Zenitram

Hands in the air everyone! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7AhfFaANIw And look at Rick, looking at you, spinning and spinning and spinning... eyes right into your soul.

The bass synth/synth and beat is ace!

What a gorgeous design, like a modernist/art deco sculpture or piece of architecture.

Did you cut that scratchplate yourself? What did you use?

You could argue that they also help people to bid for auctions that end when they're not at a computer, and by helping to secure a lower price make people more inclined to shop on eBay.

I've heard that bassists don't get much sex. They do do it, but the frequency is quite low.

It's so magical and special, like a dream.

Aye.

If it's after 13 August I can come along. I'm pretty new here and new to the bass, so won't have much to add, but I'm really good at drinking.

Good old Clarence. Always needed above the magnet.

Ben sold me his very loud Orange Crush 35B amp yesterday, and delivered it right into my front room for a modest fee. It's a very nice amp, and he's a very nice guy.

I don't disagree particularly, but who would you say was influenced by Hooky's style of playing/writing? I can't think of anyone. Which probably just means I've never heard of them.

Apparently Hooky started playing high up on the frets from the very beginning, because the gear he was playing through was so crap (I remember something about Bernard butchering his granny's old gramophone by wiring it up through where the needle went to play his guitar) that he could only really hear himself in the higher registers. Jumping forward, by the time New Order were using lots of synth, there was generally a programmed synth bass line (think Bizarre Love Triangle), allowing Hooky to do his melodic thing. When I first heard PCL and Low-life, for example (I was a spotty teenage drummer at the time), I never realised that a lot of the melodies/tunes/riffs/whatever were a bass, I just thought they were lead-ish synth parts, and of course the thing is that it doesn't matter what they are, what they sound like or who plays them, all that matters is the song. And as someone else above said, New Order produced beguilingly sublime creations that are far more than the sum of their parts. Things like Your Silent Face, All Day Long, Leave Me Alone, The Village.... wow. Listen to this, with the synth bass first, and then Hooky coming in. Doesn't particularly sound like a bass. Doesn't have to. Doesn't matter. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd6P5H9ZUVk[/media] I could go on and on about New Order. They also produced an awful lot of absolute crud. PCL contains four of my favourite songs from my teenage years, desert island disc stuff. The other four are dreadful. Complete dross.

Damn.

1. Encore 2. Stagg 3. Dean 4. Westfield 5. Rockster 6. Benson 7. Chord 8. Shine 9. Chase 10. Kay

That tube looks like a great idea, but I curled all my strings up in an empty ice-cream tub, and they came out fine.

I can confirm that soaking strings in meths does wonders for them. The tired crappy old strings on my Stagg sound completely, totally different after an overnight bath in meths. So different that you might want to tread with care; if you have some amazing sound that you just love, don't go doing this. But then if you had a sound you loved, you wouldn't be considering this in the first place, I suppose.

Right. It makes the strings like on a harp. Makes sense in my head now. Thanks.

What does "better tension" achieve? Genuine question.