BassTractor

That first paragraph gives interesting info. Thanks! Not important, but I was referring to research done when I still walked around in classical circles before '84 - possibly in the 70s. I was expecting someone to google, but couldn't be bothered myself, and also I did expect later research to come up and expected the research I talked about to not come up: it was early days in this respect and the secrecy (whilst unbelievably misguided) was enormous. I fully agree with the second paragraph. If different vibration patterns are measurable on the body, then by definition they affect the sound - even if only by slightly changing the distance between the moving string and the now moving pup. The significance of this is an unknown to me, as I've said in this thread (and in previous threads on the same matter). To repeat a previous point I made: in discussions on this topic i never see the bow being mentioned. My senses tell me it might just be a central notion: string amplitude induced tension changes bending the neck/body compound. Maybe true and maybe not true, but I wonder why it's not mentioned. Myself, I couldn't be bothered to Google - mainly for two reasons: people can do their own googling, much better than me, and I just wanted to relay something that I remembered happening long ago. To me a thread on BC is neither science nor pissing contest. One would hope your sarcastic apology was written in the lightest of tones. If OTOH it's to be taken seriously, it says very little about me. I appreciate facts and appreciate being corrected, and in this thread I've been open about my limitations and about my hazy memory.

😀 Not a problem though. One takes out the sticker from the Strad's wreckage and glues it into the new-built copy - assuming they were lucky when passing that one. 😉 I should've avoided the "double-blind" term as I do not really recall exactly how they did this - bar remembering the whole point was to take certain biases out of the equation.

Funny, but we are talking pros here, and we're not talking about say the deepest, richest violin that Guarneri ever made vs. a run-of-the-mill beginners model from Stagg. Here's what I think I remember from this test: probably performed during the 80s, involving pro violinists, probably comparing with so-called "exact" copies, feelings of bewilderment and (unnecessary) shame and a willingness to keep this test a secret. I'm aware this is spongey, but deemed it best to mention it anyway. My guess is the info is on the webz somewhere, but I haven't bothered searching for it. BTW, I'm neither in the "tonewood is important" camp nor in the "tonewood doesn't matter" camp. To me it's physics - physics I know little about, think a little about and wonder a lot about - and I distrust confirmation bias and snake oil.

There was this similar thing with violins where it was postulated that old violins had vibrated for so many decades that they got better and better. Also this notion was flip-flopped with a similar notion about repairs and new layers of lacquer. Yet in a double-blind test violinists proved unable to discern an Amati, Guarneri or Stradivari from recently built violins. Bummer! 😀

Quite obvious that on a fretted neck, the type of lacquer used inbetween those frets is essential! Seriously though, "physically present" does not equal "noticable by human ear". I guess the wood used in a bass only really counts in one respect: how bendy it makes the neck. IOW there might be a noticeable difference between a bendy fretboard on a bendy neck and a stiff fretboard on a stiff neck. I don't know the answer to this, but sense that physics command it. The bass remains a bow, and a bow has to answer to physics. Once the bow stops answering to physics, you might not go home with the lady you're aiming at. Oh, wait!

Nope. I can't remember when they stopped playing live (Andy's famous live nerves are said to have been instrumental in this), but have a feeling it was quite early. However, Windsong released some live material. I haven't heard those, so can't comment, but the live stuff I have heard was nothing to be ashamed of at all. There's also live footage on YouTube. Edit: I believe the box set Coat of Many Cupboards has some live stuff.

Oh, and this. Bought off me own money ...

As a young lad, I saw music in this cover. My parents wouldn't buy it for me, but I said: "Trust me." They didn't trust me, but they bought it anyway. Their distrust was misplaced.

Polyrock

Gentle Giant - "Playing the Fool". A landmark live album to my ears.

Deep Purple - "Made in Japan" Focus - "At the Rainbow".

May well have been Sweet Water from Seattle. We had a thread about the Stain tour support act, and apparently, Bad Brains did part of the tour (I dunno where but assume the American leg), and it's my impression that Sweet Water did both the American and the European leg. I'm aware this is not science (yet). However, Sweet Water did do exactly the polite middle-class punk that I heard in Oslo. Edit: Ah, I should've read more of the thread. @mr4stringz, do you think that on the Stain tour it could've been Sweet Water rather than Naked Truth?

6th of November, 1975 St Martin's School of Arts Charing Cross Rd. I mean: thousands upon thousands of people attending the Pistols' first gig in a venue that could hold a few hundred. Too demn crowded. I was out of there. 😉

Was gonna answer 1,200 but then the rules kept changing. Now it suddenly must be on strings! OK then: 30.

STOP THIS!!!!

4 (four!) replies without the word "Stratobasstard" ??? Must be a record. 😉

These audiences as a whole were a part in my leaving the so-called "avant-garde" many decades ago, roughly for the reasons you describe, but... I think it's OK to also mention that amongst people in these audiences are some resourceful ones who know exactly what they're talking about and/or whose love for the music in question is genuine and deep-felt. I've performed weird stuff where discerning listeners afterwards asked questions or came with remarks that only non-poseurs could come up with - sometimes confronting me with weird or "wrong" choices I'd made. BTW, there was a lovely little TV programme here, where a physics guy, with no art training whatsoever, made a lot of modernist paintings, and got a famous painter to put on his name on them before they organised an exposition under the painter's name. Many poseurs swallowed it hook, line and sinker, but some art lovers shook their head in disbelief at the total collapse of the painter's new output.

The way I read it, Arbor made cheap lookalikes for beginners. Dunno how Hohner got involved.

Ah, but Stringrays do go cheaper than Stingrays. edit: @FDC484950 got there before me.

Maybe what follows is not interesting, as I didn't see it mentioned before, but: I come from a world of classical music where I'd record live, either as an organ player recording only myself or as a member of a constellation recording the whole group. No sweat whatsoever, great expressiveness etc. and the timing was as precise as one can get. Mucho transpiro however when having to record to pre-existing multitrack recordings or... shudder... to a clicktrack. I've never managed, and have lived with the thought I could never learn. Wondering if you multitrack guys have been through a phase like that.... in that it was indeed only a phase.

Strictly off-topic, but Dutch proto-prog band Ekseption at one point (maybe two points - the debate about that is unfinished) in time had no original members. In '76 some studio guys and some guys who'd been in the band for short periods, made a terrible, terrible album under the Ekseption name. Some say one founding member was in the studio; others say he wasn't. The record company kept totally silent about who was actually playing, essentially trying to sell a non-Ekseption album to Ekseption fans. In 2003, keyboard player Rick van der Linden was the band's leader and the only one who had been in Ekseption before, and he wasn't an original member. Though: it should be mentioned he had been responsible for their previous successes (mainly poprock reworkings of classical themes, with jazz impros - though half their output was of a different character).

Yeah, that be the principle. We sent hundreds of sea kayaks to all parts of the country, and the cardboard box factory of all people kindly advised us we'd be better off with naked kayaks in plastic tubes. We had a total of one damage, and the full price of that kayak was way lower than the price of hundreds of protective boxes. I guess we were lucky, but we did count on the fragile look, and it seemed to work.

Have always been slightly wary about playing other people's stuff, and felt way more at ease with writing my own material and letting famous people play it... as a tribute so to speak. Sadly, Bach, Beethoven, Strawinsky and others were not in line with my thinking.

Ha. 😀 In Oslo, Neil Young met up with the Young Neils, and then wore their t-shirt when he performed. Loved that. BTW, the Young Neils were known musicians in other bands, and certainly not the preying types.

Good idea, also because if you don't put on a value, then customs will decide on a value, and it might be high.