molan

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1407593923' post='2522145'] There are plenty of awesome women bass players who are as good as the best male players - MeShell , Carole Kaye , Esperanza [i]et al- [/i]but if Marta was a fat spotty ginger lad from Scotland do you think he would have a similar amount of attention and apparent acclaim ? Never underestimate the power of novelty. Like I have said before, Marta is a fine player with a great future ahead of her and I wish her well , but she is not a sensation or anything truly exceptional. She is very competent, but here is nothing remotely original or unique about her bass playing . [/quote] I saw an example of exactly this the other day. I was hunting around on YouTube for a bass cover version of something and top of the most viewed list was an attractive female player. She was out of time in places & played some obviously bum notes. The comments underneath the vid were exclusively from guys, universally positive and full of 'absolutely nailed it' type comments. Meanwhile the next one on the list had a tenth of the number of views and very few comments. However the guy playing it seemd to be note perfect and bang on time throughout.

[quote name='Bolo' timestamp='1407482083' post='2520886'] Didn't she tour with Jamiroqai or whatever after these vids? [/quote] No she most definitely didn't! Was invited to play at one soundcheck (basically a publicity stunt) and that was it. I know someone who was at the soundcheck (such as it was), it wasn't a pretty sight apparently. There's a lot of 'misinformation' out there about how this happened and her playing ability. It certainly hadn't hurt her public profile though. . .

I saw Streetwalkers a couple of times in the mid 70's. Always a great live show. I think it was John Peel who got me into them and he played them quite a lot. Used to love the Red Card album. http://youtu.be/otB8qVbYyxE Many years later my secretary told me that her boyfriend was a guitarist but that he wasn't very well known and that I wouldn't have heard of him. Turned out to be Charlie Whitney! She said I was the first person she'd ever worked with who knew anything about Family and/or Streetwalkers. Never got to meet him though

Julian Mullen is our resident tech at BassGear. Really nice guy (despite hailing from Manchester) and an excellent tech. He does loads of work for us and is in the shop every week

[quote name='casapete' timestamp='1407579016' post='2521921'] What I don't get is that for the most part there are often great quality professionally recorded clips available of stuff (either on sale or free on the web) that you can watch whenever, and just enjoy the moment of the live gig. [/quote] This is what always amazes me as well. There is so much freely available, good quality, video content out there that I can't understand why someone would want to ignore the actual gig in front of them just to get a crappy video that they'll probably watch once, stick on YT, and then ignore. I once saw Vic Wooten stop someone recording him with a phone by saying more or less exactly this. He told the person that they could get many of his clinic performances online already and that simply recording another just to try and score some points for having he most up to date version on YT was a pointless exercise - not least because he had another clinic coming up so the guy's vid would be out of date in days. Of course, being Vic, he did this in a nice friendly and non-confrontational way. Those of us whose view was being obscured by the arse holding his camera up with two hands gave a big cheer when he put it back in his pocket and slunk out of the room

I've never really found a comfortable leather strap Some of the Harvest ones are beautifully made from super-soft leather but the one I had was a little slippy. Any instrument that wasn't perfectly balanced would tend to dip towars the headstock. I've used various neoprene straps for years and found the amount of 'give' in the better designs works really well to relieve weight and strain on my left shoulder. Recently I moved over to Mono Betty straps and find they offer a nice balance of flexibility, grip & comfort. Not the prettiest straps on the block but hey work really well for me.

I played a Bruce Thomas Precision today. Really nicely made, well finished, good fretwork, super-tight neck pocket, good balance, sounded great

Incorrect strings in a pre-packed set are surprisingly common amongst specialist brands. Thomastik Infeld are the worst for this. Much rarer for the bigger brands though.

A lot of modern small heads have a headphone out and aux in socket. This allows you to plug in an MP3 player and jam along to music whilst listening to a mix of the music and your bass through headphones

£100 shipping, even with insurance, is way over the top. Looks cool to me though

£3K for a, possibly refinned, '62 is a good price. Could easily hit £4K.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1406711892' post='2513913'] Nice, but... seafoam green and tort?? [/quote] Classic early 60's combination - one of my favourites, so much so that I have a '63J in precisely these colours The original tort guard is a thing of great beauty .

How about the 30th Anniversay Live album? Has most of the best songs on it and production is good if I remember correctly.

Dr Duck's Ax Wax is your friend - use it on any guitar related parts that need cleaning

My old flat mate had a couple of top 20 singles in his own right but gave up playing and became manager (or co manager) of Wham, Lisa Stansfeild, Yazz, De La Soul, Snow Patrol, The Verve, Richard Ashcroft, La Roux, Soup Dragons, Badly Drawn Boy, Klaxons, London Grammar, Boy George and lots of others. Got some writer and producer credits on some #1 singles and albums as well. Even managed some sort of co-producer credit on the Bodyguard soundtrack which sold zillions! Actually another flat mate was Billy Idol but Generation X were already making money so I guess he was already famous rather than making it after I knew him (although he must have been bigger solo than in Gen X). Around the same time I used to go clubbing with George O'Dowd - when he dropped the 'O'Dowd' and added a 'Boy' he did rather well for himself