Dingus

[quote name='Mook' timestamp='1392664171' post='2371335'] I would like to publicly apologise to the bass playing community as during a wedding gig at the weekend I did indeed overplay. I was guilty on the evening of a flagrant use of 16th notes, slapping and harmonics. I know I have let down my fellow comrades with my lack of taste and subtly.........but I really enjoyed it and can't promise that I won't be doing the same next weekend!! Thank you for your time and understanding.....I am now at peace [/quote] Never mind apologising to your fellow bass players, it's the married couple you should be asking for forgiveness. Everybody knows a marriage needs a strong foundation if it going to work , and that foundation is built on a good , solid no-frills bass line . If that marriage fails somewhere in the future then it may well be that your fancy finger work was the beginning of the end for them . Slapping and false harmonics are two of the most commonly cited reasons for divorce in Britain nowadays. Fact.

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1392650246' post='2371053'] Looking at an old thread I took part in years ago on another forum there was footage of Geezer gigging a John Birch Rick in green burst. Can't find the footage on YT as yet. [/quote] Maybe that is what he used on Never Say Die?

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1392484758' post='2369324'] People did order custom models but we always had them in stock too. The first time I ever went in the shop I was 15 & had never seen a BC Rich or any other high end US guitar up close. A friend of mine told me a new guitar shop had opened & they had "those weird shaped guitars you like" - of course I didn't believe him until I went in there myself & what I saw completely overwhelmed me. There were two Mockingbird standards & a Mockingbird supreme, two Biches, an Eagle supreme, a Mockingbird bass, a Bich bass & a Bich 8 string bass..... and that was before I noticed the Deans & the Hamers. They also regularly stocked basses by Manson, Pangborne, Jaydee, Alembic, Steinberger & Wal. You can probably see why I don't have much interest in going into music shops much these days. I started talking to the owner of the shop & he was really impressed that I knew what all these guitars were. I started helping out in the shop soon after & still helped out when I could even after I'd got a "proper" job. The shop was actually the UK distributors for BC Rich for a while in the 80s, changed location twice & finally closed when the owner decided on a change of career & went into web design. Some of the best days of my life were spent in that shop. [/quote] [quote name='White Cloud' timestamp='1392655868' post='2371140'] I sincerely feel your pain. I remember that era...music shops were an exciting day out. Today music shops are generally full of Fenders, Squiers or Fender variants.......B O R I N G. [/quote] Yes, quite. I can't really tell if it is because I have become more blase` about the whole thing , but guitar shops are nowhere near as alluring a proposition as they once were. The depressing uniformity of both the stock and the establishments themselves bears little or no relation to the tantalising excitement of going to guitar shops in my youth. One long-gone little independent shop where I lived when I was growing up regularly had basses from JayDee, Ashley Pangbourne , Overwater, Vigier ect, as did its' competitor on the other side of the town centre, and both shops had staff who were bass players and were as enthusiastic about basses as you were. It was a thrill just to see those kind of basses in the flesh, even if I couldn't afford to buy one at that time, kind of like looking at sculptures in an art gallery. Even if you don't have one at home, you could enjoy the beauty and experience some joy from that.

[quote name='Skybone' timestamp='1392649109' post='2371039'] Don't forget though, at the time, late 80's/early 90's when GnR were huge, there was also demand for BC Rich's from the other "Hair Metal" bands (Poison et al all used BC's at some point), as well as all the Thrash & Death Metal bands of the same time. Messrs King, Hanneman & Araya were long time BC users at that point. [/quote] Significantly, though, Slash chose to play a vintage Mockingbird guitar, referring back to a previous era of rock music and aspiration rock and roll -orientated guitars. It's not a genre I am an authority on by any means, but I seem to remember that by contrast the hair metal bands were favouring the later more pointy and extreme models of B C Rich that were current models at the time. It is important to make that distinction because, by playing the Mockingbird , Slash was making reference and paying homage to the era of 1970's rock groups that had inspired him like Aerosmith ( Joe Perry and Brad Whitford both played B C Rich's during that decade) , and aligned himself with the spirit of that age rather than with the following decade which had given rise to the hair metal bands, who were imminently about to fall inexorably out of fashion at that time in the early 1990's .

