paul_5

I love John Frusciante’s tones - single coil pickups with a smattering of gentle compression and a valve amp just on the edge of overdrive. If it’s just the neck pickup then so much the better. Effects wise I love the whacky stuff that Tom Morello does with his Whammy Pedal, and anything through a rotary cabinet. The Edge made some of my favourite guitar based noises on Achtung Baby too. My philosophy is ‘if you’re going to use effects, use them ALL!!!’ Least favourite would have to be early rock and roll stuff with that god-awful delay.

Yes it is, needs a high gain preamp though, as the output is tiny!

Electro Voice EV20 is a great mic for voice over work too.

My preferred pickup configuration. Looks nice!

For folk wanting the Slonimsky pdf there's a pdf version here: https://ia803000.us.archive.org/24/items/nicolasslonimskythesaurusofscalesandmelodicpatterns/Nicolas Slonimsky - Thesaurus OfScales And Melodic Patterns.pdf

That body design is great for someone with short legs. The bridge has a couple silly points though.

There's a whole lot more to Britpop than Oasis though; Blur (in particular Graham Coxon) have always been a really creative band - check out their albums from around the mid 90s! Suede also had some great tunes, as did Sleeper. I lived through it in my early 20 (my peak 'going out' years) and yes, Oasis were everywhere, and were boring.

And Sly Stone in his vocals.

I’ve never needed a spare bass in nearly 30 years of gigging. I used to go out with a couple of basses ‘just in case’, and occasionally I’ll take a second bass for a change of sound (mostly it’s fretless Jazz, but occasionally it’s nice to dig into a P with flats) depending on the band and the set list. These days it would be nice to have a gig to go to; my first one of the year is in July!

Glad to hear you’ve taken your first steps in Zappa’s immense (and intense) body of work. as a newcomer I’d recommend: Broadway the Hardway Apostrophe Sheik Yerbouti as the most accessible ones. The Yellow Shark Project is worth a listen too - FZ’s masterpiece of orchestral writing.

I watched a video of one of these the other day - sounded great!!

A preamp should be able to do both. whether you choose to use it to just change the eq, and set the output to match bypassed signal is up to you. I’ve got a Dave Hall valve unit that I used to use as a preamp direct into a power amp - much like other BCers who run into the effects return socket of their amp; these days I just use it as an overdrive pedal, so I dial back the volume and that’s what it is. Tone shaping is much easier (and safer) to do in the preamp stage, as the signal is significantly smaller (typically less than 1v) when compared to the signal coming out of the power amp stage, so that’s why it gets done at that particular part of the amp.

Put me in mind if a Pearly Queen. and not in a good way.

Could’ve as simple as a dicky switch - it’s a mechanical device as will fail eventually!

Everything’s worth repairing!

There’s a little plastic cover on the headstock; it’s under there. 😄

I’m no Derek Smalls, but...

“TLC needed”. I think that ship may have sailed, time to administer the last rites.

It’s 5 parallel clipping stages, each tune to *very* close frequencies. Messy and chaotic, but in a really food way.

You might be correct; true 'bit crushing' is only possible using digital audio, so it's probably the most recent invention.

An excellent choice. Today (and yesterday) have been very 80s for me, in a Kate Bush, Prince and Erasure way.

For that track I think the CAR bass is more appropriate, personally I prefer the other one though; it’s just got a bit more bite to it.