chriswareham

That sounds familiar. The drummer wasn't known by the name "Belle" was he? A legend on the London alternative music scene who unexpectedly passed away in 2023.

I have a Brandoni constructed Eko semi-acoustic bass guitar. Fantastic instrument, and I got the opportunity to tell Roberto how much l love it shortly before he passed away. In the early 1990s his instruments would occasionally appear in Macaris music shop in the London's West End, which is how I came by my one.

Amphetamines maybe. A fair bit of research has gone into using them for military applications, ever since they were first produced in laboratory conditions just over a hundred years ago. They were used extensively in World War II, particularly for air force personnel by the Axis and Allied forces, as they increased endurance and attentiveness. Studies show they can improve reflex responses and awareness of stimuli, although at the cost of increasing levels of paranoia and eventual fatigue when usage increases beyond certain thresholds. An interesting case is the Finnish soldier Aimo Koivunen who accidentally took a massive dose of German supplied Pervitin while on a mission behind Soviet lines - it resulted in a week long period where he evaded capture while frankly off his tits. Didn't seem to do any serious damage as he went on to live into his seventies, but he did father nine children so I guess it may have impacted his libido 🙂

Many thanks for the responses! I've been pondering my options and based on some of the comments decided to buy a Ray 24 which seems to have a recreation of the 2 band pre-amp from a Stingray from the early 1980s. After changing the strings on my regular bass this evening for a set of stainless steel Rotosounds I think that also plays a big part in capturing the sound I'm after along with a modulation effect. I experimented with a bunch of effects, and came closest with my ancient Frontline rack mounted thing. The modulation offers either chorus or flanger and seems to be a clone of Boss circuitry. With careful tweaking of the manual and feedback controls on the flanger setting I got really close to what I'm looking for even on my passive bass.

Oh, that's tempting. I think I bought a Yamaha BB1200 from you, which I used with a Joy Division tribute until I got tired of too many people saying I should be playing a Rickenbacker (I'd point out Hooky's clearly playing a Yammy in the Love Will Tear Us Apart video and before that he actually played a Hondo rather than a Rickenbacker, but to no avail).

I played a Stingray for almost twenty years, having bought one when I first started working full time after college. It was my dream bass since several of my favourite bassists used one - Barry Jepson of Southern Death Cult, Jamie Stewart of Death Cult and The Cult, Simon Gallup of The Cure and even Peter Hook during his Revenge / Monaco phase. I then switched to a Greco copy of the Rickenbacker 4003 about five years ago, and sold the Stingray. Fast forward to now, and the while the band I'm in suits the middly honk of a Rick style bass I think the tone I was originally inspired by would fit even better. So I had a look at what's out there in Stingray land, and I'm confused. It used to be that the choices were straightforward - four or five strings, two or three band active tone controls. Now there seems to be a bewildering array of Stingray models and no amount of Googling seems to provide an explanation. So in short, I'm looking to recreate the kind of tone from the Cult's early performance of Horse Nation. I know that solid state amps (Trace Elliot) and chorus were also a factor, but I'm wondering what models from the current Stingray range get me close without spending more than I have to. So do the Ray 4 models have the same kind of pre-amp as the more expensive Sterling or full fat Stingray models? Do the two or three band active tone controls have a difference in terms of what sounds you can get? I would prefer to go for something like a Ray 4, Ray 24 or Ray 34 rather then the frankly eye watering cost of a US made Stingray but don't want to end up with something that disappoints if I can't get the right tone. Advice very much appreciated!

I had a few lessons with a guy that did that. A session guitarist called Peter Maxim, an incredibly softly spoken man who taught me things I'd not normally play like the bass parts to Bill Withers and Ian Dury songs.

Peavey 3620. Two 18" Black Widows and two 10" Scorpions in a single mahoossive cabinet. I'd trust that thing ... trust it to give me a hernia that is.

I saw a comment on a computer forum saying "never trust a computer you can lift". My version of that is "never trust a bass cabinet you can lift".

NAMM, but not directly bass related, unless you count the amount of FM synth bass sounds out there on recordings. Behringer demo their working prototype of a Yamaha DX-1 clone with additional filter, LFO and envelope cloned from the Yamaha CS-80. I used to hate all things to do with Yamaha DX synths, since they're a sod to program and the presets were abysmal. However, there are thousands of free patch banks floating around on the web that prove FM synthesis really is amazing if you can work out what the algorithms do and how modulators operate on carriers. Fortunately they don't predict it to ship until next year, so I don't have to find room for one just yet.

I'm another one who learned Peaches by The Stranglers as my first song on bass guitar. And like someone else who has already posted it was on a Marlin Slammer that a friend had let me borrow. Dead strings, action a mile high and it weighed a ton!

Mesa Boogie refuse to provide schematics, service manuals or spares so techs tend to hate them. They're also not very easy to work on because they're very complex and the cabling inside makes access to most of the boards a nightmare. It seems they want all repairs to go through the mothership in California, which is somewhat ... inconvenient ... to anyone outside the US.

Which it would. Microsoft can be criticised for a lot of shoddy software development, but one thing they have been very good about is backwards compatibility. I've seen software written in the 90s that still runs on Windows 11 without modification. It's also why you may see multiple versions of C++ and .NET libraries installed on a typical Windows system.

In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary, come again?