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Got to say a huge thank you to @alyctes who has just dropped off so much stuff for me to pass on to schools and clubs. I just can’t say thank you enough Jon

Just picked her up from Bass Direct. Light as a feather, sounds like thunder. Over the moon is an understatement!

My '73. Bought in 1990 from Boogie Music IIRC. Done thousands of gigs on this. Light, perfect sound, everybody who plays it, loves it. A real players guitar too. I will sell it when I retire from playing although that won't be for a while yet (I'm 52) Always love to post a picture of the old girl

Makes Mr Phillips' creations look like Alembics...

Summoned as I am by an upper-case challenge, a full reply might settle this non-argument. 1. I don't care about his money one way or another. I don't really care about my money either, but a taxi driver often does and I do care about getting where I need to be without worrying about being late. My point: sometimes money represents intangible, unquantifiable aspects of life. 2. I don't care if he's a git. I'm not asking him to join me for dinner. If he treats people badly, that reflects poorly on him (as it does on anyone), but after all the lyrics for "Yesterday" aren't "Yesterday/Hurry up with my sandwich you grotty nobody". Most listeners aren't going to experience that side, they merely hear the music. 3. Taste is subjective but also indicative. When a lot of people share a taste, there might be any number of reasons for that. I'm interested in the reasons, which are complex, rather than in the subjectivity of aesthetic responses, which is obvious but unlikely to shed light on anything. 4. I don't care about popularity or lionisation except as phenomena. What I like isn't especially popular except when it is. Popularity would be a meaningless measure of anything I do, except when it isn't. Being lauded and being popular only overlap sometimes (cf. thread on Banksy). McCartney's popularity in 1964, or 1980, are less interesting to me than his durability as an exponent of musical genres that are not as fleeting and short-lived as their commercial dimensions suggest they might be. 5. My subjective view? Well, okay. I formed my initial musical tastes in popular music from whatever Radio 1 played throughout the 1970s. That included some truly impressive moments (Bowie, Roxy Music, Slade at their most cheerful, Elvis Costello at his most acerbic, etc). There was much dross, of course; there always is. The Beatles remained popular and got played a lot; their stuff just worked like all the other stuff to my ahistorical ears. I knew it was "old" (i.e. not made last month), but I liked it anyway. So, lesson in the obvious for the young 'un: catchy songs endure. And McCartney was responsible for quite a lot of them. Wings didn't impress in the same way but did confirm that he was still in the game. McCartney II came out in 1980 with "Coming Up" on it. It isn't Bowie with "Fashion" or some similar display of acute musical antennae, but it does reveal a musician with a taste for incorporating new-found elements into his own work simply because he likes them and thinks he can use them. Another lesson: things change, and open-mindedness applies in all directions. I could like PiL, Madness, and "Coming Up" at the same time -- and then find Macca's Christmas single silly but oddly catchy. I saw that I might not be his audience for everything, but there is more than one audience. He is a populariser; including rather than excluding. Does he do it to make money? Sure. Does he only do it to make money? Of course not. He's having fun, and that comes across the way even a mediocre film can be elevated by an ensemble that is obviously having a whale of a time. And this was significant for me, an anxious child who quite obviously overthinks everything. Sometimes, having fun is a virtue in itself. I went back to the Beatles and listened property. It's like nothing else and everything else: a wide range of musical antecedents transmuted into songs realised at such a clip that they retain their spontaneity. They are seldom overworked. Many people deserve credit -- George Martin being the one everyone points to -- but McCartney is certainly crucial. Studio experiments; harmonies that evoke pre-modern chants; a transatlantic gumbo of styles worn lightly; and energetic performances from a band that was learning as they went, and which quickened the transition from studio as venue to studio as laboratory. Listening to the Beatles in the early 1980s was an education in itself. In 1981 I was teased for it by the kids who in 1989 were in love with it. Lesson: massive popularity does not preclude artistic validity. Were the Beatles a literary phenomenon, that artistic merit would be less clouded by the stigma of adolescent adulation. What do I find exciting and moving about his music? To be honest, I am lukewarm about most of his post-Beatles music, with a few exceptions, but I respect what he does with it. I respect the fact that an overpetted moptop still has the urge to form an ambient techno group with Youth. I respect the fact that he is obviously inclined to be a crowdpleaser until he drops, like he's Tony Bennett. But exciting and moving? Well, I associate Abbey Road, the last thing the Beatles recorded, with the frenzied, intoxicated lovemaking that characterised the breakdown of my first serious relationship. It's the sound of something that knows it is dying but is compelled to pretend otherwise, the sound of emotional demolition. I associate the guitar solo of "Taxman" with the transition of my taste -- and, crucially, the personal values that taste signifies -- toward the kind of jagged loss of self that I still try to invoke when I play the guitar to try to stay halfway willing to live. I hear in McCartney's bass playing a path through my own musical limitations as I pick up the four-string after 40 years with six thin ones. But, if were are going to get close to the bone, so be it: in the hours before my wife died, I played her six tracks. Five of them were mine. The other was "Things We Said Today". If you can write a song that captures so sweetly the sense of love beyond the reach of communication, you deserve McCartney's money, but I'll lay odds you can't. I question the premise that we can draw a general rule from your own subjective dismissal of a musician because he was unkind to you and you don't like plutocrats.

