BigRedX

That's because it's a more accurate representation in looks, build and sound to the original 60s Thunderbird then anything produced since the 80s with a Gibson Logo on.

Never heard of Tagima, but MiJ Tokais are well worth tracking down. As has been said the original 80s instruments were probably better than those they were copying, and their original range of Talbo aluminium bodied instruments were great too. However since then they have diversified in price point and manufacturing location, and unfortunately most of the instruments that don't come from Japan are not so accurate or well made, which IMO does a huge disservice to the Tokai name. I've owned two early 2000's Tokais, a Talbo Bass and a Talbo Jr travel guitar and both were excellent. However I wouldn't buy any Tokai not made in Japan without trying it first.

Anyone have any more information about the Circle Guitar, other than what's on the web site and accompanying video? Interesting concept, and from what little I've seen I think it's one of those instruments that needs to be tried before being dismissed or praised. Only thing I've seen so far that would tend to put me off is that the control connection for the guitar appears to be a cat5 cable. Not the most gig-worthy of connections. Also looks as though Manson Guitars are involved - hopefully they will do something about the rather ugly shape before it goes into production.

Joe Dart plays in a band called Vulfpeck whose most interesting album is "Sleepify"....

The only people using Evri (and similar low-budget delivery services) are those selling high volumes of low-cost items where it doesn't matter if a proportion of them don't reach the intended recipient. Everyone else should be avoiding them not matter how "cost-effective" they appear to be. Hint: they're not.

And anything on the PWL label... You don't much more mainstream than that!

In the late 70s when the "Indie Charts" started it used to mean any record that wasn't distributed by a major record label. So bands on Rough Trade, Factory Records, 4AD (who were part of Beggars Banquet, but unlike the parent label had independent distribution), and of course that bastion of the "Indie Sound" PWL. So right from the beginning it's been meaningless. A bit like "Alt Rock" which has pretty much been mainstream rock since the mid-90s.

Gold hardware, but not the pickup cover and knobs. Do they think we're blind?

Only 3 months after the gig, but this photo was published as a double-page spread in a local paper/magazine headlining an article about the Beeston Oxjam Festival we played, and I thought it was worth sharing.

Intersting. I tend to set all signatures longer than a couple of lines to ignore, and haven't noticed this particular one. So... 1. I simply don't come across this particular mod in the threads I frequent, so I haven't noticed it. 2. I set their signature to ignore on a previous version of the forum that allowed it. 3. I set their signature to ignore before they became a mod. This last one raises an interesting conundrum, since the moderators change from time to time what happens to someone who becomes a moderator who was previously set to ignore? If the signature is truly excessive maybe you should name and shame.

I don't think I've ever paid as much as £50+ to go and see a gig

Spotify pay out plenty. It's just that the record companies take the main share of this. I look at my individual streaming payments and then compare them with artists who claim that their share of streaming royalties are next to nothing, and think that something must be wrong because if I was getting those kinds of streaming numbers I'd be doing very nicely thank you.

I've not noticed reduction in audience numbers. In fact over the last 15 years the gigs I've been doing have been far better attended that most of the ones I did in the 80s and 90s. IMO a lot of the problem at "grass-roots" level is that many of the bands while being more musically accomplished than those in the past aren't actually entertaining enough for people to make the effort to go and see them play live.

I think you'll be surprised by exactly how much drive/dirt there is on what sounds like clean bass in the mix. Have a look and see if any tracks by the above have been posted as isolated bass tracks on YouTube. Then you'll get a much better idea of the sound you are aiming for.

Maybe its different in originals bands (which is what I've mostly been in over the past 50 years) in that the musicians involved tend to be interested in the same kinds of music and those whose influences are wildly different don't tend to last long enough in the band, so it's rarely a discussion I have ever had. Also my influences tend to be bands, and songwriters/composers rather than musicians. On the whole I find individual musicians rather uninteresting.There are two exceptions to this and one is very obvious to anyone who has heard me play recently.

Have you tried contacting Hipshot directly and seeing what they say?