When people are complaining about the size of the neck do they mean the width or the depth, or both? The width at the nut is about halfway between a traditional vintage Precision and Jazz Bass width (presumably Leo Fender thought that would be an inclusive compromise) and it used to be that the width was offset slightly by a noticeably shallow neck profile front to back . Pre -EBMM basses and earlier post EBMM examples have pretty slender neck thicknesses. It is noticeable in recent years ,however, that the neck profile on Stingrays seems to have got slightly chunkier. Personally, it doesn't particularly bother me, but I expect it could very well alienate people used to the feel of the older Music Man basses. It's not just Stingrays, either. All the EBMM basses I have tried recently had had some degree of substance to the neck shape. The EBMM Sterling, for example, has a narrower nut that the Stingray, but a similar depth front to back, or at least that has been the impression I get.

Another custom bass for someone who probably used to eat crayons when he was at school because the other kids told him to. Where can I order mine?

[quote name='GarethFlatlands' timestamp='1392410648' post='2368553'] Anyone I might have heard of? I was playing in a electro/glitch band back in 2003-4. Long shot but our paths may have crossed. [/quote] You definitely won't have heard of us. It was more than a decade before that, in the very early 1990's , and Warp was just a little record shop from what I remember. That band hadn't done any gigs, but we got record company interest by virtue of the fact that we had a pretty unique sound and, more importantly, knew an incredibly irritating girl who was a rising star in A&R , and who subsequently has gone on to great success and had numerous chart acts. The old adage that it's not what you know but who you know really is true. Unfortunately, all this talk of record contracts made some of the other people in the band start to think that they were now actually the electro-shoegazing Led Zeppelin and had already made it to the big time , despite the fact that no contract had actually been signed with any record company . Arguments and disagreements ensued, and you already know how this story ends . I was mainly playing music in Manchester in those days, , but I remember Sheffield being a really vibrant place around that time, and I have got some particularly fond memories of a pub called The Porters in Hunters Bar.

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1392416604' post='2368656'] Geezer definitely used Rickenbackers occasionally in the late 70's - I remember an interview with him in "Beat Instrumental" where he said he was using a Rick because the truss rod went in the neck of one of his John Birch basses & that was the only back up he had with him on the tour. I've seen footage of him using a Rick too. He also mentioned having a fretless Rick with nylon tape wound strings on it. BC Rich Eagle basses weren't £1000 in the late 70's BTW - the shop I used to work in was one of the few UK stockists & they were around £700 in 1980 as far as I can remember. Absolutely superb instruments, as were all BC Riches at that time. Update: Just found a price list from October 1980 - Eagle & Mockingbird bass: £699, Bich bass £999. [/quote] £700? Then why didn't I have one ? I was only about £650 quid short of one . According to the inflation calculator, £700 was the equivalent of £2546 today. However, such conversions are misleading as they do not take into account the amount of disposable income people have in the respective eras. Far more people have £2546 to spend on a bass in 2014 than there were people with £700 to put down on one in 1980. I based that price( £1000) on my only point of reference, which was a very old feature in Guitarist Magazine about a vintage hot bubblegum pink B C Rich Bitch guitar that had originally belonged to the wonderfully-named Len Tuckey , who was in fact Suzi Quatro's guitarist and first husband . I seem to remember Suzy had a matching pink Bitch bass. In the article it mentioned that the original receipt was still in the case , and that the guitar had been ordered from a shop in the London, and it had cost £900 in 1979. I had figured that the basses would have been a bit more expensive. If your old price list says that the Bitch was actually a more expensive model then that explains my mistake. My sincere apologies to anyone who has overpaid for a B C Rich on the basis of my misinformation in the interim period . That is very interesting that you worked for a B C Rich dealer at the time. Did many people order them , or did you keep stock in the shop? They were such beautiful instruments. I can distinctly remember people who didn't even play guitar noticing how amazing they looked at the time. My first recollection of them is the members of Thin Lizzy all playing them in the video for " Do Anything You Want To" , which will have been around 1979, in fact. . Then for a while you couldn't give them away, and then Slash used a Mockingbird guitar in the video for "You Could Be Mine" and the used market took off again, it seemed like .

