chriswareham

I love everything about the Warwick Star bass ... except the headstock. I think it's a great shape for their solid bodies, but find it a bit out of place on a more traditional looking semi-acoustic.

I could only find them in the gold or red finish.

I'm done. Unless the current owner of a Hohner headless bass I sold earlier this year gets bored with it. I bought it from someone on here, then endured continual taunts from bandmates about how "naff and eighties" it looks. To my eternal shame I gave in to the taunts and sold it, despite it being the most comfortable bass I've ever played (it took a while to get used to looking down and my lizard brain getting confused by how close my hand was to the end of the neck though). I regretted selling it the moment it was sold, and put a note in the case saying I'd happily buy it back. The current owner has said I'll get first refusal if he gets bored with it, so fingers crossed.

Not normally one to show off a new acquisition, but I thought this was unusual enough to make an exception. About ten years ago I owned an Aria semi-acoustic bass that seems to defy all my Googling to find out much about it. It was apparently a "Tab 66" model according to the receipt I still have, but unfortunately it was stolen from the storage locker I had at a rehearsal studio in Walthamstow. I looked into claiming it on my insurance, but factoring in the excess and potential hit I'd take on my renewal I didn't bother. Cut to this year, and I decided I need another semi-acoustic because ... well, they look as cool as f*ck and the other one I own is very fragile. Since I needed it to be my main bass, I ideally wanted a standard 34" scale and that seems to be a bit of a rarity with semi-acoustics. I eventually got the options down to an Epiphone Jack Casady or another Aria, the Tab Classic. As an incurable goth, it had to be in a black finish, so that was the Jack Casady out of the equation. So this is my new bass: The black model seemed to be permanently out of stock in the UK, so I took a chance on buying it online from a German outfit whose name starts with a "Z". It was shipped super quick, although the post Brexit import tax kerfuffle slowed it down a bit when it reached the UK. Still worked out cheaper then buying the red model from anywhere in the UK that had them in stock. As I've come to expect from buying online, the setup on arrival was completely unplayable. The neck was like a banana, action 10mm at the twelfth fret, and bridge jacked up to the point the bolts where about to pop out of their sockets. A nerve wracking session of truss rod tweaks and bridge adjustments later, and it now plays beautifully. It has the rich, woody sound I associate with a semi-acoustic and is perfectly balanced when played standing with no neck dive. The label inside the body only mentions Japan, but I assume it's actually a Chinese made instrument. The body and neck is Maple, while the fretboard is a laminate made by Knoll that feels like Rosewood. The quality is outstanding, the only thing I can fault it on is slightly sharp fret ends which a couple of strokes with a safe edge file sorted out and were probably down to shrinkage in the wood rather than a quality control issue.

Ooh, that Gretsch is a thing of beauty. Always had a soft spot for semi-acoustic basses with their "piano string" like tone, and I own two. The first is a short scale that was cobbled together from parts by a former employee of Eko who bought all their guitar components when they went bust. He used to make a few instruments every so often and sell them at places like Macaris in London, and this one was the twenty first birthday present from my parents: The second (and getting back on topic), was a purchase this year. It's a long scale Aria Pro II Tab Classic that replaces a Tab 66 that was stolen from the supposedly secure storage locker I had at a rehearsal studio:

Best: An Acoustic Control Corporation 136 combo, purchased from a fellow BassChatter. Replaces an ACC 140 head that I used to own, as it's the same head combined with a 15" speaker. Worst: A Rickenbacker 4003. The neck on my battered Hondo Rick copy broke at the heel (it was a bolt on with most of the heel routed out to fit the neck pickup). Since I play in a Joy Division tribute act I needed a suitable replacement quickly, and this 4003 popped up locally on Gumtree at a reasonable price. Having now played it live several times, I find that the neck flexes leading to intonation issues (perhaps the more recent ones with a proper truss rod are better).

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A Greco with neck through construction is the best *ahem* Rickenbacker *ahem* bass that I've ever played, and I've owned somewhere in the region of ten copies as well as the real Rick pictured on this thread. One of two Czech made Jolana D-Bass guitars that I've owned was even nicer to play, but it had its own sound thanks to a Precision style split pickup in the neck position and a Jazz style pick up in the bridge position. The two Jolanas were wildly different in terms of neck shape, so I think they were handmade, whereas the Japanese copies I've owned or played have all felt very consistent.

In my case it's not knobs, but the pickup selector switch on a Rickenbacker 4003 or reasonably accurate copy. How many times have I inadvertently flicked that fecker down so that I'm only on the bridge pickup? Too many times, that's how many.

