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This. Most people who play bass or guitar are male and this one thought he’d write an article about sneaking stuff past his wife which he thought might be amusing. It’s just fluff and easily ignored. And should probably be taken with a pinch of salt too. I showed my wife and she just said ‘we’re not as daft as you think we are’ with a grin. And that’s the appropriate response imo.

Because along the way people become more entrenched and divided when people try and police they way others think and tar entire groups of people with the same brush. I long for the days when we could poke fun at each other and laugh, poke back and take things as intended or just have the ability to not find things funny without having to say one is offended. Actually I think that’s still pretty much how the world is except a vocal minority who aren’t doing their cause any favours.

I recall a similar conversation regarding the death of valves, soon to be totally supplanted by SS. That conversation took place in 1966.

More of the usual unfunny, sexist sh!t that portrays women, especially wives, as complete idiots, or harridans hell-bent on denying husbands the enjoyment of their hobbies. Sad, boring, and mostly untrue. But hey, the 'funny article' doesn't suggest comparing your guitars to her handbag or shoes, halleluja! And a guitar-playing wife is totally hot! That's all right, then.

Duck was one of the reasons I started playing bass. Saw him a few times with the M.Gs and Blues Bros band. Got to meet him and shake his hand at an M.Gs reunion gig. Got my ticket signed, which is framed on my wall

I had an issue with a replacement pickup I had fitted to a Shuker (by Jon), it turned out that the pickup was verrrrrry bright paired with the active circuit in the bass. When I couldn't live with it, I took it back to Jon, he changed a couple of caps for me in the circuit, job done. The issue was clearly because I'd asked for a different pickup to be fitted, and I'm sure there are people in this thread who might have rolled their eyes and said 'Durrrrr', but Jon just sorted it, no charge. That's customer service: the extra mile. I have four Shukers now, and those two facts aren't unrelated. I ordered a different pickup for my Dingwall (a P-Tone), as it turned out they sent me the wrong one by accident. Sheldon's (immediate) response? 'Really sorry, we've shipped you the correct one, you can keep the other one.' And those pots? They haven't been specced correctly. End of. The excuse of 'Oh, that's just what they do' doesn't wash. I played a Maruszczyk once, it was a nice PJ copy. I wouldn't buy one new, though; too many unhappy customers for the price bracket. Oh, and if anyone who'd sold me something new for £2k+ said 'You find something good or is it only stinky poo?', they'd be getting it back by return post.

Watching this great footage of Otis Redding, in what looks like a school hall, presumambly ending his set. Obviously I've only got eyes for the diminutive Dylan Thomas lookalike on the bass. I love it when people have a sense of humour on stage, it always makes the gig a happier event. On this you can see him exchange smiles with various members of the band and right at the very end, after someone finally manages to restrain Otis coming back ... again ... who is left shouting 'once more!' as the rest of the band scarper as fast as they can? Always the bass player. Not just the calmest, the most intelligent and musically knowledgeable, the best looking and the coolest, but also the funniest.

Depends entirely on the song, the style of music, what the other instruments are doing...

This. This would get an immediate F* right off, I paid 2k for this instrument, you can shove it with that attitude.

I frankly still cannot understand here all the people who are going to OP saying "Oh you simple thingy, you should have known that a finish on your new custom bass coming from a highly paid luthier would come in cracked, awww" - I find that disgusting. Regardless of whether nitro finishes are more prone to cracks or not (undisclosed to the customer), regardless of whether the volume pots are working with some weird curve to them (undisclosed with the customer), the point is that anyone running a business would not want those type of discussions happening around about their brand (and it happens here in multiple topics, over on talkbass and so on), for what? In exchange of a couple of polite email replies and offering help to the customer? I know for a fact that despite really liking some of their designs (and why I follow such topics), after this rigamarole I will never go and buy a bass from Adrian. All he had to do was not even offer refunds etc...but just keep an honest channel of communication open with the customer, so that they could work TOGETHER to solve the problem. Even if NOTHING was then done to regards of sending bass back, changing parts etc...the OP would have been absolutely happy with their instrument since the builder took the time to walk them through their doubts. Seriously you all are minimising the sour taste this leaves way too much. I wonder if {insert your favourite luthier here/Shuker/Sei/Marleaux/Sadowsky/Whatever} did that when YOU ordered your custom build...

One of my bass playing heroes and one of my major influences - remember hearing all those great Soul records when I was little as my brothers were really avid collectors of Stax back in the day. This book is definitely worth getting:

I’ve had an itch for a white P bass for a little while now. I’ve been working on a shortlist of possible luthiers. Thanks to this thread, I’ve managed to cross one off 😎

If you strip away the various levels of my bass playing that have been laid down over the last 50 years or so, you'll find Duck Dunn at the bottom, the foundation to everything I play. Sadly I never got to see him live.

And what about the current world, in which the minorities are shouting so loud, the majority can not be heard?

I have absolutely no problem with offensive humour, as long as it’s actually funny and can be quite clever. Mightn’t always be my cup of tea, but that‘s my problem to deal with. Not offended by this - I just think it’s just cr@p! (Files alongside jokes about mother in laws and women drivers etc etc).

Balls to 'this day and age'. That I find offensive! To submit to the current culture of everything must be neutral and even is an utterly impossible goal. Life is not even, equal or neutral, to try and insist it should be is setting yourself up to fail as life will never be this peachy walk through the park where everyone is exactly equal to the next person. I long for an age were the thought of race, gender, personal preferences etc. aren't even a consideration anymore, where you could be trans, straight, black, male, blue, unspecified and be looked upon in the same light as the next person, with no judgement. BUT I do not long for the day where everything is forced neutrality. I have my interest, they may not be your interests, but I have the right to be able to access content that appeals to my interest. We are not all the same, we like different things, life is a beautiful tie-dye of different appetites, just because someone chooses to be trans doesn't mean we can't still read a book where the love interest is male/female. Nor does it mean that I (as a man in a male/female relationship) should de-value another book written where the relationship portrayed is based on a different paradigm. To grey everything out would be a crying shame and totally the wrong way to celebrate our differences.

