NancyJohnson

There used to be a time when shipping stuff in from Japan was worth the time and effort. Great exchange rates etc. I can say with some certainty that fully landed in the UK (so bass+shipping) was under £700; somehow or another I didn't pay any import duty on it.

The colour of those Thunderbirds was more ivory than white. This was mine. I bought it in from Japan.

So like Ticketmaster's Dynamic Pricing, then?

If a restaurant in a big city sold single baked beans on a cocktail stick for £2.00 each, some epicurean would be saying they were divine. Again it's all subjective and there's this correlation between price paid and justification. Charge £500 for a bottle of red wine vinegar and there'd be people queuing up to drink it, all saying it tastes delicious. I'm reminded of this:

If anyone on the Facebook massive is following this thread (and the mutual lovefest with me and John), seriously now folks, fire up Spotify (or whatever) and go listen to Heights...their Phantasia on the High Processions (etc) is a fantastic thing. Likewise, check out the two Rhoda May EPs on the same platform (347 and 589). Awesome band.

Me too. ☹️

I recall being at The Wilde Theatre for one thing where Al and another guy were handling sound, but can't actually remember if you were playing (jikes, sorry). It was an all day thing, but memory blurs...we saw My Never Time and a truncated set by the truly fantastic Rhoda May, after this we kept going to the bar. I saw you at the Cellar Bar, can't remember if this was with Tesseract ..Jay did two sets? Trust your recovery is going well (as usual mine!).

I'm sure I pointed a camera at Heights at one point.

Keith Richards and the X-Pensive Winos - Live in Boston 1993. God, it's a belter.

There's a similar thought to a different builder, here. I'm uncertain how many luthiers Jaydee employ(ed). When Mike Lull died a few years ago, his son Spencer took over the business; my understanding is that Lull had outsourced elements of the builds when demand exceeded the limits of the workshop. Spencer changed things by bringing work back in house and by stripping back the models they offered (focus is now on Precision/Jazz type models). He seems considerably more hands on from a socials perspective, too. From what I've seen and read, quality seems to be as good, if not better, than previously. Perhaps all it takes is new blood to take over. They know the legacy of the brand and want to invest in that.

Haven't most of us owned something that we sold cheap only see the prices go nutso? My old Travis Bean (sigh), that frankly terrible '79 Precision, all those Gibson Thunderbirds. Mass produced bass amps have little or no appreciating resale value unless they're old valve things like Matamps. I doubt any of the current production line Fenders/Gibson/MusicMan/Ibanez etc basses will be loss-making or worth anything long term. My belief is the money is in investing in short runs and decently built kit. I own a couple of Hamer basses, I bought one very cheap and am being hassled by two Americans who are in this odd bidding war, currently at $4k. My Mike Lull basses (one likely going up for sale shortly) were both built by Mike before he died, are certainly carrying ticket prices equivalent or higher than what I paid. Again, I'm getting enquiries on a Lull build from the US offering c.£6k. I suppose you have to realise one swallow does not a summer make; just because there's someone out there that'll pay over the odds for something doesn't necessarily make it a collector's market.

I've been using Elixir Nanowebs for yonks - Nickels and Steels (whatever is cheaper at the time of purchase). To be honest - and while using adjectives to describe a sound here - the differences are marginal. I'd say that a new set of steels may come over as slightly more brighter/zingy than a new set of nickels BUT if you were to randomly mix the steels and nickels, I doubt you'd really be able to tell the difference. The main thing is that the strings settle in and once they have, they don't really wear out like conventional strings and that's the main thing. I've never had strings last so long (I would replace D'Addarios monthly). I've had nickels on one of my Hamer's since October '23, still good. I put a set of 45-130 nickels on a Lull (sitting down?) in June '21, and they've still excellent. Steels on a Spector in July '24, still great.

A Growler means something completely different in these parts and I don't see any photographic representation! 😄

With hindsight, I'd say the most important thing with gear is just find a bass that [you] love the shape of, something that makes you actually want to pick it up and play, something that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck when you pop the latches on the case. This is one hundred percent the most important thing. 2nd bit of advice would be to take on board that they all, more or less, fundamentally sound the same out of the box. In general it doesn't matter what pickups you have installed. The sound is only really affected once you apply other elements (amps/cabs, stomps etc) and how you actually play the thing. We're just slaves to guitar and amplifier makers and the remoras that are making pickups/pre-amps.

I'm sorry, but no. Forget the actual bass or guitar that you're using for a minute, here. To get 'the Pink Floyd bass sound' (whatever that actually is), what is your signal chain? And, Roger Waters or Guy Pratt? My point is (and always has been) that, by and large, the clean tone of the vast majority of basses is more or less the same. In a effort to reinforce this, we did a blind test a few years back with over a dozen basses and the scores for identification were extremely low. Members here couldn't hear/tell the difference between Jazz or Precision or Rickenbackers or whatever. A Precision Bass alone will simply not give you 'the Pink Floyd bass sound' any more than it will deliver 'the Phil Lynott, Bruce Foxton, Steve Harris (etc) tone' without certain characteristics in the signal path. It's just a tool to facilitate it. Any bass will do it.

