Norris

We made this during the first covid lockdown. All audio recorded at home and sent to the guitarist for mixing. All video recorded on phones and sent to me for editing. None of us met in person due to the restrictions at the time

Hot & sweaty - great! I slapped some new strings on my guitar and took it along for the guitarist to play. He fell in love with it The blue thinline tele is the "Nozcaster" that I built for myself (build #1). The wood LPJ double cut is the guitar that I made for the guitarist (build #2). I'm proud to say that both guitars sounded amazing in his hands. I really must find the time to build myself a bass (Enjoying the Sire 5-string P loads though!)

I've had my P7-5 (v2) since January and still loving it. Black & tort too - gorgeous!

Done it a few times over the years What song are we playing? What key is it in? Where are we in the song? What is this thing round my neck? Who/where am I? Try not to ever be confident in what you are doing - that's when the gremlins of incompetence strike!

For a temporary fitting, two strips of masking tape glued back-to-back with a few spots of CA adhesive. It has much lower tack (and hence lower gungyness) than double-sided tape. A decent quality of masking tape is worth the extra money (3M is about as decent as you can get) - blue tape is usually better and less gungy than white

"You've ignored us all night, but now you're drunk. Of course we'll keep playing. Oasis you say? Certainly!"

Use it or lose it And you may end up losing it anyway

The drummer doing a solo in Moby Richard! Edit: Led Zep would love the "Richard" substitution!

"The 5-string" although I actually own another fiver but need to get my donkey in gear to move it on to its next owner "The Squier" "The Rickenbacker" "The Thunderbird" ... you get the idea from this point Edit: Wow I got censored to "donkey"?!

Ha ha. Bought tickets for the next Muse tour mainly because RB are supporting (seen Muse a few times, latest album a bit meh, but never seen RB before). We'll see how that goes...

As @Bolo said scrape the worst off with a plastic credit card. Then use a mild detergent solution (washing up liquid) to wipe off the rest with a wrung-out cloth. Let it dry out, then wipe on a smidge of lemon oil to condition the fretboard

My guitarist uses a Mesa Boogie combo and about half a dozen pedals. That's not really going to be much help to your situation though

Of course if it was fretless as well as flat, a piece of veneer would suffice

Wilkinson parts are budget, but generally better quality than unbranded parts. The only Wilkinson thing I can think I've used is the bridge on my telecaster (3x saddles in compensated pairs), which is much better than the individual saddle bridge I used originally

When drilling your pilot holes put a piece of masking tape on the drill bit to mark your depth. Rather than wrapping it tightly just fold it in half to stick to itself. Then it will also clear the swarf from around the hole as it rotates. Keep backing the bit out as you drill - you want to keep the grooves clear for a nice clean hole. Yes, drill bit the size of the screw shank excluding the thread, and a bit of normal candle wax. Also make sure you use a screwdriver that fits the screw head properly. Some of those screws seem to be made out of cheese and mash/shear easily (I'm looking at your machine head screws Kluson!)

First of all just play it for a few weeks and maybe refine the setup how you like it. Then later on if you think something is not quite up to scratch, upgrade it I played a Squier for several years. The main upgrade I made was to fit a set of Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder pickups. I also swapped out the loom, mainly because the volume and tone controls were not reliable The Squier bridge and tuners are perfectly serviceable imho

Yes, original members

Haircut 100 tomorrow night. Mrs Norris' favourite band from the 80s. I'm hoping for some nice funky bass lines

Excluding school band gigs, my first paid gig was around March 1985 and I'd have been 19. After a couple of months with that band we went off and did a summer season at Butlin's playing 6 nights a week. A right baptism of fire! Edit to say I'm still playing with the same guitarist now!

I'd be tempted to flat it all back down and give it some more of the colour coat. Get the colour nice and flat before going on with the clear However you'll be surprised how much the lacquer will thin out over an extended curing time. Even if you get it looking flat you're likely to see some grain eventually. I did a guitar with dyed flamed maple (very tight grain) with a lot of clear lacquer and flatting back, and it was like a mirror when I finished. Several years later I can now see the grain in the right light. It still looks fantastic imho, but that's the nature of a nitro finish. I was just a bit surprised given the amount of clear lacquer I piled on. If you don't want any grain then use a 2k poly

I found the same. Older strap locks fit both old and new buttons. Newer strap locks only fit the new buttons. The newer lock pin doesn't engage properly on older buttons That's not so much of a problem if you use the same strap fitted with older strap locks for all your basses. It's a right pain though if you want to use the newer locks as you'll have to change all the buttons. The newer locks do seem to fit more snuggly, but I never had a problem with the old ones

I lent my bass out a few weeks ago. It was to Martin Turner though (ex-Wishbone Ash), who had travelled 100 miles or so to a gig without his bass. Luckily I have a Thunderbird and was not too far away... Oh, and I hung around to make sure he took care of it... and buy me dinner too

I'm going to suggest a Hofner violin bass. Cheap, light, short scale and fun to play. You don't even need an amp to have a noodle

We are not really a wedding band but occasionally people insist... We were booked to play at a reception so arrived in good time, set up and waited for the guests to arrive. ...And waited. ...And waited. For several hours it was just the bride and groom and the maid of honour. We didn't know where to put ourselves. After a bit of phoning round they rustled up a handful of people and we played a set. Obviously there were a few tensions between the families. I felt so sorry for them. Another wedding reception. This time the disco arrived before us and set up a couple of tons of equipment on the stage. Great - we ended up setting up on the floor next to the stage. That wasn't what made it a memorably bad gig though. No, that was near the end of the night when the groom's brother had a major altercation with his dad and kicked him unconscious. The police kept all of the guests in the room for two hours while they investigated the crime scene. It took us 3 months to get paid for that one too. We don't usually do weddings

A decent set list takes a bit of curation. Stuff that's in your genre/niche/usp that people have heard of but no other bands do. We centre around 70s rock and absolutely refuse to play Mr Brightside, etc. because nearly every other band does that. We venture into funk, pop and prog too - the proggy stuff especially helps us to stand out