Personally I don’t think it’s a ‘custom’ instrument, it’s a combination of the standard alternatives he offers. If we take what you say as a given - theN the main problem is how the issue has been addressed. A friend of mine bought a new Sandberg, he found a fleck, and I mean a fleck of paint on the neck from another finish, which obviously happened by accident. Sandberg contacted, no questions asked took it back, solved the problem- no extra cost. Thats service

But that's not the guys life... He's writing from his experience so it's contextually correct. That's akin to saying that all romance novels written thus forth must be gender neutral for fear of offending someone, the result would be no-one would ever buy a romance novel again as no one, bar a very small (but no less important!) slice of society, would identity with the content. Tailoring everything to neutrality is not the right way to go in my opinion.

Just to throw my 2 cents in... I don't disagree with @Silvia Bluejay, but, at the same time free speech comes with the price of sometimes not liking what is said. Humour is also hugely subjective... and in the current climate not a soul here would admit to finding blackface funny, yet I absolutely guarantee that most of you have laughed at it in the past (League Of Gentlemen, Always Aunny, Mighty Boosh to name a few). I feel that we are sinking ever closer to a society that will be permanently walking on eggshells. Anyone is free to be offended, but to live in a world where no one is ever offended would be absolutely terrible as it would literally mean no one could do anything as with 7,000,000,000 people out there, you can guarantee that someone will alwaya be able to find offence in what you do and say!

Here it is - plenty more where these come from, if you're interested. With apologies for derailing the thread towards a non-wooden bass! Edit: all taken by me, on a black photo background and a bit of photoshopping for light and contrast.

Watch the whole show ..

I've watched this clip probably hundreds of times and always thought Tom Jones should have gone to Laurel Canyon instead of Vegas. Superb live band with Stills on Hammond, Dallas Taylor killing it on drums and Greg Reeves' deep bass grooves. The look on David Crosby's face when Tom starts singing is great, and Neil Young's guitar fills are spot on. Love it 😎

I made a house (well, a wall of a house...). Does that count..?

+1 There's a lot of good bass players out there who know "when to keep their chops in their pocket". Guys like Pino, and Mike Visceglia (Suzanne Vega's bassist) are a couple that spring to mind. Every band I've played in whether it be an originals or a covers band, I've gone in with the mentality that it's mine and the drummer's job to make everyone else sound good. If I've played my part in that, then I'm happy.

Have a listen to the other bass players working in the various studios in the southern states; Tommy Cogbill at Fame, Mike Leech at American, David Hood at Muscle Shoals and Vernie Robbins and George Allen at Malaco, and all the other guys. They were fantastic exponents of the "less is more" school of bass playing.

Of course you can, think of it as keeping the memory of the little habitat alive. A bassy memorial.

Mahogany-purpleheart-maple-walnut on my Alembic

Okayyyyy time to move on guys. Go in peace and be excellent to each other.

Yes, it's nuanced, but it's going to get to the point soon where I'll not be able to take the mick out of Mackems. And we can't have that.

I agree. It almost feels like we're running on rails these days.

This ^^^^ The shared piece is poorly written, decidedly indicative of its geographic origin and a tired old joke.

Aaron Cheney has the right to post unfunny, tired and cliche-ridden articles. And, having read said article, I now have the right to ignore all future offerings from Aaron. Which I certainly will. World keeps turning, we move onward and upward.

I love these topics. It's like a TV Show - "The Bass Detectives". Always amazed by the shared knowledge on here.

Agreed - the real stupidity in that article (having fortunately only skim read it) is that it would have been so easy to just make it how to get it past your partner and leave the gender Male/female/trans out of it

Not offended, just bored sh!less by this stuff, and I have as much right to object to it (as per free speech) as anyone else.

Indeed that’s true. I’ve also seen truly awful stuff involving old Gibson guitars and Marshall amps, whereby components from all original ‘cheaper’ models as been taken off and put onto players examples of the very desirable expensive models to make them look legit and untouched - even to the point of using NOS 50’s solder and flux - or used to make models appear to be something else, or used on plain old fakes. Same with refinishes. I helped a friend buy an old 50’s Fender bass on BC from a guy who seemed to have a good rep. On the visit I asked if I could take the bass apart, my friend actually declined as he felt safe with the seller. Some time later when he owned it I took it apart and saw clear signs it was redone by the magnificent Clive Brown. I very much suspect the original owner knew full well that was the case, but that’s another story. Its a market that can be quite unpleasant at times.

Makes sense. @dave_bass5, this has absolutely nothing to do with cancel culture or allowing art and satire, etc. Just thoroughly fed up with casual, unfunny sexism, and the article linked to above is no art. If no-one else sees this rubbish for what it is and calls it out, I will.

Now is the perfect opportunity to avoid tab and go straight to reading music. If I was to give one piece of advice to me starting out 100 years ago, it'd be try to avoid tab if poss. That and if your strap is twisted, whichever way your turn it will be the wrong way.

Updated with MXR M87 and flat patch leads...

Duck was an amazing player. I was fortunate to see him twice as part of a pseudo MGs backing Neil Young. And I do feel very fortunate indeed to have done so.

Another vote for the book. It's superb.