Russ

I had a very short-lived endorsement with Warwick back in 2003, back when the band I was in at the time was doing OK, and Warwick had very few UK-based endorsers. I got them to make me a 5-string Streamer Jazzman for 20% below trade price. I got it, and the neck was... horrendous. Super-thick and hard to play. Sounded good, but it made my hand cramp up! I ended up basically saying to them, "thanks, but no thanks" and called things off, and I sold the Streamer for quite a lot more than I paid for it, so it all worked out in the end.

My sister-in-law is trans. I’ve heard some of the cr@p that she had to put up with. Some people just can’t live and let live - how does someone they don’t know dressing differently and using different pronouns affect them at all?

Lobster's back. Something seems different this time, maybe it's the studio?

I know he just toured with them for the first time in years. I think Josh Paul was playing with them before Rob came back. Hopefully they'll do some new material. Tye Trujillo, Rob's son, is also shaping up to be a very good bass player. He toured with Korn after Fieldy went on hiatus, played with Suicidal Tendencies after their bass player, Ra Diaz, went off to Korn to replace Fieldy on a more permanent basis, and has his own band. I think it's cool that they share a love and appreciation of Jaco despite coming from two different musical worlds - Marcus was talking about Jaco being his mentor and friend, and Rob made a documentary film about him and is the owner/custodian of the Bass Of Doom!

Great vid. Lots of fun to see Marcus rocking out with Trujillo during the jam at the end! Trujillo needs a new side project - I want to hear him doing his thing like he did in Infectious Grooves, Mass Mental and so on. Musically, he’s a bit wasted in Metallica, but I believe the salary is good.

I think Ampeg have a bit of a reputation problem right now, thanks to their previous generation Class D stuff. That’s why I’m not getting one (yet). Plus, I don’t think it’s a particularly attractive-looking thing. Big, sticky-out knobs, fiddly, fragile-looking little switches, and so on. I can overlook that if the sound is good and it’s going to be reliable, but, a) nobody seems to be able to tell me if they sound any good, and b) they haven’t really been out long enough to have a good measure of their reliability. Additionally, it’s a bit of a harder time to be an amp company. With the rise of modellers, IEMs, etc, less people are buying amps these days in general.

Always thought he sounded more Midlands than Yorkshire. Although the "BEHS" thing does suggest Yorkshire! EDIT: Bradford, apparently. I stand corrected.

Great player. But I find his "comedy Brummie" schtick tiresome and unfunny. Same reason I have no time for Davie, despite him being a good player.

Nice, but I’m really not on board with the whole headless thing. They’ve always just felt completely wrong in my hands, ever since I first tried an old Hohner Jack headless in the early 90s. I tried out a Strandberg bass last year, and it was a lovely thing - light, punchy and comfortable (my back loved the lightness!), but it still had that same issue as the old Hohner. The balance is off, and, for your left hand, it just feels like you run out of neck. I can see why they did it - if they want to use that same singlecut body shape they use for their guitars, adding a headstock is going to unbalance it. I’d have hoped they’d come up with a better design to compensate for that and still have a headstock.

My Sei singlecut 5 is a wonderful, amazing bass that I will never part with, but it’s had various neck issues over the years - that’s despite having a theoretically very stable wenge/bubinga construction, with carbon reinforcement rods. I had to have compression fretting done on it, followed by sending it back to Martin & co for a neck “reset”. It’s been behaving itself ever since, so hopefully it stays that way.

Now that these have been out in the wild for a while, has anyone got experience with them in a live environment? I'm wondering if they have inherited the reliability and QC issues from the old Portaflex and SVT-7 heads. Basically, I'd love to buy one - the Ampeg tone is peerless to my ears, but, as someone who's owned both a PF-800 and an SVT-7 before and had them both crap out on me at gigs, I'm cautious and maybe a bit sceptical. I've heard that since Yamaha bought Ampeg, things have got a lot better, but I'd like to hear some first-hand experience. I've heard a couple of scare stories, like the V12 being unusually quiet for something with so much power. Anyone?

There's been some decent rock stuff that might appeal to the white, male, over-40s crowd in Eurovision over the past few years. I'm white, male, and 51 and I thought Baby Lasagna from Croatia were good this year, Voyager from Australia were fantastic last year (Alex Canion from Voyager is a hell of a bass player too), Sam Ryder did a great job the year before, and Maneskin brought the glam the year before that. It's usually in there, in amongst the assorted "quirky" Eurovision fare.

