BigRedX

Most Gibson EB3s and EB0s are short scale. There are long scale versions which are fairly rare and therefore might be worth more if you decide to move it on. The Epiphone EB3 is long scale.

Take the carving away and it's just a standard bitsa P-bass. And why are these carved instruments always finished with a gloopy application of reddish varnish?

And even if it does stick to the more common time signatures, rock music will often stretch them to breaking point in the name of "feel". Used to have terrible arguments with one drummer I was in a band with about the length of a pause in a particular song, where I (the composer) wanted to stretch it out for a bit of tension, and they insisted on counting as a standard 4/4 bar. This was also the drummer who was very disparaging about musicians who play by "feel", so I was extremely tempted to work at exactly how long the pause should be and then present it as a bar of 17/16 or 33/32.

For western melody-driven music if the odd time signature is supported by a good tune it often isn't obvious that it's not in 4/4 until you try to play it. For instance "Take 5", the "Mission Impossible" theme, or the intro section to "Tubular Bells"where the riff/melody is so strong that it covers up the fact that there are extra or missing beats. Also what is obvious to one musician, especially if they wrote the music, can sometimes be impenetrable to others. I once wrote a middle section to what was otherwise a fairly ordinary pop/rock song that, when I actually worked it out, comprised alternating bars of 9/8 and 4/8. I would count it as quavers 123,123,123,12,12 with each chord change being on the "1". I thought it was obvious especially as the chord changes drove it along, but obviously I was wrong, as the rest of the band never got it and eventually we gave up, and moved onto something else.

Where? AFAIK all the Tokai catalogues published are in the link I posted above. I can't see any Rickenbacker bass copies in any of them. There are two Rickenbacker guitar copies in the 2000 catalogue and that is it. If there were Tokai-branded copies of the Rickenbacker basses in existence, there would be photographs of them somewhere on the internet. One would have turned up at some point on the Digimart website, there's 55 pages of Tokai branded guitars and basses, new and second hand, (pretty much every Tokai currently for sale in Japan) there right now including a couple of 60s Hummingbirds, but not one Rickenbacker bass copy. That's because they do not exist.

All the Tokai catalogues are in the link in my last post. If there are any Tokai-branded copies of Rickenbacker basses they will be in there somewhere. I can't find any. Can you? Rockinbetter basses have nothing to do with Tokai. That was already established earlier in the thread.

Sorry, but I am certain that you are mistaken. As I said earlier in this thread, I have a printed copy of the 2000 Tokai catalogue and while it has photos of Tokai-branded copies of Rickenbacker guitars, none of Rickenbacker basses copies. You can find scans of the Tokai brochures here. I haven't found photographs of Rickenbacker bass copies in any of them. In fact, the guitars only appear in the 2000 edition. Have a look for yourself. In 20+ years of looking on the internet I have never come across a single photograph of Rickenbacker bass copy with Tokai branding on it, nor have I found any scans of Tokai catalogues that show the basses. AFAIAC, this is because these mythical instruments do not exist. I will be happy to be proved wrong, but I will require decent photographic evidence for it, and not someone's half forgotten memories from 20 years ago.

Always consider a mic positioned over the player's shoulder pointing down; as this will come reasonably close to capturing the sound that the player hears which may well be the sound that they want.

Also, it will have been better made than a Precision of the same vintage.

Maybe Nottingham is an anomaly, but in the 40+ years I have been playing and going to gigs in the city venues come and go but overall the numbers appear to stay the same. As I said in my first post in this thread very few of the places I played at, or went to see other bands at, still exist as music venues, but at the beginning of 2020 there were just as many opportunities as there were when I first moved here and most of them are superior to the gigs I was getting in the early 80s. Certainly there are far more opportunities for weekend gigs for originals bands. When I first started gigging here, weekends were strictly discos and residencies for a few rock covers bands. The best you could get playing originals was a Friday night gig at The Hearty Goodfellow sporting Pinski Zoo who had a residency there. Everything else was mid-week only. I'm also unsure of the "iconic" status of TNT. I wasn't even aware of it as a live music venue until I did my first gig there about 7 years ago. In my mind it's certainly not up there with The Boat Club, The Garage/Ad-Lib, or The Hearty Goodfellow, to name but three.

I've not played the place since it became Alberts, but in the days when it was a Firkin pub you used to be able load in from the car park on Talbot Street up the big, wide fire escape which was nice and easy. The worst venue for stairs in Nottingham was a nightclub on Greyhound street where the gig room was 3 or 4 flights up from street level and no lift. Played there a couple of times in the late 90s.

While it is always sad when a venue closes, we shouldn't be so focused on just keeping everything as frozen in time. If there is a need for another music venue like TNT then one will appear. I've been gigging in Nottingham for 40 years now. With the exception of Rock City (and a couple of places that will allow you to hire them for private events) none of the venues I played at before 2005 still exist. However there's still plenty of places to play, if your band is sufficiently entertaining (pre-COVID at least). BTW I've played with several bands at TNT and was never that impressed. Load in/out was always a pain (only the Chameleon is worse IMO).

In the days when I was still using a dedicated bass or guitar amp I had whatever multi-effects unit(s) I was using at the time connected via the FX loop (in serial mode). I haven't used "pedal" effects since the early 90s. I did use a Roland GP8 in my guitar gig in "4 cable mode" where the guitar goes to the input of the GP8. It then passes through the various Filter, Compression and Distortion effects before being sent via the GP8 effects send to the input of my amp. The FX send of the amp is then connected to the return of the GP8 where it goes through any modulation and delay effects, the main output of the GP8 is then connected to the FX return of the amp. Sounds complicated but works perfectly.