Six Boss DS-1 distortion pedals in series.

Another beautiful meditation on the bittersweet nature of love:

Nine Inch Nails - Closer The Macc Lads - Do you Love Me?

The single truss rod came out first on the Al Cisneros model bass a few years ago. I think it was then put into limited run models made over the next couple of years, which may account for this niche 4001C64S having one. So if the serial number indicates it being made in 2020 or so, it could be genuine. The cavities under the scratchplate looks the typical mixed bag of clean areas and then that bodgery with presumably a Forstner bit between the control cavity and neck pickup cavity. My genuine Rick 4003 has marker pen writing near the controls as well, so that may be factory.

I'm surprised to hear that Parcel2Go have a depot - I thought they were just a website that sell other companies courier services, presumably run on a shoestring to maximise profits and hence no customer service whatsoever.

I've got one of their smallish powered monitors (their Sub Zero brand). It's used on stage to monitor a drum machine after too many bad experiences with no drums in the venue's own monitors. No frills device, solidly made and clear sounding. They're also my go too for guitar cases, both padded and rigid ones. The cheapest ones are so-so, but the ones they describe as "premium" are still very affordable and excellent quality. Been tempted by that semi-acoustic pictured above, but it's kind of spoiled for me by the headstock which doesn't seem to suit the body. Oh, and I thought all semi-acoustic basses sounded "woody", perhaps with an overtone of piano like sustain with new roundwound strings on.

I couldn't bring myself to part with the eight or ninety quid they want for one of those splitter boxes, so I built one for about ten quid in parts (aluminium pedal case and three decent quality jack sockets).

I suspect that whichever factory in China originally "cloned" the 4003 did so from pictures rather than forking out for a real one to examine. Since intellectual property is not a thing in China, that original clone design then made its way to all the factories out there. Checking Aliexpress, different sellers do sometimes offer variations but that terrible bridge is pretty much standard as far as I can tell, so I guess that's produced by one manufacturer. Something similar happened in Japan, where intellectual property and patents weren't really a thing until at least the late 1970s. If you read the autobiography of Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, he talks about an ever expanding book of designs that did the rounds of Japan's early electronic music equipment manufacturers. That's probably why copying of US made guitars became such a big thing, as the concept of something being a "counterfeit" was not part of the culture.

I use the earlier 16 bit version of the Akai EIE, since it has a lot of features and also functions as a USB MIDI unit. Works perfectly with my Debian Linux system, and pops up cheaply second hand. (The later Pro version doesn't work with Linux though, as it uses it's own driver for 24 bit support).

Two others that come to mind are Modern English and Love And Rockets. They also suffered at the hands of the UK music press, particularly L&R who had already endured a lot of spite in their preceding incarnations as Bauhaus and Tones On Tail.

The Psychedelic Furs had far more success in the US than at home in the UK. The infamously bitchy music press here wrote them off when they released their third album, and back then bad reviews in the weeklies could kill a band overnight.

I seem to recall that the Spotify desktop application is an abomination that basically wraps the core of the Chrome web browser. If so, I wonder if one of their JavaScript geniuses introduced an OS version check that sees that you're running version macOS 10 and is trying to suggest that you update to Windows 11.

I'll check - I now recall the thread on here about that bloke. Thanks for the info. Our singer is the person that deals with the booking agencies and promoters, so I'm going to suggest that he contacts the promoter and makes it clear that unless a fully equipped PA and a sound engineer is provided that we'll be cancelling the show.

A tribute act I'm in are booked to play Ronnie Roos in a few days time. We've just had a message from someone saying that they have replaced the original promoter since he was "doing a bad job". So far, so worrying. Now we've been asked if we'll be bring our own mixing desk and sound engineer, since the venue apparently doesn't have either... I can't find much more than pictures or flyers when I search for the venue, including their own Facebook page. The best I can see is a couple of pictures of an unusual but decent looking venue with a bunch of adequate looking PA speakers to the sides of a low stage. So have any Basschatters played this venue recently, and if so what was the deal with the PA and sound engineer?

I think this one qualifies as a bad cover of what was a bloody annoying song in its original form: Human League - Rock Me Again And Again And Again And Again And Again And Again As for the vocals on this, if it was me I would have wanted to forget about it rather than release it: Gary Numan - On Broadway And any cover by Guns And Roses. I loathe them as a band anyway, but they also released a lame version of one of my favourite songs and their fans seem to think they wrote it. I'll link the original version instead: Rocket From The Tombs - Ain't It Fun