KK Jale

If your local place baulks then the folks who can definitely 100% fix this are jpfamps.com. That's 'cos they do all the official Orange repairs on the side. Nothing about Terrors that they don't know. They've mended mine several times to the point where it's basically a UK-built OTB. Lovely fellas too.

By the way, if anyone misses the old metal Fast Fret tins, get a US friend to post you a can of Tibet Almond Stick. It's a light oil designed as a furniture scratch remover that's been around for about 100 years. The actual product feels and smells and works exactly the same as Fast Fret.... I imagine someone spotted an old timer guitar picker using this stuff as string lube back in the 70s, had a lightbulb moment and flogged the idea to GHS, who probably used the same manufacturer. I use the Almond Stick as a refiller for an ancient wooden-handled Fast Fret applicator and keep that in the Almond Stick tin 'cos I think it looks cool.

Fast Fret addict here. Some hate it but I can't gig flatwounds without it... worth a try, I recommend it. To lownote - I've heard this as well but I think if you just give the strings a swift swipe then wipe nearly all of it off straight away with the little cloth, you won't get any crud on fingerboard or frets. I've been using the stuff for yonks with no ill-effects. It might deaden strings a bit, I don't know. Flatwounds, eh?

Andy Gibson now works out of Sixty Sixty sounds on Denmark St, he's very very experienced and I've had good results. On one MIJ bass he even did a partial defret, a slight fingerboard shoot and then replaced the original frets for me, which is something many repairers won't do... and affordably too.

You could well be right. But I was surprised to see that USA Lollar covers matched MIJ Fender while the new pickup is the odd one out.

@PaulThePlug cheers! Not impossible but hellish tricky to do really accurately without a pillar drill IMO...

I have this P pickup. It came in a cream cover and I wanted to switch to black so I offered up some covers from to see if they'd fit - a Japanese Fender cover and a Lollar one. Nope. It seems that whereas many P pickups are 29mm this one is spaced at 28mm, which is just enough to make a regular cover not fit... not without filing the holes oval. TL:DR: anyone have any ideas?

Interestingly, as used by a certain Mr Illsley on the first ever gig by Dire Straits (Deptford Crossfields festival, the whole shebang being powered by an extension cable out of somebody's apartment window)., Mind you, John may just have borrowed it for the day. Apologies for the quality of the photo, they didn't have cameras back then - this is someone's memory directly printed onto a Kraft cheese slice.

The ringing phone and Ronson swearing story at the end of Life On Mars is weird because I'm certain I can remember a cut in which somebody clearly says "Right! that's enough". On one of the great covers of a Chuck Berry song, Johnnie Allan's early 70s cajun version of Promised Land, in verse 8 he sings "terminal gate" like verse 7, but it should be "terminal zone" to rhyme with "telephone". AFAIK he always kept it like that. I think Dave Edmunds copied him.

A most enjoyable and life affirming little film. Feck knows why that has never shown up on any Music And Musicals search I've done on Netflix, so cheers! 🛁🛁🛁

In Search Of Space (fold-out sleeve! Bonkers Robert Calvert logbook!) was a formative influence on my spotty self. Immensely heavy, electronic, psychedelic, trancey and perhaps more Euro/Krautrock-connected than they are given credit for. Still like it today.

Squier Vintage Modified Tele Bass Special with a well nasty relic job and a "1" on the front of the price that shouldn't be there.

I do believe they are different things, and when pushed to it, especially with beer inside me, I will argue that a pickguard is raised from the body of the instrument while a scratchplate is screwed down flat. A jazz guitar has a pickguard. A Jazz Bass has a scratchplate.

I'm a lifelong Precision/Labella junkie so kudos to Alex for bringing on the flats. I've been using a Mk2 Midget for years - oof, nine actually - and always assumed that were I to switch BF cabs, it would be to a Two10 or 2 x One10 set up. Now I'm thinking the SC could well take it. Insert mindblown.gif here.

Maybe not what you want to hear, but spookily enough about a year ago I too decided I was absolutely 100% switched over to 32" scale with the lovely bonus of super-light weight.... but had I sold my long-owned full-scale bass I would now be crying bitter, salty tears, writing bad poetry on clifftops, and that sort of thing. Tuck the MM under the bed, that's my advice.

^ I believe Wizard's tooling etc went over to Hot Rod Pickups, down in Chichester. They still do a P pickup called the Thumper, plus a 'vintage' one. https://www.eternal-guitars.com/product-page/pb-thumper-precision-bass-pickup

David emerged from the woodwork with a much-needed bass part, excellent!

TC Polytune/Unitune clip has been flawless for me.

Those are the two we do. Singer I work with is very upset today, JP really meant a lot to her.

Also so glad I caught him - London Palladium in 2017. Unforgettable gig. "You come home straight, you come home curly/ Sometimes you don't come home at all..."

I came across a cracker just today... far from famous, mind. It’s a lovely Staples Singers cut of an old gospel tune, recorded in the mid 60s, and it's obvious the bassist (who can certainly play) has pretty much NO CLUE when Pops Staples is going to go to the IV chord. Assuming it was one take and live in the studio, I suspect Pop's open tuning and lack of conventional chord shapes may have thrown the poor bass player off. Anyway, they couldn't be arsed to do a re-take, not even one. Amazing. Fab groove though...

Irresistible pop bossa nova from 1967. Glorious lift into the chorus

Thanks. Very interesting to hear his timing so closely... very relaxed, never ever pushing, very much on the back of the beat. Bloody pros eh.

42.8 here on an August '82... Radius feels actually a touch flatter than on an 85 A-series, but I don't have a gauge alas.