ambient

I sometimes use a .125 B on my instruments. It's fine. A .125, .105, .085, .065, .045 is a perfectly normal set that you'll find sold by many string companies.

Guitar bags? Someone laughed at my comment, but a friend of mine has an Alembic Stanley Clarke and uses a guitar gig bag .

I can't think of any instrument that I dislike, when played well anyway. Bagpipes when played badly can be painful to listen too, but when played well they can sound incredibly haunting.

What songs are you looking for? Someone might have a TAB or score they can give you.

I used photo booth on my MacBook for the video and recorded the sound at the same time in Logic Pro. Then just import the video into Logic, it’s quite simple to align the two, just drag the video until it aligns with the sound.

I've owned a few of the TRB basses. A TRB6, a JP1 and a TRB1006J. The TRB6 and the JP were both very old and Japanese built, they were a totally different level to the TRB1006, both being completely luthier built. The TRB1006J was though a very, very nice instrument, a lot better than the price would lead you to expect. A friend of mine who's a very, very fine solo bassist plays one, and loves it.

A couple of my students have Ibanez basses. The one has a fantastic 6 string bass that he only paid a couple of hundred for brand new.

Gloves are a good idea. Have you totally discounted everything else? I have an allergy to liquid soap, some shampoo and shower gel, as does my mom. It took years before I realised what was causing my hands to be so sore. I’d visited the doctor and spent a fortune on handcreams. It was so bad that my doctor the first time he saw me asked what I did for a living. When I said I was a musician he was totally flummoxed, he was thinking that I worked with chemicals or something. It was by chance that I read an article in a newspaper about chemicals in everyday products that can case harm. We now use tablet soap at home, when I’m out I make sure to completely rinse and dry my hands after washing. Some of the soaps I can actually feel my hands stinging. Just wondering because you say it first appeared on your foot.

They do make some really lovely and amazing basses.

What about using a projector?

There are a great many instruments that I just look at and think, no. All the time I was playing it I would be conscious of the fact that I didn't like the instrument.

G-Plan and Ercol from the 1970s are hugely popular and fetch very good money. So you're quite possibly correct.

Banjo yes me too, except here at 41:28, absolutely sublime, it just comes from nowhere and is perfect:

Fender were mass produced, not quite in the sense that we use the term nowadays, but they were still mass produced. Mostly probably by migrant workers from Mexico. What actual percentage from any given year in the 1960s still survives? The ones that do still survive weren't any better made than the ones that didn't, they were just better looked after.

I've got an early 70s Revox A77 that I bought from a guy on here a few years ago I love the thing. Prices nowadays have rocketed, and like you say there's a market for plug-ins that try and often fail to replicate the sound of the tape. I recently bought a really old cassette tape player that I'm using to compose with. You can't replicate the sound produced by it.

I think a lot of the desire to own a vintage Fender is the mystique surrounding the the company and it's instruments. The not knowing who's owned it, who's played it, were it's been etc. There is something attractive about old instruments. I've owned a few instruments that were 20 plus years old. These were Yamaha basses, neither Fender or Gibsons hold any kind of allure for me. There's something very nice about old, very old acoustic instruments.

Basses with less than, or than than 6 strings :).

I think that with amplified instruments, once the instrument is plugged in it will pretty much sound like any other. The feel and responsiveness to the player between instruments is different though.