NancyJohnson

I didn't mind the overall look of the Dimension bass, although there was too much scratchplate going on. I'm not saying this thing is beautiful, but take the scratchplate off (in truth, it's unnecessary) and we're in Lakland/MusicMan territory here. Granted the bridge is slightly too big, but it's got a nice deep sunburst, two pickups (winner, winner), rosewood/whatever board. Even though I'd never consider buying one, it's way more attractive than a J or P:

Just thinking about this one and the TZ model earlier in the thread. Fender could have gone out on a limb a produced something genuinely radical here; there's certainly no reason why they couldn't have tweaked the body shape away from the Jazz shape and done a 3-aside headstock, but like Gibson, they're inherently lazy and it's probably simpler to just make the neck pocket and headstock bigger in CAD than to design something different. Likelihood being this'll be in production for 12-18 months and (like everything else different) be quietly withdrawn due to poor sales.

The fundamental issue with Fender is that they're too headstrong and they're stuck with a headstock design that doesn't look pretty with the incorporation of additional tuners. Other manufacturers don't seem to be too hindered/constricted by sticking to the same shape headstock across their ranges; off the top of my head, Ibanez. I love the Spector headstock. You could (possibly) put that on anything.

Headstock is a munter.

Cheque in the post, sir. I just remember after that one I had this intense pain behind my ears, only for one of the girls in the crowd asking for her Alice band with kitten-ears back. Oh, and then there was the sound guy going off and doing lines while we were playing. Jikes!

I've had this for a long time. It's in incredible shape for a 40 year old instrument. There's hardly any left globally (they didn't even have a model to photograph to include in the Hamer coffee-table book) and it's worth a small fortune (which is why it doesn't see much action). Tonally it's lovely - I've not had the pickups out (not want to/see any reason to), so I don't know what they are, but considering it was 100% original when I got it, I'm assuming they're early-80s DiMarzio units. Original hardware was chrome, have swapped out to the same units in black and have recently swapped the jack socket for a flat one made by a young chap locally. (Kept the originals.) Gigged it once - @Wolverinebass was at that one - I rehearsed with it a couple of times and it's been to a couple of SE Bass Bashes, but in general it spends most of its time in a case.

Cheap Trick (see what I did there?)

Watched about 20 minutes of coverage at around 7.00pm last night on BBC2 (I may wander onto iPlayer at some point today). It's like a three-day version of Later... with Jools Holland supplanted by hip young things (or as my mum would say, 'Boys in shorts'), making gravy by standing on a hill reading an autocue and waxing lyrical about how great past festivals were - it would be like me saying how great the Steve Hillage set was in 1979 - then telling us they're going cut back to Mwombi N'Dunga, a folk/apala crossover artist from Mali doing an acoustic set. Ack.

If I was playing there, I'd use my most obscure bass and get a t-shirt done.

We're old enough to just do it in our pants now. It's expected.

I haven't a clue who is playing (and deep in my heart, I really don't care), but decided to have a look at the bill. Christ on a bike. There appears to be hundreds, nay thousands, of artists playing. How on earth does one sort the wheat from the chaff? How does everyone get paid? I recognised maybe ten bands and gave up scrolling. My idea of Hell to be honest.

Given Warwick copied/used a NS/Spector design, you could probably consider this a Poor Man's Spector.

Given Epiphone are now hawking Les Pauls/Explorers (etc.) with a Gibsonesque style logo in the correct placement, I'm not unsurprised that for the bass they've dispensed with that and stuck the headstock logo in that position/orientation. All that's gonna happen here is buyers are going to break out their sanders, buy a replacement Gibson waterslide decal and thincoat over the top of it. Just like Squiers.

The G&L is a munter. 100%. The early headstocks were nice, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Fender complain the original design was too similar to theirs?

Has anyone thrown original Rickenbacker 4001/4003 pickups/loom into another bass (all the while retaining the general pickup distances along the scale length)? If yes, does the new bass display similar tonal characteristics to a Rick?

*Sadowsky.

208 'Your Cheerful Earful!' Ooh, loon pants!

