Russ

My 2003 CAR Bongo has the full-size tuners (the other ones I owned had the smaller, lightweight tuners). Even compared to that, the Sterling ones look wrong, like the tuner shafts are too long.

It'd get us out of the "tariff trap" - almost all the wood that's used in the construction of the guitars comes from either Canada (spruce, maple) or South America (mahogany, rosewood). We might have to stop making guitars with Brazilian rosewood entirely because of the tariffs (we also use East Indian rosewood on some of the cheaper instruments). The stuff from Canada is partly covered by the existing USMCA deal (the updated NAFTA deal from Tangerine Palpatine's first term) but not entirely. Having another facility in Europe or the Far East would bypass all of this crap for rest-of-the-world sales. We used to have the old Sigma range made in the Far East (various places, mostly Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia and Korea), but we sold those off back in 2007 to some German company who now make cheap, Temu-level sh*t using the same brand name, which is a travesty. One of the best acoustic guitars I ever played was a Japanese Sigma DM-5 (basically a D-28) - every bit as good as the US-made instrument.

At the end of the day, all tax and NI ends up in the consolidated fund at the Treasury, where it's disbursed. A small percentage of NHS funding will come from NI contributions since it's all coming from the same bucket at the end of the day, but it's budget and allocations is based on a percentage of income tax, VAT and other tax receipts rather than NI. That's why when you get your tax document from HMRC every year, the NHS is a big slice of the pie on the pie chart. I work for a well-known US manufacturer of acoustic guitars and we're seeing a significant dropoff in overseas sales, to the point where we're considering moving some manufacturing out of North America (we currently have factories in the US and northern Mexico). Not only have our instruments become more expensive, people around the world just don't want to buy American stuff. Or, at least, American versions of American stuff - supposedly Fender Japan have seen a big surge of interest in their stuff this year...

I'd always encourage anyone who's not convinced by the 5-string experience to restring it with a high C and try it again. It becomes an entirely different beast.

I like the supplied gig bag, but, for me, the big oversight is that it doesn't have a shoulder strap, just a handle. For the good ol' one-trip load-in, I want the bass on my back, pedals/FX/head hanging off my shoulders, and I need one hand to drag the cab and the other to open doors! All smaller Class D heads should have a gig bag.

When people get their first Stingray, they always do the same thing, especially if it's a 2EQ - dial the bass and treble all the way up. Then they wonder why all they can hear in a band context is woof and click, with no midrange. So they sell it. Eventually, they discover that the EQ controls are kinda interactive, as you dial up the bass and treble, it actually sucks the mids out. So you end up only adding a tiny bit of boost to each, and, all of a sudden, you can actually hear yourself in the mix!

Also not a fan of flatwounds. They just feel wrong under my fingers and I'm not a fan of the tone in the slightest. If you like them, more power to you, but they're most certainly not for me. Precisions - love the tone. P-bass+rounds+pick = legendary sound. But not a fan of the look, dislike the feel, and I've never played one that balanced in a way that I'm comfortable with. Markbass heads - they were flavour of the month for a while and I dabbled with a Little Mark II back in the day. Found it a bit anaemic and underpowered, and kinda woolly-sounding (and that's with the VLE control turned all the way off). They also seem to break down a lot, and they don't fit them with universal voltage PSUs. Plus I'm not a fan of the gaudy yellow and green graphics. On the other hand, I like their cabs.

