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Everyone beat me to the punch in uploading some really excellent pix from the day (sorry, work intervened!). But here's what Google decided to do with the pix I did take - shakiness down to them, not my subsequent whisky consumption! Midlands Bash Bass 040519.mp4

Picked this beauty up from @Moos3h last night... thank you so, so much, and I hope you had a safe journey to the Riviera This really is a 37 year itch finally scratched... these were all the rage when I started out playing, I'd always fancied getting my hands on one and now after all these years I have. Yes it has some issues, as James pointed out in his ad: the electrics are not working and one of the switches is knackered... should all be straightforward (oh blimey, that's the kiss of death isn't it ) and if it still doesn't work I've got a Yamaha 2-band eq I can put in there instead; there's a hairline crack in the neck... I'll flood some thinned glue into it if it needs anything, but it doesn't seem to affect stability or playability; it's got a few major league dings in the body as the pic shows... I'm not sure what to do with these really, a refinish would cost a fortune and I don't want to spend a shedload of cash on it. I might just seal the edges of the dings with glue to stop any more flaking off, and call it mojo The serial number places it in December 1982. The neck feels great and it plays well, action is fine and all the hardware works. The missing knob is present, I'd taken it off when I took the pic. I've not yet plugged it in so I don't know how it sounds, but from what I've seen on yootoob the 1A core tone appears to be P-bass-on-steroids. I have a feeling that my bitsa P is going to struggle to keep its place in my working group. Happy day.

Righty! We counted the cash and we’ve raised £186 that’s been donated nordoff robbins (in the mother’s name of course).

Billy was such an influence on me that my first "decent" Bass was a black Aria Pro II. Here's my 16 year old self throwing a pose with my Integra 😂

The Cure are massive. They filled Hyde Park at their 40th anniversary gig last year.

Can the classifieds just be divided into 'things I might be interested in' and 'things I am not interested in'? I'm sure that would be easy to implement!

Sooo happy with my new sound now.

It might quell the author's conscience a little to remember that purchasing a vintage 4001 such as this is a Hall-guilt free undertaking. Back when checkerboard 4001s (with crushed pearl FWIs & gap tooth bridge, of course!) were being made, little Johnny Hall would've still been in the back yard with his GI Joes, & half a gallon of gas siphoned out of Papa F.C's Studebaker, playing My Lai.

Whenever someone asks me if I'm on Facebook or WhatsApp and I say no, they always give me this expression like I've just told them that I want to slurp yoghurt out of their shoes while they're still wearing them. S.P.

I hate it when people summarise my ramblings into one pithy sentence. But basically, yes - well put 😀

Heavyweight Equals Fabulous Tone (HEFT).

Ill be honest I've listened to bits and bobs of FNM over the years, and the musical chameleon that is Mike, what I have listened to is great. then i got into Mr Bungle which is sooooo good. Girls of Porn being a favourite . I love this though. The bass line from Bill is really great and totally owns this recording. I know good music when I hear it. I think.

You realise that the cat now legally owns the bass?

That takes me back - I had a 1978 poo brown one of those in the early '90's, when I was broke but needed a cheap 4 seater. Plus was that with the leather and walnut it really did feel like driving a tiny Jag / Roller - minus points were too numerous to list, not least the hydrolastic suspension regularly leaking out so you'd come back to your parked car to find it listing to one side, looking at you like a sad but ugly dog. The rusting body held together with filler and glassfibre patches would have probably gone on forever, but one day the driveshaft fell off. I now have a 1982 Triumph TR7 convertible (harvest gold with beige tartan interior....) - will I never learn? Back to the OP - I know nothing at all about Mr Hall, but have owned 4 Rics (only one now, but a keeper - a '72/73 FG 4001). I'd say Harley-Davidson are a better comparison - they stuck with basically the same agricultural, unergonomic, fairly primitive but iconic design for their entire history - but it does what it does so well, and somehow just outcools the rest.

Too late. Soon as I bought the car, the girl used that picture for a "crash for cash" claim against me. She's saying I rammed into her from behind... 😕

and being Rickenbacker, square wheels

I thought the point with JH was that he’s changed nothing. He’d have put a square steering wheel on a car and tell everyone to go f**k themselves for 30 years

Mr Bungle - California. Great album.

