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You are of course entitled to your opinion, and your feelings are valid. For me, I don't really believe Elton John thinks it's alright to fight on a Saturday night, or that The Proclaimers really would walk 1,000 miles, or that Sting really thought every little thing she did was magic. I think it's possible for a lyricist/author/screenwriter to write a story about characters, without necessarily sharing the opinions of those characters. I don't think it's necessary to agree with the sentiment of a song to perform it. Musical theatre is on my side here 🙂

My goodness.. if that's how you feel, don't ever join a folk band. The lyrics to half of those tunes will give you nightmares.

And so with the finish just about where I want it, the myriad of final assembly tasks begins. The idea for using Tru-oil is to do something similar to @Jus Lukin 's headless build - have enough gloss to show off the wood figuring but still have enough grain showing through to retain the organic feel of some lovely timbers. This is pretty much there - below, you can see the gloss on the main reflecting surface but, if you look at the edges of the reflection see the shimmer where the oil has sunk into the grain? It's pretty much like that over the complete top and more-so for the 'strident' grain of the oak at the back : The first part of the assembly is fitting the tuners, because I need those to line up the bridge. Here they are fully fitted with the truss rod cover just placed on at the moment (magnets will be fitted in the next couple of days). The nut, also, isn't yet fitted and finished and nor are the fretboard or frets: In that it is easier to reposition two bridge screws rather than four, I fit two of them first and check the alignment of the two outer strings all the way down the fretboard: Yup - straight. So tomorrow I'll sort the bridge earth, drill the other two holes and fully fit the bridge. Then next will come the cavity shielding and fitting the electrics.

Another one for the stable 😍

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE... I stated a dispute with eBay re this matter; eBay handed this over to Paypal as that is how I paid. Despite being given repeated opportunities to give ANY response re this matter Peter Barton (aka 'vintageinvestments' on eBay) refused to engage in the dispute process (quell surprise) and Paypal have refunded me. Why this guy has dragged this out is beyond me. He clearly did not hand over the cab to a stranger knocking on his door claiming to have won it... how could anyone know he had sold it on eBay and how the hell did they get his address when even I didn't have it? You just wouldn't would you? The main thing is that in about 30 days I'll have the funds credited back to my credit card (almost 7 weeks after paying) and with the assistance of BC I know a lot more about Mr Barton and I'm wise to him should I ever have the pleasure of meeting him professionally/in person. Oh and I'm still in the market for a TKS cab.

Not more of that cancel stinky poo! You can't cancel something, that is just a right wing meme. If you don't want to do something you don't do it, its not cancelling it. If your audience don't want to listen to it, its not worth doing it, its not cancelling it.

I've been a victom of rape and domestic violence, so I find songs which seem to glamourise things like that uncomfortable. Hip hop especially nowadays is AWFUL for its portrayal of the treatment of women, and it really doesn't sit well with me. However, with that said, there are few bands that are intentionally glamourising it because they agree with it, but instead they're telling a story. Anything could be taken to be offensive or insulting to some section of society but we just have to remember that music is an art form and we're entirely allowed to not like or agree with art for it to still be legitimate. Music is art of the time, and reflects the society at the time it was written. With all that said, you have to make the decision about whether you want to play that song, you have every right to say no, just as much as the other members of your band have the right to say yes. I hope you find some kind of compromise that suits everyone!

Marshall MB 15 in really good nick, sounds good too. One happy teenager (his Mum and his sister aren't too happy though! ).

I think that's the Japanese calendar, in which the year derives from the reign of the emperor at the time. In the Showa calendar, which ran from 1926 - 1989, for the duration of the reign of Emperor Hirohito, 58 corresponds to 1983. And that's a stunning JV. If you didn't give the chap at least a grand for it, you robbed him!

Arrived about an hour ago.

This. Songs, films, paintings, sculpture - in fact, all art - reflect the time and the culture they were created in. If they don't please or suit you, don't sing, play, look at or listen to them. But please don't whinge about or attempt to "cancel" them. I don't like the great majority of films. The gratuitous violence, covert (and overt) political agenda they promote and the manipulative appeal to base emotions in most irritate me. So I don't watch them (don't even have a telly). However, I recognise that others are free to make their own choices.

It's not perfect, but it's getting there. Slowly.

Before & After shots. Selling a few pedals basically paid for the Helix and C4 (+ controllers). My conclusion is that this new setup is fun and has a lot more potential sounds and tweakability, but it does lose a few things - the individual pedals are more limited but often sound a bit better at their specific sound and have more obvious/immediate hands-on (or foot-on) control. The new setup is better suited to hooking up to a laptop and planning out presets rather an spontaneous tweaking. Also, the Helix editing system is great and a £20 footswitch will give you two extra footswitches which is plenty to do most things. The C4 sounds great but Neuro editing isn't as intuative, and it needs a £100+ controller to access additional presets via footswitches (and the setup of that isnt that easy either). So I wouldn't particularly recommend people spend £325+ on a C4 and controller if it is just to replace their envelope filter and octaver, but it does also do a lot of great synth sounds so is probably is worth it if you want that too.

