EliasMooseblaster

You're absolutely spot on. Their management contacted [A Band I have Worked With*], and at the same time their frontman decided to connect with the band on FB, at which point it became very obvious, very quickly, that they were a couple, and the only constant members of the band. (I have seen semi-regular posts advertising vacancies for a new drummer to tour with them - did someone say Spinal Tap?) Still, they'd got in touch regarding a buy-on as supports to their European tour, so we did our research. It wasn't just that their music wasn't our cup of tea, it would have been the most horrendous mismatch with the music we were making: using loose analogies to try and preserve a veneer of anonymity, imagine if Stevie Ray Vaughan had been invited to open for Limp Bizkit. They also wanted a small fortune to buy on; offered a very restrictive financial arrangements which would have made it nigh on impossible for us to recoup said cost; and were very explicit that we should absolutely, under no circumstances whatsoever, presumably on pain of death, bring any amps with us - we had to plug into their Helix / AxeFX setup, whether we liked it or not. We politely declined. But they still tour Europe quite regularly from what I see.

I haven't needed that level of attenuation since I was working on an airfield...

From the same LP... On a scale of one to chuffing superb, how chuffing superb is Paul Chambers' bassline on this one?

I've heard that Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee still openly joke about Neil Peart being "the new kid," though I gather it's a lot more good-natured than it is in some groups.

"Goddammit, I knew I should have gone for a leak before the set started..."

It's the perfect gateway album. I've come to love the rest of their stuff, but it takes some time to grow on you, especially if you don't listen to a lot of the new wave, funk and assorted world music that influenced their sound. You gradually realise that a lot of their other albums are more interesting, and more challenging, but I still think LC is a solid album of well-written pop songs. Just to put the cat among the pigeons, my favourite is Speaking in Tongues...

Surprised to see the comments about the weight...my T-bird is as light as a very light thing. A positive waif compared to my SG bass - now that one's a back-breaker.

Is anybody else unable to say or read the name "Lynne" without hearing fat Alan Partridge yelling it in distress through a mouth full of half-chewed Toblerone?

More specifically - buy one of the good Epis! The neck-through models will do you much better than the cheaper bolt-on ones - indeed if I didn't already have the Gibson myself, I'd be very tempted by one of the new vintage-style Epis with the Gibson pickups. Personally I find the real charm of the 'bird is up the dusty end of the neck - the high notes can be wonderfully articulate. That, and the crushing, piano-like honk from the bottom notes when you get the pickup settings just right.

I've been playing a kit-build Precision since 2001 - for several years it was my only bass! Bought mine from Brandoni Guitars in North London, and it turned out to be a really good instrument. I refurbished it a couple of years ago - details and some pictures at https://ralphbeeby.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/precision-bass-refurb/ if you're interested! As Andytre says, you may want to upgrade some of the components, but when you consider how much money you save on the kit, it doesn't seem like such a shame to splash out on a nicer pickup, for example. If I were to do it again, I would also invest some of that saved money in getting it professionally set up. I really didn't know what I was doing when I built mine, and the neck is slightly bowed after years of stupidly high action and no truss rod adjustments. Still a great instrument, though, and still getting extensive use (I used in on Cherry White's last single, if you wanted to hear it in action... https://cherrywhite.bandcamp.com/track/broken-land)

Perhaps it's one of the privileges of playing with a band that's typically recorded as many parts together as possible. It's nice to be able to vary the line a bit, and the fills always work best if they play off what the drums and guitar are doing. I think you'd have to put in an awful lot of effort to recreate that feel with a sequencer...possibly even enough effort that it would just be easier to set up the mics and record the band playing it! It's probably worth admitting that I'm not completely precious about it: I'm happy for engineer to edit out the odd bum note here and there, or let me "punch in" to replace a shonky couple of bars - god knows studio time is expensive, and those would be quicker than me insisting that my 15th attempt from the top will be a perfect take!

You might like to try the Sony MDR-ZX100 - particularly as I believe you can now get them for less than £20. Mrs Mooseblaster passed a pair on to me and I was pleasantly surprised by them. Sufficiently surprised, in fact, that I looked up some online reviews, which included a few people saying they'd found them good enough for mixing - apparently the EQ is relatively flat compared to the horrific low end shelf on a lot of other well-regarded headphones.

