NancyJohnson

I went through a massive XTC phase a couple of years back and it amazes me to this day that, singles aside, I didn't connect with them first time around. I was drawn to them more recently because of the recent reissues that were overseen by Steven Wilson and Andy Partridge (which leads nicely onto the masters...). I'd read an article detailing Wilson's work and he pretty much said that the label's attitude towards the masters was ambivalence...they'd deteriorated to such an extent that they were unusable, so Wilson went back to digital multitracks; at this juncture we really need to get past this nonsense about future mastering technology (sorry Skank) being able to pull more content from tapes that would be 40+ years old or getting melancholic about these artefacts simply being lost. I'm not wholly aware of the format the original audio would have been captured in back in the day, but listening back to the box-set of XTCs 1979 album Drums and Wires does make you question why there is any need to retain the original masters at all. Sadly, well with XTC at least - and this applies to other bands too - there's also the case that mastertapes are also lost by other means than fire or flood; they're just lost. Reels of tapes in unmarked boxes in dusty record company basements.

Fire or flood? There was allegedly a catastrophic loss this side of the pond about 20 years ago when the Thames arrived unannounced at the Virgin Vault. This wasn't limited to Virgin artistes, but nobody is getting all tearful about the loss of original recordings from Japan or XTC. Personally, I don't really feel any loss unless there was content languishing there that didn't see release, yes harsh, eh? You would like to think that everything had been digitised years beforehand, so it's not like total loss.

JMB has the potential to be huge, but as Jack said, the main problem is that it's free, so any asshat can post there. Lutz/recording aside, I've been away from band stuff for about 18 months now, so posted up about three weeks ago. At least got some replies, but they're all from numbskulls. Might have another peruse now...

I never got on with the three-pointer at all and I went through a lot of Thunderbirds, a couple of which underwent bridge changes within a few minutes of them getting home. Bridges aside, I'm hoping that next year will finally see a short run reissue of the 20/20 bass and a proper Les Paul Junior DC guitar.

The Lambourne place was part-owned by our guitarist...from memory it was called Sounds Good? The exterior resembled something off Dad's Army, right at the back of this old trading estate. I have video somewhere.

It looks nicer than the Flea...I'd like to see a readable logo on the blumming headstock though.

I was on holiday in Minorca a few years back and this guy walked past me and said, 'You look familiar, I think I know you.' We had a beer that evening and tried to work out from where. We didn't live in the same area but after a few minutes, we both admitted to playing bass; turns out we both used to frequent the same rehearsal place in Lambourne, near Swindon and he recognised me from load in/out periods.

I'd completely forgotten about this Max Webster ('Flex Lobster') track. I saw them supporting Rush at Hammersmith, they were promoting A Million Vacations. Good band.

I had an EH Black Finger. Everybody telling me how it would revolutionize my tone. Couldn't tell the difference to be honest.

I'd concur Mick Karn, forget Japan here for a minute, but you listen to Polytown, JBK or even the stuff he contributed to Gary Numan's Dance album, he's instantly recognisable. I often wonder to myself what Hesitation Marks by NIN would have sounded like with him rather than PP. Of the rest? Billy Sheehan. Ummm. I'd love to hear what Geddy Lee would be like in a non Rush/solo band.

No sweat...I suppose with my huge gorilla hands, neck sizes, width at nut, radius and profiles etc. don't make a lot of difference for me. The only thing I'm not a fan of is necks with a high gloss finish.

Can I ask the obvious? Why not just source a ready made one? Surely the costs are going to comparable, if not lower than going through a luthier? A genuine loaded Fender from somewhere like The Stratosphere is going to come in shipped at less than £300.00.

The fundamental issue with active basses - well for me at least - was that the signal chain got muddied; you're piling an active signal from the bass into an amplifiers pre-stage, which is adding more tonal characteristics to the signal path, before you're actually amplifying anything. By virtue of what the active bass does means you simply don't dial up everything to 100% like you would a passive bass. I've owned two active five strings...a Streamer and a Bongo, plus a Fender Jazz with a John East fitted. When I was recording, these had a nice tone straight into the desk, but in a live/rehearsal environment you just end up tweaking and tweaking until everything was full on and it's just mush. Irrespective of whether it's bass or guitar, god knows how people run mutli-FX/boards into the front of a head and wonder why it sounds awful; I played with a guy once, nice guitar into a Fender Twin Reverb. He bought a processor of some kind, Yamaha I think, and ran an overdriven sound from that into his already overdriven amp and he went from great to horrific in one jam. He just could grasp that distortion into distortion just didn't work.. Its really a case of less is more...small tweaks; it's a fine balancing act.