Bass gear and Updates

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First things first, my time with the Tom Bertram band has come to an end. It was great fun and I definitely recommend that you check out his album when he releases it.

I’m not doing a lot else at the moment, I have some band auditions coming up, and I’m trying to get a pop-punk or post-hardcore band started up, we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve also changed some of the gear I use, on the amp side I’m using a 500 watt Markbass Little Mark III, as the Ashdown gave up the ghost when it blew the power amp. I can still use it as a pre-amp, for practice and recording, but It’s never going to make it to a gig again.

On a happier note, the Little Mark III is an absolute beast of an amp, it sounds just as good, if not better than my Ashdown while being smaller, lighter and running cooler thanks to its class D transformer.

I also have a new bass guitar. It’s quite possibly the nicest thing I have ever seen, never mind played! It’s a custom ESP Phoenix II, with the custom part being the finish, which is a negative of the black version, so it’s a white body, with black pickguard and headstock.

I’ll post some pics when I dig out the DSLR, or take some pictures at a practice.

Recent Books II

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Another foray into recent reads, all pretty great books.

  • Terminal World – Alistair Reynolds
    A story where the lead character becomes progressively less human physically, but more human in character throughout the story. It’s a great far-future-post-apocalyptic adventure with humans, machines and things somewhere in-between.
  • Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
    Quite possibly my favourite book of the year. It’s a video game sci-fi adventure of the like conjured up by Neal Stephenson and Cory Doctorow with a bucketload of vintage video game references and 80′s pop culture thrown in.
  • REAMDE – Neal Stephenson
    A slightly shady founder of an MMORPG, Terrorists, MI6 and Russians. It’s not the best I’ve read from Neal Stephenson, but it’s in the top three.
  • Stark’s War (The Trilogy) – John G. Hemry
    More sci-fi, but this time with a military twist. Three fairly entertaining books that cover a mutiny and a fight to preserve freedom and the rights given to citizens by the U.S. Constitution.
  • Feed – Mira Grant
  • Deadline - Mira Grant
    More post-apocalyptic near future adventures, now with more zombies! The Newsflesh novels follow Georgia and Shaun Mason kicking arse, taking names and blogging all about it.