Doctor J

Been here, life's too short. Filter it down to what you enjoy and keep doing that. For me, it's writing and recording, love it, all the joy of new music with none of the baggage of being stuck in bands with people who need to sort their f***ing lives out.

Oversinging has very much become a thing people think they need to do, all the time. It needs to die in a ditch.

Yowzah!

A bit more information would help. First, where is the fret buzz, everywhere across the neck or specific areas, towards the nut, towards the neck etc? When you say "totally straighten the neck out" - how much of a gap is there between the bottom of the string and the top of the 8th and 9th frets if you hold down the string at the first and last fret at the same time? Ideally, the neck would not be set totally straight but there'd be a little bit of a gap, the witdth of a business card, less than 1mm in this area. Are the strings buzzing on the first fret when you play an open string? This is the only reason you'd think about replacing the nut - provided the neck relief has been set correctly and is not bowed back. Don't replace anything for now. Until you confirm this is not a setup issue, you'll only waste money by replacing parts which don't need to be replaced. First things first, get the neck relief right, as described above. Then report back.

https://www.canalquarter.uk/jackyp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Stone_Cherry

I think I bought a lawnmower from Salt Raspberry, many years ago. Nice fella.

Not hot pink but it's a start https://www.zikinf.com/annonces/annonce-2417837

Nice. The original Arpege body shape is fantastic. It's a shame, but understandable, that he reined it in a bit with the later models.

Imagine getting frustrated and worked up about kids starving to death and swearing on TV at 7pm, yeah, what an insensitive, scruffy oaf. No class at all.

Trade it for a Sadowsky PJ.

Another Vigier convert here. No truss rod, a neck that just stays as it should regardless of season is a wonderful thing, so this would interest me greatly. Starting with a Fender compatible neck makes sound business sense, not just for the amount of big F basses out there but the aftermarket parts realm mostly lives here too. Beyond that it gets into the realm of personal preference. My own preference is for 38mm nut width and Jazzish shape overall, banjo sized frets, no fretboard dots or inlays, just high-contrast side dots. The headstock would have to be somewhat sympathetic to the design of the bodies it goes into so, keeping that Fender pocket in mind, something spiky or oddly misshapen (hi Klos) might not work. I'd go for a tilt-back design too, regardless of overall shape, to alleviate the need for a string tree. Why progress one way but keep a workaround for bad design in another?

"Golden era" is generally a load of s***e used in ads to make the seller's instrument appear better than the countless other versions of the same instrument available, but it is entirely made up. There hasn't been a bad era of Japanese instruments, they have been consistently excellent since the late 70's. If you can, try both instruments and see which you prefer. If you can't, pick one and don't approach owning it with the notion that something needs to be replaced before you even get your hands on it. Play it, get to know it. If something isn't working out then, by all means, consider replacing parts but at least play it first and understand what needs to be replaced and why.

It's interesting how the signature market has split in two directions. It always used to be the artist's vision of their dream instrument, usually (but not always) a standard design with custom tweaks like pickups, wiring and hardware, an instrument designed to facilitate the needs and unique playing styles of established iconic musicians. Since fake wear became a popular thing, signature instruments have drifted to a point where it now also means replicas of standard instruments with no real tweaks other than imitated wear. EBMM are stroking both sides of this particular piglet, with the likes of Pino and Cliff Williams on one side and the radical designs they've built and put into production for the likes of John Myung, John Petrucci and St Vincent, among others. Being honest, the replica instruments do little for me, particularly when you can buy actual instruments from the same era for a lot less. Getting your hands on what exceptional musicians have done to push beyond traditional designs from the previous century is far more interesting, to me at least. 6k seems crazy for this as, once you start playing it and putting your own dinks and scrapes into it, it becomes less and less Pino's and more yours, which is the opposite of what you bought it for in the first place.

There's no doubt budget instruments are better than they were, but they're not on a par with high-quality builders have put out, like some of the brands I mentioned earlier, for example.

Buying a new Fender is a gamble 😂 We're at the point in time where superb instruments made by the likes of Hamer, Ibanez, Warwick, Jackson/Charvel and many more have reached vintage status. Like I said, a bit of nous can get you into the vintage world for not much money and get you a superb instrument too.

It looks like the Toxic Avenger if he were a banana. Love it!

Probably my favourite bass of all, tonally, and that one is quite the looker. Well done.

Certain brands are expensive, yes, but vintage stuff is not, by default, expensive. Anyone with the nous to avoid the obvious can bathe in vintage gear all they like for not too much outlay.

I've seen several former instruments of mine relisted at over double what I sold them for - at prices they struggled to sell at - and then struggle to sell again at the new higher price. I've had a Stingray, a Peavey Sarzo, an Ibanez Roadster, an L-1000 and, most recently, a Warwick Streamer LX, all show up at over double their previous sale price, usually a year or two after they left my hands. Are these collectibles? I don't think so, I just think Reverb has given a global platform to set ridiculous asking prices which then seems to affect the general prices of these things. Generally, though, desirability seems to really go on brand name, rather than instrument quality. There doesn't seem to be a correlation between how well built an instrument is and the size of the market interested in it. With more obscure brands, you might find an obsessive or two who are prepared to pay up but, if you want things to move, I think you're safer with the big-name unit shifters.

I always enjoyed purposefully antagonising them. That could be done a number of ways but, usually, it would involve musically heading places they were not expecting to be taken, which kept it exciting for the musicians, too. It also allowed more room for self-expression, which was always nice. I understand this is different for the covers game, though. If you're playing for the money, you can't really do much outside the well-worn tropes for fear of alienating your brand and affecting future bookings, so I suppose you're relying on one of the group with charisma to continually work the crowd to keep them engaged and that energy should feed back to the performers. Everybody should play some part in that, however, and take their eyes off the neck dots now and then to look at, and remember to perform to, the people they're playing in front of. There are few things duller than a band with eyes glued to the necks of their instruments.

SHARRRROOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNN?

Celebrate the best of Swedish: SAABBA

Try listening 2 minutes 20 seconds into it, perhaps.

I heard they order a lot of pizza. Coincidence? 🤔