Back on topic, here's three of mine - I don't have the black 6-string or the purple fretless any more, but I do still have the CAR one:

NI pays for the state pension and various benefits, not the NHS, so that's not a good comparison. The NHS is funded from general taxation. OK, using current figures, a salary of £50,000 brings in £3,293 a month, or £39,521 a year after tax and NI. That's an effective tax rate of 20.95%. Using today's exchange rate, the equivalent US salary is about $67,800. So let's pick a state - let's say Virginia, that's a middle-of-the-road state in terms of state income tax. Adding up federal, state and FICA (basically NI) taxes, you end up with $52,728, an effective tax rate of 22.23%. In some states, it'll be a bit higher, in some a bit lower. So. not a great start for the US. That amount of tax only covers healthcare if you're a military veteran (the VA), so poor as to be indigent (Medicaid), or pension-age (Medicare - which has a whole different bunch of requirements). The way it generally works, assuming your employer provides health insurance, is your employer will pay a percentage of the total premium - typically 50%, leaving you on the hook for the other 50% which comes straight out of your pay cheque. Some employers pay more than that, but 50% is pretty standard. That number is subject to how many people the insurance is covering - might only be a couple of hundred if it's just you, up to well over $1k for a family, and, like I said above, the insurance premium is only one payment out of many that you have to make. There's also various levels of insurance, the availability of health savings accounts, and all sorts of other nonsense. The whole thing is a colossal cluster-fornication. And add in that the cost of living is probably about 50% higher than the UK... yeah. You see where I'm going with this.

Back then the exchange rate was in the UK's favour - it was nearly $2 to £1, so it seemed very cheap. The weekend flight to New York to buy cheap stuff was a thing, where you'd save more than the cost of the plane ticket, but that's most definitely no longer the case. People in the UK don't believe me when I tell them about the US medical system - even with insurance, you have an excess ("deductible") you have to meet before they pay anything. After that, you're still having to pay co-pays - in our case, it's $40 for a GP visit, $75 for a specialist, and anything the doctor prescribes is subject to the insurance company approving it (there's a lot of "computer says no" going on). And there's 26m uninsured Americans, with a large number of the rest being under-insured. The stress of dealing with the medical "system" over here just makes sick people sicker. Yes, the NHS has its issues, but you'll never be panicking about paying bills or worrying about an insurance company's algorithm deciding you can't have a particular procedure or medication. Went to Austin a few years ago. Cool city, lots of music, good food, very geek-friendly, quite student-y. But you don't have to go far to be reminded that you're in Texas - all the shops with "no weapons allowed" signs, gigantic megachurches, insane weather (including hailstones the size of cricket balls), the unbelievable heat, and so on. Nice enough place to visit, but I certainly wouldn't ever want to live there. Especially with kids. Anyway, oh yeah, Bongos...

Given my situation (Brit living in the US... for now), the cost of living over here is astronomical. Almost everything is more expensive, with the exception of petrol and some consumer goods. And the consumer goods are getting more expensive because a certain Tango-tinted sociopath decided to add an import tax to everything not made in the States. I earn quite a lot more here than I ever earned in the UK, but have less disposable income. Groceries/shopping - anything from 50% to 100% more expensive, for sh*tter food. Medicine - don't go there. Bills - energy about the same, phone/TV/broadband much higher. Taxation - once you add up federal and state, not much different in my income bracket. Property taxes - dependent on location, but makes council tax look like a bargain in many places. Loads of "stealth" taxes too. And then, of course, you have health insurance and all its associated expenses, which is just plain usury.

Not sure I've come across any replacement MM pickups that use neodymium magnets - they're all ceramic or alnico, and hence don't nail the Bongo sound. If anyone knows better, please let me know - might sway my decision to get one. Noll do a 4-band EQ that Klaus can configure with the Bongo frequency centres (for reference, they're bass at 40Hz, low mids at 400Hz, high mids at 2.5KHz and treble at 6.3KHz, all at +-15dB).

I'm a Bongo afficionado and have owned four of them (I still own one). Probably the best-sounding basses I've ever played, with the neo pickups and the 4-band EQ. The Sterling ones look nice enough, but I'm not massively enthused by them. They won't have the sound, plus the full-size tuners look weird and make it look like one of the dreadful AliExpress Bongo copies (see below). It might make an interesting mod platform though, especially for those who want to try the whole multicoil/filter preamp thing. One of these with a set of Turner MM-sized pickups and a Lusithand preamp would be a very interesting beastie.

