chrissy

When people talk about leaps forward in information technology, they always compare the latest device to the computers used during the moon landings e.g. 'there's more computing power in that digital watch than was used to put a man on the moon'. I now describe anything with a micro-chip in terms of Manson Kestrels e.g. 'that computer may have computed pi to twenty billion decimal places in one nan-zoik but it's only as powerful as an eighth of a Manson Kestrel'. Coincidentally, a Manson Kestrel is only marginally less intelligent than an actual kestrel. Sadly, due to it's extreme heft and over-engineered die-cast hardware, the Manson is considerably less graceful in flight.

I have less trouble getting my computer to work properly than I ever did with that bloody Manson.

Here's a photo of it with the controls as I bought it. I think I had changed the switch by this point.[url="http://imageshack.us/f/26/dsc022511.jpg/"]http://imageshack.us/f/26/dsc022511.jpg/[/url]

You may well be right, it was a while ago.

Jon Bon By Bloody Jovi, I used to own this very bass! I bought it from a guitar shop in Nottingham about 4 years ago for £500. The electrics were a mess and took some sorting out. In the end I gave in and handed it over to the local guitar tech, who had to get the wiring diagrams directly from Hugh Manson , I seem to remember that during my conversations with Manson's shop Exeter(or Plymouth, or somewhere down there) that it emerged that the bass was made in 1983 and was 'a very early one'. I'm pretty sure that I replaced the toggle-switch and the control knobs(one was either missing or broken) and there was some problem with the grub-screws on the (very fiddly) bridge. Other than that, the bass was a bit of a mystery to me also. I found that in a live situation, the sound balance across the strings made it very difficult to be heard once I ventured very far up the neck on the D and G strings(this is a problem which I often encounter and I am reaching the conclusion that this may be a problem with my technique rather than some of the lovely basses I have owned. The only bass I have not had this problem with is my current Status Shark, so it must be me, right?). This combined with the Manson's colossal weight, led me to to sell it on ebay about 3 years ago. I initially advertised it as a 'Merlin' but during the sale, somebody commented that they thought it was a Kestrel. That's all I know. If you're interested, I will try and dig out my e-mail exchanges with Manson's and/or my guitar tech, perhaps they may be more enlightening. Hope you still own the bass and are getting good use out of it. Chris Allsebrook.