BigRedX

Mine: 1. A month in the studio with Trevor Horn producing. 2. A small tour bus complete with driver and road crew.

I used a piece of holographic sticker cut to shape stuck to the front of the guitar I made in the late 70s:

Those of you complaining about what Facebook shows you must either have the wrong friends or be following the wrong groups. All I see is posts from my friends and those groups I have chosen to follow. Any "friend" who consistently posts crap I'm not interested in gets unfollowed, likewise with any groups. I get the very occasional suggested or sponsored post which I always mark is irrelevant. Having said that Facebook is not installed on my phone or any other mobile devices. I signed up to it using a one-time email address and it runs sandboxed in its own browser on my desktop computer which is used just for Facebook. I only have that browser open while I am looking at Facebook and quit as soon as I am done. While I am looking at Facebook I don't use anything else to access the internet. Anything that pops up in my feed that looks interesting is noted down and checked out in a different browser after quiting Facebook.

While it can be possible to remove the stickiness using IPA, it will come back, and IME much sooner than a couple of years. It's a manufacturing defect with the plastic/rubber used and once the material has started to break down there is nothing that I know that will stop the process and cleaning off the stickiness just exposes new material that has already started to degrade. Ultimately the only permanent solution will be the replace the parts in question with something made out of a more stable material.

I the early 2000s I joined a band where I felt fretless bass would go well. To test this out I bought a cheap defretted Wesley Acrylic bass off eBay which told me I was right. After something a bit better and being somewhat short of funds at the time I was attracted to the Squier VMF Jazz which had received nothing but positive reviews in the musical instrument press and plenty of love on the bass forums. I played one for about an hour sitting down in the shop and it seemed perfect. Unfortunately once I got it home I discovered it wasn't as suitable for me as I thought. I wasn't used to Fender-style basses, up to that point my greeted basses had been a Gus G3, Overwater Original and a short scale Burns Sonic, and so I wasn't prepared for how relatively large it was and how badly it hung on the strap on my small body. I couldn't reach the G-string tuner without shifting how it hung. Even the 36" scale Overwater felt more ergonomic and well-balanced in comparison. The biggest problem was that it sounded weedy compared with all mu other basses including the £60 Wesley and the ancient Burns Sonic. I bought a Badass Bridge for it, which tightened up the tone somewhat but didn't make it any less weedy sounding. I then fitted a J-Retro pre-amp which gave me lots more tonal control from the bass but didn't make it sound any chunkier. I was seriously considering going back to playing the Wesley, when I spotted a Pedulla Buzz for sale which I could afford, and which for me was everything the Squier was not, and which was my main fretless bass until I finally received my custom-built Sei Flamboyant.

For me it would be having what I make from music as my primary source of income.

Regarding the stickiness, if it's just a coating that is sticky you'll have to remove it, otherwise it will come back no matter what you do. If it's the actual material itself then the only real solution is replacement. Maybe some nice wood for the end cheeks and see if someone is offering 3D-printed replacements for mod and pitch wheels.

When I was a kid, most boxed sets were made once and then the bricks went into the general collection so I could make whatever I thought of. Back then the main reason to buy a boxed set was to get hold of some of the specialist bricks that weren't available separately. That doesn't seem to apply these days.

Not only that, but IME once I stopped trying so hard, the bands I have been in have been more popular and more successful at a grass-roots level.

I'm only on Facebook so I can promote whatever band I am currently in. While I don't think I'd quit if I wasn't using it to promote my music I'd probably only look at it once a week tops and my page would simply be whatever my friends had tagged me in.

About mid-way through 2002 the band that I had been playing for almost 13 years ended with a bad split up. I had got fed up with organising every band-orientated aspect of the other members lives and therefore following the split I wasn't ready to form another band. I did have a look at trying to salvage something from our finished and half-finished recordings but in the end I couldn't be bothered. Then at the end of the year for some reason I Googled the name of the first band I was in back in the late 70s and early 80s and came across a glowing review of our contribution to a multi-band double EP that was released in 1980. I got in touch with the web site that had published the review and it turned out it was run by a record label in Chicago who were seemingly on a mission to release every UK DIY band of the post-punk era. They asked me if we had any other recordings and if we did would we like to release a retrospective CD of them? So for the best part of the next two years I was involved with getting all our recordings that were on a mix of 1/4" reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes digitised, cleaned up; and then in discussion with the other band members about which tracks from about 4 hours worth of recordings should be included on the CD, and designing the cover for it. During that time I barely picked up an instrument and I certainly didn't write any new songs. When the CD was released in early 2005 I was just about ready to start making music again. I decided that my next band would be one where all I had to do was show up for rehearsals and gigs and play some bass (or guitar or synth). That was fine to easing me back into being in a band and starting to writing songs again. After that the next band I joined was the one that became The Terrortones, and since then I've not looked back. Having taken a break I came back much more relaxed about playing in bands and I would like to think I'm a better band member these days than I was in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Overall the bands I've been with for the past 20 years have overall been far more popular and successful than those I was in before.

