EliasMooseblaster

I'd hazard a guess that the most effective thing they can do is encourage musicians not to volunteer for it. The thing is, that although it's pretty s***ty of REMT to expect highly qualified musicians to play without receiving a fee, there's nothing illegal about it. Nobody's rounding up vagrant violinists or homeless harpists and forcing them to play; their participation would be entirely voluntary. In REMT's defence, it looks like they've been (reasonably) upfront about what they are willing and not willing to pay for - to be honest, getting your housing and food paid for is a step above what I've received for some gigs in the past! And nobody's being forced to do it against their will. There may well be some musicians who feel charitable towards the Tattoo and wish to do play it just for the fun of it. That's up to them. I hope there are not too many highly-qualified-but-very-naive musicians who hope that playing this event will help them tap into some treasure trove of more lucrative opportunities; unfortunately many of us only learn from making these mistakes in the first place. In any case, REMT aren't breaking any laws, which limits what action the MU can take from a legal standpoint. But, as I say, their attitude towards the musicians' livelihoods is pretty s***ty - hopefully it will deter a lot of suitably qualified musicians from volunteering their time for such an event, and if they come a-cropper and have to pay for appropriate musicians at short notice, perhaps that will teach them a lesson. So now we just have to hope for a shortage of applicants, the better that justice might prevail...

Sounds good to me! Probably a slightly cliched choice - and I'm assuming historic endorsees count - but mine would have to be John Entwistle. Without his testing and input, the roundwound bass string could have been a completely different beast from the ones we know today. Nearly 20 years ago, I started using Rotosound Swing Bass strings in my endeavours to get closer to his tone, and despite the odd dalliance with other brands, I've always found myself going back to them.

I've a Little Bastard 30 (the original run, before they rebadged them as the CTM-30), and a CTM-100. Basically, I got bitten by the valve bug a few years ago, and haven't looked back. Though I am grateful that they're relatively light compared some of their competitors (the LB-30, especially)! The most tenuously British bit of gear might be my Precision copy: it was a self-assembly kit which I bought from Brandoni Guitars, who are based in North London. But I think I'm right in saying that their supply of kits was a huge stock of surplus parts they'd acquired from Fender's Japanese factories. So it's a set of Japanese parts licensed from an American parent company, sold to me by a British company! Made in Britain? Well, it was bolted together in my parents' garage in Surrey...

From a guitar perspective, it's often a bit of a surprise to people to learn that a lot of notable guitar tones over the decades were created by players with relatively light strings. Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of the few notable soloists to have routinely used .12s (and possibly .13s?) on his Strat; Pete Townshend and Malcolm Young have tended to favour .11s and .12s, but then they're both better known as rhythm players. By contrast, Dave Gilmour has always favoured .10s, while I believe Carlos Santana, BB King, and Billy Gibbons are all in the ".09s or lighter" club. The other notable member of this group is Tony Iommi, who was using the lightest strings he could get to ease the pain on his severed fingertips, but still created an absolutely genre-defining guitar tone. The moral of the above is that you can go lighter without sacrificing your tone. Yes, your tone will change with string gauge, but it won't necessarily make it "better" or "worse," and perhaps crucially for you, lighter strings needn't necessarily mean a lighter sound. The main difference will be in how they fare under your fingers: heavier strings will cope with the abuse better if you're quite a physical player. I've used RS66 45-105s myself for 20-odd years and found they handle my second-rate John Entwistle impersonation admirably well, and they have enough tension to handle drop D quite happily.

Probably true of a lot of "British" amps though, surely? I know my Ashdowns are British designs built in China. But if that counts, my amp choices have been quite consistently - if accidentally - British: two Ashdown bass heads, which have a succeeded three different Laney combos. I think the Berg cab is the only exception! (And on guitar, a Blackstar which has replaced a Vox. We'll ignore the little Squier practice amp I had to begin with!)

