Happy Jack

Have you met my drummer?

I already own one of these amps so I'm not interested in actually buying this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-1970s-WEM-Watkins-Dominator-Bass-MK1-1x15-Valve-Amplifier-Combo/203211789750?hash=item2f505dd5b6:g:nwMAAOSw8Wlfzrar What caught my eye was I have wired the speaker/amp with 2 jacks, as I use an inline DI box (much easier and better sounding than a mike). I can wire the speaker straight through to the amp if required. I genuinely have no clue what this means. I frequently use a DI box, or the DI Out from my amplifier, but clearly he means something else.

Reverting back to identifying the various features of this bass, it's always worth remembering that Hofner weren't engaged in building vintage basses that would attract lots of interest in 60 years' time on the Internet. They were churning out as many instruments as they could possibly manufacture, so as to meet the entirely unforeseen explosion in demand following the early success of The Beatles. Especially with the solid-body instruments (considered to be cheap'n'nasty when compared to the craftsmen-built traditional instruments like archtop guitars) this was a parts-bin operation. There were great stacks of parts and components in the factory, built in different batches and often sourced from outside ... the factories that made Framus, Klira, Hopf and many other brands were literally just down the road from Hofner. Depending on which models had recently had a production run boosted through the system, the next instruments to be made might feature parts or components originally intended for other models. Some of the Hofner basses I had (dating from 1958-65) definitely included non-Hofner parts, especially the tuners. These parts were original fitments, not later retro-fits.

Agreed. Better still, go the whole hog, take some random lyrics from Jimi Hendrix and fit them in any old how.

"I personally imported this bass into UK around 10 years ago, as I don't think they were ever retailed over here." Fascinating ... it is of course possible that Mike sold the bass back to Japan in 2005 only for another Englishman to re-import the same bass in 2010 but that does seem like one helluva coincidence. And the suggestion that they were never sold in the UK rather undermines the vendor's credibility.

OK, this really IS rare. At £1200 it's not too tempting (to me, anyway) but undeniably something a bit different. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Stunning-ultra-rare-Tokai-Talbo-B-135-Bass-Good-original-condition-Alu-body/254651491114?hash=item3b4a69632a:g:pl8AAOSwwshfCyez My only real criticism is that Tokai really, really should have hired a graphic designer before turning a 12-year-old loose with the Letraset on that headstock.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bruce-Foxtons-personal-Bass-similar-to-his-Rickenbacker-and-Rivoli-Very-unique/164607059443?hash=item26535865f3:g:T20AAOSwLHpf5zEz Please note that this is not just 'unique', it is actually 'very unique', which means that it is even uniquer than most unique things.

If I didn't already have one, I'd have bought this by now. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ovation-Magnum-III-Bass-1979/133484281562?hash=item1f14487eda:g:DCwAAOSw3ChfKWMM

Excellent devices. I have mine in my (tiny) study ... aka the front landing ... and I run it through a Crazy 8 which sounds just sublime.

Incidentally, one of the greatest gigs I ever attended was at the Hammersmith Odeon, with The Pretenders and The Specials supporting The Who. When I read Ska'd For Life I was particularly looking forward to Horace's recollections of that gig. He absolutely panned it, said it was the most boring thing he'd ever attended. Ah well ... maybe best just forget the diary then. 😂😂😂

On that road lies the ultimate in OCD ... you'd end up losing sleep after gigs because you'd forgotten to make a note of the settings on your Sansamp after you changed them on the fly for Paradise City ...

Or of course just buy a Wal with the 'Pick Attack' switch ...

Dey do dat dough, don't dey?

Could be worse ... you could be watching the original film again. Possibly the most depressing 81 minutes I ever spent.

Just double-checked that in Martin's book (All You Need Is Ears, 1979) and he points out that he had in fact already left EMI (and therefore Abbey Road) at this point and was now running Air Studios. So the equipment he had lent to The Beatles was kit that he had himself borrowed on their behalf from EMI. No wonder he wanted to keep an eye on it.

How seriously do you take the whole Tier 4 thing? Hint: Don't reply here!

I thought exactly the same. My best guess is that he's playing a Danelectro bass through an octave-up pedal. If you'd like to experiment with a Danelectro twin-neck to see if you can match the sound, drop me a PM ... I have one hanging on the wall next to me.

Glyn Johns tells a different story (Sound Man, 2014). He says that Macca called him out of the blue and asked him to produce a TV special they were planning, to be filmed/recorded at Twickenham. George Martin was essentially fed up with the band's pre-collapse antics and wanted nothing to do with it. The TV thing never happened, and the project morphed into the Let It Be project that we all ... erm ... have mixed feelings about, shot at Twickenham and at Apple HQ in Savile Row. The reason George Martin got involved was that Lennon and Harrison had been completely fooled by Magic Alex (look him up if you're not familiar with the name) into paying for a sooper-dooper sound system that Alex was to install at Savile Row. Come the first session there, the recording professionals were wetting themselves laughing at a teenager's home stereo. The Beatles called George Martin at Abbey Road, and he quickly shipped down to Savile Row enough kit to complete the project. That's why Martin appears in the montage; he wasn't producing, he was keeping an eye on his kit! The Phil Spector thing happened later, entirely at Lennon's demand, and without Macca even being consulted. What he did to the production on the album was genuinely the final straw that broke the relationship between Lennon and Macartney. Personally, my sympathy is entirely with Macca - Lennon was so far out of order that I would never have been prepared to work with him again. Over the last nearly 50 years the stories have twisted and turned, and many have tried to make Macca the villain of the piece. Unfortunately for them, pretty much all the evidence (and I've waded through a LOT of it) simply confirms and re-confirms that Macca was right all along, while smack-head Lennon was making a series of appalling decisions.

Well the documentary is going to be three 4-hour parts released at annual intervals, so there'll be plenty of time for Peter Jackson to show it. Then five years later he will release a further three 4-hour films covering a 30-minute tea-break they once took.

That's a typo ... the price is actually in Pesetas.

[Ian Dury] Arrz-holes Brexit Rickenbacker Sold [/Ian Dury]

I've wanted for years a way to have some of my album sleeves on display - the artwork is so good and the memories so vivid that it always seemed silly to me to have everything tightly packed onto a deep shelf! As luck would have it, @Chownybass has just launched his solution and jolly good it is too. In the interests of full disclosure, Stephen did not actually make the Hofner 500/2 ... nor is he responsible for the current contents of the frames. The frames work better with single album sleeves than with gatefolds or double albums, but apart from that tiny niggle I'm impressed with these. The albums are retained very securely, yet it takes roughly 60 seconds to remove and replace, allowing me and @Silvia Bluejay to have our vinyl on constant rotation.

Yup. Animal glue has been used from the start of European instrument manufacture, and it's an excellent glue. But it's organic, and all organic things change over time. With animal glue, somewhere between 40-60 years after application it will gradually dry out and turn to dust. If the instrument has strings on and so is under tension, as the glue's strength fades away the neck will very slowly try to fold up like a pen-knife. Nothing is 'wrong', nothing is broken. All that's required is another application of animal glue by a guitar tech who knows what he's doing. In watching various YouTube channels featuring luthiers (I particularly recommend https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8wIqZCt9h6uJbOBCQVuUmg though https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdD1Cqxr8aINzWs1agg3tEQ is always entertaining) I've noticed that animal glue is getting less and less used, and that fish glue seems to be preferred. Still organic, still in keeping with the original construction, just a slightly different take.

Is there still a decent blues scene in NI? I play around London and blues is a commercial disaster in this area ... there are very few decent blues gigs and some of the bands competing for those gigs are unbelievably good.