Cato

My main reaction is surprise that moving to full UK production results in such a relatively small price increase.

Generally speaking steel strung acoustic guitars are physically harder to play than electrics, they tend to have heavier gauge strings and higher string tension. I've always found it much easier to fret barre chords cleanly on electrics. Although as a longtime bass player I suspect fretting hand finger strength isn't going to be much of a hurdle for you. String gauge and type is all down to personal taste, although for a beginner you probably don't want to go any lighter than 10s, just because they'll be too easy to bend out of pitch when you're learning to fret chords.

I saw Jamiroquai a few times at Glastonbury in the early 90s. They were one of those bands who's albums I was never massively into but who's live show was just on another level. Every memeber of that line up was top notch even the didgeridoo player, with Zender's basslines being the engine that drove the whole performance along

With my active Deluxe Precision I always set EQ on the bass with the amp flat although I think that's as much down to convenience/laziness as anything else. The EQ on the bass is just closer to hand. I definitely wouldn't say the preamp on that bass is just for fine tuning, it's just not that subtle. As above though, no right or wrong answers here, just personal preference.

Don't want to speak too early but it looks like things are calming down in my little corner of Warwickshire. No queues at the Tesco forecourt in Stratford earlier this afernoon and none at the independent down the road from me, both still open. I suspect that the majority of those inclined to rush out and fill their tanks have now done so and the pumps haven't run dry. Fingers crossed anyway.

I suppose it depends how obsessive the person doing the tuning is. It's just about impossible to get any of my basses or guitars absolutely 'spot on' according to the tuner on my HX Stomp, they're always fractionally over or under the mark. The machineheads on the instruments just don't have the finesse to make to the tiny adjustments that would be needed to get them 100% on the money. Fortunately the Stomp also employs a traffic light system where the green light indicates 'close enough' and that's what I go by.

I imagine there will be a spot at some point in the room where the elements of the sound are in perfect balance. Everywhere else however.....

I have a similar thing with black basses with white pickguards. Doesn't mater if it's a vintage pre CBS precision in mint condition , it will still remind me of the Encores in the Argos catalogue when I was a kid.

Got to be the singer's dad. Anyone else and he'd be waddling down to Casualty to get the drumsticks extracted before the end of the song.

I can't escape the feeling that the combo is staring at me. It'll be an awesome little rig but probably not particularly lightweight, unless your Hartke 3500 weighs considerably less than my early 90s model.

That may be the first time I've heard church bells that weren’t jarringly out of tune with each other.

I'm disapointed but not suprised G&R were basically a one album wonder. Albeit that album was one of the defining rock albums of the 20th century so no small achievement. With the benefit of hindsight Use Your Illusion never really came close to those heights, and as for Chinese Democracy....least said soonest mended.

My guess would be that it was a joint project with a couple of students from her uni's media/perfomance arts departments. She does her experiment, they get to show off their skills putting together a glossy video, maybe there's a music production department that got involved as well. Costs are kept down. Everybody hands in a fairly impressive bit of coursework that ticks the right boxes for their respective studies and, as a bonus, gets to put creating a viral video on their CVs.

For the young 'uns (i think there's one or two BCers under 45)

What it mainly reminded me of was one of those Les Dawson piano skits. It's not just randomly bad, it feels like it's been meticulously arranged to be as jarring as possible. I'm not certain but I think some bits sound like they've been pitch 'corrected' to be further out of tune than they already were.