs that need a very aggressive sound. I'm rusty and I need practice to get more fluent.... fingers are so much faster! It's a completely different technique with the wrist doing more - and in a different way to slap.

That's because people come to see YOU as an originals band. Most covers bands we are pretty interchangeable. One thing about depping is it's a licence to get creative but it can get a bit hairy if there's a dep guitarist as well and many of the songs have multiple well known versions...

I have the weekend off! Then seven gigs in July, then just two in September!

Was nice.

I think it fell on the floor... behind your right foot.

All sounds good on my PC speakers. 👍

Never underestimate the power of a cheesy press release! https://www.penarthtimes.co.uk/news/25261621.rock-band-dinosaur-connection-play-penarth/

A very high input resistance voltage probe would do the job.

Point of order. if you want a bass that sounds how it did when it left the factory, you seriously want a 2025 modrl not a 1966 one...

I think the arguments for specialist speaker cable are weaker than for instrument level cables. For bass stacks cables are so short any losses are negligible. For long PA runs maybe. The speaker cables I made in the distant past used cable designed for repeated coiling and flexing and I've never had a failure. I do use branded off-the-shelf speaker cables now because I greatly prefer speakon. Instrument wise, I use decent cables and prefer my Sommer/Neutrik ones for reliability and 'limpness', although I have many others.

A good one. That's both sets sorted. They threw some unexpected arrangements at me tonight and I had to cope on the fly. We finished by jamming Need Your Love So Bad. Typical Peter Green song - sounds like a standard 12 bar blues but is very different. Amazed myself by anticipating the chord sequence and even managing a bass solo - I've never played it before. TBH that's as good as it gets 🙂

And... the one issue when in more than one band. I just got asked to a rehearsal for a gig I hadn't been told about on 5 July. I have another gig in the diary and I'm committed to that, so the others are going to have to find a dep.

Hmm. Needs vocals.

Whoops! 2002 to 2020! Too many twos.

Hmm ... an obvious experiment is to substitute a variable supply for the batteries and see how low it can go before the preamp fails.

Both a good example of how far the batteries can discharge in a low-current application and still function (the Precision ones were probably below 8V before they failed completely). It also hints at the rapid collapse in voltage when the batteries fail.