Beedster

In descending order of quality Warmoth, Musickraft, Allparts, Mighty Mite. All are IME better quality than Fender MIM replacements, of which I’ve owned two, one went back due to appalling fret work, the other I should also have sent back as it was not worth the cash by comparison even with Mighty Mite

Having watched a lot of 70’s Who stuff, and given that while a massive Who fan I grew up with Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, Clapton et al as the obvious choices, Townsend has to be the best rock guitarist full stop 👍

You and me mate 👍

Nice Jazz project for someone, will be up for £1000 tomorrow. Will be a stunner when done, but while if plays and sounds fine, defo needs some work to be all it can be 👍

…. and of course, a lot of it is a placebo effect. But so what 😆

I think that’s spot on, I guess there’s a reason he gravitated in the instrument direction he did 👍

Completely agree, and why I tend to listen to them live more than studio. Yes, WAY has a much more balanced mix 👍

Not a fan of chorus at all, ever, but love how that sound her gets sits in the overall mix. I have a potentially rather special Precision that I’m going to be working with also - feels more natural to me - but man the Buzzard makes getting the tone and nailing the lines so much easier and for whatever reason so much more pleasurable 👍

Why I bought this bass (clip from Classic Albums: Who’s Next, which is a great way to spend 90 mins if you haven’t done so) 👍

Yep, ideally - and depending on what type of bridge is installed - you’d modify or flip the bridge, or potentially install a right hand version. If you have photos of the bridge we can be more helpful I’d imagine. And you will need to install a new nut, I doubt you can simply reverse the existing one, although you may be lucky 👍

I’m confident that in a band of four members I am the least competent bass player (possible exception of drummer although he can hold down a bass line). So easily 😆

Singing lessons are a great idea Mick, not just to improve singing technique (pitch/tone/range/control) but also to protect your voice for things other than singing. I had short-notice surgery on my neck years ago - long story - and during the surgery my vocal chords were damaged requiring further surgery. I was told in no uncertain terms by the surgeon that I would need 6-weeks of not using my voice at all followed by regular speech therapy. The therapist was also a voice and vocal coach, and the stuff she taught me was well worth learning. I still do the exercise occasionally especially if I'm doing BVs for a gig. Enjoy the journey mate

Recently bought two rather lovely music-related items from Mick (he does move on some really interesting and unique stuff so I'm always keeping my open for new stuff from him), and thoroughly enjoyed doing so both times. Packaging of the second brought a huge smile to my face also, many thanks Mick 👍

That doesn't mean that they are autocracies though? But either way, if democracy means a process by which a group of people accept that a smaller/sub-group will take responsibility for decision making, then many successful bands are democracies. The problem with some/many other bands is that that one or more members have usurped power. I'm happy to be in the former, I've usually walked quite quickly in the latter. Having said that, I was at fault for this with one of my longer running bands years back in which I thought I was getting my own way because my judgement was valid, in hindsight the others simply weren't prepared to argue with me, they preferred to get on and play the music. We made some great music and we're all still good friends, but I would do things differently now for sure.

I hope that the advent of AI generated music will lead more people to recognise, appreciate, participate in and support real live music. Of course, we're in that awful stage where people have done things with AI because they could not because they should (not unlike the early 80's when digital sampling became easy and our group of electronic music students were doing things like the national anthem performed by a choir of barking dogs), but we will no doubt see some imaginative integration of AI and analog in time. But for me the ease with which AI can be used to generate professional sounding digital audio has pushed me away from a focus on recording (I can spoend hours doing something analog that can be done in seconds using AI), to concentrating on playing and performing live.

Yep, I thought that also, there are moments when there's a whole lot going on bass-wise but his right hand's not moving, nice work 👍