Whatever I do to straighten the neck, the headstock section has to be rejoined. Always a bit dodgy to add to the thread before you know the result, but it wouldn't be an Andyjr1515 thread if we weren't tip toeing on the very edge of disaster, would it! Normally, a scarf joint would be clean sanded and joined before the neck was carved so the clamps are sitting on flat cauls. Clearly that can't be done here. So the cunning plan is this: To take the neck profile either side of the joint: Carve a block with the shape and taper and check it for fit: Then, protecting the blocks from the glue with masking tape, apply a thin layer of Titebond to both surfaces and slide the joint together to interlock the grain break lines and line up against the break pattern and hold the carved block along the joint: Then, finally, add a flat top block and clamp until it's fully cured (basically, overnight): The visible joint at the back of the neck isn't going to be pretty, but the name of the game here is to get a strong, sturdy and straight joint. The neck will need to be stripped and refinished whatever and so I can tidy up the visible joint line at the time Oh...and if it isn't strong and sturdy and straight, then I'll have to break it open and do it again. But then again, you'd be disappointed if there wasn't a precipice I was walking backwards towards

I can't wait...

I always like to have the physical bridge to hand when I am working out the bridge position and neck angle. This way I can check the actual and usable range of saddle height and intonation movement. I then draw the fretboard height, fret height, nut height full-size as a side view to the previously drawn plan view of the bass and plot the string run from nut to saddle at it's lowest set action height: I then match that against the saddle height range of the bridge to work out what, if any, the neck angle needs to be to allow the saddles to be able to have reasonable adjustability once it's all assembled: And this says that, in fact, I shouldn't need a neck angle. Which is, as it happens, a decent double check to what I had assumed. Why? Because the hipshot B-style is a modern take for the Fender BBOT...and Fender basses also generally do not need a neck angle. So when the neck splices arrive on, presumably Tuesday (unless UPS are delivering today), I should be able to make a burst of decent progress

£200 neck.. £100 pickup... Triggers Broom?

I think these stories abound about so many celebrities /notable people... I'm a life-long Bowie fan and these days, since his passing in 2016, it's hard to find anyone anywhere going to print (so to speak) being critical of his personality. But there are plenty of stories about what an insufferable ego manic he was during long phases of his career - particularly the 1970s... Knowing all that about Bowie doesn't change my opinion about his musical/artistic output, though I suspect if I'd met him and he'd been nasty or rude to me personally, I might feel differently. I'm with @Dad3353 in knowing full well that the world wouldn't miss any of my songs - hell, they don't even know about them anyway thankfully! But I think that the numbers infer that there literally are millions of people who would miss a fair number of McCartney's songs if they were somehow to be withdrawn from the Earth's pop music playlist.

You could inlay "Yes, you are too loud" in there. You know that it would ALWAYS be useful, no matter what band you were playing with.

