EliasMooseblaster

True, that is quite a bold assumption!

Let me join the chorus of replies telling you that the Tony Franklin fretless is an absolute masterpiece. I was also surprised not to have a blend control or separate volumes, but the tones are wonderful in all three selector positions. The Jazz bridge pickup might also be the nicest example of its kind that I've played. Also worth noting that if you switch to the P pickup and open up the tone control, you can get some bright, clanking tones that almost make it sound like a fretted bass in the Entwistle/Foxton school of playing, which is ideal for confusing the hell out of your bandmates.

'...following a series of technical problems with the studio's sound system, most of the show was blighted by the celebrity guests' microphones cutting out. Many viewers reported that they could nevertheless discern a sound, which one described as being "similar to that of a pallet knife against the inside of a wooden barrel".'

I'm going to side very much with Graham's take on this. Groups such as The Who started incorporating synths into their albums around the early '70s, but it didn't make sense to have a couple of extra synth players drafted in to play a few tracks off Who's Next and then shuffle off the stage for the rest of their (by that point quite extensive) live set, so they had those parts on tapes triggered from the desk by Bobby Pridden. (It might also have been for the safety of any prospective synth players, given how adept those four men were at using all the available space on a big stage.) I didn't realise Kiss had resorted to lip-syncing. I've never been able to stomach their music, but I'll freely admit they were great showmen - this seems somehow disappointing, even for a band I didn't like in the first place.

If it's easily modded then it should work alright - I could be mistaken, but I think the key thing with guitar vs bass wah pedals is just the frequency band they work across. That said, you could always get a pedal that does both. I don't know how well it sits with your budget, but I'd recommend having a gander at the Ibanez Weeping Daemon - among other bells and whistles, it has a control which moves this frequency band so you make it more "guitar-friendly" or "bass-friendly" as you see fit.

I have never looked up the lyric to the Kaiser Chiefs' I Predict A Riot, but I can only assume that this is what they were singing about.

Bugger me, that's an uncanny resemblance. Has it finally come full circle: that Fender have started copying other people's copies of their original instruments?

Was anyone else at Koko in Camden last night? Took Mrs Mooseblaster along to see Charlotte Gainsbourg, who I thought was excellent. Really nice stage design, as well: squares of flourescent tubes and lots of flashing white lights; combined with the musicians all wearing white, it made it look like some of Kraftwerk-esque electronics lab. A little peeved by a handful of people in front of us in the crowd who insisted on holding up their phones to get another photo every 30 seconds (I'm sure one guy must have taken nigh on 100 pictures over the course of that set...). But other than that nuisance I shouldn't grumble - even the sound was pretty good, at least from where I was standing.

...and Sabbath were partly just in lower tunings to make the string tension easier on Tony Iommi's mutilated fingers!

If You Like A Lot of Chocolate on Your Biscuit, Join Our (Monday) Club...?

Beers on Monday? The Monday Night Crew*? *or "Crúé" depending on your leanings toward glam-metal...

Thanks - I suspected it might have been a mad dash to see what parts a local guitar shop might have had knocking around to get the guitar into working order in time for that evening's gig! Now you mention it, I do know a guitarist who has an alarmingly intimate level of knowledge about SRV's gear and setup, so perhaps I should pick his brains next time I see him.

Ludicrously optimistic prices aside, anyone know what the story is behind the left-handed trem? Did SRV prefer to have it dangling from the top of the bridge, or was it just a frantic bodged repair while on tour that he just got used to?

It's good to know I won't be the only person on this forum harping on about how damn good they are!

I've definitely seen Pride marketed as a pale, got a feeling Doom Bar might be as well if you look closely at the back of the bottle...perhaps this is a good reason for me to buy another bottle! But yes, I agree wholeheartedly re the balance of beers across the bar. The insidious effect even seems to be creeping into our christmas and winter beers, which I normally look forward to for their ominous blackness - but no, yesterday I tried Wychwood's Brewdolph, a "golden christmas ale." It was nice enough, and I tip my hat to their terrible pun, but since when has christmas been a time for golden ales?

