tauzero

It's rather unlike me, but it's the more mundane of the Atlantsias that appeal to me more. If the photos were a decent size and the website wasn't so Geocities, I might have a different opinion.

I had a fretless 4 about 15 years ago. Lovely bass, great neck, but I was used to heavier basses (Hayman, Fender, and Warwick) and I found the incredible light weight rather unsettling. Now, old and feeble as I am, I'd find it rather attractive.

I think I've got 14ish natural basses and no painted ones - the three Seis are lacquered though. Apart from liking the look, an unlacquered natural bass doesn't show the minor knocks that knock chips off painted basses. I sold an immaculate black Hohner B2AV and replaced it with a natural one because I knew it would get chipped eventually.

They're slap plates. They are brass, set into the fingerboard, with a microphone set under them which picks up the percussive sound from them and adds it to the pickup output. I think the mini toggle switch turned that on and off. Only really useful for those weirdoes that play slap.

No. But I never said it was. And indeed, that's not what the topic is about, nor what I was replying to - MoJo said "it's hard to hate a Precision", and I was citing a Precision that I found it remarkably easy to hate. I will freely admit that I didn't own it though. And on the whole I don't hate Precisions, I just consider them as the grey porridge of the bass world, the equivalent of the BSA C11 in the 1940s in motorcycling terms.

You are somewhere that you don't need to explain a sudden desire to possess something which will be of no practical use whatsoever, simply because you are attracted to it. I'd rather like one, and a Trace ELF, despite having an Ashdown MiBass and a MarkBass 250 as backup amps already.

It looks like a Fender and a Cort have mated, and then disowned their offspring.

I saw that earlier this evening and wondered if it was my old one - it had originally been lacquered but the lacquer was dreadfully cracked and I stripped it off, but I didn't make a terribly good job of finishing it. Chopped it in at Musical Exchange (for any familiar with Birmingham last millennium), can't remember what for. If it is my old one, the body's been cleaned up and properly treated. Oh yes, and the body is inconveniently wide so it's hard to find a gig bag or case to fit it.

The video quality is too poor to tell. In the still photo, I'm not sure if there are artefacts because it's not great quality, but it looks like there are faint lines from a defret where the filler material was the same colour as the fretboard. Most noticeable above the 12th fret between the E and A strings.

And another one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BASS-COLLECTION-BY-SGC-NANYO-5-STRING-ACTIVE-JAZZ-BASS-FROM-LATE-80s/254127243521

I'm very slightly annoyed with myself because I took a couple of basses to Jon Shuker to have some work on them, picked them up a month or two later, and never took the opportunity to ask to have a play on one of his creations. The Uberhorns look lovely but I don't know what the necks are like.

I hated one. I hated it so much I didn't even try to play it. I was in the recording studio at Robannas in Birmingham. It was a session for the club band I was in, and I was going to record the bass in the control room. This is a very electronically lively place, and my active bass was picking up all sorts of shyte. The recording engineer pointed at a P bass in the corner and said "you could use that". No I bloody couldn't, the strings were about 15mm off the fretboard at the 12th fret. Happily, I had my passive Peavey with me, and it coped with the noise.

Glam, prog, early metal, melodic rock. Artist-wise - T Rex, Alice Cooper, Focus, Yes, Genesis, Meat Loaf, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, REO Speedwagon, to give some examples.

In our previous drummer's case - throw all your toys out of the pram at the start of a rehearsal due to some imagined slight, pack up, storm out, leaving the band drummerless four days before their next gig (our slide guitarist volunteered to play drums and is now our official drummer).

It seems ridiculously optimistic to think that the human race will last longer than a few decades. It's all very clever but seems fairly pointless. If the desire is to have something that future archaeologists can dig up and play, there's the issue that they won't know how to. If it's to have something stored for near-future use, multiple hard drives in RAID arrays in multiple locations will provide security, with the hard drives being swapped out for replacements as they fail, and for whatever the next form of storage will be after that. The biggest issue is hardware becoming obsolete without the contents of media for that hardware being transferred (like old VHS videos, or before that, the Project Doomsday laserdiscs), or software being lost - for example, years ago I had a digital camera which used a proprietary format for images, which I can no longer see because the company has gone titsup and I haven't got a copy of the viewer software.

