NancyJohnson

If you're looking to shield the cavity, honestly, go to your local garden centre and find some adhesive copper tape; it's identical to the stuff sold as musical cavity shielding and horticulturaly used to keep slugs off your planters. Fraction of the price too.

Any fans here? A while back picked up his biography, just saw it by chance in Waterstones. Finally picked it up about 48 hours ago and it's a joy.

Rush.

For Christmas, my wife was kind enough to swing for a John East preamp; I knew it was going on one of my Lulls and ultimately decided it was going on the five string. The bass was fairly lively beforehand, but man alive, the instrument has come alive. Considering the money I shelled out for the bass, I profess to being a bit miffed that the control cavity wasn't shielded already (not that this caused any issue previously), so I had to wait for the arrival of some copper tape before fitting (Top tip: much to my chagrin, the tape is identical to the stuff we use for keeping slugs off our planters, so get it from a garden centre if you need any). I had a bass previously that had a J-Retro on it and all was well with that, so really no point in looking elsewhere really. Only nervous moment was having to drill the body for the active/passive switch. It's a wonderful bit of kit, I can cut and boost the tone, sweep me mids etc. Lovely. Highly recommended.

I rarely visit instrument shops, large or small, Andertons is OK but once a year is enough. Moving to my singular experience, quite a few years back I was asked to help out selecting Telecaster for a mate's kid (it was reward for good exam results), had to be new and had to have a guarantee. Against my better judgement, we schlepped off to Dawsons Music in Reading. The place was staffed by a bunch of dead-behind-the-eyes teenagers whose sole remit was to try and push Epiphones or pointy trash onto us. While mate and kid were looking, I sauntered off to some dark corner to check whatever new basses they had in stock. Pretty much everything I picked up was unplayable, worst of the bunch being one of the Gibson Grabber reissues; horrible front bow on the neck and I swear the action midway was about 3/4" off the board, dead strings, didn't intonate. I did question to myself at the time how it could even have left the factory this way, or why Dawsons wouldn't at least have given the instrument a once over, but all they're doing is just moving stock and it's just an SKU; I could well have buying a drill in B&Q as far as the business was concerned.

I've often wondered, thought it been stolen. Today the question was answered; Steve Jansen has it in safekeeping. This kind of makes me happy.

I do like them a lot, however one observation. Two years ago I took delivery of a Mike Lull bass that appears to be strung with D'Addarios (coloured ball-ends). These still sound as zingy now as when the bass arrived. It's not had a ton of use, but even so, two years...they should be dead by now.

I haven't watched this, but (from a trivia perspective), I do recall my mum correctly identifying P J Proby as the Masked Singer on Opportunity Knocks 40-odd years ago. Reading his bio, it does seem quite shocking now how his career nosedived after two on-stage trouser splitting incidents, especially considering how Flea did a good chunk of a show I saw at Wembley wearing nothing at all.

We are bass players! If I was waiting for paying gigs to support my GAS, I'd probably still be playing a Columbus Jazz Bass copy.

I saw them once with Elliot Coleman (this the other guy?), tiny club in Bracknell. Jay used to do the door at gigs I was doing years ago and was keen for us to use one of his rehearsal rooms - he had two, but then upped this to four (unsure whether he still owns them since his move to Austin; Tesseract used to rehearse there). If you're interested, check out Heights. It's quite wonderful. It's instrumental stuff; Jay on drums, plus another two guys I know; Al Heslop/guitar (he's a great producer too, did some of my old recordings) and John Hopkin on bass (I think JH is a member here).

Who were those three catwaurlering women anyhow?

My mate Jay plays drums for them. I suppose enough time has passed for me to pass on the story about Ashe O'Hara's departure, but I'm not going to.

Keith Richards - Talk Is Cheap.

