Doctor J

Your mother should know

I go with what looks nice 🙂

If the truss rod snapped you'd expect all the strings would go flat and the action to increase by about 1cm. Are you sure it's really a truss rod issue?

Martin Ain's "mad monk on meths" was more to my tastes

More than once. The one which sticks out as the earliest was Watchtower - Control and Resistance. I love that artwork and it was on Noise records, where a lot of bands I liked at the time were based, so I reckoned it was worth a punt - at a time and age where disposable income was still a fantasy. It's still one of my favourite albums of all time.

How do they compare to a Spector made in the US though?

There's assembly, yes, but aren't necks and bodies painted and finished by hand too? Don't the same manufacturing processes and automation exist in the USA and Mexico too? I don't, for a second, think your average factory worker in the US or Mexico is living high on the hog, either. Anyway, you can see where I'm going as you expanded through the rest of your post. There's not a lot of the £99 going to the people who made it.

I'd love to know how much they're paid per hour. How many hours of manual labour do you reckon go into your average P bass, let's say since it's as basic as it gets?

Oh? How many smartphones are manufactured in the west? You have a choice, when it comes to instruments and the point of the entire thread is that the choice exists, hence the skewed comparisons.

You may consider Custom Shop prices outrageous but when you consider the instruments they're replicating - mass produced by largely unskilled labour using some of the cheapest, most plentiful woods at the time - sell for multiples of even Custom Shop prices, it might change your perspective, no? What's worth considering is how cheap some instruments are, not just how expensive others are. There's a whole lot of exploitation built into your £99 Harley Benton. When you consider the cost of the raw materials alone, never mind the taxes and duties, the transportation, everyone taking their cut along the way, it does't leave much for the poor bastards who built it, does it? Comparing the cost of something made where worker's rights don't exist and living standards are barely above the level of vermin and using it as means to gripe about how expensive instruments made elsewhere is just a little misguided, in my opinion.

Live At Leeds, The 'Oo, the various incarnations of which eventually wound up with pretty much the full gig. Honourable mentions to: Ronnie Scott's Quintet - Never Pat A Burning Dog Rush - Rush in Rio EST Symphony

Sleep in the Button Factory in Dublin, around 2012ish. Stupidly loud. I had good ear plugs and, if I hadn't, I would have left. There's rock 'n' roll level and then there's permanent hearing loss level and Sleep were wafting in the latter. I was amazed by how many people were there without hearing protection.

One's a P, one's a J, they're not the same size. The location of the bridge can be somewhate inconsistent too (think why they needed long G screws). The only accurate measurement is from a fixed point in relation to the scale of the instrument and they are the frets and the nut. The other witness point, the bridge saddle, is an adjustable, movable part.

I've never gone to a gig expecting to be disappointed. It's sneaky. It always takes me by surprise.

It'd be more accurate if it were aligned with a fret (look at the 12th fret on each bass there) but it's pretty much what I was thinking was the setup.

With that one, it looks like the E-A coil is in the traditional Fender spot and the D-G coil is much closer to the neck than the usual reversed P. Anyone got one and measuring tape?

It's better to burn out than fade away. What a legacy to leave behind.

Well done all, another great selection. I just couldn't get time, motivation and inspiration to align this month. A hearty doff of the cap in the direction of all of you who did. It's not easy.

Ah, yes, I had forgotten about them. Limp Bizkit several years ago. Some Kerrang package tour. Utterly horrible. Nekrogoblikon, crap metal with some extra from The Office in a goblin mask. Then Crossfaith, I think it was. Japanese crap metal but ridiculously loud and with seizure-inducing strobes every three or four seconds. There was another band whose name escapes me but they were patrons of the trough of crap metal, too. Then Limp Bizkit, who I had high hopes for, but they were rubbish, just disjointed and disinterested. I left at the start of the second Nirvana cover. It still annoys me that I paid into that one.

Technotronic Jungle Brothers

Pop Will Eat Itself Hardcore Superstar The Housemartins

There are enough 70's Les Pauls, Gibson ones, which were made like that, too. Play authentic, play a pancake Les Paul.

Doom

Paper and poly gives quite a bright tone but paper with nitro sounds like St. Leo singing in the shower on Christmas morning using primarily his left hand to get a lather going in his side hair.

There's now a Formula 1 driver born this century.