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1392399629' post='2368306'] If you play the thing to death[i] a la [/i]Billy Sheehan that is one thing, but to wantonly abuse a bass is criminal, in my book . [/quote] I suppose if it isn't your own bass you are abusing then it actually is criminal.

Yes, me too. I often see basses that have heavy wear on them and wonder how they got in that state. Do you folks realise that you don't actually have to hit the bass that hard to make a sound come out of it ? There seems to be a trend towards having basses that look like they have been used to do gardening with. I blame it on falling standards in comprehensive schools and local council-funded skateboard parks. To me, a bass is something you look after, because it costs a lot of money and took a lot of care to make. It always seemed a such shame to ruin that. If you play the thing to death[i] a la [/i]Billy Sheehan that is one thing, but to wantonly abuse a bass is criminal, in my book .

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1392398249' post='2368271'] Oooo you're going straight to hell for that one, they're coming for you! [/quote] If only you were joking...

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1392395754' post='2368224'] I think it's just the way the market kinda circulates sometimes. Around the 70s/80s they rotated between "[i]everyone[/i]" wanting vintage Fender or Gibsons for a few years & then it went to exotics or customs for a while, then back to the vintage. These days it doesn't seem to have come back to the exotics or customs. My guess is that it's because there's a lot more of all of them around at varying levels & better prices. My bass was valued by Bonhams at £3000+, latest insurance valuation I had was £4600. I don't think I'd have a prayer of reaching either of those prices for it. [/quote] If the right rock star saw it on the right day in Andy Baxter's shop you might get something approaching those figures, maybe. I suppose the thing about all vintage instruments is that, for the most part, much ( most, usually) of their value is completely arbitrary and notional. A vintage Fender bass, whist it sounds good, is not worth several thousand quid in terms of its' material and build quality , if you see what I mean( yes, I have got my tin hat on already... ) . Your original John Birch's have got a lot working in their favour in terms of historical association , kudos and rarity value, and not least all that there will never be any more made. Providing there is a demand, that should push the price up, but at the same time Stu, I acknowledge and admire your pragmatism in accepting that in the real world, things are worth what you can get for them.

[quote name='White Cloud' timestamp='1392395358' post='2368219'] Now now...you know I get punchy when banana necked Jaydee's are mentioned [/quote] You are not the only one, my friend, that is why I mentioned Geezer's remarks.

[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1392391348' post='2368119'] This seems to be a running theme for Sabbath...didn't they end up hiring Vinnie Appice to play on [i]Mob Rules[/i] by accident? The story I've heard is that they were trying to get hold of Carmine Appice, but their manager ended up phoning the wrong Appice! [/quote] I haven't heard that before, but , once again, it sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would actually happen to Black Sabbath. Spinal Tap is [i]way[/i] insufficient.

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1392393457' post='2368173'] John Birch SGs are because there's a collector in California that loves them, last I heard he had over 30 of them, SG style alone! There's a JB Les Paul, or is it a J1, onEbay just now, last I saw it was at £350. [/quote] I am shocked at that. I know his one-off pieces can command high prices, and it's not surprising either if you consider that he really the first bespoke custom guitar builder of much note in the U.K , and his guitars were the preferred choice of a generation of British glam rockers. When you think how retro instruments are in vogue nowadays and how revered that era is by various cliques of would-be hipsters, you would think John Birch's guitars would be rocketing in value and desirability.

[quote name='thumbo' timestamp='1336836818' post='1651775'] Warp records started in Sheffield IIRC. It's great to see how far that label has come. [/quote] [quote name='GarethFlatlands' timestamp='1336841051' post='1651834'] Warp films too. I kept recognising places when I was watching 4 Lions and Kill List. [/quote] Warp Records! I remember one of their "creative team" coming to watch a band I was in many, many years ago with a view to signing us, and him earnestly telling me in conversation afterwards that when it came to music, "Bleeps are out, clonks are in". Obviously , with the balance of hindsight, I should have taken him seriously .

