Russ

Yep. And I guess "Wongo" sounds like that dodgy payday loan company! Open to alternative naming suggestions though. If all else fails, it can be Susan. Or Dave.

Yep. They only made a small number of them. They were selling them exclusively through Sweetwater (big US online instrument retailer) a few years back. I'm not normally into sparkly finishes (I really wish they'd make a natural-finish Bongo with a pretty exotic wood top) but this one is stunning. My other three are CAR, firemist purple and stealth black.

... it'd be a "Wongo". I've always wanted a Wal, but I'm not prepared to wait three years for one, nor do I have a spare £6,000 knocking about. However, I have four MM Bongos. Yes, I know they look like bog seats, but I love them and they sound immense. So I came up with the idea of "Project Wongo" a little bit Wal, a little bit Bongo. I ordered a pair of Martin Herrick's fantastic multicoil pickups and a Lusithand filter preamp, and they're in the process of being fitted to one of my Bongos. The Herricks are a bit thicker in dimensions than the stock MM pickups, so a little bit of routing was required, but they're in, and the preamp is mounted but not yet wired up. Here's the progress so far: S The bass should hopefully be wired up and back together over the weekend - full report coming then. I might even make a video!

I saw him do a clinic thing at a pub in Croydon many moons ago. Lovely bloke who really knows his s**t. I’m about 3500 miles too far west right now to make this one, but his clinics come thoroughly recommended!

So me and the band are looking into doing some livestreams from our rehearsal space. We’ve tried it before, but the sound is atrocious when you just try and do it from your phone. What would be an appropriate setup be to livestream with decent sound and picture quality? I’m guessing a decent HD camera, a couple of good mics with a mixer, an audio interface and a decently powerful laptop to plug it all into? Also, what software would you use to control it all (assuming I use a Mac)? I’m pretty tech-savvy but online video is still pretty new to me! Any suggestions would be welcome.

There aren't really any UK builders doing "off-the-shelf" stuff. Chowny maybe, but they're pretty much the only ones. Almost all the rest are custom shops, and you'll be playing specifically what a particular buyer has specified for their personal tastes. There's nothing stopping you from contacting Shuker, Sei, GB, Overwater, etc and asking them to make something that fits your tastes. My Sei singlecut 5 is anything but polite, because it was designed not to be!

I was happy to hear that Shergold have returned recently with a new line of guitars. Supposedly there are basses coming in the near future. https://www.shergoldguitars.com/ It seems they're going the route of using Far East manufacturing, so they won't be made in the UK, but it's still good to hear that a storied name in British guitar manufacturing is back in business.

There's a bunch of bands and musicians I no longer listen to because of their beliefs and positions on various things. Various metal bands who have espoused racist or fascist beliefs, The Who, anything involving Morrissey, and, most recently, Iron Maiden, due to Dickinson's support of Brexit. I've loathed Mustaine for years, and, as far as US artists go, Kid Rock and Ted Nugent can both go and fornicate themselves.

Mustaine is a bone-fide drooling loony - conspiracy theorist, bible-basher, bitter ex-member of a band that went on to be huge, and former drug addict and alcoholic, all rolled into one angry old ginger. The fact that he went on Alex Jones' show should be reason enough to avoid anything he says or does. A lot of "tr00" Metallica fans draw the line at anything that came after And Justice... - for Megadeth fans, it's everything that came after Rust In Peace.

It's the way with metal bands - while they're on the way up, they're angry and channel that anger into their music. Once they "make it" and they're rich, they've got nothing to be p***ed off about anymore and the music loses its edge. Happened to Metallica, happened to Korn, happened to Slayer, happened to Megadeth, kinda happened with Slipknot too (although they had other things to be upset about). Metal is in rude health though. There's some amazing younger bands out there right now. I thoroughly recommend the new Lorna Shore album, "Pain Remains", as a shining example of what modern metal can be.

If you like The Commitments, check out a more recent Irish film called Sing Street. Set in the 80s, lots of New Romantic-influenced music, great young cast, with a few notable older cast members like The Commitments' Maria Doyle Kennedy, Jack Reynor and Aidan Gillan. Lots of fun, and some great tunes. And it'll make you never want to set foot in an Irish Catholic school!

Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. I've seen reviews saying they've gone "old school" with this song - "old school" must refer to the 90s now then! Between Load and Reload, there was maybe one full album's worth of decent material.

I've got a M1 Pro with 16GB. It handles literally anything I can throw at it. If I look at Activity Monitor while running Logic, with EZDrummer 2, AmpliTube and about 12 tracks with a whole bunch of soft synths, the CPU usage was... 6%. That's insane. The Air uses the same processor, so you should be good. The new Air with the M2 would be even better.

Definitely a Peavey. Probably a Millennium, with the sparkly red finish, although the Fury, Milestone, etc of that era all had that body shape. I think the Furys all had humbuckers rather than J pickups though, and the Milestones all had scratchplates.

I hate this sort of discussion. Charles Berthoud is an incredibly talented musician (who can most definitely play 'regular' bass), and him and his ilk aren't out to steal your gig. If that's not what you want to do, fair enough, you do you, but don't knock others who do enjoy that sort of thing, and who have put in the practice to be able to pull it off well. Remember, as a member of a band, you're the entertainment - lots of people like slap and find it entertaining. Like anything musical, don't over-egg the pudding, but don't discount it just because you can't do it!

Not everyone hates them. I have three.

That's the one. I also recall seeing a picture of him playing a black fretless one, with a single pickup, like the one that Tony Franklin used to play in his Firm days.

Didn't Jaco have, or at least, play a Jaydee too at one point? Vaguely recall seeing pictures of him with a fretless one (only a 4-string though!).

I'm sure they still have the router templates, etc to make them and could if they wanted. But I guess they're overstretched with what they've already got on their plates (all MK-style Supernatural 4-strings apparently, based on this thread. )

I also disliked the headstock on the Sadowsky Metro Express basses, but not because of the shape, because of the tacky decal. Looked like a 12-year-old had made it with a sheet of Letraset. But they're fixing that. I'm quite sensitive to headstock shapes and details!

The top horn on those was very short, they didn't look like they would balance well. Probably designed to be played up at armpit level, a la Mark King. As I said earlier in this thread, it's a shame they haven't really continued to evolve the designs. Since J-type basses are kinda the thing right now, a new and updated Celeste (better balance, lightweight design, etc) would have seemed a pretty sensible move for them. I guess they have enough work making their classic designs (as this thread proves) but it'd be nice to see them "widen their remit" again.

Nice upgrades. But I wish they'd revise that headstock. It's always been fugly and isn't getting any less fugly with age.

He was rocking the Status Matrix 5 in that video. I think he’s currently using the Jaydees for Level 42 but he still plays the Statuses regularly. He was using the Status Kingbass when he did the Taylor Hawkins tribute show in LA a couple of weeks back.

Best Jazz sound I ever heard was a USA Jazz with Delano pickups (the ones with the big, MM-style polepieces) and a series/parallel switch, set to series. Sounded somewhere between a Precision and a MM and was absolutely thunderous.

Look how many times people have said that about Jaco. Hasn't stopped his son playing Fodera 6-strings. Even MK plays a 5 sometimes! EDIT: Video evidence.