^ A perfectly reasonable point of view and very well expressed ^ You may therefore wish to avoid the various Gibson threads on BC where for years some of us have been whaling on Mr Henry Juskiewiecz's ar$e like it was a dinner gong. By comparison, Mr Hall's had it easy.

I was going to say chopstick. 🙂

That's a chair leg he's peeping out from behind...

Hank's finishing up his time in a back office behind the photocopier room, staring at his executive desk toy (one of those dipping bird things) and thumbing through the sits vac pages, his lips moving as he reads the words. The new management are a squad of neo-millennial hedge fund wonks headed up by the bloke who used to run a jeans company, possibly Levis. The musical instrument world holds its breath.

I think that the configurator is there to display aesthetics more than to include every option (there's no Umbo for instance!). When the range of custom options is so varied then choices have to be made and one pickup looks much like another of the same shape.

In a period of considerable financial hardship some years ago, I considered putting my beloved Wal up for sale. I took it out of its gigbag, looked at it, picked it up, played it, put it back down, looked at it again, and said out loud to myself, "For fck's sake man, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?". Decided that I would probably sell a kidney first.

This is a fantastic game and one I regularly participate in. I've got Fairytale of New York and Jingle Bells into carol arrangements at Cathedrals, the Imperial March into the Sewer scene in Les Mis and one show had a nightly battle with the guitarist to get Led Zep quotes into Grease. I was doing well, managed Dazed and Confused, Ramble On and Kashmir in various places if I recall, until he destroyed me by launching into Black Dog instead of the regular solo for Grease Lightning. I valiantly acknowledged defeat.

I don't (and haven't ever) play either. What category does that put me in?

It seems to be ok - It's actually in tune! And a smidge under 8lb! I'm guessing about I'll save another third of a pound when I get some Hipshots on it too.

They've been ahead of the game with most things so that all makes sense to me. It takes a bit of time to get a safe site up and running. Making the new pick-ups was probably the easier part. The configurator is a nice bit of fun if you aren't buying to see what can be done on a bass of your choosing. It's also a great starting point for anyone thinking of getting their ideas down on paper All credit to Sandberg Dave

As an organ player, I stopped smuggling popular tunes into my improvisations during services at one specific point: a little child loudly sang along with the popular kids tune that was my contraband that day.

Think you're being a little harsh tbh. The Sandberg configurator is one of the, if not the, best configuration sites online. It gives you literally thousands or options using the stock electronics, if you're serious about buying a bass, a quick email to a distributor will let you know the additional cost. Don't forget, software development is very expensive, even adding a seemingly simple option can work out to be days, if not weeks of work, depending on how many parts of the site the change touches.

So, in summary, JH is a bit of a Rottweiler as far as defending his product, but probably not best suited to a role in Customer Services.

@Al Krow to roughly quote you and say I hate sounding like a broken record - (and no I don’t expect my posts to be doted upon) but I have said and others have said multiple times I am pretty sure there is no upcharge for Sandberg in house be they old of Black labels - there is an upcharge for Haüssel’s. Get your bass configured, copy paste the identifier generated - email Sandberg - and make any tweaks and and you get your answer, or to confirm if there is an upcharge, just email them. It’s pretty simple to get an answer, then most of the debate falls away

The Ned model is headless.

And would definitely fall over if you stood it against your amp. John Hall never made such a daft looking instrument.

This rectum: Also, yeah, clickbaity titles... One of my subscription channels posted a video a while back explaining how youtube had changed their algorithms so basically if you didn't have "NUCLEAR EXPLOSION FAIL LOL" urls, the chances of you getting views is like, none...

