BillyBass

Our previous gig was a bit like that. The landlord of the pub had done pretty much zero advertising and there was a function in the outside area (it was raining quite heavily, so we were inside). The only people watching us were a few regulars that happened to be in the pub on the Saturday afternoon. We came away with a bit of a bad taste in our mouths, however, the landlord has asked us back for a birthday do in December, and we will be paid. so why not. More photos of you wearing the cowboy hat are needed😉

We played the Load of Hay in Watford again last night. We were outside in the beer garden this time, as the weather was glorious. Unfortunately, I had come down with a chest infection the night before and have just started a course of antibiotics. Consequently, I gave up on the backing vocals but I was able to stand and play. The beer garden is quite small but we had an appreciative crowd of about 25; got asked for a few encores and several people complimented us afterwards, which is always nice. Our set up last night

So, let us know what mischief you got up to. Photoshopping the headmaster's face onto a pornstar at work and emailing to around?

And rich Tone Music has one for £849. They do look good, lovely neck, rounded off body/neck joint, decent bridge and luminlay dots. Enough there to justify a higher RRP than a MIM Fender Jazz.

I've just changed my password too.

All subjective but for me, looks are more important than the sound. A beautiful bass can sound different depending on where you pluck, your amp/pre amp settings etc. OK, a bass with a single pup at the bridge will never sound like a P bass and vice versa but you can alter the sound from a bass...and it will still be beautiful. An ugly bass will always be ugly. The other things you mention all improve the playing and user experience, which, again, is very important. If a bass looks good and feels great in my hands, I'll do my best to get the sounds out of it that I want. The looks and playing experience will inspire me to play it. I've only ever played one Shecter. A friend owns an old Schecter that, to me looks daft. Its got a big flame sticker covering most of the body (I assume it's a sticker) and it has dayglo orange strings. Fine for a teenager, which he probably was when he bought it. When I eventually got around to trying it out, I was very impressed by the build quality and feel. Though I would never buy that one, I certainly would consider other Schecters based on that experience.

That is why we fuse the plugs and not the sockets. Something I commonly see in kitchens in London is a double socket used for an electric kettle (roughly 11 amps) and a toaster (up to about 7 amps). Putting the kettle on while you are making toast is really putting that socket under strain, though the fuses in the plugs and the device in the fuseboard would not see that. And don't get me started on extension leads! Far Eastern imported electrical appliances should be used with caution, or not at all! I have seen fake CE marks on Chinese/Far Eastern appliances. I would trust Japanese stuff though.

Goths? Miserable? Never!

There is a trim pot on the John East pre amps, at least there is on the two I have in my Charvel PJs. So you can wind it down to the lowest output and it will still be really hot. Every now and again I start to doubt myself and think maybe the trimpot works anti clockwise and I've maxed mine out!

@Bill Fitzmaurice & @Downunderwonder Electrician here. In the UK, every circuit would be protected by a device ensuring automatic disconnection of supply, at the fuseboard. This will be either a fuse, a miniature circuit breaker, an RCBO or an AFDD. The reason we have fuses in plugs is due to a quirk of history. The Germans bombed the crapp out of us in world war 2 and after it finished a lot of rebuilding was done. Electricity for the masses was a relatively new thing anyway, here in north London, we didn't get a power station until the 1920s and initially, I assume, it would have been the more affluent and the middle classes that got an electricity supply. The usual 20A circuit Bill mentions was, back then a 15A fused 'radial' circuit, using 2.5mm csa copper cable (actually the imperial equivalent of about 2.5mm). Radial circuits are: fuse>socket>socket>socket etc, the 'radial' or round name comes from the cable having the line or live conductor going out to each socket and then a neutral coming back, but both conductors, along with an earthing conductor, are enclosed in the same cable. To save money after the war the 'ring final circuit' was invented (fuse>socket>socket>socket>fuse). This used the same sized cable but then looped back into the fusebox, so there are two cables coming from the fuse, the combined surface area would be about 5mm, which was enough to take 30amps. It became a cheap way of doubling or tripling the capacity for very little extra copper. The trouble with ring final circuits is that there are some inherent safety issues. One such issue, the fact that there could be, potentially 30 amps (or 32amps with modern circuits) passing through sockets connected to leads and appliances that would be fried by 30/32 amps (single sockets in the UK are rated at 13A. Double sockets are also rated at 13A but, anecdotally, can take up to 18-19A before they are put under serious strain). Consequently, plugs are fused. Standard domestic plugs have a 13A fuse at most, though, 3A, 5A, 7A and 10A are common fuses that might also get used. As @BigRedX correctly points out above, the fuse is there to protect the cable, so if a kettle lead can only take 10A, it should have a 10A fuse at most, not 13A. Only three countries in the world have 'Ring final Circuits'. The UK, Ireland and one country in the Middle East. They save money at the expense of safety.

Mate, You regularly post photos of your Reverends here and advise us to try them out. I would love to but since the pandemic, American kit, that isn't made by Fender, has been quite hard to come by this side of the pond. Reverend's main dealer in the UK is a shop up in Scotland; they have a few Mercalli 4s and 5s, a couple of Decision Ps and a couple of semi hollow short scales. No Thunderguns, no Triads, no Wattplowers. There is one other shop, to the east of London, that has a single gunmetal Mercalli 4. That's it, for the whole country. I have been gassing for a Reverend for a while but a round trip to the shop in Scotland would take nearly 14 hours from where I live. So I consider how scared I am of my wife and whether the 8 basses I already own are sufficient and put away dreams of a Reverend Triad. Maybe I'll get permission to treat myself at Christmas.

Classy indeed, good description. Ordinarily, grey would be my last choice of colour for a bass, there is too much grey in my life as it is, when I look up at the sky. These basses, however, really do look classy.

I swap to both get the sound the song needs and for ease of playing. Most of our set is punk (=pick) but some songs sound better with fingers, so yes, to a degree, you are right. 'Pump it Up', for instance, I believe, sounds better without the pick attack and slides in songs sound better with fingers. I'm not sure how important evening out the tone really is, I'm sure the audience won't care/notice. I would be happier with an even volume though. I'm experimenting here.

I mainly play with a pick but there are a few songs, recently added to our set that I play better with fingers. So I've been looking for a way to even out the tone and volume between finger and pick playing, as far as is possible, easily and accurately. My favourite basses from my collection are active PJs, so, when moving to fingers, I've been dialling more bridge and less neck and then dialling in more volume. Easier than this, I discovered yesterday, is the 'Presence' switch on my Gallien Krueger Legacy 800. Flick it up and, hey presto, my fingers sound a lot like my pick tone. The volume still needs to be altered and you still don't get the attack a pick gives but the sound is close enough. Another thing I have done is to use these picks. These are my preferred range. I don't like large picks and the plastic or whatever it is made of dulls the treble and attack a bit, and the thicker the pick, the duller it gets. The thick 1.5mm pick is not ideal for widdling. We cover 'Welcome to Paradise' by Green Day, which has a 40 bar bass widdle and I started off with the 0.96mm pick from this range when I was learning it/acquiring the chops. I'm now ok with the 1.5mm. Anyone else got any tips?

Do you do everything naked in Finland? Or is it just saunas and bass playing?

Oh dear! GAS incoming.

Interesting topic. I've only just started gigging; 3 so far with another couple booked for June and others later on. My bass collection is 8 strong with all the main varieties of pick up/position: P, J, PJ, double hum bucker & single humbucker at bridge. I also have 3 heads and a few different cabs. In the 3 gigs I've played so far I've taken 3 different basses and head/cab combinations as I'm trying to find the tone that I like/suits the songs/cuts through etc. Lots more research to do but so far I am favouring a P or neck humbucker sound with a bit of bridge pick up dialled in. This maybe out of a desire to stand out rather than be swallowed up by the 2 guitarists. Another variable just added is that we have decided to diversify a bit and add a few non punk songs, mainly 90s rock and some of these songs I prefer to play with fingers rather than a pick. So I'm starting to play with duller picks and experimenting with bridge pups when changing between fingers and pick.. Lots to learn and much fun to be had in doing so!

Classy? No, quite the opposite. If a tart had a boudoir, it would be in those colours. Here's mine, the 'Tart'

Machine Gun Etiquette was a classic. Saw him play bass with the Damned a few times after this album came out, end of 1979 at the Rainbow and the Electric Ballroom. Sad day.

Have you thought about putting a better pre amp in? And while you are doing that, shielding it too.

I would agree with you re the pre amp. Fender/Charvel would have built these to a price point and anything more than a couple of dollars on the pre amp would have gone over this, I presume. I also have a Charvel fiver, the pre amp in that was ok but I swapped it out for a Nordstrand. My first 4 string got sent back because the pre amp was faulty (amongst other issues that PMT didn't check before posting it). I would have been happy to spend another £100 on these basses if they came with a decent pre amp but perhaps the general bass buying public wouldn't be. Still, I paid £699 each for both my 4 strings and the fiver, which are bargains really, considering you are getting 'Player Plus' style hardware for 'Player' series prices. I have 8 basses and these Charvels are my favourites.

How does the neck feel to play?

I have two of these, one metallic green, the other metallic blue. I love the look and how they feel in my hands, the jazz neck on a P body is great. As its a two pick up active bass, the pre amp and pups enable me to get a multitude of tones. Yes, the G string is dull when used in passive mode but its an active bass, I would only use it in passive mode if I had battery or gain issues, and then there is a treble knob on my amp's EQ. The worst thing about the bass is the pre amp, so I swapped them out for John East preamps. So @How1 why did you buy the bass? if you didn't want an active bass and the appearance of the neck and nut width wasn't to your liking?

Have you got the ejector seat? Must come in handy if the wife nags a bit too much.

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