borntohang

Our tour has been rescheduled again, this time to 2021, but the Industry is sounding pretty damn worried overall. Not many festivals going to be able to survive two years off and even fewer venues. My concern is that most of the older town centre venues are plagued with noise complaints at the best of times and only survive thanks to being grandfathered in before the surrounding luxury flats; if they disappear then that real estate will quickly turn into more flats or office space and it's going to be incredibly tough to find suitable new spaces to restart any kind of live club scene.

We've played with them a few times now, mostly via Tramlines. Shaun is a nice lad and I vaguely knew Pete McKee from him coming to catch my other band so was nice to meet them properly. Got cancelled by the Miley but I believe they were proudly 'going electric' at some point this year.

Pre-2018 they were made in China and are pretty universally excellent. Since they moved production to Indonesia they've moved into the "try a few before committing" level. I've got a CIC 60's Jazz in Inca Silver and it's a beaut but wish they did a maple neck P without the blocks - the only model they did like that was the Matt Freeman sig and they're tough to get hold of. They typically like to reuse the spare parts or put signatures out as standard models later on so disappointing they never did it with the MF.

Is it based off the ABM preamp? I really like my EVO IV and could be persuaded to change out my Sansamp for fly dates (assuming there are any more again...). Shame they left the compressor off - I know it's not the most well regarded comp but if you set up the input staging right it's nice to have in a pinch.

You wouldn't marry someone after the first shag would you? Need to get them both back in the room again to see what develops. First one might have overcome his nerves and the second one might have stopped taking his tramadol scrip and be a bag of loose fingers. Seriously though, I really think second auditions are the way to go. If guy one can't at least partially overcome his nerves by the rematch then he's always going to struggle. Plus if they want the gig they'll put the time in learning the new material. We once got a session guitarist in for a massive touring opportunity; we'd seen him play his own stuff and he was great and a solid improviser, if a bit flashy for what we needed. First run through went okay even though he was a bit nervous but unfortunately by the fourth practice he was still busking through what should be solid arrangements and not doing too well with it. Around the same timeframe a friend of mine stepped in on bass for a show I couldn't do and put him to shame learning the entire set by the first practice for a single gig with no guarantee of anything else. In the end I ceded the bass chair for the tour to my lad and took on the guitar work myself. Felt terrible for the other kid but he admitted he was out of his depth playing arrangements rather than just jamming.

Sounds like a fairly raw track with a lot of compression emphasising the attack and string noise to me. Depending on how they got the isolated track the EQ might not be exactly what you're hearing on the recording. That said, I've never noticed him going for it like that in the last half and it's impressive!

It's not actually the colour - I prefer the CV style poly necks for some reason and they don't gloss the unfinished ones unfortunately. Think it's just familiarity from starting learning on an old Jazz with a gloss neck.

Really like it in white but the pale maple necks aren't doing it for me. Would be nice with a vintage tint though.

They don't care and nobody will check. It's just covering their back for when somebody inevitably gets ill and I doubt it will hold up five minutes past the first local health inspector looking at their procedures.

Oh Sees have had two drummers for a while now; Melvins/Big Business, The Fall, Radiohead, White Rabbit all at various points. It's still a thing left of the dial. I really enjoyed playing with a percussionist/drummer setup, but you have to have a canny percussionist or it has a certain "brass band falling downstairs" vibe to it.

I can't remember the last time I went in a practice room that wasn't a hygiene hazard to tell the truth, but I remain sceptical that a small insulated room with high occupant turnover and poor airflow can be made particularly safe. Most sites don't have onsite staff to clean between bands and I can't see it being cost effective for them to do it - Pirate Studios are one of the biggest rehearsal companies in the UK and as far as I can tell the whole thing is run out of one or two central offices with somebody swinging by the units as and when any issues are reported. The 2m is for areas with good airflow (ie outdoors) for short spaces of times and when you're inside time in vicinity of an infected person becomes the main factor. If you're in there for 15 minutes you're probably okay; couple of hours and the distance won't make any difference plus you're more likely to pick up a heavier viral load.

Bobby Vega does that with a pick. He's got a really nice lick at the start of this where he does two triplet pull-offs then a raked muted triplet into an open hit on the bottom E (I believe a 'diddly-diddly-diddly-bom' is the technical term). I spent a bit of time getting the rake down and it's great fun to drop into a song. Of course it sounds like a bag of spanners if you don't nail it rhythmically... https://youtu.be/VL6v4BnitoU

You must have been snapping up the good ones. I don't think they're irredeemable as a range at all, but even as a collector of cheap guitars I'd want to play one in person to find a good one before dropping the hammer. I think if you're wanting to put parts into them you can get a very usable bass, but unless you're getting it for very cheap then after mods you could probably pick up a Standard for the same price and not have to get rid of everything except body and neck.

Top tier are the Japanese models that go for above average Fender money. Then I'd go for the Korean stuff, then the Indonesian Standard Series models. Stay away from anything with 'Affinity', 'J Bass', or the little boxy guitar tuners on it. If you don't mind including modern stuff then the Chinese Classic Vibes are also really good quality, but the price has been climbing to above 300 secondhand cause the word is out.

I was in fact on one of the tours mentioned in that article and will happily say that while a lot easier it's still draining and not as plush as you might think. A lot of late night travel involved even at the top end; I particularly remember a 2am ferry from Dublin to Holyhead where the passenger list consisted of twenty top-flight LA session musicians trying to bed down in the cafeteria, a hundred exhausted and whizzed-off road crew trying to find the bar, and ten bemused tourists wondering where the circus had come from! We were only on it for two months, but the core crew had been on the road for the best part of two years. In those circumstances your career lives or dies on your reputation for being low drama and reliable - you're living with the same people day in and out in a high stress environment so even comparatively small quirks wear out their welcome extremely quickly.