All Activity

Extreme + Terrorvision at Halifax Piece hall. Terrorvision always s great live bank. Extreme still great aswell. Bass player Pat Badger very underrated. Often overshadowed by Nunos virtuosity

Hong Kong (Phooey) Garden - Siouxsie and The Banshees

So it’s basically a B2 now.

This project was a real struggle. It’s been here a couple of months, in bits mostly, and it put up a fight all the way through. I got it for peanuts, probably because the guy knew it was goosed. So, I ripped out all the knackered active electronics and binned them. I spent WAY too long trying to get them to work. Today, I turned it passive…. CTS pots, orange drop cap etc…. and now those EMGs absolutely sing. Piano like tone when played with a pick, lovely neck, very nice to play and well balanced on a strap. Maybe it’ll make an appearance at the next gig? A bit 80s like, but f*** it! 😉

I have had a couple of ideas for one of my basses, but haven’t actually got around to doing yet… #1 - Replace the cavity cover with a piece of 1mm steel with some ebony veneer. Drill the screw holes in the body to fit some magnets. But I worry about losing it. #2 - Mount a battery box into the cavity cover.

I've seen something similar in an Irish bar in Budapest!

This lady was pretty impressed. In a bar in Amsterdam. It was a mirror until you got closer and this image appeared.

Yamaha makes some really tasty instruments. The TRB was a great range, especially the early ones. Enjoy!

I'm too old for it. 😂 Dave

Nice! Fender Japan seems to have quite a bit of flexibility to issue “local” models that are both desirable and well screwed together.

True but my 24 year old Thumb and 19 year old Streamer still have their original just a nuts with no issues so far with either of them.

After a bit of hiatus, Instagram threw this up for me. The Corsell Ventura

I have a Fender strap on my Fender banjo, and I thought it would look nice on my Squier telecaster but I couldn’t bring myself to do it!

GAK and three music shops that gradually shut over 13 years

I've been using a D400 with a BF one 10 (no tweeter) for some years. Very pleased with the amp and speaker, it does sound a bit old school I suppose but I like that. I play in a quite jazz group so it's great for swing and Latin, still amazed you can get so much authoritive bass out of such a small cabinet. All this is probably not much help to you but I can say boxy it definitely is not.

This will probably encourage a new thread with a title something like: “They don’t make them like they used to”. Here is a pic (taken today) of a strap that I bought in Hodges & Johnson circa 1975. Still going strong and being used today, some 50 years later. And………not made in China!

J G Windows in the central arcade, Newcastle. Brilliant shop, popped in every Saturday. Bought my first Fender Precision there in 1978, lovely colour Antigua. Unfortunately it was stolen from our van in the mid 80's along with all the other bands gear!

I used to go to school in Bingley / live in the next town and I can safely say that JSG (later Spectre) was a big part of me starting up playing in bands. We used to go walk across town to go there at lunchtime (or get the bus on Thursday late night opening) to hang out, look at guitars that we wouldn't be able to afford for several years and try out ones that might be our next instrument. On weekends and Thursday nights, there were always local musos hanging out who would give impromptu lessons and advice about gear or playing or whatever. A few years later, I was the one of the guys giving advice or showing kids how to play Smoke On The Water or Wishing Well properly. Quite a few of my mates / bandmates worked there and as I walked in they would put the kettle on, or if they were busy, ask me to put the kettle on, or answer the phone, etc. Then we would go to the pub after they locked up. As I said, a big part of my early musical journey. The demise of these sort of places (and Electro in Doncaster was another one) was a symptom of the decline of local music scenes. It's where musos would hang out, put bands together and share knowledge. All gone now unfortunately...

I’d be looking at LFSys. Top stuff. After hearing a cab shootout at the SW Bass bash, that’s where I’d put my money!

A long as it's too high for the punters to reach.

Refusal to design a soundhole to suit the instrument, instead just throwing on a random f-hole. Fanned-fret basses. The "Dingwall/Darkglass" atonal screech. What's considered "Prog" these days. Lollipop tuners. People playing the "My Generation" solo incorrectly OR other band members taking a solo each. Youtube demos that give us a clean DI tone only. The bass stylings of Mark King. YouTube thumbnails. Tech 21's UK distributor. Tool. David Tennant. BBQ sauce on pizza.

I think probably the shop I spent the most time in was in Canterbury, where I went to university. A place called – I think – castle street music, or something like that. It was a guitar shop on castle street, and businesses in Canterbury tend to go for pretty straightforward names. It was a funny little shop that, like most shops in the city, was actually two tiny old storefronts knocked together, with a little doorway between the two. I went in there a few times a month and played basses, bought strings, etc., and made awkward conversation with the guys who ran the place. I'm sure I was an irritating nuisance as I never had the money to buy anything big, but they didn't chase me away. Sadly they shut down not long after I graduated, so I never got to go back there as a taxpayer with cash and buy something shiny to pay them back for all the time I'd taken up. All the chat about the Denmark street of old reminded me of a funny experience I had a few months ago. My company's office is about five minutes' walk from there, and I swing by the shops from time to time to buy strings and fill my lunchbreak. There was one day when I popped into Wunjo to get some bass strings and chatted for a bit with the bass cellar guys about some instruments they'd recently gotten in. I came out, walked to the junction with Charing Cross Road and found myself absentmindedly thinking "hmm. Should I got up to the Virgin Megastore or get on the tube and go straight up to Camden?" It passed in a flash, but for that moment my brain was fully transported back to the summer of 2003, I was 16 and frittering away my paycheck from the supermarket.