wingnutkj

Its... basic. For reference, it's a basic black polyester gig back with a bit of padding, one pocket that's not deep enough to hold anything other than a cable and some picks, a detachable shoulder strap, and "Fender" screen-printed on it. Nowt fancy. It's not the worst I've seen. I've got a couple of the kind of "get-you-home" bags made out of a single layer of polyester that music shops'll chuck in for a fiver if you've bought something that doesn't come with a bag. But also, it's not the best I've seen. I've got better ones in my stash, so don't think I'll be using it to carry the bass around in. What do the various levels of Fender generally come with these days? I know the higher-end stuff still comes with cases, and Squiers don't generally come with anything, but what about the mid-range? The other basses I've bought new in recent years have been: Lakland Skyline - very nice Levy's polyester gig-bag, very much a level up from this one, Reverend Wattplower - custom hard-case. Anyway, the many thing is that I've got the bass and I like it a lot. Pictures will be coming when I get the chance to take them.

Despite black blocks and maple not being my preferred neck (would have loved pearl & rosewood), I've given in to GAS for one of these. t will be arriving soon. If anyone's interested in seeing what it looks like with a clear pickguard, I'll see what I can do - I've got one somewhere. And there was me thinking I was doing really well at resisting the GAS-y urge for the 60th Anniversary Jazz.

Or maybe something I can't quite get a clear picture of - I'm imagining something black and compact, maybe made by one of the 80's shred-guitar companies? Unless you mean a Steinberg headless, but that's not particularly Thunderbird-y.

Gibson RD?

Muddy, thuddy, neckdiving beasts with a god-awful bridge design where the saddles fall out when you take the strings out, and rattle when the strings are in. Very limited tone-wise - the '70s pickup positioning helps a bit, and the bridge pickup adds a bit of a change, but really they're all about that thud. That may or may not be what you're looking for. If it sounds like I've got it in for them, I should point out I'm a fan - I've had two or three different ones over the years, and there's times and places where nothing else will do. If you're looking for something a bit more useable, the new Les Paul Junior Tribute DC Bass is worth a look at, and the Reverend Mike Watt signature gives you a much more sensible pickup but much sillier colours.

I sold a pedal to Jim - speedy payment, good comms - a pleasure to deal with. Good stuff!

I bought a compressor from Paul - quick and easy transaction! Highly recommended.

I just bought a mixer from Gav - a pleasure to do business with!

Bought Dan's Muff (as it were). Great guy to deal with - speedy comms and a smooth transaction. Thanks Dan!

I buy and listen to lot of stuff via Bandcamp, but if there's a physical component, I'll try to buy that too. If I'm seeing a band live and enjoy it, I'll generally try to buy something off them, and will favour the physical component. However, I rarely play records these days, because it's easier to just play the download. Maybe bands are going about it the wrong way - get a load of download codes, record sleeves and label stickers printed out, then raid junk shops for the cheapest records they can find and bung them in the sleeves. Anyone complains, well it must have been a pressing error, right? And you've got the download code anyway.

Can't go far wrong with either of them - I've got an SD which is *still* my go-to bass (admittedly, I swapped the body out for a P-shaped one years ago), and my mate swears by the Yammys, owns two and is always on the lookout for more. Have you tried them both out? I've not seen an SD in a shop in years!

[quote name='KiOgon' timestamp='1438885058' post='2838442'] Yep - me too! Where to begin [/quote] [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/267346-the-spooky-thread/"]Here[/url]! [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/267346-the-spooky-thread/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/267346-the-spooky-thread/[/url]

My spooky music-related story: A good few years ago now, the band I was in used to jam at a place belonging* to a friend of the guitarist. It was an old stable-house, with three sides round a courtyard. One side was the house the guy lived in, the back was half workshop,half dumping ground for dead workshop equipment. The other side was a massive room with bare stone walls and an enormous fireplace, a couple of tatty sofas, ragged carpet on the floor, a pool table, and some tatty instruments on the wall. The guy basically used it as a party room/man-cave, and he was happy to let us practice in it. It was a bit chilly and damp, even with the fire on, but hey, free rehearsal space! Usually, we'd go over on a Saturday afternoon, set up our gear, jam for a while, go get some dinner, then in the evening go back to pack up the gear and hang around for a bit more acoustic jamming, which inevitably devolved into a drinking session with the guy and whoever turned up. One particularly dreich night in the autumn, we were sitting round the fire drinking whisky and sharing ghost stories. Footsteps in old buildings, visitations from relatives at the time they passed, shadowy figures at the ends of beds, the usual stuff. There was a healthy mix of belief and respectful scepticism, and eventually, the guy who owned the place, who hadn't said much until now, spoke up to say "well, I've lived and worked in a number of supposedly spooky places, and I've never so much as seen any~" At that point, there was a pop, and all the lights went off. There were a variety of reactions - couple of screams from the girlfriends (and drummer), I froze in place with the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, and the guy saying "that's just sodding typical - don't worry, it's just the circuit breaker. Does it all the time." (It had never done it while we were doing band practice running two amps and a PA off it...). He clicked the breaker back on, and the drinking resumed, at a slightly subdued pace. Later, when I was walking home with the guitarist, he told me he'd noticed that for the early part of the night, before the lights went off, I'd kept at the back corner of the room. "Probably just a natural reaction to the spooky stories, looking over my shoulder to check for anything creeping up behind me" I said. "Maybe, but so was I. And so was the drummer. Couldn't quite see whatever I thought I saw out the corner of my eye. And it was always that corner. Where the circuit breaker was..." Never quite worked out what was going on there - I certainly didn't see anything, but if it wasn't supernatural, it was certainly Sod's Law that the lights would go out at that particular moment. *Turned out when he said "owned", it was actually rented and his grand plans to turn it into a recording studio were total fantasy, but that's another story.

I've added the Staytrem bridge to mine, and have ordered a couple of sets of Kalium (formerly Circle K) strings, which I'll hopefully get in a few weeks time (I've had them sent to a friend in the states who is coming over for a visit soon).

Good find! I've found that "random" or "shuffle" buttons on mp3 players/software tend to be pretty useless, but I like the idea of being able to push a button and getting a whole album chosen for me. It needs a "and now for something completely different" button as well, which picks an album from a totally different genre than the currently playing album.

[quote]bass identification.... what is it?[/quote] It's the act of determining the manufacturer and/or model of a bass guitar based on available evidence, but that's not important right now.

If you're a regular record store visitor, Record Store Day is the worst day of the year to visit your local friendly record store. Normally on a nice sunny day like today, I'd quite happily wander round town, popping into my usual haunts for a browse, but today if I want to in, it'll involve a queue and having a list of what I want, to speed things along. This year, I had a look at what was coming out, and pretty much none of it appealed to me, and it's painfully obvious that so much of it is aimed at the "collectors" market, rather than the "I'd actually quite like to listen to the record, and I'm not particularly bothered that doing so will involve opening the cellophane and halving the eBay sale value" market.

If all you're after is the tone, and you don't like the body shape or neck width, there are a number of other basses out there with P pickups in the necessary location. Or, as a stop-gap, you could wire a Jazz up with a series-parallel switch - gives an approximation of the P pickup sound and is easily done if you're able to solder.