Sam had stage presence, charisma, talent, and, most importantly, a really good song. He deserved his spot. When the UK delivers the goods, people vote for us. Most of the time we don't! Olly's song was forgettable, had no hook or memorable chorus, and, yes, the general homo-eroticism of the performance might have turned some people off. The staging was cool though. Switzerland earned their win. It was the only song with a proper "earworm" hook, and the staging was incredibly clever. And I also liked the Croatian entry - like a more poppy Rammstein. Ireland's Bambie Thug was also a great, very original performance and a good song. They're actually pretty talented - if you look on Youtube, you'll find videos of them performing some of their songs solo on piano, and they're great.

Always wanted a '72 Jazz. Then I played a few. The ones I tried were all massively expensive, incredibly heavy, the condition was far beyond "relic", into the realm of "battered to sh*t", and they all had that horrible gappy neck pocket that a lot of 70s Fenders had. Maybe I just never found a good one, but I'd prefer a 70s reissue at this point! There's probably some other, more esoteric options out there rather than an old Fender, but I haven't come across anything I'd actually want.

I used to have a SVT-7. And I ran into the cutting out issue during a gig, in the middle of the first song. Which is a shame, as it was a fantastic-sounding head, with just the right amount of "hair" to the tone, and gobs of power. I got it fixed and immediately sold it on. Supposedly the defect has been addressed on newer versions of the head. I've been tempted to get another, but it's a gamble I don't think I want to make. Apparently the new Venture series heads nail the SVT tone, but I've not had a chance to try one yet, and it'll be a "simulated" version, since they have no valves. Now that Ampeg is part of Yamaha, the QC is supposedly much better than it was. But, y'know, once bitten and all that.

It's a cool toy, never seen a 3D configurator before. Very nicely done. But I'm a Bongo guy - once they start offering those through the configurator, I'm in. My bank account will hate me though...

Great idea, but it kinda works backwards - the fingerboard should come up rather than the frets going down, otherwise the action is going to be too high for the fretless mode. The Novatone swappable magnetic fingerboards that were a thing back in the early 90s were cool though.

Tesco Value, not even Tesco Finest?

I was in a band 25-odd years ago, and the guitarist just woke up one day and decided he didn't like rock music or playing the guitar anymore. Took his guitars, amp, etc down to a pawn shop and sold it all that same day. It wasn't the sort of band where any of us would have been easily replaced, so we just called it a day. Not nearly as dramatic as some of these other stories, but extremely random, and we were all quite hurt. However, he's picked up the guitar again in recent years, and is in a band with our old drummer.

I’m sure half the stuff in NHME was nicked. I bought some nice stuff from there pretty cheap back in the day. But this was before you had the likes of Chancellor playing them - even Mick Karn was using a Klein instead of his Wal, Percy Jones had moved to Ibanez, Geddy Lee was back to his Jazzes, and so on. They were almost terminally uncool back then.

I passed over a 4-string Mk2 in Notting Hill Music Exchange back in the mid-90s for £250. That would have been one hell of an investment.

Thanks for the clarification, Alan. That’s the other route to getting to filter-based multicoil Nirvana, buy an ACG.

Pretty sure it's a Pangton too. https://www.lefay.de/index.php/EN/bass_models/pangton

There are three that I can think of. Lusithand Devices make the NFP range - they're sonically very similar to the original Wal preamp, but with a wider Q frequency sweep and no "pick attack" control. They made sure to reproduce details to the degree of matching the level of harmonic distortion the preamp generates. Second would be the East ACG EQ-01 - this is the preamp that ACG fit into their high-end basses, with their multicoil pickups. Again, a pretty close facsimile of the original Wal design, but a little more "hi-fi" and maybe slightly closer to Alembic's approach. Then there's the Underhill range - they offer modular preamp components, including filter-based tone controls. I've heard good things, but have no direct experience with them. Currently, if you want an aftermarket Wal-type setup, the Lusithand NFP combined with Turner multicoil pickups seems to get you closest to "that" sound.

My bad. Maidenbower. I lived in Winchester when I was a kid, so I guess that town name stuck around in my head. Plus I guess it shows how memorable my time in Crawley was...