Hmm. Owned a Lakland DJ5 and currently own a Spector EuroLT; I've also played several other models from each manufacturers. IMO, the LT is a country mile ahead of any Lakland of a comparable price. On the subject of budget (and if you're willing to take the risk), suggest you have a look in the classifieds on Talkbass. Weirdly - and I've not quite worked out why - there are real bargains to be had, even when you factor in shipping and duties. If you was the NS2 look, Korean models (so late 80s vintage) are selling for $600-700 (so £530 tops). If you want to stretch your budget, you can easily pick up US models for under £1,400.00.

I don't think better musicians really come into it, the whole thing from a televisual experience is just tired, forced and predictable. It needs a thorough overhaul. I was perfectly happy with the film to be honest.

Not big on NYE, we were quite happily watching Tomorrowland, when with about 45 minutes remaining, my good lady requested we park things and watch the build up to the fireworks on the Beeb. I watched about a minute of Jools; three women in brightly coloured trouser suits caterwauling while the audience whooped it up. Speechless. Even my wife said, 'Jesus,' a couple if times. Mel C on Graham Norton, awful song, awful everything else. Craig Forking David. For fork sake. Went up to bed about 11.45pm. Even the midnight fireworks at the Eye, failed to lift things; is it just me or is the whole thing looking more and more tired every year? Given that London is striving for clean city, emission free status, the exploding of three tonnes of pyro into the atmosphere in just ten minutes, kind of goes against clean air, doesn't it? Oh, well. It's couch potato day for me. Chelsea on TV in about 90 minutes. The Magnificent Seven on BBC2. Miranda and Doctor Who tonight (this had better be good). Time for brekkie.

T Rex now. Electric Warrior.

Tony Bennett. No, I'm being serious. Tony Bennett.

Is it just me or does the groove distance between the A & D string saddles look too wide? I've tried to demonstrate below; all the green lines are the same length - A & C are pretty much equal, B is about half as wide again.

Point. Any nuances will be lost in a full band environment; you're just providing background rumble as a counterpoint to the rest of the band. And let's face it, 99% of your audience don't care what the bass sounds like.

We blind tested Rickenbacker's, Fenders, Gibsons, my 40 year old Aria, home builds; everyone taking part had access to the basses beforehand and had a list of the basses during the test. I think the highest score was 3/20 and about 30 people took part. The main thing demonstrated here was that some of the people taking part couldn't even recognise their own babies in a blind shoot out.

With all due respect to everyone who has posted (and no offense), the thing I have issue with is that just because someone owns a bass that looks like a Jazz Bass, this doesn't make it a Jazz Bass. Same goes Epiphone Thunderbirds, Rockingbetters etc. I've owned two Fender Jazz basses in my time (CIJ Geddy Lee and an Aerodyne), I've also played a few 60s and more copies than I can actually remember; none of them were exact replicas of each other, so where is the actual reference model? It's like all these people saying that the new Epiphone Thunderbirds are the closest thing out there to a 60s Gibson Thunderbird. Err, no. They're just saying this stuff because a) someone else has said it, b) to justify their purchase, c) it makes them feel better about paying a twentieth of the price of an original model and because d) they've never played a 60s Thunderbird. At the SE Bass Bash in 2018, Gary and I did a fairly extensive blind-test of about 20 basses and it was very clear the results just reinforced that nobody really had a clue which bass was being played - even their own - and that I still haven't been able to shake Carry On, Wayward Son from my head 18 months later. Every bass pretty much just ponks if you just plug it into an amp and play it clean and every bass will come alive if you pass it through a usable pre-stage. After 40 years of playing, I'll let you into a secret. The real tone comes from your hands, technique, string choice, pickups and whatever you're plugging into. Forget about 'tone' woods, fingerboard material, neck radius, how wide the neck is at whatever fret and so on. It's a nonsense. Just remember that your desired tone is not someone else's; find out how to achieve your tone and learn to replicate it on whatever bass you're playing. If you can play, you'll make a bass sound decent to your ears, irrespective of what it is.