Here she is! I’ve got a new set of D’addario Chrome flatwounds so I can restring them fretless side EAD. If I had bigger hands I’d be able to solo at the top of the fretless board, but that was never my plan anyway: the bottom 3 are going to be used for proper bass (and maybe the odd midrange excursion). the tone off those fretless strings really is quite striking! I’ve taken the thumb rest off: I don’t use them, and it just got in the way - hell of a job getting it off!

I have a few gigs trickling tentatively into the diary, and one is a dep slot for my old Madness Tribute. I've got over my bruised pride that they are still going strong without me, and am rather looking forwrd to it. It's at the Llanelli Festival, only a couple of days beyond the alleged end of restrictions - so still very theoretical. Nonetheless I have been studiously relearning everything, and transcribing all the bass parts, it has kept me busy. I got to thinking about the really important stuff today. What bass to take? Obviously I have my two toned precision, which will make a great prop/2nd bass but I wonder what the man mr Bedford himself used. Wouldja believe it theres a five year old thread here where someone points out that he was using a Bruce Thomas Profile - and I , of course, have that very bass in my collection. A good omen? Maybe I shall be blowing the cobwebs from my passport and heading over the bridge in June after all. Now, what hats did he wear....

Sorry, but that’s complete b0110cks, just 1980s NME-esque pop music snobbery that dismisses anything that has sold more them 100,000 copies as ‘elevator music’. Mr Brightside is a half-decent pop rock anthem that people who love music (but don’t obsess about it) can sing along to. There are so many urban legends about Sinatra that it’s hard to keep track. Who knows, some of them might even be true, but it is unlikely to be this one!

May sound like that now but the Killers track (which is way out ahead in this list) was energetic, edgy and anthemic when it came out, for a certain demographic. Not muso stuff, but neither were [insert your iconic band of choice].

That's a list of bland average news. Nothing but elevator music. The only one of them that has really contributed to the future of music was Sinatra and that was accidental. He used his mafia connections to get all rock gigs shut down in Palm Springs so the bands started having generator party's in the desert and Stoner Metal was born thanks to Frank. The other bands are just music for people who aren't interested in music. The peak of mediocrity.

GB Rumour

Your disagreement is noted. Obviously, all posts of this kind make assertions. You might notice that I do not say McCartney necessarily meets the critieria I mention, merely that I offer possible reasons why (a) some think he is great, and (b) others really do not. In that sense, I am not asserting facts. I am merely proposing criteria in relation to an inherently critical topic. It is up to you, or to anyone, to judge for yourself whether you think McCartney is one of those musicians who meets the criteria I set out in the first sentence. Obviously, you do not, but I don't have any sense of whether you think the yardsticks themselves are invalid. Second sentence, regarding noteworthy technique, by now has a critical consensus that appears robust. That is about historical significance more than technique per se, of course. Third sentence about virtuosity is, again, a stipulated critical perspective, widely shared by aficionados of popular music (and acting, visual art, literature etc) regarding all but the most strictly formalised modes of creativity. (It is also why it is pointless to compare classical performance with improvised jazz, for example.) But the notion that the world would not miss a single one of his songs seems a little far-fetched, given that they still sell and it is not hard to find enthusiasts young enough to be McCartney's great-grandchildren. This is ultimately a commercialised form of music we are talking about. He doesn't need to be Mozart. I don't rate him as an artist the way I rate numerous other well-known figures. But I don't think his longevity and appeal are any great mystery. Craftsmen also endure. As much as the Beatles were more than the sum of their parts, perhaps McCartney is one of those artisans who is more than the sum of his abilities. Whether he bores you or not, I assume you would agree that not everyone shares your view. I am more interested in the structure of his appeal to those who like his work, because an individual's boredom doesn't really need explication if it provides no general rule. If McCartney bored everyone, your boredom would be interesting. As it is, it is a matter of taste, and I completely respect that. He might be a git. He might be a git sometimes. He might be a git to you. Does it really matter? A gobby taxi driver who gets me to Heathrow in record time still gets a big tip from me.

Super happy to get one of these super early! Covers alot of ground! and with the dual gain controls its very easy to dial in light to heavy sounds!

Just snaffled this 48 y/o beauty. Weighs just over 7 pounds, which is fabulous for my back/shoulders. Just need to sell a couple of basses to pay for it now!

