Doctor J

The Homeball is playing riffs and asking questions in the shadow of Slievenamon, dipping a genre-fluid toe in every musical orifice. This is I Ask The Questions, the debut album, an all-original collection of songs of selective appeal for your listening pleasure.

Most heavy metal musicians never would have had realistic expectations of the fame and wealth the chosen few of them eventually achieved. Metallica were a genuine niche band until the very end of the 80's. The kind of success they eventually found would have been completely unthinkable when they were making their first four albums. When I first saw them on the AJFA tour, they were playing a 1500 capacity venue. When I last saw them on the Black album tour, they were playing an 8000 capacity venue. They were the exception, in the genre from which they originated. Megadeth were probably the next most commercially successful but they were not even close to what Metallica, as they became 'tallica, achieved. The rest of their peers never achieved commercial success at all and mostly broke up by the mid 90's. The point being, unlike a lot of genres where being commercially successful is a genuine prospect and probable aspiration when the band starts off, in Metal, outside of the pouffy hair stuff, that was completely unthinkable until the start of the 90's. Success would have come rapidly as a stranger and they were ill equipped to cope with all it entailed.

Which record?

It's mega wild to me that people are so quick to judge and libel people they've never met with no foundation 😉

Oh, and anyone who wants to actually watch "the DVD" in question and see Newsted in context, it's from the 1989 Seattle concert during the intro of... wait for it... Am I Evil! Clumsy theatrics? Yes I am! Nazi rally? No it isn't. He also wrote this song for Flotsam And Jetsam but, sure, I suppose one frame from a 2.5 hour concert shows where his heart truly lies? https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/flotsamjetsam/derfuhrer.html

Metallica aren't racists, FFS. Hugh Tanner, the original guitarist, is black. He and Hetfield were in Leather Charm together before they joined Metallica. Kirk is Filipino. Trujillo is latino. They wouldn't be the first and won't be the last dopes to make that gesture in a poor effort at humour, especially in the past when enlightenment wasn't as easy to come by as it is now. Humans start as idiots, but we learn, some quicker thank others. Thankfully, most of us don't have every indiscretion photographed, ready to be dredged up out of context for some ill-guided outrage. Let's not forget this guy married a black lady, much to the delight of his family.

On a tangent, Mission to Lars is a nice companion piece to SKOM.

I read it as Tim is talking about the two players in his band before him and not that he played From Out of Nowhere with Metallica 😉

It's a brilliant movie, an account of people who made some of the most revolutionary, high-quality music of the 80's, now creatively adrift with seemingly no ability to connect with that which fuelled them and made them great in the first place. They were so, so good. It's amazing to see just how mediocre they could become once the fire went out... and it has stayed out. Neither Newsted nor anyone else would have made a difference.

This type of misalignment costs big money when seen on 70's Fenders. Loosen strings a lot. Loosen neck screws just enough for the neck to move about. Pull the headtock to the left as you're looking at it in the pic, i.e. in the direction of the E string. Tighten neck screws. It won't totally resolve the issue but might mitigate it a little bit. Failing that, get some cocktail sticks and plug the existing scratchplate holes and redrill. You should be able to get it centred with all the old holes covered.

The bass should be a tool to bring joyful experiences into your life, it should never be something which causes you to lock yourself away from joyful living.

Did you have 38 shit years or did you have some craic along the way?

If you avoid the fashionable brands, you can pick up genuinely great used instruments for less than 500 quid. If you choose to spend over that, that's great, but £1200 is still a hell of a lot of money and far beyond what you actually need to spend to buy a particular level of quality.

The terrifying thing is there should be the Fernandes neck mated to the Mezeti body, equally or even more a mutation than this. Such a fetish for mating the wrong neck to an even more wrong body would make Mary Shelley cry out in terror.

In I go. About the song: The disintegration of the family unit due to overindulgence in technological quick highs can only be stopped by those who truly value and embrace the human experience... or forget to charge their phones. The tech stuff: Mostly done in Reason but a couple of different syths added and then mixed in ProTools

How close are the pickups to the strings?

Rumours of your demise have been exaggerated?

In Warmoth you cannot specify the heel size. They stick to Fender specs. "2.906" width fits neck pockets with USA Fender® original 4-bolt heel shape & dimensions"

The VM4 is the reversed P and MM pickup model? Is the tonal issue on all pickup selections or one specific pickup? Is the MM wired in serial or parallel or can you switch? If it's hardwired serial (which would give a mid heavy sound as you describe), adding a switch to allow you to change to parallel wiring could get what you're looking for very cheaply. If you like how the bass plays, I'd generally try to achieve what you desire on that before spending big money on something you may not get along so well with.

Not every Youtuber knows what they're taking about 🤔

With a 1.5" nut. Many blasphemies have been committed on this day.

For those who got offended by the first two... P salute you!

I wonder does X mark the spot where the headstock snaps off?

Sterling by Gibson?