Russ

She uses little teardrop jazz plectrums. She sent me some about 20-odd years back, when she was offering lesson materials by post over TBL (the mailing list). She just palm-mutes a lot. +1 on using thin picks. I'm a big fan of Dava Control picks, they're thick in the centre and thin at the edge, and they're flexible and bend a bit in the middle. You get the pick "click" then it rounds off nicely.

The Special is the current "regular" Stingray, with the new lightweight hardware and updated electronics. Shame they're only offering two finishes right now though. Maybe they're trying to push buyers down to the Sterling range, which offers more colours and finishes, and, thanks to recent updates, actually sound the part now.

Nobody's going to stop you if you are travelling with a guitar or bass. Lots of people do that all the time with no hassle. There might be some questions if you have amps, pedals, merch, etc though.

Wow. Wondering how he does the little tapping part? Let's not forget Bill Clements, who shows us how it's done with only one arm!

I'd say, if you can get your head around it, try the left-handed approach. I knew a guy who had lost his little finger in an accident, and, in addition to having lost the finger, the damage and subsequent amputation meant the ligaments and tendons around his ring finger were no longer as flexible as they had been, and the scar tissue on the side of his hand where the finger used to be was tough and limited the mobility of his remaining fingers. If you go the left-handed route, your fretting hand won't have any of those issues, and you'll only be using two fingers on your other hand (or just your index finger and thumb if you play pickstyle).

I'd be very interested in finding out how they behave in different temperatures and humidities compared to regular wood necks and full graphite necks. That's the killer app of a graphite neck for me - that they don't move or warp (or, at least, far less than wooden necks) in different climates. I'm assuming the graphite-wrapped necks might behave somewhere between the two - a bit like having graphite stiffening bars, but on the outside of the neck rather than the inside.

He's still making basses with graphite necks, but in small numbers. Not sure he's geared up for doing aftermarket stuff. He must also be around retirement age too (although that generally means nothing if you're in the US and self-employed).

Moses are no longer in the graphite neck business. They make carbon fibre speaker enclosures and violin fingerboards now. Shame. They had a graphite neck for practically everything.

I always saw Yes as basically complicated folk music, with more in common with Greensleeves and medieval madrigals than with rock, other than the instrumentation. Am I a big fan? No. Casual at best. But am I glad they exist? Definitely. And everyone likes Roundabout and Owner Of A Lonely Heart.

I don't think the graphite neck thing would have been a dealbreaker. Up until very recently, Status made replacement MM necks - the ones on the old 1980s Cutlass basses were made by Modulus, so I'm sure EBMM could have just paid Status to make some if it would have made a graphite Flea Bass possible. And wasn't it Status who made the necks for the NAMM 100 basses? I do remember hearing the stories about him wanting the whole Stingray line renamed to "Flea Basses", but I think even he isn't quite that arrogant! At the time, EBMM didn't do signature basses for anybody and they didn't want to start doing them, even though they'd been doing signature guitars for a while for Steve Lukather, Albert Lee, EVH and so on.

(dupe, sorry)

Most King Crimson fans are older, and still listen to their music on physical media (not to mention that KC only permitted their music to become available on streaming services less than two years ago). Same with Gabriel. Older demographic who still listen to CDs and vinyl, and who probably listen to Radio 4 in the car rather than music. Dream Theater have a rabid fanbase who buy physical media, and lots and lots of merch, whose age ranges from teens to sixty-somethings. Same thing with RATM. Remember when they had the Christmas no.1 a few years back? So I can't really take a statement that a band has had a large number of listens on Spotify as evidence of their "relevance" particularly seriously. Vulfpeck are a fun band. I like their live performances - they have a lot of energy and I like their staging. Joe Dart is a good bass player who deserves a signature instrument. But, if the instrument isn't very good, it makes the people who make it look bad. I don't think it was a good business decision for EBMM to work with him (or, more likely, the band's drummer who is in charge of all their business dealings). Commerford's signature Stingray is a regular Stingray with a built-in retractable ramp. Myung's Bongo is relatively close to the regular 6-string Bongo, but with passive electronics and a narrower neck (borrowed from the 5-string) with a funky dual-wood fretboard. Neither are as much of a departure from their stock instruments as Joe Dart's bass. When you start taking features away, you limit your audience. Instead of going so barebones, they could have just had a regular, natural finish MM Sterling with no scratchplate, but retaining the electronics and maybe adding active/passive switching. I dunno. The whole thing just seems hugely ill-conceived to me.

I think they're right to keep their signature basses to a minimum. Apparently a big part of the reason Flea jumped from MM to Modulus back in the day because EBMM wouldn't make him a signature bass. And he's far, far more visible than Dart, Myung, Commerford, etc. Although, if they're considering it, I'll have a Bongo 6 in red and black.

John Myung - bass player for Dream Theater (Grammy-winning prog metal band) Tim Commerford - bass player for Rage Against The Machine Probably not your genres of choice, but both massive in their fields with millions of record sales between them.

I believe he uses stock Stingrays with no modifications. Although he had that custom 3-string they made for him many moons ago (I think he lost it in a fire).

Joe Dart is a great player, but he's also kinda a "flavour of the month" player. He's to the 2020s what Stuart Zender was to the 90s, without the multi-platinum worldwide fame. His sig bass should really have been a Sterling By Musicman instrument. There are very few MM players who have the profile to do a proper MM signature bass justice. Obviously John Myung has one, Tim Commerford has one, and they should really do one for Tony Levin. Joe Dart isn't a patch on those guys in terms of visibility.

Chris Chaney has always used Aguilar every time I've seen him (once, many moons ago, with Alanis, and several times since with Jane's Addiction). Maybe he's endorsing Ashdown now? They seem to have got a few new people on board recently. Although, if that was the case, I'd be expecting him to be using one of the fancy new dual-VU ABMs rather than one that's 15-odd years old.

Lobster is a bit of an EBMM fanboy - he has a bunch of them. For him to be putting down an MM instrument it must be pretty bad.

Thanks for chipping in, Mike. Good to see you're still tooled up for graphite. I'll drop you a line on FB as I have something in mind, and there's no hurry! I remember a review of one of your Iceni basses with a graphite neck back in Bassist sometime in the 90s. I seem to recall an interesting neck/body join on that instrument too.

I saw the Kickstarter for those when they were first announced. They kinda lost me when they said they wouldn't be doing extended-range versions. I'd have thought many of the people who would be interested in something so decidedly non-Fender would be extended-range players, so I'd have thought they'd have done at least a 5-string.

Manson is majority owned by Matt Bellamy of Muse these days, and I'm sure his pockets are sufficiently deep. They're still making great stuff (I saw James Leach - ex-Sikth - is using their basses now), and the Wolstenholme/Status connection could make it a possibility.

I wonder if Jon offers them on anything other than the JJB range, or for necks with more than 4 strings? Last time I reached out to him about getting a quote he never got back to me.

I wonder how different they are to regular wood necks when it comes to temperature and humidity changes and so on - would just having the graphite wrap keep that in check? That, to me, is the killer app of graphite necks.

I was forgetting a couple of others - there's Emerald, out of Ireland, who mostly do graphite acoustics, but also do a nice acoustic bass, and they've done replacement necks in the past. And there's Basslab out of Germany, who make some crazy stuff (as well as some more conventional stuff). They use "composite", but it's basically carbon fibre. I remember trying one of their Soul basses, and the thing was unbelievably light. I think they're hollow.

Could have been. Might have to ask him. Weren't the Enfield ones just a graphite wrap around a regular maple neck?