meterman

Thank you 🙏🏻 The Filthy Six are like a proper grown up version of what we were trying to do, except they’re a proper band and we were just a couple of herberts with a Tascam portastudio and a crate of Skol. 😂

I had Fender flats on my last 34” scale bass and they cost £20 I think, off eBay. The tension might be a bit much for some folks but I thought they were nice to play and they recorded well. They broke in really quickly too. I had a set of Picato flats on a vintage Commodore bass that were great for the money (less than £15) but for short scale I’d go with La Bella or D’Addario chromes again, they’ve always been great. And sometimes you can get deals on them online. Think my last set of Chromes were £22 with an eBay voucher? Not bad, considering they’re still on the bass.

I still don’t know much, if anything, about them now 😂

Yeah, the strings were ancient when I got the bass so I’m not really sure if they were original to the bass or just worn out? There never was much sustain to it anyway, I used to have to compress it like mad whenever I recorded with it. The bass and it’s ancient strings made it onto a few records but this one is pretty funky. Sort of like Beastie Boys instrumental vibe but done on a 4-track cassette recorder instead of a Hollywood studio. It all kicks off around 1:15...

My first bass had flatwounds on it. It was a short scale Shaftesbury Tele bass (pictured below) bought s/h for £65 in 1990. I’m not really sure but I think they were ancient Rotosounds, but I’m certain someone on here would be able to identify them from the yellow silks. I took them off once to put fresh strings on before going in the studio but the new strings were awful, it didn’t sound like a duff 60s bass anymore, so I fished the old flatwounds out of the bin and put them back on. Normal duff 60s bass sound restored! 👍

+1 for the Minutemen, and “Public Image” has to count as one of The great punk basslines

Definitely The Stranglers, often the bass would be the hook of the song. Great band. Also, Jon Watson’s playing on much of the early 999 records is great. Sulphate and John Entwhistle appeared to be his main influences: Always was a fan of Paul Gray’s playing, especially in the Damned and Eddie & The Hot Rods. Distorted Rickenbackers galore: And one of my all-time faves, not just for bass, but also punk triangle playing: There’s probably millions of more recent ones but I’m an old git and the old school punk stuff always comes straight to mind

Also, “The Meeting Place”. Never mind the mullet, what a great bass line... and the Epiphone Newport with the batwing headstock 🤤🤤🤤

The Dukes Of Stratosphear - What In The World??...” Side note: Over a decade ago I had a short lived p/t job selling instruments (the last time I did anything that resembled a real job really) and I met Colin Moulding / The Red Curtain. He was looking for “one of those old sixties Vox basses like Bill Wyman with all the buttons on it and the skinny necks”. He was quite softly spoken and seemed actually a little shy, initially it wasn’t easy getting a conversation out of him, but we had a chat for a couple of minutes and he was super nice. He was polite and quietly friendly and I was polite, and quietly awe-struck. I’d met plenty famous people before and rarely (if ever) been star struck, often it’s no big deal, they’re just other people. But this was Colin Moulding! Of XTC! So I took his phone number and told him I would call him if a 1960s Vox bass came in. Before he left, I told him his playing was always amazing but especially on “What In The World??..” and he looked a bit bemused* but said, “Oh yeah, er, thanks” and that was it. A few weeks later I’d found a 1960s Vox bass, possibly the Wyman model, but definitely with THE skinniest neck, so I phoned Mr. Moulding and told him. He sounded quite interested when I was telling him the details etc, so I was happy to be able to help out. The Vox bass didn’t hang around long at all though. Pretty quickly I sold it either to Sébastien Tellier or his touring bassist, can’t remember which now, but they were super nice guys. Don’t know if Mr. Moulding ever found the Vox bass he was looking for, but anyway *A few years later I was looking at the reissue of “25 O’Clock” and the notes for “What In The World??..” said the bass was by... eh.?? Sir John Johns..?? Andy flipping Partridge!! One of my favourite recorded bass parts ever! Darn. It was a bit like finding out your dad is actually your uncle, or something. No wonder CM looked bemused when I told him it was my favourite of all his playing 😂 In my defence, my default setting is “bit of a div” but I did feel embarrassed about it later. Andy flipping Partridge though!!! And I still want an Epiphone Newport with batwing headstock. 😎

Some of my favourite recorded bass of all time. Dave Richmond rocking out on the Burns Bison while Serge gets all whispery and weird. There’s a great review of this album where (translated into English) the reviewer calls it, “music for middle aged perverts, by a middle aged pervert” which sort of nails it.