Well, guitar shops paid my mortgage for a number of years. From my perspective a few things. Yes, the internet is the big issue. 1. A warehouse with boxes guitars/amps etc is vastly cheaper to run from a website than a chain or even singular shop. 2. Big chain guitar shops need to shift units so the service suffers hugely (the chain I worked for now no longer offer a repair/restring service) which means people aren’t interested in going. 3. The big brands need to shift units...so go with the big chains with ridiculous dealership demands. I think the last buy in for a Gibson dealership was £35k. Small chains cannot do this. 4. The markup/margin/breadwinner is accessories - see point 1. A website for accessories once set up will run itself. 40-50% margin on branded strings and accessories, own brand/Chinese import accessories 60-75% - again, smaller stores haven’t got that buying power. You don’t need to ‘try out’ regular slinkies, so you don’t need the experience - you just buy them 15% cheaper online... 5. Second hand...a shop will buy a £200 retail bass for £100 as a part ex. Why would you part ex for £100 when you can sell it yourself for £180/£200 on eBay/Shpock/Gumtree/Facebook/Basschat. So the shops used to be more varied, and interesting - now they’re not. 6. Trend. It’s actually not that cool to be a muso at the minute. In the 80’s/90’s music was a bigger deal. Kids now don’t want it like we did. 7. Money. I haven’t bought a new (from a shop) bass in the 5 years I’ve not worked in a music shop. See point 5 - why buy new when there’s a glut of cheap second hand gear online...see point six...less buyers, more gear... I could go on...think that covers most of it.

On the Delano vs Sandberg stock debate, I've got a Classic with Delano soapbars (3 band sandberg preamp) and a Basic Ken Taylor with Sandberg humbuckers (also 3 band sandberg preamp) run through an Aguilar Th350 & Barefaced Two10. The Delanos sound very modern (hifi I suppose), I can get a lovely clean tone with clarity through bass, mids and highs but it's really easy to dial in some growl or thump, depending on what takes your fancy. I personally find them full of personality, particularly down in the low range. I played her mainly in a nusoul originals band and she was absolutely perfect for that. The Basic is much more difficult to describe. Because of the coil split it is has more versatility than the Classic, but to my ear still has a modern tone, but you can play around all day and find loads of lovely variety. Tbh, it's has too much choice for me, I can never remember how to get a particular tone 😂 Because of that I didn't tend to use the Basic in a band situation. I think I used her twice, both times for pub rock covers and she sounded bang on. Both basses sound huge in the mix but are quite specialised I suppose, they really suit modern styles of music, but for anything older (70s), they both just sounded wrong. Because of that I also got a passive TT, but I haven't had chance to play that in anger as am not in a band atm. At home levels though it is a beautiful, proper vintage jazz tones so I'm sure it'll be grand.

Prepare to be a recluse for a week or two.

The point about Class D is that it uses Pulse Width Modulation. If is modulated then amplified and demodulated ( yes it is a form of Modem) I would argue that the PWM output is analogous to the input signal In the same way FM Radio is. It never enters the digital domain. Of course the PWM section could be digitally controlled but that does not make it a digital amplifier as the signal is not digitally processed. Some people think that as digital systems are switching systems, that the switching aspect of class D must be digital. While both are non-linear they are not both digital, Thr French use the word Numerique instead of digital. That is because digital processing is based on the binary or octal numbering systems.

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I'm not sure that the configurator has every single option available and you can't buy directly though it, you need to go to a distributor, with whom you can discuss your specific requirements before placing your order.

Yes completely! I play my P bass very differently to my Smith. I deliberately keep them both because they sound, feel and play totally differently. Together they cover a lot of ground. The synth equipped basses are different again; obviously my mini bass is completely different and my Vigier feels like an old favourite jumper. The proof for me is that if I pick up a bass I don’t like (aesthetically or in feel) then I just don’t feel inspired to play anything in particular. Guess it’s like cars - I drive my big estate car quite differently to my previous saloon shaped one even though they have the same engine. You just pick up in the vibe from the object, be it bass, car, whatever. If there’s no vibe then I move on to something else.

I'm always missing the point these days. Really? He was talking about time signature and not number of songs for an an audition? Blue

Others, I am not the first, Have been by John Hall's comp'ny cursed: If in the breathless night I too Shiver now, 'tis nothing new. There is, however, in the first draft, a note pencilled in the margin which would seem to support the 'separating the man from the machine' thoughts above. It reads: 'Though I'd happily torch Shrewsbury to get my hands on a minty Mapleglo 4001 with chequered binding'

The zoom devices are great, you can just set up for ordinary volumes and balance, put the recorder in the middle of the room on a stool or mic stand and off you go. Really worth doing, you can analyse your playing a lot better and see how fills and so on are working out. And you can prove to others that their backing vocals are really, really, REALLY out of tune.

I would avoid playing 6/8 songs unless you are auditioning for a prog band...

HX Stomp ordered and arriving tomorrow. I can't wait for the weekend.

P.S. this: