Happy Jack

Or of course just buy a Wal with the 'Pick Attack' switch ...

Dey do dat dough, don't dey?

Could be worse ... you could be watching the original film again. Possibly the most depressing 81 minutes I ever spent.

Just double-checked that in Martin's book (All You Need Is Ears, 1979) and he points out that he had in fact already left EMI (and therefore Abbey Road) at this point and was now running Air Studios. So the equipment he had lent to The Beatles was kit that he had himself borrowed on their behalf from EMI. No wonder he wanted to keep an eye on it.

How seriously do you take the whole Tier 4 thing? Hint: Don't reply here!

I thought exactly the same. My best guess is that he's playing a Danelectro bass through an octave-up pedal. If you'd like to experiment with a Danelectro twin-neck to see if you can match the sound, drop me a PM ... I have one hanging on the wall next to me.

Glyn Johns tells a different story (Sound Man, 2014). He says that Macca called him out of the blue and asked him to produce a TV special they were planning, to be filmed/recorded at Twickenham. George Martin was essentially fed up with the band's pre-collapse antics and wanted nothing to do with it. The TV thing never happened, and the project morphed into the Let It Be project that we all ... erm ... have mixed feelings about, shot at Twickenham and at Apple HQ in Savile Row. The reason George Martin got involved was that Lennon and Harrison had been completely fooled by Magic Alex (look him up if you're not familiar with the name) into paying for a sooper-dooper sound system that Alex was to install at Savile Row. Come the first session there, the recording professionals were wetting themselves laughing at a teenager's home stereo. The Beatles called George Martin at Abbey Road, and he quickly shipped down to Savile Row enough kit to complete the project. That's why Martin appears in the montage; he wasn't producing, he was keeping an eye on his kit! The Phil Spector thing happened later, entirely at Lennon's demand, and without Macca even being consulted. What he did to the production on the album was genuinely the final straw that broke the relationship between Lennon and Macartney. Personally, my sympathy is entirely with Macca - Lennon was so far out of order that I would never have been prepared to work with him again. Over the last nearly 50 years the stories have twisted and turned, and many have tried to make Macca the villain of the piece. Unfortunately for them, pretty much all the evidence (and I've waded through a LOT of it) simply confirms and re-confirms that Macca was right all along, while smack-head Lennon was making a series of appalling decisions.

Well the documentary is going to be three 4-hour parts released at annual intervals, so there'll be plenty of time for Peter Jackson to show it. Then five years later he will release a further three 4-hour films covering a 30-minute tea-break they once took.

That's a typo ... the price is actually in Pesetas.

[Ian Dury] Arrz-holes Brexit Rickenbacker Sold [/Ian Dury]

I've wanted for years a way to have some of my album sleeves on display - the artwork is so good and the memories so vivid that it always seemed silly to me to have everything tightly packed onto a deep shelf! As luck would have it, @Chownybass has just launched his solution and jolly good it is too. In the interests of full disclosure, Stephen did not actually make the Hofner 500/2 ... nor is he responsible for the current contents of the frames. The frames work better with single album sleeves than with gatefolds or double albums, but apart from that tiny niggle I'm impressed with these. The albums are retained very securely, yet it takes roughly 60 seconds to remove and replace, allowing me and @Silvia Bluejay to have our vinyl on constant rotation.

Yup. Animal glue has been used from the start of European instrument manufacture, and it's an excellent glue. But it's organic, and all organic things change over time. With animal glue, somewhere between 40-60 years after application it will gradually dry out and turn to dust. If the instrument has strings on and so is under tension, as the glue's strength fades away the neck will very slowly try to fold up like a pen-knife. Nothing is 'wrong', nothing is broken. All that's required is another application of animal glue by a guitar tech who knows what he's doing. In watching various YouTube channels featuring luthiers (I particularly recommend https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8wIqZCt9h6uJbOBCQVuUmg though https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdD1Cqxr8aINzWs1agg3tEQ is always entertaining) I've noticed that animal glue is getting less and less used, and that fish glue seems to be preferred. Still organic, still in keeping with the original construction, just a slightly different take.

Is there still a decent blues scene in NI? I play around London and blues is a commercial disaster in this area ... there are very few decent blues gigs and some of the bands competing for those gigs are unbelievably good.

To answer the question that absolutely nobody is asking, yes, my 1957 Precision is indeed sporting the official Basschat straplocks. 👍

I just need to work out how to play both at once ...

I must have been well over halfway through the project when I realised that I used to play the original source for this song all the time on DB at acoustic gigs. I could have re-built, but I decided to save DB for my next Hollywood extravaganza ...

Didst tha' recognise the source, lad?

My project for Lockdown 2.0 was to learn video editing. It turned out that an ideal entry-level video package was actually a well-known DAW ... Reaper v.6. Inevitably, possession of a decent DAW then rapidly dragged me into learning home recording too. I learn best when I'm working on something 'real', and the annual Xmas Bash for the Junkyard Dogs (featured several times over the years on Basschat) was clearly not going to happen this year, so I thought it would be good to put together a sound/video project as a sort-of Xmas prezzie for the band. I chose a song that Rick & Paul will always associate with me, and which I had already personalised for live performance with the band. Mission Creep then took over completely. I had so much fun putting it together that I thought I should go wider with this. I wrote some new Xmas lyrics and revised the arrangement, turning it into my very own Xmas Song. I made my first foray into video editing on 6th November, and into sound recording on 5th December. Today is 12th December, so this is how far a complete novice has got on a tight time budget.They say that you only ever really learn from your mistakes. In that case, you simply wouldn't believe just how much I learned while putting this video together. Now I'm just spraying it out there for stinky poo and giggles.

DO NOT ADJUST THAT ACTION! The bass needs a neck reset, a routine & standard operation for a Hofner of that vintage, but one that can flummox guitar techs who are not used to working on vintage instruments built using traditional craftsmanship ... i.e. this bass bears very little resemblance structurally to a Fender, Gibson or Rickenbacker, it's more like working on a classical guitar. My (entirely unsolicited) advice would be, iIf you have a guitar tech you can trust then fine. If not, then either get a recommendation from someone or sell the bass to someone who understands these things.

Technically, I think that may make her the cookie monstress.

So when are the Germans starting a Belgian Lockdown?

That's an all-original 500/3 from 1960 ... the serial number and the 'Toaster' pickup work well to confirm that. Hofner continued to bring the 500/3 into the UK until 1963 when a modified version (modified to suit the demands of the chief importer, Selmer & Co.) became the Senator Bass. Only one photo here, and not too informative, but it looks to be in lovely condition and will definitely be of interest to Hofner afficianados and collectors. There's no particularly famous musician connection for the 500/3 so it won't attract a premium price, and of course in this country the Senator is far better known. If this was any other December, I'd recommend listing it on eBay with an advert aimed more at Continental musicians, who have no real interest in the Selmer-badged instruments. 5-string player or not, you'll know a bowed neck when you play one! Before trying to sell it, be sure to check the state of both the neck and especially the neck joint. If the neck is true and the neck joint undamaged or (worse) has been 'fixed', then there may be an issue with listing it immediately. If you find problems, feel free to come back to me (or others, I'm not the only Hofner Hound on Basschat) and I'll see what I can do.

At the risk of turning this into a B***** topic (which it is not), if I were doing import/export between the UK and the EU in November I'd have no worries ... business as usual. Doing the same in January is also no worries ... whatever new rules are going to exist will exist by then. The problem is December. If I sell something in December which might cross the border in December, might cross it in January, what should I be doing? Do I charge import duty? Do I charge home country VAT and then importing country VAT on top of that? And if I fail to do the right thing, will I be liable to my own tax people to make up the shortfall? If I was running Thomann right now, I'd be saying, "tell you what guys, let's just slow down on deliveries to the UK, and I mean slow down a lot, make sure that we ship nothing at all until the new rules emerge".