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1392391786' post='2368127'] Yeah, John was a bit of a "lovable" rogue with some of his business practises, or so I've been told by a couple of his ex-colleagues so it was bit pot/kettle & Tony had gone over to JayDees by then anyway so he would have been out of touch. IIRC Guitarist even offered to do a huge article about John Birch guitars as compensation, so he really shot himself in the foot there. I've still got a print-out of the fateful i'view somewhere, but it would be a tad risky to put it up here [/quote] His guitars are like gold dust nowadays, that is for sure. Highly collectable, with prices reflecting that.

I found this picture of a koa BC Rich Eagle that looks virtually identical to one of Geezer's pair of these basses : You can see Geezer playing his in this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG_qF2mHOlA

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1392391354' post='2368120'] Spot on! I spoke with the editor of Guitarist about it after John died & they wanted me to write about my bass. They'd printed a retraction and apologised profusely but he still went ahead & sued, so the magazine blanked him from then on. [/quote] It could only happen in real life! You can see how Tony had made that assumption, I suppose.

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1392390604' post='2368106'] Are you mixing up Martin Birch their oft producer with John who built a few of their guitars? AFAIK no relation. [/quote] I am indeed getting mixed up there, so thanks for putting the record straight! I had a feeling there was something wrong with that as I was typing it. Regarding the the Tony Iommi/John Birch "misunderstanding" , as I remember it , the problem arose out of the fact that someone of the same name as that esteemed guitar builder had committed and been found guilty of a heinous crime in Birmingham around the same time that John stopped making guitars , and Tony had seen the story on the local news and for several years after that presumed it was the same guy.

Geezer was also one of the bass players who had some input into the development of the Yamaha BB2024, and he has a black custom version :

[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1392388594' post='2368059'] Can anyone confirm or refute the rumours I've heard that he was experimenting with 8-string basses circa [i]Sabotage[/i]? [/quote] He did indeed have an 8 string Martin Birch bass around that time, and some folks venture that he is playing it on "The Writ".

[quote name='Cosmo Valdemar' timestamp='1392382173' post='2367963'] I'm sure Geezer would be the first to admit his memory of that time is probably not as good as it could be... But, the Rickenbacker is all over Never Say Die (the album). It's unmistakable. Ooh, and I've just remembered another one - the red B.C. Rich Ironbird bass used at Live Aid! [/quote] As far as I know, according to Geezer himself, who, as you quite rightly point out, was by his own admission a bit "fuddled" during this era , the only track featuring a Rickenbacker on Never Say Die was (IIRC) Air Dance (it was definitely only one track, anyway) which featured a fretless 4001 , but there are plenty of other tracks where conceivably it could be a Rickenbacker , but at the same time, if you add distortion at the right frequency to most basses the start to sound a bit Rick-like, but yes, it sounds a lot like a 4001 to me on that album . I know that Geezer had been dabbling with a Gibson Thunderbird around that time, so maybe that features somewhere? Talking of fleeting associations like the BC Rich Ironbird, I remember seeing Geezer with an Aria SB1000 at some point in the '80's , and towards the end of that decade a striking -looking white Status headless bass.

[quote name='swanbrook' timestamp='1392327171' post='2367552'] I am looking at a 55-94 delux, I think. I don't understand the number system is there a list that tell you which is which ? I know it's a USA version I want but what's the difference between a 55-14 or 55-94 [/quote] The 55-14 is a more basic version of the 55-95 . It is essentially exactly the same bass made with the same materials in the same way, but is offered in a very limited number of finishes, and with less heavily figured wood for the fingerboard as a way of offering the same bass at a lower price point.

[quote name='White Cloud' timestamp='1392324462' post='2367507'] Sir, I bow to your magnificent knowledge of Geezer...and the fact that you played his Eagle (my dream bass of the early 80's). The Jaydee is outrageously gorgeous looking...as most Jaydee's are! [/quote] Geezer is also on record as saying that the neck on that bass subsequently bent like a banana , unfortunately. A not uncommon problem on JayDee basses from that era . Hence he went looking for a replacement and discovered BC Rich.