'One Hand Clapping' by Wings. Enjoying this immensely (second run through already today). Wings are a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. I remember my mum buying me Wings Over America one Christmas on the recommendation of the owner of the record shop where I'd get all my records from. Those three or four albums from the run that led up to this live album (Band On The Run, Venus And Mars, Wings At The Speed of Sound) are regular go-to listening. The recent Band On The Run (Underdubbed Mixes) was a freaking 10/10 joy.

This just popped up on my Facebook feed. It's a guys website (https://luthierylabs.com) - he's made a couple of Rickenbacker copies based off the 325 guitar body shape. Ignore the Home Depot and Fender logos on the headstocks! Despite my disliking of sunburst finishes, the bottom image is probably the nicer of the two, especially with the 3001 style headstock; I'd like to see one with a four-knob/black plate on that one. The bodyshape really works in my opinion.

Being of a certain age, Japan were my main band 1978/80...I can take joy from the spartanly attended gigs I schlepped up to London for; Dingwalls, The Venue, Music Machine, Lyceum, Royal Opera House. Me and a mate saw them at The Rock Garden and then got into The Greyhound a couple of days later. Mick Karn was always the primary focal point. Nobody/fans gave a rats bumhole about them early days. It was like they were our little secret. The Lyceum shows were interesting; the first was about a 1/4 full, the next was absolutely rammed. Quiet Life changed everything really. Gone was all the psuedo-aggressive punk/funk and the audience was just full of peacocks that were more interested in the clothes and aura behind the band rather than the music. Diminishing returns too. My last gig was one of the later Hammersmith shows and it was terrible, Rob Dean long gone, almost erasing memories of just a couple of years previously. Moving back to Mick Karn, yep, genius. Groundbreaking. Inspiring. Brilliant. I honestly don't believe we, as bassplayers, knew just how great he actually was until he was gone.

I suspect that once we get off BT Internet and sign up to 900mbps Zen Internet, I'll just migrate things over to Tidal.

I realise that this might counter a couple of posts above, but - assuming you want to retain a similar body shape - why not just source a Sterling/Sub and get a carpenter to hull out the body? You could feasibly sell on the neck/hardware for a few ££.

There was a lengthy thread here a few years back, honestly it should have gone to a vote...people paying stupid money for shims or just sticking a bit of cardboard/creditcard under the neck heel. It was amazing how people would advocate using StewMac shims ("Noticable sustain," or something) when a playing card would have exactly the same result.

Just off the back of the two posts from ped and Warren above, we're probably of (or approaching and age) where historically we actively went out to try and find music we were interested in; we read music weeklies, we went to gigs, we appreciated word-of-mouth referrals, we listened to radio content/shows that appealed to our tastes, we may also have been lucky enough to have a record store nearby where Sounds journalists would drop off their review copies and owners who allowed us to listen to music on headphones (all hail, Record Scene, Staines (RIP)). Now - with all these platforms - we are spoonfed/dribbled content to the apps. I get what Warren is saying about the Spotify UI. If I look at Spotify on my phone, all I really want is a big old button that points to my search options and the playlists I've set up. I know what I want to listen to, I have a vast musical library on Spotify (and on a NAS, which because of the failure of the Sonos app I'm unable to access across my network at the moment). I've got panels for 'Recently Announced', 'Picked for you', 'New releases for you', 'Recently Played', 'Fresh New Music', 'Recommended for Today', 'Your Favourite Artists', 'Huge Playlists', 'Audiobooks For You', 'Jump Back In', 'Episodes For You', something called 'Our Generation', 'Alternative 70s', 'Alternate 60s', 'The Indie List', 'misfits 2.0', 'Made In Scotland', 'Massive Dance Hits', 'Made In Liverpool', 'Altar', Rap UK#, 'Powerpop'...there's about 20 more. I don't need any of this at all. I am no more going to click on some acne-faced indie group from Liverpool any more than I've going to go out and find something praising he merits of Allah. Let me do my own diligence rather than forcing all this poop on me (which is likely sponsored by labels anyhow). Most of the good stuff I've 'discovered' recently has come via a US indie station called W-EQX, which is based in Manchester, Vermont.