I've been worried about this myself. Whilst I'm obviously grateful that the "craft beer" movement has presented a more acceptable (even fashionable) face of "proper" beer than CAMRA types like myself could present, I do worry that their hop fetish risks driving out some of the more reliable styles. Everything's IPA, Pale Ale, American Pale, or some other variation on pale*, it seems; where you do find a black beer, it's ridiculously strong, or often a "black IPA"** . But no, none of these newer "craft" breweries seem to make a bitter. There are some more traditional new contenders in my neck of the woods, though - Sambrook's and Twickenham spring to mind - who make some very dependable bitters and more traditional pale ales (even if they don't always name them as such!) * notice how even London Pride and Sharp's Doom Bar are now being marketed as pale ales ** a bit like bass distortion: often difficult to get right, and admittedly very nice when it's done well, but with the potential to be quite horrible

If I could have the equivalent for dark milds, stouts and porters, that would be grand.

Hmm...good question. I don't know of any, but @Billy Apple and some of our other resident Spector enthusiasts might be able to help...

If you're after a broad selection (the usual suspects, plus a few more exotic pieces), I'd head straight to Wunjo, on Denmark Street (near Tottenham Court Road). They have a dedicated bass shop in one of the basements, and the staff are welcoming and helpful. If you're after something fancy and/or rare, try the Bass Gallery in Camden - I forget the name of the road, but it's a stone's throw from Camden Road overground station, and not much further from Camden Town tube.

I have run into a similar problem, despite being content to use rounds similar to the ones the bass came with. It seems the only way to get strings with suitable size ball-ends, in a single set, is to badger your local guitar shop to order some from Hagstrom directly. The shop I bought my HB-8 from didn't have much luck getting through to them, so in the end I bit the bullet and bought a D'Addario 8-string set (or they might have been Rotosound...it's been a while). The ball-ends on the octave strings don't fit the ferrules, as you already know. I've just put up with them sitting proud. But in the long run, it probably wouldn't be a bad investment to widen the holes and fit some larger ferrules. Whatever that adjustment costs, I'm sure you'll make it back from the savings on buying pre-packed sets instead of custom combinations.

Ages ago, I remember an article in a guitar magazine suggesting that best results could be achieved by grouping my effects into the following broad order (Bass) Guitar -> "Dynamic Effects" - volumes/boosts, wahs, compressors "Distortion Effects" - self-explanatory "Modulators" - chorus, flangers, phasers, etc -> Amp I'm not a great example myself, as I play the majority of sets without stepping on any pedals; on the occasions I do, it's a Tube Screamer or a Big Muff. But it looks like your own setup follows the above rule-of-thumb... Dynamic: compressor and octaver probably fit in this category - the synth is the one I'm less sure about - and the tuner doesn't change the sound so it's moot Distortion: Muff. I just wanted to write "Muff" again, really. Modulators: your Boss Chorus -> Sansamp, which is basically an external preamp anyway. So ultimately, in some hypothetical scenario where I tripped over your board and had to reconnect everything before you got back from the bar, I'd probably end up patching it the same way!

See also Black Sabbath / Heaven & Hell - if I recall correctly, Iommi and Butler occasionally hooked up with Ronnie James Dio and Vinne Appice for some gigs which focused on the albums they recorded with Sabbath. But because the "Black Sabbath" name was in use by another lineup (can't remember if they'd buried the hatchet with Ozzy by that point, or if it was another singer), they reformed under "Heaven & Hell" moniker (after the first album they'd made together). Not sure whether they drew on other material besides Heaven & Hell, Mob Rules and Dehumanizer to pad out the set. Interestingly, Sabbath's recent round of gigs and festivals seem to have stuck to material from the first five albums, and 13, ignoring the dozen or so albums made in between. Don't know whether that was down to any personal preferences or...well, can you imagine Ozzy trying to sing Dio's lines?

Good grief...so are they playing 7-string guitars themselves, or are they on baritones? (ADGCEA is a standard bari tuning, which could easily be dropped another semitone). Either way that would leave them playing the same Ab that's on your E string...that's going to be pretty murky another octave down.

Nice! I remember seeing Virgil and the Accelerators opening for Joanne Shaw Taylor...god, it must have quite a while ago now, as the latter had only just released her first album. But I remember them being good!

+1 on the Sandberg front. I feel like I'm well-covered for Precision and P/J tones with my Schecter and my Brandoni kit-build...but if I ever found them lacking, I'd probably go back to eyeing up some of those tasty-looking VM4s. God help me, even as I type this there's a little voice at the back of my mind saying, "yeah, but you don't have one with a reverse P-pickup, do you?"