EliasMooseblaster

I am looking forward to seeing more pictures as these bits of wood become gradually more guitar-shaped!

Well, I've learnt something new! I always thought his solo stuff began after and ran alongside theirs, though I wouldn't claim to be an expert on the feller - I stand corrected.

Sorry, it appears I mis-read your original post a little - if people have gone to an event and clicked the "I'll attend this" button, then it's a bit harder to spot. Clearly Mr Threatin had managed to find a service which would generate such fake attendees, and I guess at the point you have to have a look through the list of people and see where they're posting from, which can be harder to judge. That said, enough journalists seemed to be able to spot that the supposed attendees were mostly posting from Brazil, so I have to presume that enough of these people were sharing their location with FB to make an educated guess feasible!

It's usually pretty easy to tell when somebody's bought a heap of dubious FB or Twitter followers - if thousands of people have followed/"liked" their page, but their posts are only getting clicks and supportive comments from their best friends and/or mum, then their "enormous" following probably isn't all it first appears to be. (Though clearly, some sizeable venues would do well do learn this!)

Yep, probably. Power amp outputs are a much bigger current than instrument outputs - hence the need for a proper speaker cable rather than a spare guitar lead. At the very least, I expect you'd knacker preamp 2 pretty quickly. Prior to damage/smoke/fire/screaming & crying, I can't imagine it would sound particularly nice either.

The "Excellent Joe Walsh" thread that began a few days ago got me thinking: I can take or leave the Eagles, and given the choice I'd rather put on some of Walsh's solo stuff. But is he a rare beast in this respect? Usually, I feel like the offshoot solo album is a chance for members of a band to try something different, but it's never quite as good or exciting as the stuff they did with the band that made them famous in the first place. Often, they're 45-minute collections of absolute dross which reek either of self-indulgence or cashing in. But once in a while, you come across one which stands head and shoulders above the music they were making with their original band. So who - for you - should have thumbed their nose at their original band years ago and just carried on making solo albums?

Very true! I kind of understand what the guy was saying about being true to his word when he agrees to do something...but on the other hand, if the other party starts to welch on the original arrangement like that, then surely you're in a perfectly good position to walk out with your morals intact?

I'm sure a lot of us have been in situations where the "agreed fee" goes from being Some Money, to A Bit Less Money, and then a week before the event, Well, The Venue Will Lay On Dinner And We'll Cover Your Expenses, to Erm...OK I Guess We'd Better Cover Your Expenses. I should probably be grateful that the last time that happened to me, it was just for one gig and I only had to cross London rather than the chuffing Atlantic Ocean...

By the sound of it, the venue in Bristol nearly did lose out - the local article in the OP mentions that they had it out with Mr Threatin and his tour manager until he shuffled off in a huff and came back with the hire fee. I'd be very surprised if this was their normal modus operandi, and must assume that they had the wool pulled over their eyes by this shady "promotions company" assuring them that 180 Bristolians (not Brazilians...) had purchased tickets - of course, I can only speculate without knowing the finer details. In any case, I take your point re the support bands - how the hell did they get on the bill if they couldn't even draw a dozen people to one of their bigger local venues? Again, pure speculation, but perhaps more experienced bands had seen through Mr Threatin's facade when he was looking for support acts...

I didn't realise Mr Fricker did music news as well these days! I do quite enjoy Canadian Shout Man's oeuvre, and he makes a very good point: even if this stunt has got the guy's name onto papers and blogs around the world, who in their right mind is now going to book their venue out to a well-known con-man?

I just went to peruse the front page, and noticed he's now made it onto the front page of the Graun. I'm beginning to suspect this is what he was hoping for all along...

My initial thought would have been to pop a DiMarzio Model One into the place of the original mudbucker. I made this change to my Epi EB3 and it tightened up the low-end woof nicely - more recently I extended the wiring to coil-tap it, which has made it even more versatile. But then you mentioned that you already have an EB3 for those sounds. Perhaps, if the '51 Precisions aren't a workable option, a couple of those Danelectro style 'lipstick' pickups might do the trick? I think I'm right in saying they won't be affected by the string spacing...