To be honest, I woke up too early and grumpy pants this morning . Then I scanned this thread. I'm also missing the Chelsea game this afternoon as I'm going for lunch with my brother in law.

Nope, but Mr Curmudgeonly is 😄

Just scanning through the posts here and the whole subject of chasing tone. Same old, same old. Never ages. OP: "I've been listening to a lot of <insert band here> and want to get a <insert bass here> or something that sounds like it." Replies: "Oh, he played a <insert bass here> and also a <insert bass here>. I had a <insert bass here> and put in a <insert pickup here> and it sounded <insert superlative here>. <Insert random photo here.>". Lads, we really need to stop chasing this ridiculous dream of tone perfection, because unless you have (very) deep pockets, you'll always be on the hunt and it will never end. I'll say it again and again; tone is subjective, your gold standard is someone else's iron pyrite. There's this allusion that sounding like Pino/Geddy/Jaco/whoever needs to be facilitated with the purchase of a triple-priced Custom Shop Signature model, but it won't. There's too many factors/nuances that go towards what they sound like from string choice, processing, signal chain, to the air that hits your ears. Go and watch some Rig Rundowns on You Tube. A good analogy here: I remember how sad I felt when, some 40+ years ago, I found that a lot of Geddy Lee's stuff was recorded on a (then) still relatively new Fender Jazz bass. I'd been duped because I was of the belief that it was a Rickenbacker all along.

As an aside, I detest Spinal Tap as much as Schecter. It's not amusing in the slightest (come on, it never was) and this whole breaking of the fourth wall and treating them like a proper band in the real world is about as hilarious as eating soap.

I'll share a story with you. In the mid-90s, a very close friend of mine was friendly with a guy fairly high up at Warner Brothers; after a Van Halen show at Wembley they went to the after show party. He explained there was a hired in covers band doing their stuff (tough gig!); they were 'a three or four piece with a guy playing a Telecaster into a little amp'. Van Halen arrive and naturally they're coerced into playing a short ad-hoc set and shouted out requests. My mate said Eddie just took the guitar, fiddled with the amp and the brown sound was there in a few seconds. They played a few songs and gave the instruments back. He watched the covers guitarist play the same guitar with the same amp setup and the tone had gone. There's some credence in the argument that tone is in the hands but there's also the thing about knowing how to get the best out of the kit you have. Tone, as I've said hundreds of times, is subjective. One man's ponk is another man's gold dust.

I'm reading a book about Fountains of Wayne, so it's somewhat fitting to be spinning their albums. Currently on Welcome Interstate Managers. I'm so happy they're back.

Been watching Matt Freeman's You Tube Channel; don't profess to being much of a Rancid afficianado but, the content is interesting enough, despite it being Fender-heavy. There's one video up about his pair of Rickenbacker 400* basses. I liked my 4003 when I had it, tonally it was full-on Rickenbacker out of the box, but Matt's black one was an interesting custom job. Replaced bridge, all the old plate/pickups removed and a Seymour Duncan pickup in the bridge, wired volume and tone. It did get me thinking. It wouldn't be too difficult to just take everything off and just wire in some quick connectors under the plate to facilitate an easy revertion-to-stock rather than breaking out the soldering iron every time you felt like swapping. It did make me question whether I should get another Rickenbacker. Hmmm.

I have a pair of Darkglass 1x12s. Why? Small, lightweight, capable. Can double up to make a 2x12. It's really just unnecessary (for me) to go bigger. No brand loyalty whatsoever.

Punters don't know or care, in general. You might (as mentioned in other posts) get someone in who knows their shizz and will go, 'Nice bass, man,' but beyond that, nada. The crowd watch the singer, lesser so the guitarist. Incidentally, years ago I did a gig somewhere in Kent @Wolverinebass was at that one. I took a Hamer (current worth, c.£3.5k), I overheard a conversation from the coked-up soundguy and someone else: 'What bass is that bloke (me) using?' 'Some cheap Thunderbird copy.' Half right, I suppose.

My basses range from a wonderful 1978 Aria Primary bass (a Precision copy that came as part of a £50 job lot on Gumtree) up to an equally wonderful £5.5k Mike Lull custom build. There's a bunch of other stuff in between. Given the amount of money I've haemorrhaged on basses over the last four decades there's a few things I've learnt: - punters don't care what bass you play, - punters don't care how you sound, - your fellow bandmembers don't care what bass you play or what you sound like, - all basses sound more or less the same. If I were starting over now, deciding on a preferred bass would be based around choices that on the surface seems to be fairly trivial; I'd decide what shape of bass I liked (Jazz/Precision-ish, Thunderbird-ish, etc), my preferred colour, preferred fingerboard choice etc. You want to love what the bass actually looks like to make you want to pick it up in the first place and, when it comes down to actually buying something, fundamentally make a decision on buying something you're going to love, cherish and keep, rather than falling out of love with it and continually chopping kit in in search of the dream. Ultimately buy what you want, new or used, but buy something that you adore and see yourself playing in forty years time. Had I gone with my gut, I'd have bought that white Gibson Bicentennial Thunderbird I saw in Denmark Street when I was 18 and I'd wager it would still be my #1.