I think I struck lucky: my band includes a Welshman, who is de facto more interested in the rugby, and a Brazilian who emigrated for reasons including, but not limited to, his native country's increasingly tedious glorification of its past footballing prowess. The fact that I keep an occasional eye on Leicester City's results makes me the closest thing to a football expert in the group....

Perhaps I'm too used to passive basses. I tried a couple of Sadowsky Jazz-type basses at the Gallery a few months ago, and I also found the onboard EQ a bit challenging to work with. In the end I decided I liked them best in passive mode - no denying that the guitar itself was a delight to play, to be fair. Perhaps the preamp is a bit of an acquired taste! For balance, I also tried a couple of Sandbergs, and similarly found myself wondering whether I'd ever use the active EQ if I bought one, though I did find their slightly more subtle cut/boost controls easier to get used to. (I say all this having only owned one active bass previously, and the EQ knobs hardly ever left the detente when I was playing that one...)

Is your amp valve or SS? If valve, you'll knacker the amp very quickly unless you plug it into either a speaker or dummy load. I think you can get away with it on a SS amp, but there are probably still reasons why it's not recommended...

Strengths: I can carry my amp. Weakness: I can't carry a tune.

I used to front a blues-rock trio. Good fun, if very draining. If I can offer any single nugget of advice: Make sure you can trust your drummer. The logic is as follows: your attention is split between the bass and the vocal line, but the majority of the audience will focus more on the vocal line, so you need to make sure that is as spot-on as possible. As others have said, you may find you have to simplify the bass part as a result, and you won't be able to devote as much attention to the rhythm and the groove. Ergo, the last thing you need is a clodhopping shed builder behind you who can't keep time or lock in with the rest of the band.

I used to play with a band that was comprised entirely of deps. It was a singer/guitarist who had a reservoir of friends he could call on who knew his songs (yes, it was originals) and obviously liked to fly by the seat of his pants! It became his running joke to say to the audience, "...and at this point, I'd like to introduce the band...", then turn around and introduce us to each other - fair enough given most of us had literally just met for the first time.

I shall continue to fly the flag for Schecter. The Model T is an excellent P/J bass. I've recently gone back to playing mine more regularly and remembered how much I love it. If you turn off the J pickup, you essentially have a beautifully-made Precision which sounds as good as an American Fender, but only costs a bit more than a Mexican one*. *I'm assuming you can still get your hands on the passive Model Ts; the active ones cost a bit more, but I've heard they're also very good!

I agree: the usual playlist on Planet Rock makes me fear that rock music is in pretty dire health (I have ranted on this subject quite a big in the past). Every so often I come across groups like All Them Witches, or Bouquet of Dead Crows, who seem to have some fresh ideas, but they're few and far between. Like you, I also owe a couple of great discoveries to Last.FM - it's a shame it's not more widely used.

£500 is an insanely good price for an insanely good amp. Hope you enjoy it!

I think, at its most ridiculous, I was playing in about six or seven bands at one point. Fortunately, most of them were fairly ad hoc, so it wasn't too difficult to manage the calendar around them. You may have to make a decision about which band gets your first priority, though - and maybe make this clear to the other band(s).

"Home is where the (victim's) heart is..."

Exactly: if you were looking for a place to live, you'd expect to see plenty of photos before agreeing to a viewing, just so you don't find yourself standing in a pigsty / fresh murder scene / sex dungeon, awkwardly trying to explain to the lettings agent that this didn't really meet your standards for a "cosy family home." If this bass is indeed the "ONLY ONE OF ITS KIND, YOU B**T**D TIME-WASTING TIRE KICKER; I BET YOU KICK PUPPIES AS WELL, DON'T YOU, etc, etc" then surely the guy would be all too happy to send you some more photos to show the thing off?

One of the trickiest things to nail will be the custom shop pickups. The P pickup is very bright - a '62 RI would probably get you there - but the J in the bridge position is apparently something they designed with TF himself, and may be difficult to come by outside of that bass. Not being a connoisseur of Jazz basses, I'm not sure how to compare it to other bridge pickups, or what might get you close. If you do decide to go down the bitsa route - firstly, I look forward to hearing the results! - and secondly, you could probably improve on my only gripe with the design: replace the blade switch with a blend control!