Every photo shows the blue as a different colour. The more turquoise-y ones look nice but the others are quite nasty IMO. I would be very disappointed if I bought one and it turned out more grey than turquoise.

Recorded live on 7th December 2019 in Leeds. This was the encore of our set, and consequently the last thing we have preformed in front of an audience:

Lots of photos of him not playing that bass.

Brilliant. How have I missed this - is that the singer from Jetsonics?

Is it going to have Wal-shaped body (if so which one) or something different?

I thought you might all enjoy the final panel of today's "Steeple" web comic: The full story can be found here, and for those of you not aware of the work of John Allison, he's the person behind Scary Go Round, Bad Machinery, and Giant Days comics.

Are you sure it's a genuine SM58? There are a large number sub-standard knock-offs in circulation. Have a look at this guide for more information.

My experience of 45+ years of playing originals is that you can generally get to play the sort of music that you want if you are prepared to put in the effort. I might live in a large-ish city, but Nottingham is hardly a source of world-renowned artists in the way that Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield etc. are. The "vibrant" music scene only really exists in the heads of a few local journalists and those who think it starts and ends with Rock City and the associated DHP venues. I'm also not a brilliant technically adept player and I still manage to find bands originals bands that are interesting, entertaining and fun to be in and play with. IMO if I can do it just about anyone can. I do have to admit that the originals band I was mostly referring to in my first post was one of those magical moments when all the "stars aligned", but I only got in that position by constantly working hard to be in the right place at the right time when the band formed.

And as an audience member, by the time I started to go to gigs regularly (from 1980 onwards) my taste in music was mostly the sorts of bands that I could hear on John Peel's radio show. Most of those bands only had a single or two available, so the majority of the set would be new to me. And the local bands supporting them might only have a 3-track demo cassette available. Therefore the only way to hear most of the repertoire of these artists was to go to the gigs. I did go to gigs by "more established" bands, but again a significant portion of their sets would be new material, and that is a good part of why I went. I think I would have disappointed if the whole set had been "the album" and nothing more. In a lot of cases the live performances of the recorded material were disappointing as they didn't always manage to capture the nuances of the version I knew and loved. It never occurred to me to go and see a covers band play. At that time most covers bands played "rock" which wasn't what I wanted to hear at all, and if I had, I would have preferred to listen to my favourite recorded version. It's an attitude that has stuck with me. The only covers bands I have seen have been either at events that I happened to go to for some other reason and there happened to be a band playing, or ones that included friends in the line-up.

Having played in both covers bands and originals bands here's my take: I have to say up front that I learnt to play because I wanted to be a songwriter/composer and therefore I am probably biased toward playing music that I have had a part in writing but: Before I'd actually done it for my self playing in covers bands (so long as you were doing the right kind of music) looked like it could be a lot of fun, so when the chance came to join a covers band one of my good friends was in I jumped at it. For me the whole experience was a big disappointment. They had a set list full of songs I'd enjoyed as a teenager so we should have been great, but I always felt that were simply weren't doing the material justice, without actually being able to put my finger on what exactly wasn't right about our performance. Often when playing gigs I felt that the audience would have been better served with a DJ and a well chosen playlist. In several cases dissecting the songs so I could learn how to play them killed off any enthusiasm I might have to listening to them in a non-band context - there are more than a couple that I liked beforehand that I will be quite happy to never ever hear again. The other problem was that the originals band that I was also playing in at the same time, was doing much better in just about every aspect of being in a band. There's a big myth about covers bands making more money than originals, and while I didn't actually "make" any money out of either, the originals band always had cash in the band fund to pay for things like the rehearsal room, fuel for the van, recording, and producing merchandise items. The covers band money seemed to disappear in a never-ending round of repairs and upgrades to the PA and lighting systems and despite having the cheapest rehearsal space ever, each band member was expected to pay their share of the costs each time. Another thing that never gets taken into account is payment versus time spent and expenditure by the individual band members. A gig with the covers band would take up a good 6-7 hours of an evening, being at the venue early so we could set up both the band equipment and the PA and lights before most of the audience got there, and often still be there after the last punter had left packing everything away again. With the originals band we could (if we wanted) arrive about 20 minutes before we were due to play. The PA and lights would be supplied by the venue (and have been for every originals gig I have done from the late 80s onwards) so we didn't have worry about them, and often drums and backline would be as well. We would usually stay until the end, because that's when we'd sell the most merch, but we could have left at any time after we had finished playing. The originals band would travel together in the band van, or if we knew that there was a decent backline supplied, and the gig was less than a couple of hours away, we'd all cram into a single car with our instruments, keeping the travelling costs down. It also meant that everyone including the singer would be there to help carry and set up the gear. The covers band would turn up each one in their own car, and invariably someone with an important part of the PA or lighting rig in their car would be late. With the originals band there would almost always be free drinks and, more often that not, food supplied by the venue. I can't ever remember getting fed and/or watered playing covers. And while the gig fee for the covers bands was usually higher, after merch sales the originals band would almost always come away from the gig with more profit. I ended up having the quit the covers band because the originals band was playing almost every weekend, and no longer had time to be in two gigging bands no matter how infrequent the other band's gigs might be. And while this particular originals band stopped gigging 5 years ago (we've never officially split up) I still make money from them in the form of PRS royalties, record sales, and streaming/download payments.

I've made quite a bit. All in writers PRS royalties, but the money ultimately comes from the BBC from what they pay the PRS. That's why it's always financially better to be a songwriter/composer than just a musician.

IIRC at some point Yamaha changed the spec of the pre-amp and the new version didn't do what Peter Hook wanted, so he was buying up all the old models he could find. Therefore this signature model should have the older version of the pre-amp (or at least something that sounds like it).