mcnach

love it! thank you for posting this!

Dang, the control cavity on the VM4 is tiiiiiiight! I bought a John East Uni-Pre de luxe preamp a few months ago to install on this bass... and I don't think I'll be able to fit it in. My original plan was to make it passive because I am liking much better its passive sound and the preamp is 'meh' for my liking. I thought I would just manage with it as it is, since in passive mode you still get a passive tone control, but its action is pretty limited. The Uni-Pre deluxe combines a 3-band EQ with semiparametric mids, and you can tweak the bass EQ points too, as well as having a passive tone control... agh, I'm going to have to buy a different bass now to fit that in Anyway, back to the original plan, fully passive: volume blend Tonestyler tone control additional control for the 'intenity' of the Tonestyler, as I have a spare hole... Watch this space...

whoa, blast from the past! I remember liking this and hiding it from my heavy metal mates (I was always quite eclectic in my tastes ) I do prefer the original (I still have the 45 RPM single!) by RAF. A bit strange to get someone covering a song the same year (or year after?) the original came out. I could not view that video, so here's the Laura one: and here's the RAF one (the video is not the greatest example of a music video but hey, it was the 80s which spawn masterpieces as well s the worst of the worst 😞

No idea what that is, very strange. Nitrocellulose paint doesn't look like that either, hmm. I hope somebody else can provide some information. The Classic series came both in poly and nitro (the latter one being a bit more expensive), separately from the Roadworn which were quite different animals. You could always test the paint on some hidden area (under the pickguard?). Nitro will dissolve in acetone, while poly will not.

Absolutely this. I have a F1 and it's superb. Pricey, but very good protection, good storage, and very very comfortable to carry, unlike the Mono M80... I have had mine since 2014, used regularly (several times a week usually), and it's still in great condition. They don't make the F1 anymore, but their Urban seems to be the 'new F1' as far as I can see. https://www.fusion-bags.com/collections/urban/products/urban-bass-guitar-gig-bag

I know you asked for Glasgow, but Edinburgh is not that far away and you have the fantastic Chris McIntyre. He's beyond very good. We got lucky when he moved here from London a few years ago. This is for your Sandberg Marlowe DK I gather? If so, it deserves the best https://www.mcintyreguitars.com/

I have a 4-string set and I would like to use it on my 5 string bass, but I haven't seen anywhere selling singles... am I not very good at searching this, or do they really not sell singles? Does anybody know?

Very nice, thank you!

And immediately following that we get: It doesn't sound like all this would have happened if she had, indeed, removed the listing when requested, does it? Obviously I do not know the exact truth, but with what's on that article, which scenario sounds more plausible to you? 1) woman receives cease&desist letter, after a day pulls the listing down and sends the lawyers that response, then the lawyers take exception to the wording and decide to press charges. or 2) woman receives cease&desist letter, sends the lawyers the aforementioned response (where she 'objects', and pretty much tells them to go away), listing stays, then lawyers say 'ok' and press charges. I have no doubt the listing was removed after one day. I am just not so certain which day she was counting from. Again, no, I do not know what the exact truth is, but to me it looks like she miscalculated her situation, bluffed, and when it escalated, she bluffed some more and went to court, thus digging her hole further. I just cannot believe that if she really pulled down the listing *a day after* being asked, that she'd be pursued and that the court would not side with her. In the absence of further evidence, if I have to choose, I tend to go with the simplest explanation, the one that leaves fewest questions unanswered. From the two scenarios above, to me, #1 just sounds ridiculous, while #2 fits pretty well the narrative and her belligerent stance. When is the movie coming out?

Hmmm... She stated on her response she had no intention to withdraw and then waved a red cloth to the bull-lawyers "feel free to file a lawsuit"... While the whole thing seemed silly, it looks like she brought it on herself. I find it hard to have sympathy for her, no matter how much I may dislike Clapton.

Another pedal that while being different still overlaps a lot with the Spark Booster, is the Valeton Tube Refiner. It has more gain on tap, but it is able to do very good low gain sounds as well. I got one 2-3 years ago out of curiosity and I liked it so much that I bought a second: I use both for two different settings. They replaced the Spark Booster on my board, although I still keep it.

Very common in MusicMan at least. I'm sure a lot of people have instruments with shims but they don't know it because most people don't ever remove the necks.

Joyo American Sound is such a great overdrive pedal. Its built-in speaker simulation may be basic but it works very well. I love it for guitar, but it's great on bass as well. The Joyo Ultimate Drive is also veyr good, for those higher gain moments, although it does low gain nicely too.

Indeed, that can be a nice 'trick': bump the bass EQ a bit, and then turn up the filter cutoff frequency removing the lowest lows until... well, until it sounds right. It allows you to get a nice and fat low end without the mud. I 'discovered' that by chance, using the Mesa D800+'s built-in adjustable HPF. I thought I was so clever... then I saw I had just invented the wheel a few thousand years after the original

That's it. It's not so much what they say, but how.

This is what was usually found at my grandparents'. Trust me: it looks better than it felt

Oh, yes! And then there was the toilet paper they used... I'm pretty sure if you folded it a couple of times it could stop bullets. If we went to visit for a weekend I'd often hold it in until we were back home

My grandparents survived just fine without central heating, and for a while without drinking water on tap (a small village, drinking water was collected from a public fountain). But they embraced the modern ways when they arrived. Similarly, I can do without a tuner, there's always alternatives... but why would I?

I thought it would bother me more than it did. One of the things that I've always found getting in the way of my being comfortable with a 5 string was the spacing. I prefer 19mm spacing on 5 strings, so this one did feel rather narrow to start with. I have gotten used to it now, but for a while I considered replacing the bridge or perhaps just the saddles. The fingerboard is wide enough to allow a wider spacing (check the pictures), probably not quite 19mm but certainly wider than it is.

So sad My condolences to her friends and family. So very sad.

I was briefly in a band where the main guy (it was clearly HIS band, there was no doubt about it) was a bit like that. Not so much just complaining, but would spend the first 3-4 songs asking for changes to the monitors several times per song, and not precisely with a nice tone of voice (I don't think he meant to sound like an adult male chicken, I think he just gets very tense onstage wanting everything perfect)... That was not very nice, but what annoyed me the most was that he never wanted to show up early for soundchecks... which brought the issues he would complain about. If we had a soundcheck, even a short one, things would run much more smoothly. Great music (originals, fusion of funk and hip hop), I loved that, but he sucked the joy out of it and I quit after a few weeks during a rehearsal. He started giving us a lecture and complaining about the backing vocalist having missed a cue about a part where she'd take over the lead... but the rest of the band kept it going, we repeated the section smoothly and she picked it up correctly the second time around. She had been saying from the start that she could not hear the main vocals or the guitar and she was struggling. That was the last drop for me and I packed and left for good. The only band I quit when I was sad to quit, as musically it was very good. The guy is now a solo act. I wonder why.