Does the routing under the scratch plate expose enough of each of the three butcher-block parts to make an informed decision? Alternatively you could just go for it and if it would be rubbish with oil/wax, go for shabby chic. Apparently it's all the rage.

I've got an Ashbory and a Kala (Thomann were flogging them off cheap). Haven't gigged the Kala but I have gigged the Ashbory on numerous occasions at ceilidhs. It has the silicone strings on which I've never had a problem with. Once they've settled, they stay in tune pretty well - I did check them a couple of times at each gig but only a little more frequently than normal basses. Those HBs look pretty good and my experience of HB instruments has been good. The only caveat I'd sound is that being acoustic-bodied, they will be more susceptible to feedback than solid-bodies. I don't know how much of a problem that is, though, and it's going to vary by what environment it's used in.

You win again - there's a lot of covers, but there's Bee Gees (who started me thinking of this song title), Hank Williams Jr, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jerry Lee Lewis, C-Block, and Johnny Rivers. I'm not sure who did the originals for a couple of those which are multiply covered and life's too short to work it out. E&OE.

I feel I've dodged a large number of bullets. One club band singer that I didn't get on with, one guitarist (very capable) who never helped with all the other gear, one singer who randomly rearranged songs (we used to accommodate him, but there were many daggers stared at him one night when he introduced us as "my band") - they're the ones that spring to mind and considering I've played with about 100 bandmates by now, it seems I've done quite well.

"I can't hear myself". No, of course you bloody can't, I'm getting the input level for your mic so it's just below clipping. I will set the monitor levels when either I am satisfied with the input level, or I'm so stressed by trying to do it that I no longer give a flying wossname. And why don't you sing as loud as you'll be singing in the gig when I ask you to sing as loud as you'll be singing in the gig? And it would be nice for me to get a chance to set up my bass gear too.

There was me expecting this to be about Fender necks.

Just remembered, I left one thing out from my tale of last night - Mrs Zero got me a pint, which I left on a table in front of the stage while I was doing the setting up. Some bastard nicked it.

Last night... A pub we've played before. I was doing the PA rather than the percussionist. Setting up was stressful as the others milled around getting in the way, and trying to get levels was a pain in the bum. "I can't hear it" "That's because I'm trying to set the input levels". Then both my active speakers went wonky - one went woofer only, the other went tweeter only (which we could have coped with) then the one that went tweeter only became intermittent. The percussionist lives just round the corner so he nipped back for his speakers. The guitarist/vocalist's guitar suddenly stopped providing an output, so he went to his backup one, which didn't work either, so I swapped leads, still didn't work, then he thought of turning it up. We got going about 20 minutes after we'd originally planned to. I kept getting signals from Mrs Zero to put vocals up which I couldn't do, as I'd already got the levels right up on the mixer and couldn't get to the speakers to knock the level up on them. Then the percussionist's cajon's front panel split. Finally, after a couple of encores, the replacement PA also gave up the ghost. Upshot - they gave us an extra £20 and we've got a few more gigs there. It could have been worse. Speaker with woofer only just needed tweeter reconnecting. Speaker with tweeter only is working perfectly happily. Instrument cable I was worried about is fine.

It's not been a frequent occurrence by any means, but sometimes you encounter the loud-mouthed critical bully. They tend to be beefy psychopaths, so I don't get drawn in to arguments with them (strong sense of self-preservation, or devout cowardice, one of the two).

Had a similar experience with one former band (but without the silver lining) - we played at one pub where we were pretty much ignored. At the end, with the guitarist in a fine sulk and going on about never playing there again, I went to get the money off the landlady. She told us we were great, and that the customers had all been telling her how good we were. It would have been nice if they'd let us know too.