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NancyJohnson

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Posts posted by NancyJohnson

  1. I just listened to the deluxe edition of Def Leppard's Pyromania.  I'm sure that the original was staple listening amongst our jolly troupe when it came out.  I'd read a review recently in which someone had written that the bonus content - a live show from the LA Forum in 1983 - was 'all killer'.

     

    God, it's just awful.  Off the scale terrible.  How this band ever got to, and continue to be, as big as they are, is truly beyond me.

  2. Interesting twist following the recent backing tracks thread.  Had a coffee yesterday with a guy I'd worked with remotely during the pandemic; he seems very keen on resurrecting our long-dead lockdown project.

     

    Musically it was pretty straightforward, live guitars and bass, live vocals, drums were all drawn from live loop packs (Beta Monkey), loads of voice/keys/noise samples.  He's keen to try and take things out live, utilising everything that sits behind the musical elements.  Think of Public Service Broadcasting.

     

    I'm not entirely certain how this can be achieved on a budget, so am looking for a bit of advice.  Could we strip all the guitars/bass from the original recordings and just route these through front of house and somehow give the drummer (or all of us) an in-ear mix so we know what we'd be playing along with?

     

    Suppose a bare bones solution at this point.  Laptop running a DAW etc.

  3. When we had some building work done last year, we had a just in case contingency in the event of emergencies.  A week before the work started, the boiler went.  Then the garage door broke and when the builders were working at the back of the house it became clear the extension roof was rotten. 

     

    I had about £8k to play with.  All gone.  No holiday.  No joy.  After everything was paid I had under £3.00 left in the bank.  ☹️

     

     

    • Sad 3
  4. Limited by design specifications, you'd have to think all these cheapish/entry level basses must be coming out of the same handful of facilities in the far East.  This week they'll be making Harley Benton, next week Fazley, the week after something else.

     

    It would be interesting to have owners of these just break them down and see the similarities.  Given the level of secrecy, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if stuff like Limelights were sourced from the same locales.

     

     

    • Like 1
  5. 16 minutes ago, kodiakblair said:

    Proof my timing is cr@p 

     

    There's a fella over on TalkBS named Scott Dasson (godofthunder). Scott's nuts about old Gibsons but not too keen on the 3 point bridge so he came up with an alternative; calls it the Badbird.

    It's a 2 part design so no good if you don't fancy screwing a tailpiece to your bass.

     

    Here's Scott and some happy random punter with his 'improved' T-bird😄

     

    GeddyBadBird.jpg.09b04c25319abb0c69bf7dfc9c0b7cbf.jpg

     

     

     

     

    The Badbird is a direct replacement for the two piece bridge of yore; it does not replace the three pointer on the existing holes/studs (the bass will not intonate). 

     

    Scott did make a prototype two part bridge to replace the three-pointer...it required an anchoring plate to hold the ballends and a long throw harmonica style bridge unit that floated/sat on two of the studs. I don't believe he actually put it into production.

    • Thanks 1
  6. I borrowed a Watkins bass and a WEM Dominator from a bloke a few doors down.  I guess I was 14 or 15.

     

    We had a three piece band, sharp learning curve, then through sixth-form this kind of expanded to a group of about eight to ten members and it all got a bit interchangeable. 

     

    Some 40 years on, over half of our merry band make a living from the music business; two run a successful mastering business, another writes/produces/sessions, others are touring musicians/session players, one has a career in set design (TV and film).

     

    My plans dissolved about 35 years ago after a meeting with a Polydor A&R guy.  So close.  So far.

     

     

     

     

  7. 11 hours ago, jd56hawk said:

    Never had any desire for a Gibson after I played the Epiphone 60s Thunderbird...might just be the perfect T-bird.

    Even so, when it came right down to it, I had to let it go. It was either Thunderbird or Thundergun and the Reverend was just a little bit better.

     

     

    Pics-Art-10-18-02-52-35-1.jpg

    Picsart_23-08-15_13-18-21-404.jpg

     

    I was offered a Reverend artist endorsement a few years back; never too it up.  Liked the Thundergun, reverse headstock.

    • Like 1
  8. The principal of backing track usage is fine if you don't need a full time keyboard player or your budget doesn't extend to a string or horn section.

     

    Obviously it's all a matter of how you want to do it and the cost thereof.  Feasibly, you just have your whole set on a DAW running on a laptop/tablet.  You should be able to split/assign the backing tracks to front of house and other content (click) to some kind of in ears.  You'd absolutely have to be on the top of your game too; no room for mistakes, no room for swing.  

     

     

  9. Not particularly rare.  No real correlation between price Vs rarity either, just selling for what equates to current market value. 

     

    It's like estate agents going, 'I sold one just like this last month for ££, but reckon you could get £££ for this.'. (Don't get me started on estate agents, that's a whole other thing.). When I had my Thunderbird fire sale, most went for £800-900 a pop; pretty much what I bought them for.

     

    Luckily(?) for the used market, as Gibson frankly don't care about their bass range at all, since the 90s relaunch finishes are pretty much limited to black, sunburst or ivory; there will be a handful of special editions (the Nikki Sixx models, Rex Brown, Simmons, plus the Gothic/Yamano ones).  You should be able to find any of these easily enough.

