Jean-Luc Pickguard

I try to mod my instruments so that the mods are reversable if possible, so I can return everything back to stock if I do sell. Things like swapping out the pickguard, fitting a hi-mass bridge in place of a BBoT, replacing tuners for ones with the same footprint, and replacing pickups with ones of the same shape make this easy. A notable exception is that I fittied much larger gotoh GB640 tuners on all three of my vintage pro thunderbirds, but I'm not planning to ever sell those.

No Debussy Blues — Grinderman

I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea — Elvis Costello

I'm a big fan of lollipop tuners. The first set I bought were hipshot HB2s which I fitted with the matching D-tuner on my fretless Precision bitzer. They were fitted as standard on three JMJs and a vintera mustang bass. I have put a set of HB10 lollipops on my Sienna sunburst player mustang bass. I was planning on fitingt a set of HB7 lollipops to my competition orange squier classic vibe mustang bass, however they don't fit as the holes in the headstock are slightly too close together.

I Thank You — Sam & Dave

It wouldn't have been a problem in the days when being in a moderately successful band meant playing regular gigs in your local area, but these days we have websites, youtube, facebook, bandcamp, spotify etc to consider, although of those I'm only planning to use youtube and bandcamp to any extent, plus a website when I have more material.

True story — The band I formed and fronted from 1985-86 was called Nirvana. I guess Kurt had a copy of Love by The Cult as well.

For the last six months or so (might be longer) I have been using a band name for one of my ongoing projects which is fairly obscure reference to something that will probably be meaningless to anyone who didn't grow up in the 70s in the UK. Before the first release I did a thorough online check for any band with the same or sigificantly similar name. For this I searched google, youtube and various streaming services. Nothing came up at that time and no domains in reference to the name had been registered. I did another search this week and a facebook page came up for a band in Scotland using the name. This band was active from 2014 to 2021 when they broke up, but it looks like they might be getting back together. I'm not planning on contacting this other band as I'd prefer to fly under the radar, and I've not promoted the name yet to any great extent, ie the youtube views are in the hundreds at best. I guess I have three options Continue to use the name as my project is the only one with actual releases under the name, and if the other band gets in touch tell them to eff off. Quietly forfeit the name and re-release the existing tracks under a totally different name Pluralise the name - for example if the name was 'silver beatle' make it 'silver beatles' instead (that isn't the name in question by the way) I'm tending towards the second option, but have yet to find a suitable replacement name. What do others think? Has anyone else had encountered a similar issue with their band name?

Thanks But No Thanks — General Crook

Mr Pheasant — The Kinks

I think most people were confused reading it. I certainly was.

The Day That Curly (Wurly) Billy Shot Down Crazy Sam McGee — The Hollies

Up With The Cock! — Judge Dredd

Good job! I made a flap over the serial number on mine so that it is still fully shielded, but the copper tape could be lifted up if it is ever necessary to view the serial. I think I can detect a very slight copper tint on your pickguard, but it looks fine against FireGlo. It would have bugged me on mine, being JetGlo though. I don't know why RIC swapped from the style of knobs on yours to Jazz bass-style knobs for the current model. I had to buy a set of the silver topped ones from Rickysounds to ensure I remember which knob does what.

All When We Were Young — Felice Brothers

It's a bit of a black box with few controls, but its probably doing a bit of eq & multiband compression.

Reflections 1 — Izabella Khalo

It Wasn't Me — Shaggy

CNC Machines#

I use my trusty Zoom H2n to record gigs & rehearsals. I then bring the recordings into Logic Pro and usually just top & tail the tracks to cut out any the faffing about between songs and apply Logic's built-in mastering. Sometimes I split the tracks into stems using Logic's stem splitter so I can apply processing on drums/guitars/bass/vocals individually before mastering, but that tends to make the process a fair bit more time-consuming. Once I have a folder full of mastered MP3s, I upload them to a hidden page on the band website so the other band members can have a listen.

I'd be looking for an original 70s badass II to go on the bass if it was mine. Then the original bridge could be sealed up in a plastic bag before it gets the chance to spawn a load of evil little rusty porridge monsters like something from Dr Who.

Roll With Me Henry — Etta James

My recording is called 'To The Light' As posted above, this is a poem I wrote based on the pic read over a repeated chord sequence. As outlined above the vocal was recorded using a £3.20 USB condenser mic. I had to record it whilst the builders working on the house next door had downed tools for lunch. The bass is my lovely JetGlo Ric 4003 and was recorded using the Rick-O-Sound output to send each pickup onto its own channel in logic where each was processed with their own amp & fx sims. The Drums were from logic's acoustic 'Psychedelic Rock' drummer, made extra tight by setting the kick/snare to follow the 4003 bridge pickup track.

Shoes — Bobby Bland

Trace Eliott Elf