NancyJohnson

Always felt a bit underwhelmed with Fenders. Owned three or four in the hope that they'd simply fit in, but nah. Just on the subject of Jaguars, the ones with all the switching options, reckon we're all of the belief that we'll be flipping the switches with authoritative command mid-song and dialling up these fantastic new sounds; truth is we'll find the sweet-spot and rarely move away from that setting, thus rendering the options redundant. Personally, if you have a desire for a Fender, buy used or better still buy a Lakland or a Sandberg. These are way better instruments.

Shudder To Think. What a band they were.

I do find gear with provenance to be a bit of a weird thing. The sadness is that many fans will not have deep enough pockets for (most of) this stuff and inevitably they'll end up in the hands of the Hard Rock Cafe or as vanity purchases by people who have little or no intention of ever playing them. I'd put my hat on most of this stuff never seeing a live stage again. Shame.

I suspect he's not particularly concerned what the woods are, so long as it's stable and straight. I can set up/level etc. without too much issue.

I'm curious, has anyone bought one of those Chinese sub-£100 Fender-styled necks off eBay? I have a project incoming from a mate and have been asked to source an inexpensive neck ("not a maple board").

I saw this posted on Anderson's YT channel and honestly couldn't be ar$3d with it. The bass videos aren't anywhere near as good since Nathan King left/stopped. (Mersey Rod/Drain Unblockers had just posted and that's way more entertaining than these two.) I know a lot of it is in the edit, but there's absolutely zero chemistry between these two and a distinct lack of worldliness from Cici. Christ, even my wife watches the Captain and Pete stuff.

I played one of the Tributes at a Dawsons store when they came out. Action was about 15mm at the 12th fret. Makes you wonder whether guy doing QC that day was allowed to bring his guide dog in or not.

Cort ... I'd like your basses a whole lot more if you stopped cutting this bit out of the headstock.

If you're making a true copy, the LS9 headstock of below. It's the same as all these Epiphone Les Pauls, the headstock is wrong. They seem to be able to do it properlyish with Flying Vs/Explorers/Thunderbirds, but can't resist putting an adapted headstock on anything 2 or 4 aside.

The main problem with Epiphone is the headstock. I'm sure they're reasonably adept at creating fairly adept body-copies, but in the past they just knob around with the design. Do you really want P/J pickups (again) and this munter of a headstockon the Ripper/LS9?

Anyone ... Make a reliable, small (DG M200 sized), affordable, loud poweramp. Something that's small enough to sit on a board. Just a power switch, a line in, a Speakon speaker output and a big feck-off volume/gain knob. If you want to get all fancy, a 9v/18v output as well.

How did I settle on my string choice? The destination following a long journey; I use Elixir Nanowebs on most of my basses, I have a set of Markbass Long Evos on one. For me, it got to a ridiculous point where I could be spending £60-80 a month changing strings once they became too ponky. I'd be using D'Addario or Dunlop (or whatever was in my box of stuff) at £20 a pop and these lasted about as long as the shelf life of a Boots prawn sandwich. Yes, Elixirs are expensive, maybe double+ that of budget brands, but they last for ages and retain their zing. (Likewise goes Long Evos.) I don't think I've changed any strings this year.

When these bridges came out (about ten years ago), I swapped out three or four on my Thunderbirds. The Hipshot was a country mile ahead of the stock three-pointer. Moving slightly forward, give some consideration to the Babicz replacement, which in my opinion is a country mile better than the Hipshot. Interestingly, the design kind of apes the old three-pointer as well, so it looks a bit more in keeping with what it's there to replace.

You're not John Berry, are you?

My Vitriol

There was a big rumour going round that they were supposed to playing the Legends slot at Glastonbury this year. Sadly not. I suppose he's earning so much swag off Merry Xmas Everybody, there's little need for him to go out and do it live. Noddy has just recorded something with Brian Eno.

My 2 cents. We are just too obsessed with these upgrades. I'll admit that I've swapped out plenty of bridges over the years this was more to do with comfort and adjustability rather than whether I was going to get more or less ponk from the stock bridge. I've actually cut myself on high grub screws from a BBOT, so it was a no brainer to upgrade to a Hipshot Kicka$$. Swapping out Thunderbird bridges to Babicz units was also more about the bridge (literally) falling apart when you took the strings off and the general lack of adjustability. We only seem to think about tone in isolation; once you're playing in a band context you simply will not be able to hear any difference.

I know what I've got, even though when I was totting them up in my head, I did forget about one two. Interestingly, at one point I had so many Gibson Thunderbirds it was a little difficult to keep track of what I had; I had 10+ at one point. All gone. There'd be a gap in the rack and I wouldn't know whether one was missing or not.

Can anyone give me a quick process for getting audio up on streaming services?

Blimey! I have no idea what year this was, early 90s? Nothing on the internet. Saw this show with a couple of mates - we were all Sweet fans as kids - it was just a truly harrowing freak show; Connolly got through it somehow, he was being heckled by a group of people. It was just awful.

Tourtech stuff is great, I have a couple. Great value and to be honest probably not so different from manufacturers OHSCs.

A generalism for plywood basses always seems to allude to the body being manufactured from sheets of material akin to that with which you'd use for roofing a house; that said, moving to the neck construction, Kubicki Factor basses (both the Key and Ex models) both utilised a plywood-neck of 32 strips of maple. I've never heard anyone moan about these.

Nope. These were part of the Fender Fotoflame series. The top is a print. On paper. Not even a veneer.

Well here we are; eleven months of living with this bass. I think I made reasonably decent progress for the first four months. We had builders in in April, so all musical activities were put on hold, then I damaged my knee, had an operation to fix things and I'm still recovering from that - it's just uncomfortable to stand for long periods. If there's an upside, I put in a lot of hours early on and I don't believe my recent lack of playing has been a negative. My competency on regular bass translated across reasonably easy, I mean that element was more about playing vertically that horizontally. I've not bothered with the stand thing, but I will at some point, even if I need to get to a garage and get someone to weld metal for me.

I've got a NS NXT5 - my wife and mother-in-law palled up and got it for my birthday last December. I'd only played an upright on a couple of occasions prior to this; it's a curious thing, there was this desire to explore upright basses at some point and I went with the 5-string, because hell, why not? I played it a lot for the first few months - then April time we had the builders in, so it got difficult to play, then I tore something in my knee (operation) and standing for long periods is still painful, so it's been a bit neglected of late. Had a noodle this morning and don't think I've really lost anything from the first few months experience with it (except maybe the callouses on my fingers). It's the only bass or any sort that I have out at the moment.