    • Like 1
  10. We supported a band of young'uns years ago, who thought that swapping guitars every song and using backing tracks (keys/pads/backing vocals) was the way to go; the drummer was using a little iPod Nano which was jacked into FoH via a mini-jack.  It was a collision of problems.  It was all very odd; as the iPod was going to FoH, you could hear the count in and then silence; they were absolutely reliant on the on the drummer keeping exact time.  Of course this was never going to happen; they were always playing catch up or slow down as they were never in sync with what was being played on the iPod, so the backing tracks were coming in late or early. 

     

    I'll remember their final song until they put me in the ground.  The lead guitarist (frankly, I've never seen a guy so in love with himself; his girlfriend was nearby swooning and I definitely saw him mouthing, 'I love you,' to her), swapped to a different guitar, the wrong one as it happened, which was tuned down a full step.  So you had the backing tracks coming in wrong, the bass and rhythm guitarists looking as though they wished the ground would open and the lead guitarist oblivious he was horribly out of tune, all the while whispering sweet nothings and pointing at his mates.  

     

    Oh, the hilarity.

    • Like 1
    • Haha 4
  11. 1 hour ago, prowla said:

    I think @NancyJohnson had one of those and rather liked it.

     

    Mine is a late 70s Primary Bass.  Friday night Gumtree purchase.  It's a thing of beauty.  (It needed a ton of work to get it up to speed...it was effectively a body/neck and Schaller tuners.  Everything else needed changing as it was either non-functioning or missing bits.

     

    Aria Pro II produced Precision/Jazz Primary/Precise bass models.  The Precision I have does have a Jazz brother...I check eBay periodically, but they're all £££.

     

    20190516_194721.thumb.jpg.a92c4c22627e679a7559b373c5fe06cb.jpg

     

    20210212_102023.thumb.jpg.7a31f662796e939952c56ed11145b0d6.jpg

    • Like 4
  12. 7 hours ago, Mickyk said:

    Black Friday deals are a Misnomer,should be Black Friday Rip offs

     

    It's all about the £££.  Every retail business and supplier will have overstocks that need shifting to make way for new year supplies.  Ta-daa!  Black Friday.

     

    I worked ten years for a wristwatch company; we'd push Christmas orders out from June/July, extended payment terms and deals.  In the case of the bigger chain jewellers/catalogue businesses, we get sales numbers back and sign off contribution credits to support any potential losses customer side during promotions like Black Friday.  We'd rather pay a few £££ per watch rather than having it returned, checked and put back into stock.

     

    I'd never buy anything during these events, period.

    • Like 2
  13. 1 hour ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

    I've found some pics. I'm interested in how the chrome bridges look fitted, so that's what I've been looking for. Not as many thunderbird pics — especially non-reverse as I'd hoped

    I think I'm now leaning towards getting a babicz based purely on aesthetics; the overall shape of the hipshot looks a bit more out of place on a thunderbird than the babicz. I'm not in love with the branding being so prominent though.

     

     

     

    You might be hard pushed to find many chrome ones on Thunderbirds largely to the finish mismatch; as most of the current crop of Thunderbirds carry black hardware.

     

  14. I'm just off the back of a year in a band where the singer was only interested in the same dozen songs - one cover and eight or nine from his professional career - all but two were things me and the guitarist had done a couple of years previously which the band were already playing before I joined.  Over the prior 10-15 years (I suppose where I was able to record decent demos at home on a DAW), songs would just flow out of me; I have dozens and dozens of complete songs, partially finished ideas.

     

    Of course I submitted loads of stuff, old and new - we were a four piece, but ultimately if the singer didn't like the material ('I don't think that it's suitable,' was the common line), then it never got past our little WhatsApp group - this even applied when the three musicians in the band said 'yay'.  

  15. If you peruse my old posts, you'll see dozens on my flock of Gibson Thunderbirds, reverse and non-reverse stylings; whenever I had a new one arriving, first course of action was to rid the bass if the three pointer.

     

    While the Supertone is well machined/tooled, the Babicz is just better by design.  It feels better, looks better and despite being a wholly different animal to the three-pointer it doesn't look wrong or out of place (if that makes sense).

     

    I'm an advocate of the addage 'if it ain't broke', but the three-pointer is a truly horrific bit of engineering and that Gibson have (aside for a handful of times) stuck with it, speaks volumes.  I'm sure that once you have it set up, saddles notched with a file to the correct depth, intonation set etc. it'll do the job, but nah.  I wanted a bridge that gave me a full range of adjustability, didn't fall to bits when you changed strings or cut my wrist when I was palm-muting.

     

     

     

     

    • Like 2
  16. 1 hour ago, neepheid said:

     

    Oh yeah, if I ever used both pickups together, I would find this most frustrating, but my bridge pickup is pretty much there for show.  Hence why my "poker chip" is labelled DO (neck) and DO NOT (bridge).  Note that, as Yoda says "there is no try" (because I don't use the middle setting at all - I've yet to find a bass where the middle setting isn't the worst one, to my ears the two pickups fight and suck the life out of each other, resulting in a rather characterless, plain tone which I do not enjoy).

     

    I've always preferred the tonality of a twin-pickup bass; all my kit is set up to allow the ease of just playing with everything full-on or open tonally.

     

     

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