Am I the only one that is shocked at someones woke'ness about old songs? Brown Sugar is an anti slave song and Delilah is about someones, albeit over the top, revenge on someone who wronged him. Make believe and in the past.

Or Blues, stay well away from the Blues..

On Monday, I played at church in the most difficult service that I can imagine. We recorded four songs for my own mother's funeral ceremony. I am pleased with the results, and am happy to share them with the congregation on the day - we were able to personalise some of the songs, by selecting verses that were more relevant to my mum. That makes them all the more powerful. So far, everyone who listened to the recordings has cried. Me included.

For the OP yes this is spot on. You don't need to worry as all of this has been taken care of by @stevie in the design stage. For anyone interested you'll notice that we always talk about a speaker's impedance but measure it in ohms, which is resistance. That's because the resistance of a speaker and the crossover components change with frequency. Capacitors resist low frequencies and inductors resist high frequencies. The speaker has a coil in it of course so that is an inductor too and it's resistance to the amp's power rises with frequency. The amp 'sees' a higher impedance. In this case we have a capacitor in series with the horn tweeter which limits the bass and an inductor coil across the horn which shorts out or bleeds off the treble. The horn is louder than the 10" speaker so there is a resistor too, which reduces the horn driver's output. The trick is to match everything up so that at the crossover point there is enough 'resistance' to cut the output to each driver by half so the combined output stays the same across the frequency range. One little point of detail is that the speaker is a really complex load with an impedance that varies at just about every different frequency. Stevie doesn't just rely on theoretical figures in designing his crossovers but by measuring each driver and building prototypes and then measuring frequency responses. It isn't rocket science but a lot of care goes into a simple circuit like this.

I replaced my old EB stingray5 with a custom built flying V model my guitarist made for me http://cellarguitars.com/index.php/celcellar-v

And how the bass looks now.

Potato Song ～ Kesha

which is the hallmark of all art.

Jeezo! They are just songs. Does everyone have to take them so literally? A- most of them were written in a time when things were different and 2- they are just poems. some of these songs are make believe and who in the Dog and Duck is going to complain because of the lyrics of a song that was in the charts? They just dance along enjoying themselves.

Just had a quick fudge around to get the Phase90 on. I’m still getting a volume drop when the phaser kicks in ? Any thoughts on that ? (And got some toppers seeing as all the cool kids have them 😜😂)

Metal or Hard Rock - you decide.... My band Soldato released these 3 songs last year. I trialled a load of different gear and I've found and settled on Spector basses to work best for me. Signal Chain on these is a Spector Euro > Tech 21 DP-3X > GK Fusion 800 > BF BB2.

Onboard FX are a bit silly. Have to stop playing to make a change. That's what my feet are for!

Great fun bassline. Here's a quick youtube vid I uploaded a while back, may help? As with anything it's about playing it over and over again and building up speed. Good luck!

@Al Krow @lee650 - it’s time…GO!

I don't see anything wrong with the song. It's about a guy who is trying to stop a young girl "coming on" to him. Some people think it's about an older guy having lustful thoughts about an underage girl but the guy in question is trying to reject her because he knows it's wrong. Your singer would need to have a great voice to carry that song off!

Got to be done -

I put together a small board for gigs that don't require lots of mad sounds (most of them 😪). I'm not sure what the 4th pedal will be. I considered a tuner (I normally use a clip-on), but I think this might be a roving line-up anyway, depending on the gig. And any excuse to break out the Octabvre Mk3. My favourite thing about this board is the power supply: a Gigrig Isolator and a True Tone Onespot. I can't believe how simple and effective it is.

Even though it's a great bassline, Disco Inferno is an uncomfortable song for me after seeing occasional fires in nightclubs around the world where many have died, trapped inside by locked exit doors. Also, Police, Don't Stand So Close To Me makes me feel queasy, we don't play it, but it just doesn't seem right anymore when I hear it.

I don’t see a problem in adapting lyrics, or even not playing a song if it goes against modern thinking, or it makes a band member uncomfortable. It happens in literature too. In Charlie and the chocolate factory for instance, the Oompah Lumpas were Pygmy slaves in the first edition. It was rewritten in the 1960s.

We did this in a previous band I was in, but our female lead singer subtly rewrote the lyrics so the message was more of a 'you don't have to be a good girl, you don't have to do anything you don't want, and if he doesn't like it tell him to feck off'. I don't know if the punters noticed ,but once she'd done that I was quite happy to play it!