I don’t have a Z3 (yet) - was thinking of picking one up as a modding project, specifically to put one of these necks on!

Probably no worse in terms of build than an old Washburn Status. The electronics are going to suck though - they always do. These Chinese instruments tend to be quite nicely built in terms of woodworking, but they always have bloody awful pickups and electronics. But at least the pickups tend to be standard size so they're easy to replace.

@Kiwi What's the headstock shape, standard MM style? Also curious as to whether the neck length, size of the heel, etc would be compatible with a Sire Z3...

If you listen to that isolated track, there's some fills around the 3-minute mark that definitely mark the bass out as a fretless. It's not super-mwah-y, but the smooth slides give it away. Skip ahead to about 3:20, the end of that chorus has a few bits of slightly dodgy intonation! It's definitely a Stingray too - that sound is extremely distinctive. And, to my ears, the tone sounds like it's coming from a studio valve compressor - an old Neve or Drawmer or something like that (probably a Neve, Drawmer were never particularly popular in the US). Flea did quite a few guest appearances back around that time, and apparently he rarely used an amp - another track with a very similar sound was Freeway from Porno For Pyros' second album (which also featured Navarro).

It was a fretless Stingray, and I don't think any amps were involved - I remember reading a BP interview with Flea around the time that came out, and he talked about it, and that he went straight into the desk. In that isolated track, you can definitely hear that characteristic Stingray "thwp" when Flea hits his dead notes. I don't think it was as quick as they suggested though, because they didn't have much to work with - a basic arrangement, chords, drums and a vocal track, so Flea and Navarro had to work out the parts on the fly in the studio. Knowing Navarro, he was probably at the studio long after Flea had left, doing overdubs and fiddling with reverbs and delays. Most of the rest of the album was Lance Morrison, a prolific LA session player, on bass, but Chris Chaney played with her live for quite some time.

Well, not just basses. Used to have a couple of them, but they ended up getting lost, left at gigs or whatever. I went to get another one not all that long ago, and they're impossible to find now.

Was always fond of the venerable Catch-O-Matic. But I don't believe they're being made any more (unless someone knows differently - if so, post a link!).

For years, I coud sing, or I could play bass. I could do these things individually quite well, but putting them together was a different story. For me, it's all about subdividing rhythms. Learning which beats the vocal parts and the bass fall on. If you're just plugging straight eighths on a simple progression, you should have no problem since there's a bass note on every beat, but, once you start making it a bit more rhythmically complex, with gaps and different length notes, you have to start thinking about where the bass part and vocal intersect and diverge, and you practice the hell out of those bits. Just to get the basics down, play ham-fisted, thumb around the neck, and use a pick since it's a bit easier to keep the rhythm. Then refine from there - put your fretting hand into the proper position, drop the pick (unless you don't want to), and start putting the gaps in, while keeping the vocal part consistent. Don't be afraid to look at the neck, but not all the time as your head won't be in a good position to sing (chin up, loosen that jaw!). I'm not there yet, and I'm still far from Geddy territory, but I'm much better at it than I used to be, and this is what's helped for me.

FGTH played Two Tribes, with more or less the same arrangement as the recorded version, on John Peel in 1982, before they got involved with Trevor Horn and ZTT. The band, outside of Johnson and Rutherford, did not play at all on the album version - it was all session players.

Yep. I've got a Squier Contemporary Tele for when I feel the need to do the skinny-string thing. Looks, feels and hangs like a Tele. But it's got pretty hot HH pickups so it sounds, to my ears, like an SG!

It's a brilliant bass part. It's a shame the album version of the track had synth bass instead of a proper bass guitar track. It also reminds me of how many people were influenced by the whole post-punk/goth thing - the P-with-a-pick midrangey tone, the melodicism, the high-register fills, etc - straight from the Hooky and Gallup school of bass.