Ohhh, “Never Mind The Bollocks” ❤️ I had a uk Virgin 1st press, plus a red/green UK repress, a couple of USA copies, an original Virgin tape cassette copy... I was obsessed with that album, still am probably. Superb album, like so many from ‘77. 👍

I just put flats on my Telecaster and I’ve ordered a set of Chromes for my acoustic too. I’d put flats on everything 👍

uh, oh, ooooohhhhh, noooooo..... ...aaand my beans have just left the tin. No more beans. Oh, lord...

My wife calls them ‘clutter’ but that’s because I’m trampy.

Down here in France they say ‘vinyles’ - you’ll see that term used in music shops and online a lot. I would only ever say ‘vinyls’ to upset purists. (And it defo upsets them) 😂

I told myself I wasn’t going to buy any gear this year, I already have loads of stuff, and with no gigs on the horizon, only remote recording sessions, I thought I was safe from GAS. Would love a JMJ Mustang, or even a little Squier Bronco to pimp, but no, I’m all good for gear. Anyway, I caved in and bought stickers. Flame away, flamers 😂

I’ll let you know 😂

I used to have thousands of records, way more than I could count. When we lived in London I had vinyl at home (and tapes and CDs), plus vinyl in my studio and the overflow vinyl was kept in a Big Yellow storage unit along with recording equipment and instruments etc. Fair enough, I used to DJ regularly and would trade and deal in vinyl as well. So I’d have multiple copies of all the UK Beatles mono and stereo LPs, probably near a dozen copies of the “White Album” alone, ready to sell or trade if needs be. UK and US full runs of Hendrix and Stones LPs in mono and stereo for instance, box upon box of rare jazz releases often doubled or trebled up (UK mono / US stereo / Japanese reissue with Obi, etc) plus crates of funk, soul, Latin, Brazilian and psych and folk... just tons of records. Everywhere. In the end I sold off or gave away the vast majority of my hoard (I’m not sure you could call it a collection as it was so sprawling and out of control) and got it down to about 500 LPs & 12”s plus a similar number of 7”s. But after a recent move I still find myself with some albums where I have the vinyl, the CD and the original 1970’s cassette copy too... It just happens. I still haven’t really got into streaming, I would do, but often find that stuff just isn’t available when I go looking for it online. But I’ve still got 1000s of CDs. When places like Fopp were knocking them out new at £3, that’s when I accumulated them all without trying. Plus I’ve a lot of rare soundtracks, library music and jazz CDs that aren’t on streaming sites, not yet at least. And the vinyl LPs of them are £££s... I guess I should just hang on to them?

Yeah but yours is a work of art, now! Plywood is fine for guitars and basses for the most part, I don’t see why people look down on it really, as long as nobody’s charging top dollar for it. A studio I used to use in London has a no-name plywood Strat copy among its collection that always sounded great to record with. And I’ve got a mid-80’s Ibanez copy of a D-18 which is plywood top, back and sides which records well too. I might need to put some stickers on it tho...

Once I’d put a set of flats on there, stickers might be negligible tbh. Quite prepared to find out!

Looking at this yet again... I would rock the heck out of it, might need to add more stickers though 👍

I’ve met Kevin Shields from MBV and J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr too, and they are both super laid back, mellow, unassuming dudes. Totally didn’t mind chatting with the me about gear, old records, back-of-a-transit-van touring, etc, and I’m sure they had plenty of other things they could have been doing with their time. Really sweet guys. But then you see / hear / wear earplugs etc to see them live and it’s a different story altogether. Horrible, painful loudness! 😂 Never ever again!!!

Enjoyed that, thank you 👍

That made me laugh out loud 😂 Chapeau, monsieur 🙏🏻

Okay, great, I’m just getting ready to go out now but I will PM you later today with some stuff that might be helpful. It’s not a big super complicated thing to do btw, most companies will advise you on how to prepare your masters and artwork to be release ready. Anyone with the spare £££’s can make a record.