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Doctor J

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Everything posted by Doctor J

  1. There is a teeny tiny difference between a Stradivarius and a Fender, even one where Leo grew the tree himself using only Holy Water.
  2. A genuinely terrible vehicle by any benchmark.
  3. Is it worth £9000 as an instrument? Of course not. Is it worth the money as an antique? Of course not. Is it worth the money due to the celebrity connection? Of course not. When you combine all these things is it worth the money? Of course not. However, we live in the age where the very worst 70's and early 80's Fenders sell, utterly amazingly, for two grand and above. Old Squiers fetch one and a half grand. Amazing. However, all it takes is one poor soul to believe in it and have the cash in their pocket (or the credit on their card) and there is great profit to be had. These are heady times for opportunists. Make hay, etc. The next old POS will be listed at 10k 🙂
  4. https://www.thomann.de/gb/hercules_stands_gs_415b.htm
  5. That 9k allows the new owner ride a wave of kudos earned by the original owner. "I bet that bass could tell a story or two." Yeah, but we'll all have to guess what they are because the new owner wasn't there.
  6. Those pics don't show a bass with low action. I would walk away. Lots of jibba-jabba with no actual evidence of any of it.
  7. With the bass plugged into an amp, tap the pickups lightly across the top with a metal screwdriver to identify the architecture and make sure both coils are working in both pickups. You should hear a hearty thump where the magnets are located and the coil is live. Are the bottom of the pickups open or sealed with epoxy. The Aria pickups from this era are well known for coils dying but they're epoxy sealed and un repairable. It's worth having a look and seeing if the problem can be fixed. The original pickups look like they're passive, there is no direct connection to the battery.
  8. Black is Pickup earth DPDT are serial/parallel switches Brown is north coil start White is north coil finish Green is South coil start Yellow is south coil finish If you've only got two wires on the new pickup then the two lugs on the right side of the DPDT switches as the pic is orientated, your signal and your earth heading to the volume controls, are relevant. The DPDT switches are no longer in the circuit as the new pickups don't facilitate coil tapping. Edit -> Actives usually have at least three wires. Signal, earth, and one which gets connected to the battery to power the active part.
  9. Not looking for philosophy or rented quotes, thanks, just righteous anger set to music.
  10. I suppose by recently, I meant within the last year, a reaction to the world as it is right now. There has been a lot of great music over the years, much of it still very relevant, but I want to hear the voice of the youth of today. Bob Vylan very much hitting the spot so far.
  11. In Winters of discontent of olde, a tradeoff was usually the generation of some great, angry music. A mate sent me a link to this earlier and I was struck by how little other protest/socially conscious music I've heard recently. Has anything else good come out recently?
  12. In Soviet Fender, Custom Shop customises you.
  13. Guitarists have double-locking, floating vibrato bridges, trans-trem bridges, countless active pickups, modelling and profiling amps. On the amp side, they're probably more developed than bass whereas bass is really only ahead when it comes to onboard EQ, something which hasn't really been embraced by guitarists. For every solicitor peddling fake blues on their Strat, there's usually a lad plodding away on a Precision beside him. That stuck-in-the-50's knife cuts both ways.
  14. This is a good place to start
  15. DPD, or any other courier, won't hand over cash. They'll contact you late into proceedings to say they'll pay by paypal instead. Then dispute it and get their money back.
  16. There's no reason for an active bass not to work with distortion. Every EMG equipped bass and guitar is active and lots of bands who use distortion use those pickups. I run distortion on passive basses, basses with passive pickups and an onboard preamp and basses with active pickups and an onboard preamp, I can't recall every having an issue getting good distortion. Your distortion effects are active too, don't forget. If you're one of those people who boosts the bejesus out of the low end on a Stingray type, then that might be your problem, possibly overloading the input stage of the effect and adding additional clipping where it is designed to be. Don't boost needlessly and perhaps turn the volume down or lower the pickup away from the strings to about the output level of a passive bass you like which works with the effect.
  17. Now, you say it's impossible to play at the first fret, but blame the nut. Do the strings choke when played open or do they buzz when you play the first fret. If they choke on the first fret when played open, have a look at how the E and A strings are sitting on the string posts. There is supposed to be a decent break angle of the string over the nut which means the string actually rises slightly as it leaves the nut. If the strings approach the nut quite straight, if the strings are sitting high on the tuning posts, they will choke on the first fret. Loosen the strings and push the windings down towards the headstock, then tune up, making sure they don't just lift again. It would be very, very rare for an instrument arrive with a nut cut too low. They usually leave them way too high. If they are ok when played open but buzz at the first fret, it's likely the truss rod is too tight, causing the neck to arch back slightly. The easy way to check is to sit the bass on your lap as if you were playing it and hold the E string down at the first and last fret. There should be a very small - business card width - gap between the bottom of the string and the top of the frets at around the 8th and 9th frets. If there is no clearance there at all, loosening the truss rod slightly should cure that. Take pictures and post if you're not sure.
  18. Factory setups are a waste of time. The temperature and humidity of wherever it was made and setup is likely entirely different from where you are, meaning it will go all out of shape by the time it gets to you. I'm guessing it was out of tune, too? Learn how to do a setup. It's very, very easy. There are countless resources on youtube which show how easy it is. If you can change a lightbulb, you can set up a bass. The neck will usually need a gentle tweak twice a year, anyway. Save yourself time and money for the rest of your life and do it yourself.
  19. Fret it. Play it. It's a mass-produced tool for making music, it's not the Mona Lisa.
  20. And one with Flotsam and Jetsam, three with Voivod, two with Echobrain, his own Newsted stuff, plus lots of guest appearances with the likes of Sepultura... Jason has been around.
  21. Same here, was abroad for the first two weeks and haven't had a chance to get anything done.
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