BigRedX

Hiscox or if you can find one the right size for your bass a Peli Case.

Until the package has been assigned a GB tracking number, which only happens after it has cleared customs in this country you can't do anything. IME the customs charge demand and the change in tracking number happen at the same time.

Essentially my musical "CV"... 1975-1983 The Midnight Circus - DIY cassette scene/post-punk/weird noise originals. Released 5 cassette albums on our own Bland Craze label and then through The Instant Automatons' Deleted Records. Also tracks on various compilation cassettes, and two tracks on the "Angst In My Pants" double vinyl EP on Deleted Records. Produced a retrospective compilation CD for Chuck Warner's Hyped To Death label in 2003. Name from The Pretty Things song. (Played guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion and even did some singing) 1981-1982 The Perfect Party - Post-Punk originals. One track on the Radio Nottingham produced "The Bomb Party" compilation. Got turned down by CBS in favour of Wham! Name from the guitarist's note book where he kept newspaper clippings to use as lyrical ideas. (Played bass, synth and percussion) 1983-1987 SSURAEA - Synth Pop/Synth Rock originals. One very limited edition cassette EP "Plug In To Electric Living". Recorded a session for Radio Trent. Turned down the opportunity to work with William Orbit before he was famous. Name cobbled together the day before we had an interview on BBC Radio Derby, for some reason we never got around to changing it. (Played synth and some guitar) 1987-1988 The Wonderful Wild - Goth originals. Lots of gigs, but no recordings. Name came from a Freur lyric. (Played guitar) 1990 Senor Love Daddy - House originals. Released a limited edition two track white label 12". (Played synth) 1989-2002 Katskill Disciples/Big Red X/Optimum/SugarBox - Dance-Rock originals. Despite the name changes and numerous line-ups this was essentially the same band and there were some songs that made it all the way the from the first to last. One line-up of the band almost included John Bonham's daughter on vocals. Put out a CD EP as Optimum, Had tracks on various compilation CDs including the Garageband.com CD as SugarBox. The best of the finished recordings and remixes have been released as a digital album under the SugarBox name. Names - the band was already called Katskill Disciples when I joined, Big Red X is an Underworld B-side, Optimum was the best choice we could come up with before our first gig with that name, SugarBox from the Then Jericho song. (Played bass in all the line-ups except SugarBox where I played guitar) 2004-2009 Gosh! - Blues-based Pop originals and some covers (about 75/25). Lots of gigs. Nothing recorded. Band named before I joined. (Played bass) 2006-2007 The Invisible Friends - quirky covers done in our own style. Band named before I joined. (Played bass) 2009-2012 Dark Horse - Dad-rock covers. Band named before I joined. (Played bass) 2009 Mabel's Husbands - Originals. Released a CD EP "I Direct". I joined late in the band's history so I'm only on one track on the EP and just played the EP launch party gig. Band named before I joined. (Played bass) 2010-2016 D!ck Venom & The Terrortones - Rockabilly/Psychobilly originals. Gigged everywhere. Released two EPs (one on CD one on vinyl), a mini album on cassette and a full-length album on vinyl. Mr Venom came up with the name. (Played bass) 2017-2019 The Death Notes - Goth/Post-Punk originals. Again I joined late in the band's life so I'm only on the last two releases. Band named before I joined. (The White EP and The Black EP). (Played bass) 2018 to present In Isolation - Goth/Post-Punk originals. Joined after the release of the 1st album. Lots of recordings available digitally and on CD. Band named before I joined. (Play bass) 2019 to present Hurtsfall - Goth/Post-Punk originals. Have released 6 digital singles, one track on a digital compilation album and one track on a CD compilation. Name came from joining two words together to make us easier to find in an on-line search. (Play bass VI and synth) Edited to explain where the names came from (where I know).

The problem is that you can only do that once the packaged has been assessed for import duty and VAT. IME the hold ups currently are because there are too many parcels waiting to be assessed and not enough customs officers to be able to deal with them now that every parcel from the EU needs to be checked as well.

From a production PoV that makes no sense, because they won't be doing a single print run for both the UK and US and then shipping some of the copies to another country. The UK copies will be printed in the UK and US edition in the US. It's a trivial matter to create an overlay on the final artwork for each set of prices, and then produce a separate PDF for each print run. Besides I would assume that some ads would need to be changed for each version.

