Doctor J

Just bear in mind that Paul Jackson wasn't playing a vintage bass when he recorded Headhunters. It was relatively new at the time. If you believe that a bass will change, tonally, over time then getting one from his era won't get you the sound you're looking for.either.

Bacchus 24 Bacchus 02 Standard 5

There are some amazing deals out there for late 80's/early 90's superstrats. I used to have a RG550 but found the wizard neck just too thin. Coming from a chunky bass neck to something like the wizard shape and back again just didn't work for my hands. There are other shred style necks which are much easier to adjust to - MIJ Charvel/Jackson in particular are very nice. MIA Hamers from that era can be had cheaply too. Amazing guitars. As for Floyds, they get a lot of bad press but that's usually user problems. They're very simple to set up and use but, if you don't take the time to understand them and set them up properly, you will find grief. I love them. Once you set it up well you'll find it hard to put out of tune. Change strings one at a time and it's a ten minute job. Easy peasy. If you do pick up an old one, try to get one with a genuine or Schaller made Floyd, they're beautifully engineered. Count on buying a new pair of stud posts - they're cheap and cure most tuning woes on older guitars.

I'm not a huge fan of singlecuts but that is stunning. Congratulations.

The last song on the album... actually, it's not even credited and hidden after a couple of minutes of silence... Ether Song by Turin Brakes stops me in my tracks every time and the way those first fragile chords sneak in genuinely do make the hairs stand on the back of my neck [media]http://youtu.be/qeyjeyzU1ak[/media]

That NS is stunning. Congrats.

That is very tasteful. Nice one.

Ah, didn't realised they had put out something new since Fugue State. Bought and downloading now

This is harder than it first appears... ok here goes Albums - Turin Brakes - Ether Song Coroner - Mental Vortex Atheist - Unquestionable Presence The Conotortionist - Language Steely Dan - Aja E.S.T. - Viaticum Joni Mitchell - Blue Trouble - Trouble Book - Captain Scott by Ranulph Feinnes

You just can't beat a good Jazz. I've been through a few over the years but I end up moving them all on after a while. The reason? It's this ESP I picked up in 1993. The guy I bought it off had painted Tank Girl, yes I know, onto it which had stained the gloss top coat so I sanded a lot of that off, down to the bare dull white which attracts all kinds of dirt and damages easily as a result. But it's been through countless gigs and rehearsals, always sounds perfect and it's the bass where I learned to just turn off the EQ. You don't need to mess around when the bass sounds good naturally. It took a while, and even old Fenders, new Sadowskys and more have come and gone in the meantime, but I realise that I'll never play a better Jazz bass than this so I've stopped trying.

I sold all my olg gig tees on ebay a couple of years ago as there was never a realistic chance of me fitting into them ever again - I started going to gigs when I was 14, so it's not all my adult belly's fault. I made over €700. Most fun was a late bidding war over an Iron Maiden Powerslave shirt which sold for over €100. Even a knackered, ripped Slayer tee made over €60. I bought a bass with the money. Everyone's a wnner baby, that's no lie.

Ah yes, another thng about old SBs... it can be a challenge to find one with both coils of the original MB pickups in working condition, you'll find lots of replacements like that one or ones where it all goes silent when switched to series

[quote name='pineweasel' timestamp='1448406099' post='2915262'] The string spacing is quite a bit tighter than a Fender, isn't it? [/quote] There are two different spacings on the old models. The ones with dots only have very narrow string spacing. The bridge spacing is about as wide as the nut. I believe these were intended for the domestic Japanese market. The ones with ovals and eyes were export models and had spacing closer to Fender, but not quite as wide still. They've very playable all the same.

Loads of my old tickets, some signed. I was quite tall as a youth so I have a pile of plecs and sticks from gigs in the late 80's early 90's. At one Kreator gig in 1991 I came away with about 9 plecs and a drumstick, IIRC. The crowning glory has to be, and I hope you're sitting down... maybe send the kids out of the room too... a £10 note signed by Shed Seven and their roadie Stan who, to be fair, was an amazingly sound man. In the interest of context I must add that it, coincidentally, was the night I discovered what happens when you mix lots and lots of vodka with about the same amount of Red Bull. A mate and I crawled, literally - as we couldn't really stand - onstage after a gig looking for drumsticks and, upon finding the stage bare, moseyed into their dressing room to see if we could get some there. They were sound about it and I got a couple of tasty jam doughnuts instead but... well, I don't have them anymore.

Odd that they've copied the headstock almost verbatim but put an odd curve in the arse of it. Overall it looks like a skewed and stretched jpeg of a real bass. Wide and short.

Chic with Bernard for sure. Metallica with Cliff. Megadeth with Poland and Samuelson I saw them play twice so not entirely playing by the rules here but I'd dearly love to see E.S.T. again.

I bring it right down to the fretboard, almost as if you fretted (I know) it at the nut. Since that's how every other note will sound, why would you want your open notes any different?

But many of those Japanese items were actually built to a high standard, which is why they're still in use. The same cannot be said for a lot of what comes from Ali Express.

The LE model has a two band pre amp. I've had a couple of three-band vari-mid models over the years and never really liked them. The AFR picks came in at that poimt too.They came in around 91, I think.

An old Ibanez SR800LE with Lo-Z pickups. There's a beauty on ebay but it's priced just a bit too high and the lad won't play ball.

A snapshot from earlier in the year

Ian Brown on his first tour after Unfinished Monkey Business came out. He had about 35 minutes of material and tried to make a 90 minute set out of it. It was so bad he played a woegeous cover of Thriller twice. Genuinely embarassingly poor, embarassed for him, his band, his family, the promoter and embarassed I had paid into it.

At a festival about ten years ago, I had some time to kill, nothing on the lineup at that time appealed to me so I wandered into the nearest tent to wait for a rain shower to pass over and was completely blown away by Mull Historical Society. I thought they were fantastic, having been put off by the name. Another terrible name band, Goatwhore - yes, that's right. They were support at a gig a few years ago and I was again completely put off by the name, had never heard them, but they have been one of my favourite metal bands ever since. Still think the name is utterly abysmal, all the same.

[quote name='Iain' timestamp='1448092845' post='2912949'] Loving that last one you made! J-P-J pickups are interesting - vol-vol-vol-tone controls? [/quote] Thanks. No, I have an EMG BTC preamp in there. It's Vol-Blend-Bass-Treble. The neck J and P go to a small three-way toggle switch under the volume control and the output of that goes to the blend pot - the bridge J is on the other side of the blend.