Cato

Sounds to me dangerously close to a 'tonewood' debate which will inevitably lead to endless arguments over claims which are more or less impossible to satisfactorily substantiate.

Meh. Spice Girls had great PR. But All Saints had much better songs.

There's a sort of harsh nasally just about breaking up tone that I associate with the early 70 rock music which I think comes from people trying to get a distorted tone out of amps like Fender Twins which were specifically designed to not to distort. That's what generally springs to my mind when I when people talk about 'bad' guitar tone. Although, having said that, I've just listened to a few early Kiss and Alice Cooper tracks which I thought were clear examples of such a tone only to find that I actually liked the guitar tone on all of them. I think this comes closest to what I'm rambling on about.

I doubt there's a water tight 'correct' legal answer to this. There's too many aspects of the restrictions that are untried and untested in a court of law. I suspect if the police or other authorities decided to take action the event organiser would be culpable before the band (unless the band are the organisers) but there's no way to say whether the police might press charges against the band and whether those charges would result in convictions if they were contested in a court of law until it actually happens. With a lot of the pandemic restrictions the decision as to whether to take any action against any breach is mostly at the discretion of the officers attending the alleged breach. In any given situation they might do nothing, ask people nicely to disperse or start issuing fines. If you look at fines for breaching the restrictions in different areas of the country there are a lot of inconsistentencies that suggest some police forces are much more relaxed about fining people for breaches than others. TL:DR version. I don't think anyone knows.

Charvel have really upped their game over the last few years. They've obvously not forgotten their rock and metal origins but I think the more recent models of both bass and guitars have potentially a much broader appeal.

That makes perfect sense, thanks.

I've had mine from new since 1992. The red ones cames with black knobs. Where I think it mainly differs from a full fat Status is the preamp. I've never been sure exactly what the 9v active preamp does. The controls are volume, pickup pan and tone, there's no EQ. There is something going on with the tone contol,on mine when it's on full it adds an almost painful amount of treble, it's the only bass I own where I have to roll back the tone to get a 'normal' sound. Anyway, preamp mystery aside, they're great instruments. Enjoy.

Doing a bit of googling it looks like they had some sort of relationship with Fender. There's a bit about the brand here https://www.tdpri.com/threads/fender-sunn-mustang-club.312516/

I don't know anything about them other than I remember seeing them in the Argos catalogue in the early 90s I'm pretty sure they were priced at between £80-100.

I'd happily give the award to Prince. Not only was he technically superbly proficient he was also a top class songwriter which, for me, tends to be the area where most 'guitar heros' are weakest. In a nutshell Prince had the talent and he used it to make music that large numbers of people actually wanted to listen to.

I think these dsys the quality of budget instruments is such that there is not a huge difference in sound between a Squier Jazz and US Fender Jazz. They're both going to sound fundamentally like a Jazz. The extra £1k+ gets you a beter feeling instrument with better, quieter electronics and a few other things that are nice to have, but with in a band context I think most of us would struggle to tell the Squier from the Fender in a blindfold sound test. But I think that's sort of missing the point, I always think that with expensive basses it's more about the feel and, to a lesser extent, the aesthetics of the instrument.

A Stingray has always been on my bucket list. They do seem to be heading further and further away from my wallet though. Tbh I struggle with the idea of spending £3k+ on any factory produced instrument. In that price band you're moving into Sadowsky territory not to mention any number of slightly less renowned boutique names.

I reckon the guy on the gold P probably sounds brighter because he's playing about an inch closer to the bridge than the first guy.

I'm quite surprised that The Simpsons thought Morrisey was relevant enough to parody. 30 years ago definitely, even 20 years ago maybe, but in 2021 I'd be suprised if many of their audience under 40 has more than the vaguest idea of who he is, let alone know the man well enough to understand what's being parodied.

I'd be interested to see how the 'no wear' promise holds up against the reality of hitting a set of round wounds that shares the same basic properties with a carpenter's file several hundred times every time you play the instrument.

If you haven't been following the various post brexit threads, other than the slightly unpredictable additional handling fees from the courier, the single biggest potential headache with regards to ordering from Europe seems to be claiming back the VAT direct from HM Customs and Revenue should you need to return the instrument.

How do you tell at what point an instrument has been set up? I bought a skinny stringer from Guitar Guitar a couple of weeks ago. It arrived well set up (the intonation isn't perfect but it's close enough that I haven't got round to tweaking it yet) but in that price bracket I'd expect it to leave the factory like that so I have no way of telling if GG did any work.

I remember seeing the ads with Billy Gould in guitar mags in the 90s. The pics posted here look far nicer than I remembered it being from that ad. *quickly googles' Hmmm. Reading his wikipedia entry (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Gould) it seems, despite his promise in the ad, he did indeed switch. Edit. Put correct wiki link in

Are you leaving the cable plugged into the bass when you're not playing? On most active basses plugging the cable in switches the preamp on. If you leave the cable in then the preamp is always on and the batteries will run down quickly. This is one of those things that generally no one tells you when you buy your first active bass. If you are unplugging the bass between uses then your batteries should be lasting many months, if not years and if that's not the case then you need to find someone to have a look at the electronics to find out what's causing the issue.

Bit of an obvious one, but have you tried new batteries? Low battery power can cause a preamp to distort.

Another one for the Chilis I'm afraid. This time at Coventry Ricoh Arena in 2006. First problem was that it was the Stadium Arcadium tour, in hindsight that was the point I lost interest in the band, so any set showcasing songs from that album was never going to be great for me. Second problem was that the band just didn't seem into it at all. They were barely interacting with each other let alone connecting with the audience. I think at that point in the tour John Frusciante had already decided to leave so I suspect relations within the band may have been somewhat strained. The third issue was that I'd seen them on fantastic form at Slane Castle in Ireland a few years before, playing what was basically a greatest hits set, which just made the Cov gig seem even more disappointing by comparison.

With regards specifically to Fender I spoke Andertons a few months back about a skinny stringer I wanted to order. They told me that during last years lockdowns Fender sold out just about their entire planned 2020 production run of instruments across most of their lines over the course of just a few months. In terms of numbers of instruments sold 2020 was Fender's biggest year ever since they started as a company. Andertons have been unable to get more stock for 8 or 9 months because there was no stock to be had anywhere in the Western hemisphere. Fender have now completed extra runs of part of their 2020 catalogue so some of those have started to trickle in to UK retailers and more will arrive over the next few months, but combined with the whole shipping container shortage, which is another issue, supplies are likely to remain intermittent for some time. I'd guess production of the 2021 catalogue may also have been delayed. I'd imagine all the big guitar manufacturers are in a similar position.

I was never that keen on the body shape but I've been intrigued by the 3 pickup configuration since I saw this a few years back.

The really odd thing is that this isn't a one off novelty item. The company behind it makes a fairly extensive range of acoustic and electric double neck body shapes in various colours based on the same principle. Which sort of suggests that there's some level of demand for these things. Or the whole thing is some sort of ingenious loss making money laundering scheme. Scroll down the home page for the full parade. https://busuyiguitar.com/en/

About £7,500 for the ones that aren't listed as 'price on request', that's puting them well into Fodera territory.