chriswareham

(delete duplicate post)

(delete duplicate post)

A Greco with neck through construction is the best *ahem* Rickenbacker *ahem* bass that I've ever played, and I've owned somewhere in the region of ten copies as well as the real Rick pictured on this thread. One of two Czech made Jolana D-Bass guitars that I've owned was even nicer to play, but it had its own sound thanks to a Precision style split pickup in the neck position and a Jazz style pick up in the bridge position. The two Jolanas were wildly different in terms of neck shape, so I think they were handmade, whereas the Japanese copies I've owned or played have all felt very consistent.

In my case it's not knobs, but the pickup selector switch on a Rickenbacker 4003 or reasonably accurate copy. How many times have I inadvertently flicked that fecker down so that I'm only on the bridge pickup? Too many times, that's how many.

Six Boss DS-1 distortion pedals in series.

Another beautiful meditation on the bittersweet nature of love:

Nine Inch Nails - Closer The Macc Lads - Do you Love Me?

The single truss rod came out first on the Al Cisneros model bass a few years ago. I think it was then put into limited run models made over the next couple of years, which may account for this niche 4001C64S having one. So if the serial number indicates it being made in 2020 or so, it could be genuine. The cavities under the scratchplate looks the typical mixed bag of clean areas and then that bodgery with presumably a Forstner bit between the control cavity and neck pickup cavity. My genuine Rick 4003 has marker pen writing near the controls as well, so that may be factory.

I'm surprised to hear that Parcel2Go have a depot - I thought they were just a website that sell other companies courier services, presumably run on a shoestring to maximise profits and hence no customer service whatsoever.

I've got one of their smallish powered monitors (their Sub Zero brand). It's used on stage to monitor a drum machine after too many bad experiences with no drums in the venue's own monitors. No frills device, solidly made and clear sounding. They're also my go too for guitar cases, both padded and rigid ones. The cheapest ones are so-so, but the ones they describe as "premium" are still very affordable and excellent quality. Been tempted by that semi-acoustic pictured above, but it's kind of spoiled for me by the headstock which doesn't seem to suit the body. Oh, and I thought all semi-acoustic basses sounded "woody", perhaps with an overtone of piano like sustain with new roundwound strings on.

I couldn't bring myself to part with the eight or ninety quid they want for one of those splitter boxes, so I built one for about ten quid in parts (aluminium pedal case and three decent quality jack sockets).

I suspect that whichever factory in China originally "cloned" the 4003 did so from pictures rather than forking out for a real one to examine. Since intellectual property is not a thing in China, that original clone design then made its way to all the factories out there. Checking Aliexpress, different sellers do sometimes offer variations but that terrible bridge is pretty much standard as far as I can tell, so I guess that's produced by one manufacturer. Something similar happened in Japan, where intellectual property and patents weren't really a thing until at least the late 1970s. If you read the autobiography of Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, he talks about an ever expanding book of designs that did the rounds of Japan's early electronic music equipment manufacturers. That's probably why copying of US made guitars became such a big thing, as the concept of something being a "counterfeit" was not part of the culture.

I use the earlier 16 bit version of the Akai EIE, since it has a lot of features and also functions as a USB MIDI unit. Works perfectly with my Debian Linux system, and pops up cheaply second hand. (The later Pro version doesn't work with Linux though, as it uses it's own driver for 24 bit support).

Two others that come to mind are Modern English and Love And Rockets. They also suffered at the hands of the UK music press, particularly L&R who had already endured a lot of spite in their preceding incarnations as Bauhaus and Tones On Tail.

The Psychedelic Furs had far more success in the US than at home in the UK. The infamously bitchy music press here wrote them off when they released their third album, and back then bad reviews in the weeklies could kill a band overnight.

I seem to recall that the Spotify desktop application is an abomination that basically wraps the core of the Chrome web browser. If so, I wonder if one of their JavaScript geniuses introduced an OS version check that sees that you're running version macOS 10 and is trying to suggest that you update to Windows 11.

I'll check - I now recall the thread on here about that bloke. Thanks for the info. Our singer is the person that deals with the booking agencies and promoters, so I'm going to suggest that he contacts the promoter and makes it clear that unless a fully equipped PA and a sound engineer is provided that we'll be cancelling the show.

A tribute act I'm in are booked to play Ronnie Roos in a few days time. We've just had a message from someone saying that they have replaced the original promoter since he was "doing a bad job". So far, so worrying. Now we've been asked if we'll be bring our own mixing desk and sound engineer, since the venue apparently doesn't have either... I can't find much more than pictures or flyers when I search for the venue, including their own Facebook page. The best I can see is a couple of pictures of an unusual but decent looking venue with a bunch of adequate looking PA speakers to the sides of a low stage. So have any Basschatters played this venue recently, and if so what was the deal with the PA and sound engineer?

I think this one qualifies as a bad cover of what was a bloody annoying song in its original form: Human League - Rock Me Again And Again And Again And Again And Again And Again As for the vocals on this, if it was me I would have wanted to forget about it rather than release it: Gary Numan - On Broadway And any cover by Guns And Roses. I loathe them as a band anyway, but they also released a lame version of one of my favourite songs and their fans seem to think they wrote it. I'll link the original version instead: Rocket From The Tombs - Ain't It Fun

Same height as me apparently (6'4" / 193cm). I briefly played a Hofner violin bass, which really did look like a ukulele on me 😄

Flavor Flav of Public Enemy. Not the most proficient bassist but he's pretty decent on drums, which reinforces my view that every musician harbours a secret desire to really be a drummer.

Yup, that's the one! Sounds like the staff member that claimed it was Wyman's was full of it then, as I can't see them not mentioning that to you if really had been his.

It was the last time I went in their, which is about a year or so ago. There's a set of stairs leading down from the ground floor to basement, and it's hanging on the wall about halfway down. It's actually in unplayable condition, with considerable damage to the body. Surprised they've not had it restored if it really is ex-Rolling Stones.

The story I heard is that Rose Morris got annoyed with Rickenbacker not shipping enough instruments to meet demand, so they imported good quality fakers from Japan and sold them under their Shaftesbury brand. As well as the 4001/4003 style basses they also made a semi acoustic - a battered example, claimed to have previously been owned by Bill Wyman of the Stones - is on the wall of the Rose Morris shop in London. I owned one of the semi acoustics, and it was a nice bass with a very narrow neck.

Having your only web presence on Facebook means you're reducing your potential audience by a massive amount. An increasing number of people have never signed up for a Facebook account, have closed their account or haven't used it in years. Facebook are also keen to make their site a "walled garden", so pages are becoming less likely to be indexed by search engines such as Google or Bing. Your best bet is to cover as many bases as possible - website, Facebook (depending on the demographic you're targetting), Bandcamp, etc. As others have said, shop around for a cheap domain name registrar (a company that will let you buy a domain name such as mybandname.com) and web hosting. There are free websites that allow you to build an acceptable looking set of webpages, such as Wix. If you have the skills or a reasonably web savvy friend, then copy the web pages from the website builder's website, remove any unwanted branding ("this site built with wix.com", etc) and upload the pages to your web hosting.