No it's more to do with the actual customs checks rather than waiting for payment. AFAICS since the rules changes at the beginning of 2021 out-going customs are only really concerned that the accompanying forms have been completed. In-coming customs will actually check that the forms have been filled-in properly and if necessary make sure the contents of the package matches what is on the paperwork. This additional work (especially since the UK left the EU) requires more people than are currently employed. That's where the hold up is currently.

IME in-coming customs is always where the major hold-up occurs.

And having just been involved in sorting out reproduction licenses for a large number of photographs from Getty and Alamy for a book I am designing they are not cheap!

For magazines (certainly in print) some articles are designed to work across both pages of a spread. Again this highlights another shot-coming of the on-line format. Thos on mobile devices (phone and smaller tablets) will want to access it one page at a time in portrait mode, whilst everyone else may want to view a spread at a time in landscape mode. If half your readers can't view a double-page spread in a single screen and still be able to read the text, then maybe it is time stop designing as spreads. After all the "spread" format only exists because of the printed version. If there is no printed version, or if it is less popular than the electronic one then now is the time to stop designing and presenting on spreads? I'd also be interested to know if any on-line only versions of magazines have stopped producing issues where the page count is not divisible by 4, as there is no longer any physical requirement to adhere to this format?

However for the production of printed publications the wide screen format works very well because it allows me to see both pages of a spread and all good page layout programs are design in such a way as to give over as much vertical space to the content and keep the interface at the sides (on my system the interface has been mostly removed to a separate screen).

Thomann already adjust their prices for UK buyers to take account of import duty and VAT which they pay for you.

Having done some research for a couple of my clients who were thinking about producing on-line versions of their various printed publications, I can tell you that the single largest cost involved is either the licensing of the on-line magazine display software, or the subscription to an on-line publisher. For about the last 5 years there have been a very limited number of on-line magazine interface formats and all of them follow the same basic format which means that to non-magazine parts of the interface all tend to look very similar. Also IMO none of them make the best use of a computer screen where vertical space is at a premium and ALL of the interface should be positioned at the side of the content. Hosting costs for text and low resolution images is negligible compared with adding an additional 4 pages to a printed publication. As for the actual content, especially photographs AFAICS they are either manufacturer's product shots or have been taken by the editorial staff of the magazine. If you don't need print resolution quality an up to date phone (which nearly everyone has) plus a ring light and maybe a light tent will give fantastic results and you buy these for the fraction of the price of hiring a photographic studio for the day. Maybe when printed magazine are completely dead maybe designers will start to question why the on-line versions are still constrained by the worst aspects of the physical version when there is no longer any reason for that to be so.

The big problem with on-line "magazines" is that they still look and act like paper magazines and fail to take advantage of any of benefits of not being tied to a fixed page size and therefore photo and word count. You do get videos, but they are generally full of waffle, and can't be skim-read to get to the important (for me) parts. I'll look at on-line magazines again once they actually start to present themselves in a way that uses the strengths of the medium.

Again I think there is a difference if you are playing covers or originals. For originals bands while the gig itself is important so too are the merchandise sales afterwards, and IME they quality of the venue/gig has little bearing this. I've played some great gigs at quality venues supporting well-know bands and got paid for it, but have struggled to sell more than a handful of CDs afterwards. Conversely one of the best gigs I have ever done in terms of merchandise sales was in the upstairs room of a crappy pub in the back of beyond, where our "welcome" consisted of one of the locals offering our driver/roadie out for a fight within minutes of us turning up because he didn't like the look of him.

The big hold up at the moment (and has been since the beginning of last year) is getting stuff through customs. IME expect it to take up to a month to clear both sets of customs checks.

You could always make your own. IIRC Stephen Delft dedicated at least 2 articles of his "Build Your Own Electric Guitar" series in International Musician to how to make your own truss rod from scratch. Unfortunately Muzines don't appear to have the relevant issues scanned and available as PDFs yet...

I started off on the guitar and had been playing for 6-7 years before I bought my first bass. There was also a slightly out of tune piano (it was wooden-framed and would never hold the tuning for long) in our house that I try to play from time to time. In my first band we didn't have a lot in the way of conventional "rock band" instruments and equipment, so anything capable of making a musical noise was pressed into service. AsI have said in many other threads on here I consider myself to be a composer first and foremost and for me being able to play musical instruments is a means to that end rather than an end in itself.

