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AAA - Strapping Young Lad

Very nice, where’s it from?

Once I realised that a 120 B string has no less fundamental than a 130 I now exclusively use 40-120 string sets. This is only in my experience I should add.

Battery - Metallica

Perhaps more of a cautionary tale in buying old school Trace Elliot equipment is that what you may find is that thirty plus year old gear will actually need some TLC and repairs to get them back to a solid gigging standard. My last find was a thirty four year old TE AH250 GP12 SMX head that was sold for parts or not working on a well known auction site. It arrived in very good cosmetic condition but needed a whole lot of work to bring it back to a usable gigging standard. The cooling fan circuit was shot, the mosfet output transistors were distorting badly, and the pre-amp needed a new tube. The power supply caps on the output board and the pre-amp were shot as well. Not all vintage Trace Elliot stuff is going to be a bargain once repair costs are factored in, but some of it is well worth spending some time and money on because at the end of the day you might well have an amp or cab that out performs anything that's currently available in the here and now for a fraction of the cost. Well thats IMHO.

I think sometimes attachment to certain basses is all about first impressions. Picking up a bass for the first time can be an inspirational experience. For me that has always been with either a p-bass or a jazz bass and more often than not a Fender derivative like a MIM or a USA Standard. Not everything is going to endear you to a particular brand but sometimes the feel, the playability, and the tone of a certain instrument is going to make you think wow! this is a keeper. Once that has happened, it's going to be difficult to pass an instrument on to someone else even if it becomes a case queen you still love but rarely play or use.

Charged Up - Drake

Well guys, gonna have to put the project aside for a few weeks. Family emergency happening so I have to get back to the UK ASAP. But we will pick this back up as soon as I'm back!

Basses. I listed them a few posts back.

Electricity - OMD

Well I'm another who wants to give it the benefit of the doubt. I'm quite looking forward to it but with realistic expectations.

Congrats on the new bass. You have my lusted 78 fender. Ash body maple fretboard. Man that must have some attitude . It’s going to be hard to compete with that as it’s sonically unique (Bart pickups 😍) with the added nut width and profile.

I’ve a set of chromes 50-105. They aren’t sticky at all. Very smooth to play. I’ve had them for a while and the brightness has tamed tbh.

Late August a stage was seen being set up at Stonehenge and there was much speculation as to who it was for. Apparently it was Spinal Tap and Shania Twain filming a performance, I guess this is promotion for ST2 but I've not seen anything online yet. With all the old rock bands out there touring these days, the Stones, Def Leopard and Metallica I'm sure the film will lampoon some of that geriatric rock scene.

In the 70's very few club players, even the well known ones were playing pristine gear. The drivers in the cabs, mostly 412's, could be any combination of replacement speakers. What makes me like those guys is what they played not how they sounded.

Looks like it will be!

Basses or kids?

Peter Gabriel Plays Live from 1983 - on a trip into the distant past - I'd forgot what a great range he has and the tones and colour in his voice. What started me off was a friend's tittle-tattle about Gabriels ex-wife sending a letter into some Genesis/Gabriel fan site or magazine - saying how upsetting she found seeing him in the video with Kate Bush for Don't Give Up and that there might have been a bit more going on between the two of them - I'd never heard of this before or about that letter but I have Spencer Bright's authorised biography of PG which is pretty old now - came out in 2000 and there is a bit about her being upset about the video but I don't think it was anything more than that - what does get mentioned is the chemistry he had with Sinead O'Connor which I also didn't know about. I also have Kate Bush's biography by Rob Jovanovic - also quite dated - from 2005 where very little is mentioned about PG... anyway - this is what sent me off listening to all the PG solo stuff I have. I remember thinking that the live version of Shock The Monkey off this Plays Live album was better than the studio version.

Interesting... Tried the new intro song... it was going to be solo acoustic but we thought we'd put in some subtle backing. It's tricky with some dropped beats, but with the vocals it makes sense. I swapped a bass riff (inspired by Cirrus Minor) to a different song so had to invent a replacement. I suggested a big tempo change that rescued another song. For my troubles I got threatened by a clown armed with a rubber sledgehammer, but the vocalist cut his face off with a plastic chainsaw... the gig will be memorable! True confession... I'm starting to enjoy plectrum playing (perhaps because the extra practice is making me better at it).

OC2 clone > mammoth clone > Alembic tube pre “clone”> tuner/mod/delay/reverb/everything else that I think I need from tone3000, mounted on a pedalboard riser powered by you know what.