SJA

you can listen again here to the prog. [url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio2_aod.shtml?radio2/r2_johnmcgeoch"]http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio2_aod..../r2_johnmcgeoch[/url]

P bass with a J pickup added at the bridge, and i'm pretty much sorted for tone.

is it me or have they got the" trad" and "attack" ATK clips the wrong way round? attack is parallel, so should sound like a stingray, but it's the trad clip that does instead?

to quote Mick Jagger in Freejack- DON'T DO IT!

yeah, i heard that McGeoch story documentary too. I was a bit disappointed, to be honest- they could have got Robert Smith to contribute- he's mentioned being a fan of Mcgeoch's playing (having subbed for him in the Banshees). I don't think Adamson actually used a fretless- I think it was just chorus- check out Youtube clips of Magazine with a fretted Ovation magnum (string bends on Permafrost) and a Rick/Rick copy. "Tar" by Visage is another of his basslines. the bass on his solo albums is a bit subdued, unfortunately (and often by other bassists)

*keef richards drawl* hey, it's not about gear, man, it's about rock n' rollllll. seriously though, the drummer (or any other member of the band) being ignorant about the bass or amp I'm playing doesn't bother me at all- unless they start trying to tell me which type to play.....

from the Bach basses thread- [url="http://www.bachmusik.com/en/p101036/rbb-2-trd/"]http://www.bachmusik.com/en/p101036/rbb-2-trd/[/url]

I've just got the book "Everybody dance; Chic- the politics of disco". it covers pretty much everything about Nile Rodgers, Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson. there's a stream/download of a 2hour radio special on Chic/Chic organisation here- [url="http://www.sixmillionsteps.com/drupal/node/383"]http://www.sixmillionsteps.com/drupal/node/383[/url]

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good[/url] wonder who'll buy it....businessman (Railtrack director maybe?), film actor........possibly at a push an actual musician?

I think series/parallel selection is most worthwhile when the coils the switch works on sense all 4 strings, as opposed to split coil halves as in a P pickup. on my warmoth P, I put a double J humbucker at the bridge, and the series/single/parallel switch on this gives a huge variation in tone. (series is fat, single snappy, parallel is scooped)

my PJ precision plus came with a series-parallel switch for the P pickup- effectively a castration switch on a P pickup- all the balls drops out in parallel mode.

um, wait a minute, it looks like the neck has been lengthened so the fingerboard goes up over 2 octaves or so - how did he do that? is it just a block of maple glued on the end, and a new longer fingerboard put on ? if that extra bit of maple isn't joined onto the neck, the neck would be prone to shifting without the pocket wall against it.

this doesn't really surprise me. the website listed a particular gigbag, but when I went there it was the usual "none in stock- order them in"- useless. no point in having a shop with a sales floor.

another thing, if a bolt-on neck gets damaged, bows/twists badly beyond repair etc, you can easily remove it and fit a replacement. re. tone, bolt-ons tend to be snappier, more woody sounding, as the body is freer to vibrate and colour the tone, and neck throughs have more sustain and fundamental in the tone, and metallic brightness from the string. although it will all vary depending on the combination of woods used, weight of the body etc. (my Hohner B2A is neck-thru, but is very light, so sounds more like a bolt-on)

I just use a guitar gigbag for my B2A.

here's a new band on the rise, with IMO an excellent bassist, to my ears very Norman Watt-Roy-like; [url="http://www.myspace.com/blahblahblahandfriends"]http://www.myspace.com/blahblahblahandfriends[/url] check out "have no fear".

[quote name='OldGit' post='128030' date='Jan 25 2008, 09:08 PM']can you recommend one and a supplier? Can I do that with the push pull switch, IE pull it out and it takes the controls out of the circuit?[/quote] first , you can experiment to see if there's any tonal difference a controls bypass would make, and then decide whether to go ahead, by taking the pickup lead, unsoldering it from the pots and connecting it direct to the output jack, with the pots disconnected from the jack +ve. if you can hear an improvement, go ahead with installing a switch so you can select between controls engaged or bypassed; any DPDT on-on switch will do, I've used a push-pull pot I got from Brandoni (Allparts, WD products and other places will stock it too), and also the mini toggle switches from maplin. the wiring's quite simple- basically the middle switch terminals have the pickup +ve on one side, the other the output jack +ve, and when you flick it one way it the pickup connects to the controls input and the controls output goes to the output jack, and when you flick it the other, the terminals are connected together so the pickup signal goes direct to the jack. I got the idea from an article by Rick Turner in Bass Player magazine. there should be a wiring diagram around online somewhere. I've also got a Fender TBX tone control pot in my Precision Plus ; it's a sort of halfway house to controls bypass- it reduces the loading on the pickups when you turn it clockwise past a centre detent. but a full controls bypass has a more noticeable effect.

if you want more brightness, try a controls bypass switch- a DPDT switch that takes the vol and tone pots out of the circuit completely, the same as wiring the pickup straight to the jack. this eliminates the loading of the pots on the signal, which tends to drain some treble away. I've put them in my precisions- there is a noticeable tone difference.

Mike Dirnt of Green Day? even if he is a Paul Simonon clone.... maybe the list of Fender and squier signature basses reveals who's inspiring kids to take up bass- Pete Wentz? (but he comes across as completely dumb in interviews) Frank Bello?

[quote name='TheBigBeefChief' post='116925' date='Jan 9 2008, 12:20 PM']Rumour has it that Ludovic Goujon will also be teaching.[/quote] teaching what?

in the modern digital internet age, i feel that the one large remaining advantage record companies have over artists selling their music themselves is in their ability to create a demand for an artist- via PR campaigns, radio and tv airplay and press coverage (read- "hype"). only all that will cost money (PR budget, pluggers, dare i say journalist incentives) and come out of a signed artist's pocket anyway. I reckon that today if you can crack that side of the business yourself, and create a buzz about you and your music by yourself, you don't need record companies- their distribution capabilities mean less today with diminishing sales of the physical product.

[quote name='Hamster' post='126414' date='Jan 23 2008, 08:10 PM']With the amount of heads up about things worth watching being posted, I'm going to stop buying the Radio Times [/quote] i stopped buying it years ago as i was sick of the hyping of shows eg. Little britain and Spooks. I just check the website now- [url="http://www.radiotimes.com/ListingsServlet?event=10&channelId=47&programmeId=72621989&jspLocation=/jsp/prog_details_fullpage.jsp"]http://www.radiotimes.com/ListingsServlet?...ls_fullpage.jsp[/url] save on paper and recycling...

a heads up, i just spotted it on a tv guide- it's Stuart Copeland's documentary film of The Police on tour.

some pertinent words of wisdom posted on the RecordOfTheDay forum- "There'll always be people digging for gold and oil in music - provide the picks and shovels and you're sorted". there's money to be made from exploiting people's dreams of success, even if there's no gold and oil for them at the end of the day....

it's because of the varying thickness of the strings- the thicker strings aren't as flexible, so the node point is a bit further from the saddle, so an E string saddle has to be backed away from the nut to intonate correctly, further from where the G saddle is. note that when using strings with tapered windings, (ie. the string diameter steps down over the saddle), or contact-core strings (where only the core itself sits on the saddle, eg. Rotosound piano string design RS99), the saddles are more in line- because the heavy strings are as flexible at the contact point as the lighter strings.