Jean-Luc Pickguard

I now have a vintera II incoming — it should be with me tomorrow. I already have a set of LaBella flats for it. I should be able to do a side by side comparison with my classic vibe once I've set up the vintera.

The dark textured neck wood sounds like wenge to me.

I've had a couple of pickguards from Brian / earlpilanz and they are both perfect. I will soon be ordering a custom one for one of my epiphone casinos in single ply transparent tortoiseshell. The only thing holding me back from placing the order is my inability to decide whether I also want to order one for my other casino, and if so, what colour. I doubt I'll ever be inclined to order a custom pickguard from anyone else.

Perpetuum Mobile — Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Polythene Pam — The Beatles

Mine was disatched via 2nd class post on Tuesday. No sign of it yet but I'm hopeful that it'll arrive early next week. If so it'll be fun to give it a proper tryout at rehearsal on Tuesday evening.

Metropolis — Kraftwerk or Metropolis — Motorhead

Small Change — Tom Waits

Eat The Rich — Motörhead

Mine was dispatched via 2nd class post the same day I ordered, so it could be with me later today or sometime next week.

Ragged & Dirty — C.W. Stoneking

Bed Spring Boogie — Clarence Brewer

I saw this listed on the Peach guitars website yesterday when I was ordering something else, I hadn't heard of it before but the demo sounded good and it looks practical, so I added one to my order. I'll have a play with it when it gets here.

My Imaginary Guy — Deanie Parker & The Valadors

Sloppy Drunk — Jimmy Rogers

Good Morning judge — Wynonie Harris

Old Man — Neil Young

Charlie's Enormous Mouth — Frank Zappa

I usually take a pair of JMJ mustangs when I gig.

Arse Decade — David Bowie

I have three JMJs, but the bass sitting on a stand next to me at the moment is a Player (not the II version though) PJ mustang bass in Sienna sunburst with maple fingerboard. This bass is a lot of fun to play and offers a bit more tonal variety than the JMJs. I did do a fair amount of customisation to the PJ when I bought the bass secondhand at a very good price. This included shielding with adhesive copper tape and building a new loom with CTS pots, puretone socket, switchcraft switch and orangedrop capacitor. I also put on a Fender hi-mass bridge, hipshot HB10 lollipop tuners, and a fender thumbrest in the same position as on my JMJs. It currently has a set of short scale Ernie Ball cobalt flatwounds. The pickups sound good so I didn't consider changing them for something else. The only changes I made to my JMJs was to apply copper shielding and put on some medium scale D'addario chromes. The spaghetti logo on the player II looks wrong to me compared to 70s-looking logo on my original player looks wrong to me, but I tend to get irked by inconsequential things like that. I don't know if Fender has improved how they wire up the player II mustang, but the circuit on the original player mustang bass annoyingly reduced the volume when rolling off the tone unless the volume was fully open. I used an alternative circuit when I rewired mine to prevent this from occurring. You can read about my adventures in rewiring here:

I hardly touched a bass for the entirety of the 90s, having got into using a computer (first the Yamaha CX5M, then the Atari STE) and synthesisers / drum machines etc to make music. When I decided to get back into playing bass I ditched using a plecky and forced myself to get good at playing fingerstyle which I was unable to do well before.

Boomerang — Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band

Apparently Nothin’ — Young Disciples