To expand on my original post. In my current band, I use a 30" Eastwood Hooky 6-String Bass. Our band doesn't have a guitarist so myself and synth play alternate between playing the melody and bass parts:

The original is all programmed - probably on a TB303 by the sounds of it and the way the bass line divides up neatly into repeatable 1-bar blocks. The song also relies on the bass and the drums being absolutely metronomically solid and each note being precise, and therefore while the bassist in that clip is way, way better than I'll ever be, I found myself wincing over every tiny hesitation and slightly fluffed note.

I'm currently learning how to play my band's Christmas song. We have a gig coming up on the 28th November which is our last gig of the year so we thought it would be good to include it in the set. It will be an interesting proposition to play live as it was originally pieced together in the studio. I don't think I've ever played the bass/guitar part all the way through in a single pass and the part was written first and foremost to make the song sound good rather than as something I would be able to perform standing up on stage. There's some big leaps from one end of the neck to the other between the verses and choruses.

Streaming definitely benefits my band. It allows us to reach listeners all over the world. About 90% of our listeners are from outside of the UK. For better or worse it's where the majority of most artist's potential audience are. These days it costs next to nothing to be on streaming services, so why wouldn't you be there? Does it give a fair payout? How do you even begin to quantify that? Let's look at the "good old days" of record companies, albums and CDs... A new signed band might get 10% of the retail price of the record or CD, But that only came after they had paid off their advance, recording costs (often to a studio owned by the label), promotional costs like buying onto a major artist tour, making videos, paying photographers, record pluggers and all the publicity that a band with a record contract in the 20th century would have taken for granted. They would also have to sign with the record labels publishing company who would take one third of all their performance royalties. Most bands would never see any money other than what the label initially advanced them. And that was only for the very lucky few who actually got signed. If you were going to put out your own record, in the late 70s if you cut every corner possible like The Desperate Bicycles you could record and press 500 copies of your single for just under £200. Back then it took at least 3 months to get your records after you had sent them off to be pressed. If you were lucky and John Peel liked it enough to play it more than once and Rough Trade gave you a distribution deal and you sold all the copies, you could probably afford to make a second single and not have to cut every corner this time. Or if you were unlucky like my friend's band it could take the best part of a year from making the initial recording to getting your 500 copies of the single and then your distributor would go bust taking all of your stock with them never to be seen again. On the other hand streaming probably won't make any of the artists being streamed rich on its own, but if you do it right you should at the very least make back your aggregator's fees. Your music will be available for as long as the streaming service is running. Yes Bandcamp give you 90% of your download and physical product sales, but their reach is tiny compared with Spotify or Apple Music or Amazon. IME the people who do badly out of streaming do so because either they have signed a deal that gives someone else (usually their record label) the majority of their streaming income, or because they don't do enough promotion. The conservative estimate is that 20,000 new songs are uploaded EVERY DAY. So when you release your next single not only do you have to compete with the other 19,999+ songs released that day but you also have to compete with almost every other song ever released in the history of popular music. The charts (for what they are worth these days) have to apply negative weighting to back catalogue otherwise new artist would barely get a look in. So if you can't/won't promote your music how can you ever expect to reach an audience of more than your close friends and family? For me the short answer is that while I'm almost never going to make a living out of my music, at the moment my band breaks even overall in terms of what it cost us to be a band and what we make from playing gigs and having our music available to listen to or buy in various formats. And while it isn't a massive proportion of the band's overall income it makes an important contribution.

These days, the only originals bands playing mid-week are well-known ones with a couple of albums out who are on tour and have some sort of financial support from a record label or management company. Here in Nottingham gigs by new bands are on average £10 on the door (and at some venues free).

