KK Jale

Great pic of East London's best-decorated stage! Hey @Cat Burrito, I'm gonna be there December 8th, what was their backline like, or did you take your own?

I tried the flats. See posts 2 and 4 in this thread.

Isn't it just a sort of deceptively simple double-slide on the E string performed with one finger? First slide from open E to G, back down a fret, slide up to G#, jump back to D on the A string? Summat like that anyway... I may be a semitone out... but the sort of double-pump left-hand motion being the trick.

I looked into a bag for my 32" scale Squier P and ended up with a Gruvgear Gigblade Edge, the guitar model, not the bass one. The Edge is the basic, slimline version of their one-shoulder design, which I like a lot. The length measurements are on their website; the Squier just about fits with a few mm to spare. I got it half price from Kytary but would think twice at the full £100 as there isn't enough wear protection on the bottom edge IMO for serious schlepping on public transport.

If your local place baulks then the folks who can definitely 100% fix this are jpfamps.com. That's 'cos they do all the official Orange repairs on the side. Nothing about Terrors that they don't know. They've mended mine several times to the point where it's basically a UK-built OTB. Lovely fellas too.

By the way, if anyone misses the old metal Fast Fret tins, get a US friend to post you a can of Tibet Almond Stick. It's a light oil designed as a furniture scratch remover that's been around for about 100 years. The actual product feels and smells and works exactly the same as Fast Fret.... I imagine someone spotted an old timer guitar picker using this stuff as string lube back in the 70s, had a lightbulb moment and flogged the idea to GHS, who probably used the same manufacturer. I use the Almond Stick as a refiller for an ancient wooden-handled Fast Fret applicator and keep that in the Almond Stick tin 'cos I think it looks cool.

Fast Fret addict here. Some hate it but I can't gig flatwounds without it... worth a try, I recommend it. To lownote - I've heard this as well but I think if you just give the strings a swift swipe then wipe nearly all of it off straight away with the little cloth, you won't get any crud on fingerboard or frets. I've been using the stuff for yonks with no ill-effects. It might deaden strings a bit, I don't know. Flatwounds, eh?

Andy Gibson now works out of Sixty Sixty sounds on Denmark St, he's very very experienced and I've had good results. On one MIJ bass he even did a partial defret, a slight fingerboard shoot and then replaced the original frets for me, which is something many repairers won't do... and affordably too.

You could well be right. But I was surprised to see that USA Lollar covers matched MIJ Fender while the USA Novaks were the odd ones out.

@PaulThePlug cheers! Not impossible but hellish tricky to do really accurately without a pillar drill IMO...

I have this lovely Novak P pickup. Ever so nice, it is. It came in a cream cover and I wanted to switch to black so I offered up some covers from other pickups to see if they'd fit - a Japanese Fender cover and a Lollar cover. Nope. It seems that whereas many P pickups are 29mm the Novak is spaced at 28mm, which is just enough to make a regular cover very much NOT fit, not without filing. TL:DR: anyone have any ideas?

Interestingly, as used by a certain Mr Illsley on the first ever gig by Dire Straits (Deptford Crossfields festival, the whole shebang being powered by an extension cable out of somebody's apartment window)., Mind you, John may just have borrowed it for the day. Apologies for the quality of the photo, they didn't have cameras back then - this is someone's memory directly printed onto a Kraft cheese slice.

The ringing phone and Ronson swearing story at the end of Life On Mars is weird because I'm certain I can remember a cut in which somebody clearly says "Right! that's enough". On one of the great covers of a Chuck Berry song, Johnnie Allan's early 70s cajun version of Promised Land, in verse 8 he sings "terminal gate" like verse 7, but it should be "terminal zone" to rhyme with "telephone". AFAIK he always kept it like that. I think Dave Edmunds copied him.

A most enjoyable and life affirming little film. Feck knows why that has never shown up on any Music And Musicals search I've done on Netflix, so cheers! 🛁🛁🛁

In Search Of Space (fold-out sleeve! Bonkers Robert Calvert logbook!) was a formative influence on my spotty self. Immensely heavy, electronic, psychedelic, trancey and perhaps more Euro/Krautrock-connected than they are given credit for. Still like it today.