NancyJohnson

That is just the ticket! Bit expensive, but does the trick. Do the internal measurements shape up against the official ones? The bass is 132cm long...that's the main thing. Internal Length 1384 mm Width 254 mm Depth 152 mm Lid Depth 51 mm Base Depth102 mm

Bought from Ishibashi a couple of times. No issues. First bass I didn't pay any duties on, the second one I did. No idea why as values of each exceeded £800.00. Comms were good, however I'd say that they Ishibashi do/did employ the services of someone with a decent grasp of English. I wouldn't buy anything where there's a broker type thing going on, you know, those adverts on eBay where there's dozens of people in Japan 'selling' the same thing, even though this process is all supposed to be above board there (gawd knows how they navigate the minefield of multiple purchases),

Try fresh boxers or slips, my friend.

I need a case for my NS NXTa. Anyone using a rifle case? Been doing some searching, doesn't seem to be much issue in finding a case with a long enough interior measurement (160cm will give me some wiggle room).

I'm struggling to find a decent vanity shot of the bass before I dyed the board, but the first shot below should suffice. The board was quite light brown and (for me) didn't really fulfill the all-black look I was after.

Yup, Fiebings Leather Dye. Black. Mask off your nut/binding, make sure the fingerboard is finish/varnish-free and clean (I'd already been using lemon oil, the board wasn't grimy). Oh, wear gloves. Apply the dye with a Q-Tip, and do smallish areas, let the dye set up for about 30 seconds and wipe off any excess. I was a little concerned about the inlay dots on the neck as it's almost impossible to go round them...i was easily able to clean off the dye on top of the dots with a Q-Tip dipped in some methylated spirit. Obviously I was concerned. Christ, it was a £4.5k bass. The results were very much what I wanted and there's been little dulling of the board since I did it. Good luck!

I had a deadish/dullish spot on a '79 Precision Bass - it was centred around the 2nd fret/F# on the E. It just sounded ponky and the F and G were just less dull. The notes just went quieter, too. Other strings weren't affected. Didn't seem to matter what I did new/old strings etc. nothing made any difference. All I really did was to subconsciously dig in harder when I was on those three notes. The was no recourse with Fender, I just put up with it until I sold on the bass and bought a Thunderbird and it became someone else's problem. It's the only bass I've had that had the issue.

We had a song about Dee-Dee, but changed a few of lyrics and it became 'Supermodel in Cocaine Shocker!'. Go figure. 1-2-3-4!

Oh my. I'm going through a bit of a Steven Wilson crush at the moment. I feel the guy seems to have invented a machine that does 72 hour, ten day weeks. Just staggered at his output. That said, Headphone Dust, his online store. Just seems to be a great opportunity for SW to bypass whatever label he's on and just issue audio. I bought his The Raven... album; £15 buys the ATMOS/5.1, stereo versions, videos, demos and artwork. He's also going to be issuing live stuff in spatial audio as well. The spatial audio is in MKV format (essentially a digital container similar to that you'd get if you ripped a Blu-ray or DVD) and will just play back through a home cinema system. Just push it up to a NAS and use Plex. Easy! Part of me genuinely hopes he expands this store to include other artists that he works with as well.

Television - Marquee Moon

My session (four days ago), was good. It was nice to just be creating after a period of not really playing so much because of health/hand related issues. Hopefully back in on Wednesday.

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.