So how do you suggest that we listen to new bands? There are many bands who only release their music on-line, are you saying that we should ignore all of them? Even if the bands can afford to release their music on a physical medium often the cost of sending them out can make them prohibitively expensive. CDs aren't too band but the postage and packing cost for an album on vinyl can double its price, and if you want it to reach its purchaser you have to package it well and send by a reputable service. Here in the UK it may well preclude sending to most foreign in destinations as I described in a previous post. That limits sales of CDs and vinyl to those at gigs. Download sales on Bandcamp, which is about the main source of legal downloads for most bands these days are generally insignificant for new bands. To give you an idea of how insignificant they are last year my band's Spotify streaming payments alone were far greater than our Bandcamp income. Download sales on Bandcamp are generally good for the first week or two of a new release and then tail off to nothing with the occasional sale of our entire catalogue to someone who has just discovered us. On the other hand our income from Spotify is steady and continuous, and that's just from Spotify and not taking into account any of the other streaming services. Also great as Bandcamp is, the audience is mostly other musicians and a few die-hard music fans. Unfortunately these are are not sufficient for most bands to grow their audience in any meaningful way. To do this you have to be on a streaming service.

My understanding of getting the best fit of a neck in the pocket was to slacken off the strings so they are exerting very little pull on the neck and to loosen the neck bolts very slightly. Then tighten the strings back up to pitch, allow everything to stabilise for a couple of hours and retighten the neck bolts. This has the effect of pulling the neck as far into the pocket as possible, the transfer point being the end of the neck pocket and not the bottom.

Agreed. Before doing anything else the OP should get a decent straight edge and check: 1. The fingerboard. With the stings off it should be either flat or have a slight back bow. 2. the top of the neck extension between the end of the finger board and where the bridge attaches. This should be perfectly flat 3. The back of the same from big to heel. This should be perfectly flat 4. The pocket that the neck extension fits into. This should be perfectly flat. This could be the problem if the others are all correct and bolting the neck in place is imposing a curvature on it.

You don't even need post-processing. Find a decent-sized room, through a couple of duvets on a clothes horse and you have enough acoustic treatment for recording great-sounding vocals.

So how do you decide which gigs to go to? This is not an attack, as someone who has been an avid gig goer and seeker of new music for the past 45 years I am genuinely interested. I told you my method in the post you quoted. I still get to see loads of bands live although these days it is mostly bands who happen to be playing on the same bill as mine.

But does it? In the 80s SAW did everything in house and most of the artists they produced were signed to their PWL label. These days I suspect most of the money goes to Max Martin or one of his associates.

In those days I would go and see bands I had heard and liked on John Peel's Radio One program, or someone who looked interesting in the music press (mostly NME and Zigzag) or even a local band that had an eye-catching poster. Most of the bands I heard on Peel lived up to their recorded promise at gigs, the others were a mixed bunch, some excellent, many terrible. The great gigs made it all worthwhile. These days none of those things really exist. What is left of the music press on-line is depressingly mainstream, there are no radio shows as eclectic as Peel's, and hardly anyone puts up posters for gigs and those that do are mostly dull. The internet has given us access to bands from all over the world and that is both its strength and its weakness. I get to hear loads of interesting new bands but lots of them are not from the UK and are unlikely to be playing here any time soon. I could order a CD or record from one of these bands and hope that it reaches me in an undamaged state, but with the current postage situation regarding UK and US in particular, this is becoming more and more difficult. From the other side of the transaction, I have had to stop selling physical copies of one of my previous band's back catalogue to addresses outside of the UK, because for the last 5 years not one has reached its destination and those that did eventually get returned were no longer in a condition here they could be resold. In these cases streaming whether it be Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube is the only way of being able to hear these bands. Each stream may not add up to much but at least the money will eventually reach the band. If I buy a CD the chances are that there is no profit to be made once international postage and Bandcamp have taken their cuts. And so I ask again how do you discover new bands?

I don't think the pickup route is the problem. It looks as though the bolts for the neck attach either side of this which should counter-act any weakness at this point. My suspicion is that the problem is due to the fact that all the "neck" bolts appear to be beyond the end of the truss rod, and the flexing point is between the end of the fingerboard and where the first set of bolts attach to to the body. I wonder if fitting two more bolts that definitely attach the neck at a point where it is also being affected by the truss rod will overcome this flex point.

Glad to be of assistance. Now where's my share of the prize money?