Congratulations on your new arrival, and welcome to the club! A CTM-100 into a well-voiced cab has turned out to be my absolute Holy Grail for live sound, and I hope it proves to be the same for you.

...similarly, how many of us have had to convince somebody that actually, making music can be a career if you're making money from it?

Sold a Makala Ukulele to Pete last week. Nice, straightforward transaction , couldn't ask for better comms, and I had a message yesterday to confirm that the instrument had arrived safely. Thanks very much, Pete - hope you enjoy the uke!

"She got her looks from her father...he's a plastic surgeon. taking her to court for infringement of trademarks."

Just to confound my search, I see that the "Elite" name has now been re-purposed for their active P/J Precisions.

Now that's a beauty! (Pity about the weight, but then I've been playing an Epi EB-3 for years, so I'd probably put up with it...) What did they call that line? (And how hard are they to come by these days...?)

I didn't realise Fender had released a P/P before! Now that, I would be sorely tempted by - wouldn't be my first choice of colour, but I've always liked the idea of a twin split-coil bass. (I think I just assume that dialling in the bridge pickup will give me more a Thunderbird-esque sound than a P/J would...)

Was this the "technically the first 5-string" bass that was designed to be tuned E-C? It does seem like a bit of an own goal to go to the trouble of extending the instrument's range with the extra string, to then simultaneously cut short its range by stopping the neck at the 15th fret...

An alternative take on crowdfunding: visual artists (painters, sculpters, etc) always used to struggle to make a living by producing something and selling it. Similar story with composers. But if they could get a wealthy benefactor - a patron - to fund their projects, they could devote more time and resources to making bigger and more challenging works. Wealthy benefactors are a bit hard to come by these days (not that it was ever especially easy). However, a large group of people could stump up a similar sum of money for a favoured artist if they all threw a tenner into the pot*. If they already know your earlier work and are interested in hearing more, they might consider it a decent investment to hand you some money to pre-order your next record. Disclaimer: I've crowd-funded an EP in the past, and I know a couple of people who've used it as a model to fund several albums to date. It seems the most important thing is not to abuse the good will of your fans... ...to wit, I'd agree with everyone above whose ghast was flabbered by the target sum. If I were considering donating, I think I'd want a little more transparency around what a $50,000 fundraiser pays for.

*polite cough*

I've always thought it a shame that they didn't continue the Blacktop range - presumably these didn't sell especially well as I've only met one person who owned one! - but at least the Blacktop basses offered some new pickup configurations that Fender hadn't really offered previously. So not radically different, but more different/less cynical than a different list of colour combinations.

I can't even be certain there isn't an idiot in my solo project...

Hello Lewis, and welcome to BassChat. Do you mind if I ask you narrow down your location a little further, as in my experience, the answer to your first question is a resounding "Yes!" and I happen to be playing a lot of folk-blues at the moment myself...

Considering this is the same company that invented the split-coil Precision pickup, you'd think they'd be brave enough to offer something as basic as a choice between "traditional" and reverse P-pickups, wouldn't you? Perhaps they could really go off the deep end and offer different configurations for their two-pickup basses - not just P/J or J/J, but maybe P/P, J/P, P/HB, J/HB. (OK, I'm not sure how well J/P would work, but plenty of other companies have had good results with the other three combinations...)

Presumably the same group of unspeakable deviants who were confident that the fey cover of Chaka Khan used on that Tui advert wouldn't be a capital offence.

Well, they are British.

That's a shame - I've heard of a few jams like that around London where you're lucky to get a look-in unless you're a mate of the guy running it. Which is, of course, the fastest way to stop people coming along week after week, and the first nail in the coffin of that particular jam.

So am I right in thinking that the valves are biased incorrectly? I've heard the legend that the released take of Let There Be Rock was recorded while Angus' amp started to smoulder and eventually melted/caught fire, but is there some tonal advantage to abusing other amp heads like this?

They can be in their own way - if the person running the jam knows their onions, the good bass players get called back up more frequently!