The toughest gig. Respect is due.

Surely its a statement of absolute distress at the thought of losing a lover. Its not a statement of fact. People say and do odd things when they are in love. Or was Tom Petty actually having his heart dragged around? They are songs for goodness sake, and if they bring to the public's attention something awful that happened in the past, Brown Sugar, then kids should know about it.

Pic from a few days ago of the routing of the back. Mine is the second one up from bottom left.

Not a song I have ever played in a band, but I always feel uncomfortable when I hear it: I would rather, I would rather go blind Then to see you walk away from me How must blind people feel when they hear these lyrics?

Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

I'd raise your concerns with the band - you are part of a group that (at first glance) endorse the song by playing it. I've left bands before now over song lyrics, as I'm not going to promote or perpetuate outdated attitudes and/or misogyny or racism (amongst other things). Simply by being on stage performing the material you are part of that in the eyes of the punters. I've also been in bands that did Brown Sugar, but changed the lyrics to make it acceptable in the 21st century. Happy compromise.

And neck done. While @Matt P 's final whisper coats of Tru-oil were drying I go back to this. The brass nut needed slimming down and thinning down: Then the fret recrowning and polishing: And finally a last tidy up of the rosewood: So all ready to return to @AndyTravis

Ah nice to see that bass went to a bass chatter. I love Nordstrand pick ups and preamps, when I saw that on the bass direct website I thought to myself "who asked Carey to build them a bass, but then said I want Aguilar pups in it". Glad it still sounds great.

I play nothing but metal. Mostly Maiden and Megadeth, which I use a pick for but lately I’ve been getting hung up on my wrist position and picking technique to the point of overthinking it and probably making it worse. Sometimes I have a crack at whatever metal track tab gets suggested on YT. Kreator tabs seem very hard to come by online, I find. I warm up to 80’s (guilty pleasure) rock like Whitesnake, Def Leppard etc which I play using finger picking. Am currently trying to develop my finger picking to three fingers so I can switch with the Maiden tunes but it’s going to take some time and practice to build up the finger strength (all things I am often short on). With the pick I've got the attack but with the fingers I've got the speed so it's a work in progress ... I bought the JS2 Spectra last summer but really, have no gear to speak of. I have a little practise amp and a second hand Boss tuning pedal. I do have a virtually soundproof room for practising in though. The background photo on my profile of the Jackson is a picture I took myself at a David Ellefson gig in London a couple of years ago. I went out for a drink with him afterwards.

I no P bass expert so went to Bass Direct I picked my self up a red one of these yestarday, after trying several guitars over about 3 hrs. As I was trading in I could get what I wanted and I eventually got down to two P style guitars. The Boxer and a MARUSZCZYK. Both sounded beautiful and hit the spot to my ears. In some other ways they were quite different. Note: The boxer feels as the name suggests is more of a bruiser, the MARUSZCZYK a bit more classy but was more gentle. I went for the Boxer as it is an exceptional sounding bass, has wider range of tones and it was RED! 😂 👍 I'm liking it this morning even more than when I picked it out....very happy!

And I think the finish for the body and neck may be there. Still got to do the headstock plate but that is a straightforward job. What I'm trying to do is achieve a 'light gloss' with the tru-oil. That is, enough thickness to get the figuring really popping but letting it sink in some of the grain to retain the organic feel of the wood. On the neck, a classic Tru-oil slurry and buff silky satin. Here's where I've got to:

As a tour manager, who actually has to arrange these things for the artists and crew in the touring party, and has to manage the budget for making the whole thing happen, I'd be inclined to disagree. Whilst we don't need visas or permits for EVERY country within the EU, there's a fair few we do, and some come with stringent requirements, fees, and lengthy processing times, as well as interview visits to embassies, usually in London, for all applicants (which incurs travel costs and a day's pay for each person required to make the trip). Countries that don't require a visa still place a limit on the number of days you can work in said country per year. This might not affect you if you tour Europe once a year but if, like many crew or session players, you work with multiple artists and hop from one tour to another, you might find yourself in hot water when you realise you've used up all your days in one of the countries on the schedule. On top of visas and permits, there's now tax complications in each territory as we're no longer part of reciprocal schemes. There's carnets for your equipment which big tours crossing all of Europe would have had professionally arranged, but smaller DIY/low budget tours would do without and just not drive through the couple of territories which required them when we were members. They're now needed everywhere in Europe. I'll do my best not to delve in to the political aspects of a clusterfck that one third of the electorate voted for, as politics isn't my business. Touring, however, is my bread and butter, and it's been made more challenging, more expensive, more difficult to drop personnel in at short notice if needed, and generally more of a pain in the balls in many ways by our new status as a third country.

1988/9 Sunburst Sabre 8.1 lbs