Happy Jack

All basses are black in the dark. Anyway, why would you be looking at the body of your bass when playing it?

Sorry mate, there's no way that the colour of the bass will make it sound different.

After all these years, I still find myself wondering how Fender can possibly have re-invented such a simple instrument in so many ways. Does an American Standard Player Artiste Roadworn Signature model really sound any different from any other Precision? IME the only things that makes one P sound different from another P are (i) string choice, and (ii) fitting a hot pickup.

No, it doesn't attach, but it IS small enough to fit under the handle of many cabs! I've rehearsed with mine many times, and gigged it a few times (usually when playing gigs where I'm mostly going through the PA), and I haven't had a problem yet. Linus, there's a country band I play with that rehearses at loud but less-than-gig volumes, right on the cusp of should-I-wear-earplugs? I play a Precision through the Elf into a Crazy 88 and it's (i) more than capable of holding its own, and (ii) utterly righteous. Like any good, small cab it's significantly heavier than you think. My Crazy 8 weighs less than my old Barefaced OneTen, but not by that much. The Crazy 88 is definitely heavier.

Really? Can't say as we noticed ... [Whistles unconvincingly, whilst shuffling feet]

Assuming that those are serious questions, UN = IN REFURISHED = REFURBISHED (= repaired or renewed)

In my head, the lower (bass) strings should be fretted and the higher (treble) strings should be the fretless ones ...

Why does it come with five (spare) sets of strings? Are the bridge saddles like sharpened chisels or something?

Mine lives in the lounge, running through a Crazy 8 cab. Overkill? Of course. But then so is my main gig rig (GB Shuttle 900W through either a Markbass 210 or a Markbass 410). I like headroom ...

Now that's what I call straight-line thinking!

An original Hofner 185 Artist (or perhaps the 182 Professional) won't cost you an arm & a leg, and it will sound better than that thing!

Oi! That's our Silvia's ironing board, I'll have you know.

I'm genuinely impressed that Google returns no hits, nothing at all, not a sausage, bugger all. I honestly didn't think that was still possible.

This is the point, really. If you're lucky enough to make it big when you start out (and there's always a huge element of luck involved) then it doesn't really matter how crude or limited are your musical skills. Initially. But after 40 years (forty years!) as a rich & famous professional musician with, frankly, nothing better to do with your time than improve as a musician, needing a visual prompt to be able to play a Dm chord on a keyboard is (putting it very mildly) pretty bloody lame. That takes nothing away from his sonic landscaping skills, or his unerring ability to find the correct single note to play on each beat, but you have to ask yourself why he never improved. As to the tired old Adam Clayton debate, my best guess is that he could come round to my place, pick up any of my basses, and play some seriously good basslines. I doubt that he's actually limited to pedalling 8th notes on the A in real life ...

It's hard to believe there are two such bodgers in one small town in Sussex ...

Isn't that You-Know-Who again?

US$130.95 At the exchange rate of two years ago ($1.61) that would have been reasonable without actually being cheap. At the current exchange rate ($1.26) this is clearly not the solution for everybody!

When playing the bass, I can feel the 'pulses' under my thumb if I choose to, but under live conditions I can't imagine that I will notice them after the first four bars of the opening song. If I had a magic wand to wave, then I'd probably add a Brightness knob to allow me to control just how bright these are. I suspect that would seriously compromise a very simply solution though. I am intrigued however to see just how bright the green or yellow versions are - if the red is this bright then you could probably read a book by the yellow ones! Will this prove to be a robust, long-lasting solution? Ask me in five years ...

And the result? First, in daylight: That doesn't really do it justice, so here we are in my studio under sort-of stage lighting:

My main gigging bass is a Mike Lull T5, which has been my go-to bass since the day I bought it four years ago. The only thing about it I don't like is The neck of a bass guitar, when I'm on stage, is about the same distance from my eyes as a paperback when I'm reading it, and I need reading glasses. It's an age thing. Without glasses those tiny little dots that Mike Lull uses are vague blurs; under stage lighting they disappear completely. My usual solution is to enlarge the dots using Tippex / Snopake or similar, but that's a pretty cheesy solution on a £4k bass. Another thread here on BC reminded me about FretFX LED fret markers, which I read about years ago but discarded when I found they had to be specially imported from the States - too much like hard work. I finally decided to give them a go and visited https://www.fretfx.com/ It's not the slickest website on the net but everything you need is there. My Lulls are all 35" scale but that's not a problem, and there's a decent choice of colours. I have red LEDs built into my Status Streamline so I decided to stick with red for this project too. Since FretFX treat each order as a custom build there's quite a long lead time (several weeks) plus of course they then have to be sent over from the States by post. All told, I waited a month for mine. What arrives is pretty damned minimalist - a cardboard poster tube containing a 2"-wide strip of the plastic corrugated sheets that builders use as temporary flooring and carpet protection. The LED strip runs inside the corrugation to protect it and keep it straight, and all that you can see is the battery holder, a strip of six CR2032 batteries, and some business cards. Once the two cable ties are snipped, the LED strip slides very easily out of the corrugation. At this point, you realise that this is NOT an "LED strip", it's a length of fibre-optic cable with 'pulses' at fret-marker intervals, and the entire light-source is a single LED up in the battery compartment. It's actually a very elegant design and of course means that you can easily and safely cut the fibre-optic strip anywhere you like without affecting the uncut portion. Rather than an off/on switch of some sort, the design has the CR2032 protruding from the batter holder (though still held in place firmly) which means that you switch it on by inserting the battery the right way up, and switch it off by removing the battery and re-inserting it upside down. A very nice piece of lateral thinking IMHO. The installation process is really very simple and involves peeling off the plastic on the back of the fibre-optic strip while being very careful to line everything up the way you want it. It's a bit fiddly and Silvie is way better at this stuff than I am, so I stepped back and watched. The only thing to watch for is the routing of the portion of the strip that runs from the 1st fret to the battery holder on the headstock, i.e. the portion that is not actually stuck to anything. Once the main strip and the battery holder are fixed in place, some thought is needed to avoid (i) looking unsightly and (ii) having the cable pass where the weight of the bass will crush it when on a wall hanger or similar. It's also worth mentioning that the LED is really pretty bloody bright! (Well ... duh!) When doing the installation, in broad daylight on a sunny day, Silvie had to have the LED markers off since they were dazzling her. For an installation video, see the next post.

Joining a band = one thing. Forming a band = another thing. Asking all the other members to join a non-existent band = a silly thing. YMMV

Silvie & I have replaced our existing fridge & freezer with a single, big American-style jobbie. The old freezer went this afternoon. We can help you load the fridge into the back of your car ... INDESIT SIAA12 https://markselectrical.co.uk/SIAA12_Indesit-Tall-Larder-Fridge.html It was new in April 2017, works fine, but we've been having an issue with door closure to the slightly uneven surface on which it stands. It currently resides at HA1 3RG and - obviously - we'd like it gone sooner rather than later.

Incidentally, I'm looking for 16–18 1st violins, 16 2nd violins, 12 violas, 12 cellos, 7 double basses, 4 flutes (one with piccolo as a specialty), 4 oboes (one with English horn as a specialty), 4 clarinets (one with bass clarinet as a specialty, another specializing in high clarinets), 4 bassoons (one with double bassoon as a specialty) plus 5–8 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones (one with bass trombone as a specialty), 1 tuba, 1 kettledrum player, 3–4 percussionists (of whom at least one must also play kettledrum), 1–2 harps and a keyboard player (piano, celesta, harpsichord, etc.) to form a new orchestra.