EliasMooseblaster

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!

One concise, if slightly dismissive, maxim I've come to like is that "there are no prizes for being the healthiest person in the graveyard."

I'm not sure there's a clear rule one way or t'other, but I've tended to be of the opinion that: If you're recording it, make it your own or else what's the point? If you're playing it live, it depends how well-known it is: most of the audience won't know the Camel song you've snuck into the setlist, but there'll be one bloke at the back who'll be delighted to hear it. But if it's a radio-friendly pop song that most people would recognise, I think there's a lot to be said for putting your own spin on it and leaving people guessing. Which provides a neat segue into my own link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifIpiVFDMKc

Tui. It probably wouldn't offend me quite so much if they didn't have the advert playing on a loop while you take the little shuttle train from one side of Gatwick to the other, but being forced to listen to that crappy fey cover of Chaka Khan multiple times is a new and subtle form of torture.

So when I wake up with my ears still ringing, after trying to get my screaming toddler back to sleep in the small hours, and having achieved all of three hours' sleep myself, I should actually try and power through without coffee if I want my ears to recover? Thanks, life. Way to kick me while I'm down...

Turn down the tone control a tad.

My Generation...but NOT for the reason you'd think. Of course there is plenty of merit in learning those solo breaks, but if the band plays it properly, it is a song in which the bass has to hold everything together, but is also right upfront and completely exposed. Listen closely to the original single (and the better-known live versions, for that matter). Study the bass part, but also study the guitar part. The guitar chords on that intro are actually very sparse - those droning crotchets are just being played by the bass. You have to be right up at the front of the mix - time to kick in that overdrive pedal with the midrang hump, perhaps. Now listen to the drums. This is the other giveaway: My Generation swings. Keith Moon's over-the-top playing obscures this fact a little, but if you listen to the way the drums and the bass lock in, you will hear it swing. If you play it straight, you will fall into the same pit of mediocrity that caught out Green Day, Oasis, and countless others. Once you have beaten these subtleties into your bandmates' consciousnesses, take some time to learn the solo breaks. Because we all know that any Who fans in the audience will be judging you on those. EDIT: I'll come back with the other four when I think of them...

I was wondering this - has he just assumed that, because a 7-string is typically strung down to a low B, it is de facto a bari guitar?

I've a couple of tenuous ones... 1. Years ago I saw The Hamsters in Milton Keynes - I'd had no prior warning that they were filming that gig specifically to generate footage for a live DVD. They were their usual, reliably entertaining selves, though it did feel a bit odd when they "broke the fourth wall" towards the end and started discussing which songs they wanted to get another take of. Tenuous, because I never did find out whether said live DVD was finished and released. 2. I am in the audience on the DVD release of Bill Bailey's Part Troll show. (Tenuous, because his act is more "comedy with musical bits" than a band.) A group of friends managed to get tickets for one of several nights at Hammersmith. When the DVD was released, we weren't sure which night - or nights - the footage had been compiled from. Not, that is, until he started talking about hash brownies, and asked the audience what else they had cooked with weed - somebody yelled out "stroganoff", and at that point we knew, yep, that was the night we were there.

This hits the nail on the head, and nicely exposes a great mismatch: at 18, we're full of ambition and energy, but we're also incredibly naive, especially to the scale of hard work involved. By the time we're seeing out the end of our thirties, we have a much better understanding of how hard we need to work - and how to do that work more efficiently - but life has rather drained us of that spark and drive along the way. Or to put it another way, if 23-year-old me had known then what 33-year-old me knows now, I could have been regularly playing to literally tens of people by now.

The stars could be aligning - I saw a gorgeous Shuker fretless on the marketplace earlier... If, however, your heart changes back towards Gibson-style things and you want to keep the costs down, you could always do what I did - get an Epiphone EB-3 (or EB-0 if you're set on short scale), and swap out the stock mudbucker for a DiMarzio Model One. Works really well with a nice valve head, especially if you've the patience to wire up the coil tap option for a bit more versatility.

Damn, they certainly sound good! It's reassuring to know that someone else has been able to use them without knackering a fingerboard.

For the first time in ages I have something to contribute to this thread! Did anyone else get along to Danzig last week in Brixton? Great show; only got into them in the last few years thanks to Mrs Mooseblaster, and it was a bit of a treat for us that the set featured a lot from the first few albums.

One of the motivations for buying a Fender Tony Franklin was that I'd heard the man himself stipulate an ebony fingerboard to cope better with the wear from roundwound strings. Despite this, I'm very aware that my usual favourites, Rotosound Swing Bass, are notorious cheese graters, even the softer nickel variant. I'm sure the ebony will cope, but there's a nagging sense of doubt about it as the day gradually approaches when I'll have to replace the stock Fender strings. Then I remembered that my Schecter came with Elixir rounds when I first bought it, and they certainly offered a similarly bright "angry goose" tone to my usual RS66s. Aside from imparting insane longevity, would the coating make them gentler on the TF's beautiful fingerboard?

I might be able to help here...I have both the CTM-100 and the LB-30, which I run into a Bergantino 2x12. The CTM-100 managed an outdoor gig without PA support last month, and coped sufficiently well that the rest of the band suggested suggested I turn down a bit! I mostly use the LB-30 for home and recording, but it still comes out for smaller gigs - it's certainly managed small-to-medium-sized pubs and bars without needing any help.

I managed to get up to seven, and decided it was time to implement a one-in, one-out policy - partly for space reasons. The trouble is, if I wanted to get another, I'm not sure which one I'd move on in its place... I can't sell the kit-built Precision for sentimental reasons. I probably can't sell the parts build, as it's since become an experimental three-pickup oddity, and would have everyone here marvelling at my awful botched routing over on the "eBay Weird and Wonderful" forum within minutes of me posting it for sale. I don't want to flog the Epi EB-3, as the resale value is non-existent, and ever since I popped a DiMarzio Model One in to replace the stock mudbucker, it's been really enjoyable to play again. I don't want to flog the T-bird, as it's still my second favourite. I don't want to flog the Schecter, as it's my current favourite. The 8-string? Maybe, but I'd have to trade it in for a different 8-string. Not beyond the realms of possibility, but I'm not really looking at the mo. The Tony Franklin? Still my favourite fretless. It's not going anywhere. NB I've mostly put this all down in writing for my own benefit, as if I don't keep reminding myself of all the above, I'll start trying to justify a Sandberg or some weird and exotic fretless...

Does nobody else look at that twin humbucker placement and think "Thunderbird"?

"Richter" is to Laney as "Rumble" is to Fender - it's the name for one of their more enduring bass amp series. "RB" is indeed "Richter Bass", and they cover everything from tiny practise combos (RB1) to a high-powered head (RB9).

As someone else who also appreciates a good cup of the Earl, next time you cross la manche, I would recommend tracking down a bottle of Marble Brewery's Earl Grey IPA. It has saved several evenings when I've been caught in the dilemma of whether to have another beer, or a cup of tea!