NancyJohnson

It's odd how you get thinking about auditions. I'd completely forgot about this east European guitarist we tried out; he was younger than us and was temping in the warehouse where I worked. We decided to not go the route of booking a room, so we tried him out in the extension of my house; stripped down session. He arrived on foot just carrying a guitar (no bag) and a little practice amp. He'd clearly made zero effort to learn any of the material I'd given him and I believe his expectation was that we'd become his backing band. He was also a terrible player and quite terrifying in equal parts. You remember Alexei Sayle's character in The Young Ones? That's what he sounded like when he talked and well, that started the drummer laughing. Every statement ended in 'yes'. He'd go, 'We do one of mine songs now, it's about the Russian Mafia in Stalingrad, yes?' and he'd play a breakneck fast two chord thing with him shouting out sweary vocals about gang members killing each other and disposing of the bodies in furnaces. That was one of the more happy songs. Drummer is laughing. Singer is laughing. I'm trying not to laugh and offer encouragement. He knows exactly where I live. I'm trying to formulate an exit strategy. We stop for coffee. He asks whether I have anything stronger. I watched him down about 1/4 pint of bourbon like it was orange squash on a hot day and then ask if we have vodka. Before long, it was thankfully over. He's going, 'This was great. We must do this again soon, yes? You on the drums, play faster next time, yes?'. Drummer says he's going to be working away for a bit (phew), but singer does not play along however and says it was great and we should do it again soon. B*stard. Thankfully the guy got fired and I never saw him again.

You're just down the road from me and @cetera. Julien Mullen in Reading was always my go to guy for anything I couldn't sort out myself. His website hasn't been updated in yonks, you could try the mobile #. http://www.julianmullenguitars.co.uk/Contact.htm

If I could have a pahnd for every time I've seen people mention neck dive, eh? With the dozen or so Gibson models I went through, dive was negligible (I mean, much as I joked about it, it was there a little, but wasn't a dealbreaker) and it's non-existent on my Lull, Hamer or Spector. Grippier strap and I tend to play with my left hand on the neck. Not in the market for one of these, but I'd be in the market for a TBII should Gibson pull their finger out and reissue those.

Nothing against these per se; I played Gary's for a bit and it was fine, but always felt the geometry on the Epiphones was out compared with the original. I know many will see this as nitpicking, but if you're going to make/reproduce/copy a faithful replica, then then should be doing that (much like they're trying to do with all the Les Pauls, Explorers, Vs and SGs). About the only area where the body looks correct is the forearm bout. The other three corners are skewed; the lower horn has always been short/stubby and the upper neck joint and control corner, smoothed out/rounded.

The sound would just randomly start and not stop until I tapped the mid-pot with a finger or messed with it somehow. John let me know how to take the pot out of the circuit (so I could at least start playing it again without fear) and I returned the pot and cable to him. He returned it a few days later (uncertain if it is/was the same pot), but he included a new wire/ribbon saying these were more stable than the old ones, so I suspect the problem was was with that. Anyhow, reinstalled everything and it's been 100%. Give him a shout!

Mate of mine had a huge house (that looked a little like Tracy Island) with a large basement studio where we'd just leave our gear set up 24/7 and turn up and play. We were never going to take things out live, this was a more open musician session thing where we'd write/record/jam/drink beer; several drummers played, other guys just either lost interest or had commitments elsewhere; I'd mentioned to everyone I knew that we just needed someone to come along and play drums. We got a suggestion of a local bloke through a friend of a friend of a friend, so in desperation we asked him along. He'd apparently being playing for ages, but not so much recently. I guess the latter comment should have rung alarm bells. He turned up and unloaded an absolutely beautiful old Ludwig kit, all the hardware looked lovingly taken care of. Big problem was he really couldn't play at all, but I don't think he realised that in the slightest. There was just nothing there whatsoever. He could barely hold together a slow 4/4. It would be akin to getting your mum to sit in on traps for a session. It was an uncomfortable three or four hours.

Decades ago, I remember a mate going into a shop on Denmark Street to buy a Precision, he liked the black body but not the maple board, so the store just swapped over necks from another Precision with a rosewood board.

So just to get this straight, the two basses(?) you're talking about are the ones pictured below? I haven't gone as far as to check scale lengths, the depth of the neck pocket or how far the neck pocket sits towards the bridge, so there may (obviously) be an issue with intonation and action height (which one would hope could be resolved by adjusting the bridge or by utilising a shim of some sort in the neck pocket). The other thing is the holes in the neck and the ones running through the body sufficiently line up and whether they'll need dowelling and redrilling; given the propensity of neck plates being more or less identical, the neck holes will likely align with the body holes, it's just questionable whether they're in the right place. These are the most obvious things. If you're confident of setting the instrument up after, then go for it, I say! I've not seen much in the way of neck swap posts, so would be interested in seeing how this pans out. I do wonder whether manufacturers just carry out wholesale copies of instruments allowing for easy swappage between manufacturers instruments.