There are still aspects of this story that I'm struggling to get my head round. So this chap evidently has some material online - all the articles I've read have mentioned music videos in which you can't properly see the "crowd" he's playing to, while simultaneously playing all the instruments on each track. It sounds like he thought he could buy a following through various dubious Facebook schemes, and doubtless got a lot of clicks from some people in Brazil. But at what point did this stop being delusion and become a deliberate attempt to deceive? Surely he wasn't stupid enough to know that 180 tickets had not actually been sold, despite the number of earnest Brazilians telling FB they would attend a gig in Bristol? The article mentions a tour manager who was with him, so were they both in on the scam? Did they know that the interest was all fake, and is this simply part of an elaborate ruse to get outraged articles into local news and get us talking about his awful music? Or...has he actually been blinded by the dopamine hit of so many "likes" on his FB page that he's started to believe his own hype, (even though only 26 people tuned in to his music last month on Spotify) and a promotion company (conveniently left behind in Hollywood) decided to pocket a few quid by cynically taking advantage of his delusion? I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's having a chuckle at our expense as we read these articles, aghast, but then life has also taught me not to underestimate just how stupid and deluded some people are capable of being...

The master? Do you have the prototype, then? (Hard to say for sure, as I don't have it with me in the office, but I'm pretty sure the layout and choice of chicken-heads is the same as on mine - from memory, the front panel looks the same)

Thank you all very much, gentlemen, I remain delighted with my purchase. I've finally given it its ultimate test by using it in a band setting - not one of my usual outfits, admittedly, but it was nice to hear it in some context. Pleased to report that it sits in the mix just nicely. I have, however, fallen into exactly the trap I feared: the temptation to keep tweaking my sound. I'm sure, as the novelty wears off, I'll regain the discipline to choose one or two settings and just stick to those for the duration of a rehearsal/set, but with so many options I can't help experimenting at the moment! On the one hand, it's reminded me why I stuck to Precisions for so many years...on the other, it's hard to settle on one sound when so many of them are good and potentially usable.

Given the number of people who assemble an unbranded bitsa Precision or Jazz and then waterslide a "Fender" decal onto the head, there may be a surprising amount of truth to that for some people!

Howdy! Another HB-8 owner here. Not had any problems with the pots myself, though I've often thought it might be nice to have either separate volumes or a blend control instead of the 6-way switch - and maybe swapping one or more pots out for a push-pull so I could keep the coil tapping as an option! Intrigued by the switch to flats - did you manage to find a flatwound 8 set, or did you have to put one together from regular bass strings and some guitar flats?

Anyway, I finally got round to recording a demo so you can all hear it. Just to really spoil you, I've turned it into two separate videos with different audio tracks: Here it is DI'ed: And here it is through a nice valve amp:

Admittedly it's the first one of his I've ever seen in the flesh (in the wood?), but from the photos I've seen, it's clearly not alone in being a stunning specimen!

Another instructive example:

Also bear in mind that you don't have to share your early drafts with anyone. Be prepared to prune, revamp and redraft, ideally in a highly flammable notebook. And if you're ever feeling self-conscious about your lyrics, put a Human League record on and reassure yourself that some people really do get away with any old Jackson Pollocks.

Obviously the cab's voicing will have an effect on the overall sound, but I don't think it will prevent you from getting a warm, valvey tone. Most of the colouring of your tone will come from the amp itself; the cab will just emphasise certain aspects of that. I've been running my Ashdown into a similarly well-voiced, modern cab (a Berg 2x12), and it's certainly done no harm to the tone - if anything it's helped it to carry further!

Pretty much - "experienced practitioner" can often mean "Grand Wizard of the Darkest Arts of Gaffer Tape" in some of the places I've played!

Give thanks to any nearby deities that you have chosen an instrument with strings, as opposed to keys, reeds or brass tubes. Joking aside, one of the beauties of a stringed instrument like the (bass) guitar is that most songs can be shifted up or down a key by moving your hand up or down the neck a few frets. It's a shortcut, but you can go a surprisingly long way with it in some genres. But it does also help if you want to take the time to learn your scales: every type of scale, ultimately, has a "shape" on the neck which you can move up or down to move it into a different key. The key will change, but the shape won't, because the intervals between the notes are the same. So you can take it one step at a time - learn some of these shapes where the scale begins on the E-string, get used to moving those around, and then incorporate some of the other positions when you're more confident. Familiarity, unfortunately, will only come with practise!

It does depend on the sound you prefer of course, but there's a wealth of amp modelling / preamp / preamp+DI pedals which you can put in front of the DI. Never been keen on a dry DI signal myself, but when I was still mostly playing the London Toilet Circuit, I usually had to like or lump it; wish I'd known about even half of these clever little boxes back then!