Piers_Williamson

One of my favourite albums of all time is Shadows and Light. It also made me a life long fan of Pat Methingy and Lyle Mays (the latter now sadly RIP)

What should have been a fantastic Fender Precision Lefty, except it wasn't. I think it was probably that I didn't know how to play it! I ended up hot rodding it with a di Mazio pickup, putting a Badass on it and stripping the sunburst ala John Deacon. All to no avail. 40 years on, I acquired a 77 Precision which must be pretty close to my original (bar a maple v rosewood neck), and it is the business. In the intervening 40 years I've learned to play a little bit better too.

Fat fingers. Here's the truss rod

Thanks all, so to continue my education

If you saw this on a pre-CBS bass and knew that it had been re-fretted, what would you look out for?

there is only one type of biscuit....a chocolate minty one....

That has a bit of a John Entwhistle vibe to it doesn't it (except I think his was Rum and Coke and had a straw)?

Did the Ramones have an unusually undersized fan base?

I'm waiting for the Alembic he used to play with Judie Tzuke to come up for sale (Although I'm a leftie so no use to me)

Well I think Duke Ellington’s title was well deserved

😔 Not good. My go to amp/speaker repairer. I would be interested in who is recommended. If they had to clear their gear out of their premises, it must have taken a mega effort! It was a proper Aladdin's Cave

Interesting. I have a Handbox R400, where I assumed the pre-amp stage did much the same job as the Noble, so I plug either my Wal or my Fender straight in. I tend to use the Noble as a front end to my Phil Jones (the combination is absolutely brilliant, but not as loud as the Handbox) or my Mesa D800+ (which got rather sidelined by the Handbox!)

As a fellow Noble fan, I'm curious as to what you like about the combination with your active basses. I primarily like my Noble with old school fender passive pickups (having listened to Tim Lefevre). I also discovered it works well in combination with a compressor, but I find my Wal and Musicman pretty overpowering in combination. Any advise?

I have a fantastic Noble valve pre-amp which has an equally fantastic valve DI

I really like the way the neck of a Stingray really sits under your hands, almost like I imagine a short-scale would (albeit I don't own a short scale). Much more forgiving to play long sets with.

I'm afraid Alicia Keys song will be forever associated with part of South Wales for me, so I count that as an honorary GB song

If it were me I would have a luthier do the cutting for you. It's not a time consuming or expensive job for someone who knows what they are doing.

Once upon a time I had an active Lakland five string that I thought sounded really 'naselly', other than through an old fashioned valve rig. For better, for worse, I sold it to a fellow basschatter in Spain, who was in raptures about my (ex) bass. Roll the clock on a few years and I was very fortunate to acquire two Wals (at 'player' rather than 'e-bay merchant' prices). I thought both sounded quite 'bassy' 'til I started playing about with the pickup trim pots. Then I discovered that if I cut the bottom end and turned up the pick-attack pot I could make both sound like a Jazz and/or a Musicman. I wondered whether as a (getting deaf) 60 year old one's sense of enjoyment of the sound of a particular bass can be adapted a lot using active basses? (I own three passive Jazz basses as my reference)

There is a band called The XX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_xx Does XXXX plus the XX comply with the Rules? (Not quite but close)

Love Shack B52s

I watched this yesterday, went back to the 'Shadows of Motown' score, and my jaw dropped, particularly with the bridge section. what an astonishing phenomenon Jamerson was, and Julia Hofer is a pretty understated player that covers some great tunes too.

Mouldy Old Dough was apparently the 42 best selling single of the whole of the 1970s in the UK...so there you go!

Does this count as 'novelty', or 'Slade on anti-depressants'?

I do wonder how much it weighs, and are both basses 'on' all the time?