NancyJohnson

China. eBay I bought Jazz and Precision profiled necks last year, blocks, binding. £70-80 shipped.

Tiny upgrade. Popped in a pair of P94s and changed the knobs to amber coloured ones (only because I shattered one of the originals getting one of the potentiometers out). From a visual aesthetic, I'm of the opinion the 90s look better than the humbuckers. I'm still staggered how good this is.

Two days in. Rusty start, bit of hand pain, bit of a struggle until things loosened up. Back in next week.

Just going back to my mate, he used to (no pun) wax lyrical about different elements he could add to his system to make it sound (subjectively) better. I can recall speaker isolation systems (spikes, then this ball bearing/cup system). Crocodile clips (on speaker cable) attached to curtains, speaker cones made 'from the same stuff that they coat the tiles on the space shuttle'. Power supplies. Power amps. Different cartridges for different music ('Yeah, this one us better for reggae.'). He would say regularly that achieving 85% of musical audio fidelity was cheap and simple, the big money is in the final 15%, which I suppose is where his business model lies.

I have a mate who owned an extremely high end hi-fi business. We're talking installs running into the tens of thousands; another of my mates is one of his clients. It's ridiculous money changing hands (£750 for a turntable power supply, I mean, WTAF??). Anyhow, I reckon I've listen to enough records on high end kit and - while it's a personal opinion - no amount of money thrown at various set ups is going to convince me that those crackles and pops and surface noise etc. would be worth the outlay. Could you imagine if, in an alternative universe, CDs actually came first, then 100 years on some wag said, 'Hey look, I've invented this, it's 7" bigger, made of black plastic. It's prone to scratching and if you play it a few times, it'll actually sound worse! You won't be able to use it anywhere other than in your house and the hardware will cost a fortune. It's great, and oh, it's going to cost you three or four times more than those CD things.'

Provenance though! Think about the provenance! 😂

Isn't there some correlation between desire vs. price vs. ownership where people will just go, 'Oh, it definitely sounds better than the old one.' It's the same with (meandering down a muddy path) pickups and strings and tonewoods. (This is why Paul/Milehouse Studios You Tube stuff is such a delight to watch; small pots, pickups, wood etc. "It makes no difference. It's all bullshit.") I concur with @BigRedX, some stuff - like my old Sparks, Sweet, Mott The Hoople singles - needs to be played on an old Dansette. No amount of £2k tonearms are going to make those babies sound better.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1C4VRzNLwe/ Peter Hook's New Order flightcases for sale in an Uppingham Antiques Centre. Be quick.

Reading the comments here (and elsewhere) about belt vs direct, how to get the best out of your system etc. What I never seem to read much is how vinyl is a flawed and degenerative delivery system (but plenty about how all those rumbles, crackles and pops add character to the music) or how turntables are trying to negate outside issues. Christ, I remember how even walking across the room would cause my old deck to rumble. My brother had bricks in his rack in an effort to negate outside influencing effects. We've come so far, haven't we? My mum was playing Led Zeppelin albums on a stereogram which played at 16, 33, 45 and 78. The stylus being able to flip 180° dependent on what you were playing. She regularly played old 78s. Nobody cared about whether you could hear a bit more high-hat or low end. Now it's all, 'I paid £500 for a tone arm and it makes such a difference.'

Redux. There's a load of photos from Jersey. Stuart We were crawling over the soundcheck: St Helier airport 7.00am (note t-shirt that Stuart gave me). I'd just come back from Spain, hence my complexion reflecting mu Portuguese heritage. And glasses!: I had nothing to sign, so I bought a book and they signed that!

Despite moaning frequently about these younglings buying vinyls (😏), I'm getting a bit of a vinyl itch on. I don't know whether it's the having or the getting tbh. There's about 100 albums and a few boxes of singles in my spare room, plus I have access to a ton of vinyl that comes through the charity where I volunteer. For me, I just need a built in phono stage and wireless (Bluetooth) connectivity so I can squirt the output into a Sonos system. This isn't going to be a full blown addiction thing. It would be nice to just hear a few things that aren't on Spotify.

I saw Big Country a few times. Just before The Crossing was released, me and a mate flew to Jersey to see them. He worked for an airfreight business, they had an office in St Helier and he got someone to procure tickets; both of us had family working at BA, so we got cheap flights out. We had nowhere to stay and travelled in shorts and t-shirts. Found a room in Pontac. Gig day we thumbed a lift to St Helier (in a Lords Taverners minibus!), found the venue (Fort Regent Centre) and just holed up in a bar there. We saw the load-in and then Stuart and Bruce came in. This was mid-afternoon. Drink was drunk. They're stunned that anyone would want to fly somewhere to see them. We were invited in for the soundcheck...it was just me and my mate and a couple of crew (private gig!), more drink (Stuart gave us fresh t-shirts), then the gig. It was a great gig. Next morning we were on standby flights, so we're at the airport at 7.00am, same clothes. Band come in, see us, Stuart cheers (I remember him putting his arms up like he'd scored a goal), he tells me proudly that he's bought a wristwatch for £2.99 (this memory has stuck with me, him just going, '£2.99!'.). It's noticeable that despite the hour, he's not holding back in the spirits. Cleared to fly, we're on the same flight...Stuart is cheering when he sees us boarding. He's in the row behind us. Amazingly, Kenny Dalgliesh us sitting in the row in front of us. Over the years, we run into Stuart a few times and he always made some remark about the Jersey blokes. I genuinely miss him, it was a tragic, terrible, lonely and pointless death. I often wonder what could have been, but at least his legacy us pretty much intact.

This one and the XB Driver, I reckon.

So. After three-odd years containing knee surgery, a pulmonary embolism, torn rotator cuff, additional knee work and hand surgery, Sunday sees me back in the studio. I'm genuinely feeling energised to dip my toe into things. It's a blank canvas, we just go in, write in the fly and hit record. Old school.

I had Mike Lull build me an NRT5 (see below) with Bass Direct having to handle the logistics. I'd gave preferred to have gone direct, but Bass Direct were the business handling UK distribution, so I pushed to go through them. By way of advice, check your build specs several times and contact the builder directly for confirmation of these. From memory, I specced out everything in finite detail; woods, pickups, hardware, colour etc. but what was confirmed back was littered with errors. I was forking over more than £5k for this and I wanted it to be right, so I was a bit frantic. Eventually, I just went to Lull direct to firm things up.