AFAICS any MIDI capability is MIDI over USB, which will require a host device to work rather than traditional MIDI via 5-pin DIN sockets which is a peer-to-peer protocol. That means you can plug the EWI into your computer and use it to play a plug-in instrument via your DAW. If you want to use it to play sounds from keyboard or other device that has MIDI DIN sockets you'll need a MIDI host box to go between the two. There are cheap host boxes, but all the decent ones cost at least as much as the EWI.

Thanks. Unfortunately after all that the article is big on attention grabbing headlines and light on actual information.

Can you save this as a link to the web page it came from?

Are you going to be able to program this set up to do "scatter winding"?

That cracking looks like water damage.

I don't know where in the country you are, but here in Nottingham while the kinds of opportunities for gigs have changed since I moved here in 1980 there is very little difference in the numbers of gigs available for originals bands and IME these gigs are now far easier to come by. Back in the early 80s in Nottingham there were almost no weekend gigs available for originals bands, and from what I saw from gigging out of town that pattern was repeated throughout the country. If you wanted a gig it was Monday to Thursday only and also you would have to take into account hiring a PA system as none of the venues had their own. This started to change in the late 90s when some venues had the occasional weekend slot for originals bands and in-house PA systems were beginning to appear. Nowadays mid-week gigs are almost unheard of and unless one of the bands playing has a couple of popular albums out and consequently a decent following you'll be struggling to get an audience. One of my bands did a Wednesday night gig in November, and while we managed to get a decent sized audience and came away with a profit, it required a lot of work on social media and with friends on our part. Also it couldn't compare with the turn-out the following Saturday at the same venue when my other band was supporting a minor synth-pop band from the 80s and the promotor was turning away punters who didn't have tickets because the venue was rammed. IME changes in work culture have made going out on a "school night" much harder than it used to be, with punters saving their money and energy just for the weekend.

You are perfectly right. I'm probably being a bitter old man, but: Personally I think there is too much music available nowadays. The figure being headlined is 60,000 new tracks being uploaded to Spotify every day. Various attempts to to debunk this have resulted in revisions down to between 5000 and 40,000 track daily. However, just 5,000 tracks a day is staggering, considering that in the days of vinyl there were probably significantly less than 1000 new singles and albums each week (That's just a guesstimate - I have been unable to find any serious stats on this if anyone has them please post). This combined with the dwindling number of listeners prepared to buy recorded music, means that there is an ever growing number of songs vying for an ever shrinking audience's attention. When anyone with a computer, an internet connection and $50 can produce and album and upload it to all the download and streaming sites, it's not surprising at lots more people are doing it. Unfortunately all that "background noise" makes it much harder for listeners to find new music that they like. And as a listener in the 70s when I started getting into music beyond what was on TotP, my sources were John Peel and Alan Freeman on Radio 1. I'd probably hate at least half of what they were playing and be indifferent to a lot of the rest, but there would be a handful of new records played every week (out of the 120 or so I'd heard) that I would like enough to consider buying. By contrast last week I listened to a 500 track modern post-punk/goth playlist on Spotify. That's 500 songs in specific genres that I really like. However I found less than 10 new bands that I enjoyed enough to warrant further listening. What particularly struck me was how derivative and how poorly recorded much of it was. I've always been worried that my band's home-produced recordings weren't up to scratch, and while so far we've not managed to emulate Trevor Horn or Martin Rushent, by comparison with most of what I heard we are doing pretty well. When someone like myself is struggling to find interesting new music from curated playlists what chance do most casual listeners have? Also when you consider that if my band puts out a single we are in effect competing with every other song ever released for listeners. In the days of releases on vinyl and CD a single (unless it was very popular) had a life of no more than 3-4 months, so it was only ever competing with a few thousand other songs at any one time. These days Spotify and other on-line sources have to apply negative weighting to streams of "back catalogue" tracks otherwise hardly any new music would make the current charts. It's not the cost of living that is crushing new music. It is the sheer amount of music available

G4M and other retailers who do this are contravening UK consumer law regarding the sale of electrical equipment. If enough people complained maybe they would sort themselves out and start supplying equipment with the correct mains connectors as standard. IMO external PSUs with their tiny non-locking connectors and flimsy cables are bad enough for reliability without adding yet another poorly fitting adaptor to the equation.

And as I said in a previous post those genuinely driven to create will find ways to do it irrespective of circumstances.