I stopped playing this for quite a while because the John East circuit developed an issue on the mid-pot. It all worked, but periodically the bass would just emit a theremin type squeal. The thought of replacing the full circuit was a bit of a costly ball ache. At my wife's prompting, I spoke to John, he sent a replacement part and bingo, back in the game.

I don't currently own any basses that I hate, but I've certainly had some munters Used a '79 Precision for yonks; awful. Yeah, I could have traded it against something different, but I didn't.

It's all very sweet, but you can just imagine this lot becoming the darlings of a future edition of Later... and the audience of hipsters just whooping it up.

First day back at work for a week and I'm running the the Missing Persons back catalogue.

While I favour Gator bags, if you want a well made and sturdy bag for the stuff you're stating, check out Troop London. Cavernous, loads of pockets, different sizes/colours etc. great for just chucking stuff in. We've got three in different sizes; used them for gigs and holidays. Currently in Madeira and there's two up in the hotel room as I type. 10/10 https://www.trooplondon.com/collections/all-bags

My mum had a longstanding embargo on buying Irish after my brother got shot in Northern Ireland. It was actually said brother who talked her round: 'It was the IRA who tried to kill me,' he said. 'Not the people working for Kerrygold.'

Good grief. Everyone knows that once it's got a ding it's time to chop it in for something better.

On a bit of a Pavement twist at the moment.

Sorry, just looking to fast track an answer. Who were you playing with?

Never been pro, nearly signed to Polydor in the mid-80s but that fell through ('sorry lads, we're really only interested in your young, hot singer'). I do think of what might have been, but to be honest there's the niggle in the back of my head that only a tiny, tiny percentage of pro-players (or jobbing musicians) go on to make decent money and most wouldn't have anywhere near the level of lifestyle I have now. Weigh in that I would never have met my wife etc. Could I be a pro? That's another question entirely. About a year ago I joined a band that had what is colloquially referred to as having 'a known front man'. I genuinely liked the guy, but a musician he was not; I honestly thought that association would somehow be a step up to better gigs, better circles of musicians, better riders and getting paid (being married, I had little interest in the prospect of being surrounded by loose women). Even in his early 60s, he was still carrying the insane dream of making-it. If my experience is tantamount to being a working musician, then shove it really; the weekly Zoom calls analysing performance at the previous weekend's gigs were just awful, the little tantrums, the persistent tellings-off, lack of fun and endless repetition of the same fecking 13 songs were just nails in the coffin. God knows what it would be like working with someone really famous. George McFly punches would fly.

I don't know about anyone else, but those Jazz pickups in soapbar routs really isn't doing anything for my OCD.

Gig money? People get paid for gigging? 😂

Reckon most people would sooner pay a slightly more premium price for something that doesn't really deteriorate. I love these quotes about Keith Richards' guitar tech and killing a set of Elixirs in four gigs. Go you!

Here's the original LongEvo thread. This answers where I got mine from (promotion through a business called MSL Pro, who haven't visited Basschat in a propriety basis since June 2021); reading through the thread, it's odd how time/hindsight changes/refreshes/blurs opinion. When they were fresh on, I seemed perfectly happy/positive about pretty much everything but fast forward to January 2023 and while yes, they'd been on the Hamer for a while (by comparison the Elixirs will have been on everything else for way longer) my observations were: ...had a couple of four hour rehearsal sessions - took the Lull to the first one (Elixir Nanowebs) and the Hamer on the second (LongEvo) - by way of observation the LongEvos were a little like running through treacle. They felt a bit sticky (for want of a better description) if that makes sense...I tend to do a lot of work at the nut end and slide up to dusty end for embellishments, but they were quite hard going. The Elixirs are almost self-lubricating by comparison.

There's a thread elsewhere here about LongEvo strings, I can't wholly remember how I got a set of them, but they were on a reduced introduction price. Might have been a direct purchase from Mark Bass. Anyhow, moving along. Interesting enough experiment, can't remember which bass they went on. They were OK, but given there's several manufacturers making coated strings, there just didn't seem to be anything in the product that made me think it was worth repurchasing. Just reverted to form and went back to Elixirs! You get what you pay for.