Big_Stu

Cool, that's the same pickups that Dave Hill of Slade had in all of his John Birch guitars, including the Superyob. I've got a matched pair of John Birch Magnums in my bass.

Is that a Magnum or Hyperflux that's been added to yours? If you don't mind me asking. I met John a few times when he built my custom EB3, mad as a box of frogs, but a bit of a rogue too by all accounts.

I was "down the pub" with my other half to meet up with one Jim Lea, ex of Slade; just before the lockdowns started. At one point she took great pleasure in telling him that I thought The Beatles are over-rated. The withering look I got off him is imprinted in my memory forever.

Is that a recent purchase? I saw a very similar on eBay in the not too distant past.

Often covered but did anyone do it better than this?

I thought that too, but have to give due credit to the Grand Funk Railroad cover of it.

John had a bit of a rep for modifying Gibsons, and other brands but especially Gibsons. he told me himself that his inspiration for his J1 guitar style was to mirror the cutaway on a Les Paul to make the body symmetrical. He was quite scathing of Gibsons in general. His SG copy made the horns more pronounced. Some of his mods have had a "Customised by John Birch" metal plaque added below the bridge or the back of the headstock. Interesting to see the EB0/3 description. Could it be a bass that was originally an EB0 but adding a pickup has made it EB3 spec. I had just such a bass, it had been badly refinished cherry after being inn a shop window too long and the front of it was bleached to "walnut". The mod on mine wasn't a John Birch job though.

There's, or was, a Scottish tribute to RATM called Radge Against The Machine. Incredibly clever, "radge" is a term of abuse up there, as many words are come to think of it.

It would have been a good one to ask Lemmy, but he'd have just replied with his death stare. Easy to rack up BPM if you're one of those grunge kids that hammers the E string and keep the other three* for spares. * other basses with more than four strings are available.

In October '78 Slade were in the doldrums after being usurped by punk, and were playing any dive that would have them. They were booked to do a week's residency of the Cavendish Club in Blackburn, Lancs. It started on the Monday night, with almost zero publicity. A few fans travelled but were turned away due to a strict dress code, so in the end the crowd in this 1000 seat night club numbered 19, a bouncer told me. When they came on Nod said "Jeeeesus, did you all come on the same bus? Because there's so few of you we'll just do a quick golden oldies set, OK?" Which is what they did. I knew a small number of the fans there already, and have since met four others. So it's the only gig by a name band I've been to where I could actually name half of the crowd. I was chatting with Jim Lea last year and reminded him of the gig, which he remembered. When I told him the low turnout was partly due to dress code rejections he was surprised and said "I thought it was cos we were crap!"

There were a couple, but the best one was taken over by SevenOaks and doesn't do repairs now, or help with them; the other closed down. I'll try Manchester when it's a bit safer to go.

What happened was at first the right channel kept cutting out, it would come back the next day but happened more and more often. Then it went totally silent. It still powers up etc and looks fully functional, apart from no sound.

The place in Blackpool referred me to them, and they said the same about getting hold of parts. But thanks for the reminder, I'll give them another go if I don't get anywhere with Matt's ides.

Fantastic Matt, very much appreciated!!! I'll let you know how it goes. The reviews of the KI are very accurate - it's a great machine.

I have a defunct Marantz 63 KI Signature CD deck, a world-beater in it's day. It died a few months ago. Marantz customer care is diabolical, they referred me to some depot in Blackpool, who didn't want to know because they found it impossible to get parts off Marantz. I suspect the laser has packed in. Calls to many local hi-fi shops have all expressed sympathy for the loss, "great machine", "a classic" etc. but were unable to advise further. A guy my brother knows builds his own hi-fi so I'll be paying a visit with the deck one I'm safe to stop shielding. In the meantime I have a Pioneer CD-R deck I can use, not as good a sound, but better than many.

Apparently one tactic I was told about by an ex-employee was to send a finished guitar on spec to a "name", which they would assume was a sponsorship gift. Then JB would wait a few months then send in an invoice knowing that it would just be processed along with all the others a big band would get on a daily basis. One such gets mentioned occasionally on here. I don't mean to denigrate John, to me he was a mad professor genius, and even in the last week of his life was working on "a radical new pickup which would be far higher output than Tony (Iommi) had ever heard of". As an electronics expert he not only served on Hawaii (where he "electrified" an acoustic guitar for the base band) for the US forces but was also a Chindit fighting the Japanese in WW2

I used to always got for Neutrik, from Maplins (RIP). Glad I had a stash of spares bought in before they folded, just put one in a Strat build.

My dream bass was a John Birch EB3 exactly like Slade's Jim Lea. When I had the cash I had him build me one, and in the process became one of the elite few to have been ripped off by John Birch. But it is what it is, I still have it. http://youtu.be/ffZXnWkbkgs

His numbering system wasn't very reliable, mine doesn't have one at all.

This pretty much covers it. That's a gouge, not a dent, steaming will have very little effect and could easily wreck the finish making it a bigger problem. A good furniture restorer would be my first call,.

Get an old fuse screwdriver and heat the tip to red hot and hold it against the grub screw. being brass it should quickly conduct the heat and expand, which - in theory - should break the grip of the crud, thread lock, or gunk that's seizing it. You might have to do it more than once. If there's enough of a slot left it also sometimes helps if you turn it slightly to tighten it before trying to unscrew it. Brass is soft, so don't overdo this if you give it a go.

Long term? In it's case, stored vertically. Otherwise, on a stand. And just to open another can of worms.......... long term storage with strings tuned or slackened off?

I'd guess that would have been the John Birch copy that was made and famously destroyed in the wings during a gig, but I believe has now been reassembled. Lovely bit of John Birch lore about that one's origins. Many years ago I used to regularly buy a music magazine, can't remember it's name just now. Each issue's inside cover pulled out into an A3 poster. One edition had a huge collection of famous guitar picks collected by fans. One of which was a "sixpence" which BM had had minted to guarantee a supply, with his profile image on it rather than HM The Queen. (There was also one of Steve Cropper's labelled "Pick Of The Crop" - ho ho! One of which I now own.)

Loving the use of chickenheads. I had plans to do similar with a black Rockinbetter and white chickenheads but the prices went silly this side of the pond so I gave up the idea. I've since put a couple on a Strat customisation I'm doing now.