I think overall the problem I have the video in the OP and similar ones is that they don't give me what I want to hear from music. That not to say they are good or bad but simply that they have nothing to say to me. Maybe because I class myself as a composer first an arranger second and a musician a long way behind those, that I'm not interested technique so long as it doesn't adversely affect mine or the musicians I work with ability to perform my compositions. For me the best technique is invisible in that it doesn't overshadow the composition or performance.

For me the most important items in a studio these days are suitable acoustic environments to record those instruments that require them, and a good producer and engineer to coax and capture the performances out of the musicians. No amount of hardware can replicate these. In the early days of home recording I was able to tell myself that my recordings would be better if I had more professional equipment in my studio. Now that everyone can have a fantastic studio in their computer I can't hide behind these delusions anymore.

Yes they were. Confirmed to me by Martin Sims.

If you're benchmark is an original 60s Gibson, the Epiphone Vintage Pro is a lot closer than anything with a Gibson logo on it made since 1980.

No it was more part of the discussion as to what constitutes a "bass solo".

I supposed that's the difference. I don't really record just for "fun". My recording are all done with the aim of putting them out in some format for the general public to "enjoy". To a certain degree, I don't find the recording process particularly enjoyable, because it makes me over-analyse my playing/performance and I become very aware of all it's shortcomings. This is why I have discovered that having my own proper home studio was (for me) not a good idea, because there was always the opportunity for me to fiddle a bit more with the arrangement or mix of a track because I or another member of the band thought it could be improved. I've mentioned this before in other threads about recording, but I think it bears repeating. Right from my first band my musical output has very much been recording first and foremost and performing live a distant second. Because of this, in the 90s when home studios (i.e.something more than a 4-track portastudio in the corner of the room) became not only affordable but also capable of producing quality results, I threw myself whole-heartedly into the process, spending 10s of thousands of pounds on equipment and a room the house it all in. Unfortunately what I ended up learning was that I was simply not a good enough engineer to do all that equipment justice. My band of the time spent a year working on our first EP (although some of that was due to the fact that our original singer left just before the final mixes were complete and we spent another couple of months recording new vocals with her replacement). We then spent 4 years working on the album and follow-up single, and then end result was 4 "finished" songs that I have never been 100% happy with production/mix -wise and another 6 in various stages of incompletion, before the band split. By that time one of the completed songs was already out of date from a lyrical subject matter PoV. In retrospect the money would have been much better spent hiring a really good studio along with an engineer and proper producer who were sympathetic to the musical style of the band. That way I'd have a great sounding album's with of recordings and probably enough money left over to not only pay for the CD production but some effective promotion too. My inability as an engineer was hammered home, when I subsequently joined The Terrortones, who having acoustic drums couldn't record in my studio as I had neither the environment nor microphones to do it. Therefore we booked a weekend at a decent local studio where the engineer got a much better sound than I could, in a fraction of the time I would have spent and with equipment that was technically less good than my own studio. I ended up selling all my studio equipment (most for a massive loss), and these days I have just enough to do drum programming for Hurtsfall and to record my bass parts.

Using Audacity. It has the facility to import any file as if it was audio. There are various different settings for how in interprets the data in the import menu, and I simply worked my way through all of them saving the results that produced more than just random noise. Then I imported these into Logic, edited them down to the sounds I wanted to keep - some were "sequences" some were simply single notes and assembled them into this:

My first Bass VI, and baritone guitar, were bought entirely on a whim. They came up at low prices that were impossible to ignore and so I bought them. There probably was some degree of an itch to scratch, but I think it most a question of them being available at the right price at the right time. I played about with both but not having particular use for either, I didn't really do anything useful with them. The baritone guitar got used by The Terrortones' guitarist on a couple of tracks when we recorded our album, but that was it for years. The some years later the guitarist in my next band left, and just for fun I suggested we try to see if we could make the songs work without him, with me swapping from "normal" bass to Bass VI and making more of the synth parts as melodies rather than textures. A couple of surprisingly good rehearsals later and our direction was set. It did become obvious once I started playing it seriously that the Squier Bass VI wasn't really suitable for my playing style and role in the band, and I embarked on a long quest to find something that was, eventually ending up with the Eastwood copy of the Shergold Marathon 6 sting bass. The baritone guitar got sold when I had my last big clear out of unused instruments.