I'm Vin, and I'm crap at bass! Live in Bristol, originally from Stoke. Into punk/hardcore/post-punk/post-hardcore and 90s alt rock. Technically been playing 20 years, but for most of that I didn't have a bass, so I don't think it counts. I only picked it up again a year or so ago. Hoping to do a band when it's safe. Never learned to play anyway. Just like making noise. I like short scale basses, cuz my back and my fingers are knackered. My rig consists of a Fender Mustang (PJ), a Portaflex, a Fender Rumble 210 Cab, and a minimalist pedalboard with an emphasis on grindy, nasty grit. Nice to be here, to be here...

Will do!

Mr Brightside is a really good anthemic pop rock tune that has engaged many punters. Whether it is to your taste is neither here nor there, but you should be able to appreciate it for what it is. In a world of formulaic manufactured pop cr*p that has dominated the charts for the past 20 plus years, I actually find it quite encouraging that a genuine rock song heads that list. I think that is well known that Sinatra wasn’t a big fan of rock and roll in general, but to be honest I doubt that he would have been too bothered about heavy metal in particular. It is likely that HM wasn’t considered to be really the kind of entertainment that would appeal for the general clientele in Palm Springs, although times are starting to change as the old Vegas clientele die off and the late boomers rock and roll generation get older and start seeing big stage classic rock events in Vegas hotels as more appealing!

Yes, but what you fail to realise is that Janek mumble mumble something, whereas Jaco long sentence with lots of unexplained,,,,, commas. I hope that's clarified things.

I wish! I’m the guy who’s now totally skint! 😂

That's a BIG number vocally to pull off and for the record I think your vocalist is pretty darned good!

I find Mr Brightside to be extremely average. There's absolutely nothing original or interesting about it. Not as bad as Ed Sheeran though. Just radio friendly unit shifting music written for maximum sales. That particular Sinatra legend came from a few different stoner metal pioneers (Nick Oliveri, Josh Homme, Mario Lalli and Pepper Keenan) and its fairly well documented that the police shut down all metal shows in Palm Springs plus Sinatra was there at that time plus he hated metal.

I meant Guitar Strap not Jock Strap... 😀

I just cut the fingers off! 😄

Just had another 3 Pinegrove straps delivered today, that makes 4 in total including my ACG branded one. After a fairly exhaustive search, these are the definitely the best straps out there in my humble opinion!

Not quite sure how Janek Gwizdala fits into this, seeing as he wasn't even born until 1978...

Unreadable and unplayable - by special request, this is Dylan Wilson's bass part for the 2018 Richie Kotzen tune, 'Riot'. I am not convinced that the first bar is correct. If you hear it differentIy, do let me know and we can fall out over it. Riot – Richie Kotzen – Bilbo's Bass Bites

Very good job, the intro sounded just like Slash and when the rest of the instruments come in it’s so near to the original. No disrespect to your singer, but that’s probably the only point you realise it’s not actually GnR playing.

This pseudo stream of consciousness is getting really hard to understand... over and out

However, as far as earliest goes, here's something from 1954.

Thanks for the heads up. That would have been ideal, but I’ve already committed to the BB735 for sale on here, so I’ll see how I get on with that.

I'm sure it won't miss many of mine. ...

Here's my pedal board. Beringer tuner Boss LMB3 bass limiter Orange Two Stroke boost / eq Earthquake Devices Plumes overdrive Orange Fur Coat fuzz with octave up Way Huge Pork & Pickle fuzz / overdrive Electro Harmonix Bass Clone chorus All mounted on a Pedaltrain Metro 24 with a Donner power supply and connected through the effects loop of my Orange Terror amp. It's mostly various types of distortion. The Two Stroke is my favourite at the moment, it really gives the pre amp a nice kick for a nice natural sounding distortion. The fur coat is absolutely disgusting, perfect for doomy stuff.

That's my view.

I wanted to try the Shaper for some fingerboard symbols. I decided to try an infinity. Tricky to draw in CAD as they get longer and narrow as you go up the neck. The plan is black resin

Anyone remember the band Gaye Bikers on Acid? They had an amusingly named alter-ego , and sometimes (If I remember correctly) used to support themselves................ Lesbian Dopeheads on Mopeds