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It's fun going back and hearing your younger self and realising what kind of player you were then. When we had a 25 years reunion of our R&B/boogie band we got the tapes out, and discovered none of us could play that fast anymore!!

I’m not sure, but Bartolini rings a bell. I just remember he was getting so much work for electric upgrades and repairs he thought what else can I do to improve the fenders. Quite a lot it turned out!

Well, this has been a fairly interesting journey. Hours of frankly terrible church hall recordings going back to when I was about 13, through to some fairly decent studio reels. Runs from punky originals, through metally stuff, the white soul boy years and then stops with a few tapes of stuff I recorded in a local studio as audition tapes for band/label prospecting. I also unearthed a pair of three-track demos I did with a band when I was 18 or 19, the first was self-financed (£65! I remember this distinctly) and the second funded by Polydor (this is another story). Dates cut off late 90s. Interesting. Despite my punky/alternative roots, re-listening to the WSB stuff was the most interesting. I was writing with a bloke up in Ealing; I'd decamp there for an entire Saturday, every Saturday for about 18 months, and we'd just immerse ourselves and write. His wife would do a nice lunch, we'd work through the afternoon and I'd get home around 6.00pm. Programmed drums. From memory, I was using a Warwick Streamer 5LX...my first foray into a 5-string. Sadly it was never going to be a live thing, purely writing and recording (I had a 50% share in a 24 track studio, so it was a good vehicle for that). I'm very pleased to hear these again. For now, the tapes go back in the box. I'll probably never listen to them again! If you're interested: https://on.soundcloud.com/u5PWooGdoLMkJ1426

I think @rwillett has one

I accidentally added reverb to a heavily overdriven bass track in my DAW. I like the noise it made and thought it could be an interesting effect to add for baas breaks in songs. Has anyone tried this? Does it work well in the real world? Would a cheap Behringer reverb be any good or should I splash out on a fancy one?

That is very kind of you and a good idea. I've already ordered a sheet of plastic as it goes, so I think I should be OK, but nonetheless, many thanks!

....... And who can forget 😎

I’ve had an update from Robin at @Manton Customs - neck is back together, everything is great, all that remains is the cosmetic job to ensure the new binding looks in keeping with the slightly aged binding on the rest of the bass (this thing has binding on all the edges!). So that’ll take maybe another 2-3 weeks. really looking forward to getting it back. Being able to play it like the Rikkers will be amazing.

Don’t be put off - critical to me finding out I had a problem was discovering I couldn’t adjust things to my liking. I’d say it sounds like very small adjustments, then give it time to settle, and critically remember the anticlockwise reverse action on the rod. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I wonder if the old rod design could even get the neck as flat as I wanted it. I’d had the bass around 2 years at that point, and it had never been quite as ludicrously flat as I keep other basses… I can say that getting the bass fixed has been a great adventure in itself!

Or rusty as everyone else would call it

For hardware which needs an occasional connection to an obsolete OS or I/O to be configured then it might be an idea to keep an old laptop with firewire etc to one side. Not a huge inconvenience to keep using something you love. This is twice as fun if you're an old PC nerd as you can play Half Life on it as our lord intended. If it's just a modern OS thing then a VM might be a more convenient (but less fun) way of doing things. ASIO4All drivers are also a potential lifesaver for old audio interfaces - a while back I sold an ancient M-Audio Quattro (genuinely forgot i had it and found it in a box) which isn't even on the legacy support section of their website and the last drivers were for Windows 98 IIRC. Worked fine (well as fine as USB 1.1 can be) in Audacity with ASIO4All which amazed me.

Hold On Tight - ELO

Thank you 🙂

Well, no his use of it became obsolete. If he was still using the same interface it would still be working fine I assume.