tauzero

Having just (as a buyer) undergone a traumatic experience where a couple of grands worth of Warwick bass disappeared while with DPD (fortunately reappearing afterwards), I'm sure you won't mind if I completely ignore this advice. Especially as your speculative 5% figure seems rather a long way off the mark. It seems more like 1-2% from my experience. It doesn't have to be a huge percentage for the insurance companies to make a profit - any courier which was losing or destroying 1% of the parcels they handled wouldn't stay in business long. Yes, even Herpes and Yokel.

We're talking insurance companies here.

Beware of insurance coverage levels. Parcelfarce won't give enhanced cover for musical instruments, only their standard cover for the service (£100 or £200, depending on the service). I use interparcel.com and UPS, and have had no problems with them.

It wouldn't hurt. Just start by saying that on rereading your reply, it was a bit short on detail, and then add what you want to. Try to avoid any hint of desperation.

The producer got the mix just right in 1963, and he's not going to go messing with the settings now.

The description says it has 38 unfret markers. Though there's one each side of the neck at the 12th unfret, so that might just be the gravestones for 37 frets rather than 38.

Philip Catherine later took over from Jan Akkerman in Focus. Just thought I'd mention that.

Good idea. I keep meaning to do something like it and never quite getting round to it. Presumably you have an offsite backup of the spreadsheet in case the computer gets stolen too?

That's pretty much what he said on BBC Breakfast.

But where that falls down is that Gilmour's black Strat looks pretty much the same as a Squier Affinity. The collectors are buying more than decorations, they're buying the associations too. I rather hope a few of them are bought by talented guitarists who will use them at least occasionally, and others by institutions like the Hard Rock Cafe which will display them for the public. It's a bit sad to think of them disappearing into vaults, never to be seen again until whichever auction the new owner decides to sell them at.

3-2-0-0 4-1-2-0 (I've known the 1 about 15 years, the others a couple of months) 4-0-3-0 (should be 5-x-x-x but we still haven't got a singer and I've only done 3 rehearsals with them) I think I've actively disliked one former bandmate, about 30 years ago (she was the band leader and she eventually sacked me). But there's been a few I haven't actually disliked but would describe as being self-abusers.

To quote Sir Paul of Macca: Sei, Sei, Sei. 😁

It's very lovely but rather expensive. And here's another £3500 second-hand Warwick: http://andybaxterbass.com/details.php?id=1443 (a 1986 Thumb 5) - I can live with much less slanty pickups, a 2-piece bridge, and broken battery box lid for less than half the price.

Have you had a look in the adverts section?

So it's rather like murder, because you've got to prove intent as well? 😁

Isn't that the very definition of A Dorian?

When I help out with Mrs Zero's duo, I always ask the guitarist what the next things are to bring out. I try to tell the other members of my band too, but not always successfully - if things get chaotic, I just wait till they've brought everything out and then load up. We always do a final sweep to make sure nothing's been left behind, which almost always works. I've managed to leave my amp at home. It lives in a silver case, very similar to a silver case that Mrs Zero was using for a vocal effect pedal, and I grabbed the wrong one. Still, I had my spare amp with me. And no speaker cable as it was in the silver case. It was only about an hour round trip to get my amp...

So, who did that crazy dance move first, Jay Osmond or Cliff Richard?

Bassy McBassFace?

He was on BBC Breakfast this morning talking about it, and the Strat he was going to use for Live Aid didn't work so his guitar tech passed him the red one.

I bought a Warwick Thumb 5 from someone in Italy, who used Skynet to send it to me. That finished up with DPD at this end. Originally DPD said delivery would be on the 24th, and I'd be given a one hour delivery slot when it was loaded onto the van, by about 11:00. 11:00 on the 24th came and went, no sign of a delivery slot, and then the status changed to delivery on 25th, allegedly at my request. 11:00 on the 25th came and went, and no sign of a delivery slot, so I contacted DPD. The artificial stupidity bot had a pretty limited repertoire, so I spoke to a human instead. Gave him parcel number, name, first line of address, and postcode, and he said "no, that's not the postcode". What seemed to have happened was that the address was correct, including the postcode, but there are separate postal town and postcode fields, and although the postal town was correctly set to Tamworth, the postcode was B77 1AA which looks like a generic Tamworth postcode rather than my actual postcode. So he changed the postcode field and then it was supposed to be delivered on Monday 28th. You know what's coming, don't you? So on Monday early afternoon I rang up, and was told it had been misplaced. Cue horrible sinking feeling. The very helpful customer service chap said he'd open a complaint and get a depot search started. Checking the parcel status yesterday morning, it had been scanned in the early hours, so it wasn't lost, and was being delivered later, and I'd be notified of a delivery slot by about 11:00. Can anybody guess what happened at 11:00? If you guessed "bugger all", award yourself a sweetie. Then the status changed to delivery today. So I opted to collect it from the depot, as it became increasingly obvious that they were utterly incapable of loading it onto a van to get it to me, and today at about 10:30 I collected it, fortunately intact. I was half expecting DPD to ask me for rent, it had been there for so long. I'm not going to go into a stupid rant about how nobody should ever use DPD, because they're normally reliable. However, it would appear that if one little bit of grit gets into the machine, everything goes titsup. In future, with any courier, if there's an inexplicable change of delivery date, I shall be straight on to them rather than hope that things will turn out. The situation could have been even worse - as I'm now out of work, I can sit around waiting for parcels.

Triplets:

After a traumatic few days while DPD c0cked up the delivery, I picked it up from the depot today, the culmination of its journey from Italy. The photo is of it in its arrived state - since then, the frets have been cleaned, fretboard lemon-oiled, neck and body waxed with genuine Warwick surface finisher (more lemony goodness), strings changed, and set-up done. I'm surprised at the tonal change from moving the blend between the pickups, as they're very closer together.

Newly arrived 1988 5-string, added to the family.

He was just on BBC Breakfast. Don't think he's giving up music, just selling most of his collection. I think he'd like them to be played but he recognised that they'd probably finish up in glass cases.