NancyJohnson

So you want a top 20 songs from me? Ok, wilco. I'll create a Spotify playlist and pop up a link here in a day or two.

Aah, the old tying me up in knots because of what I posted trick, eh? Well played, old man! Well played. Bravo! 😂

Because they're shit, TBH. One-trick ponies.

Five, count 'em in boys, just five Van Halen tracks. Jump (94), Panama (184), Why Can't This Be Love? (293), Hot For Teacher (407), Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love (439) - five UFO tracks and just four by Aerosmith (I'd prefer to not include 'I Don't Want to Miss A Thing'). Good f*cking grief. This is populist rock music for people that have insufferable music taste. This is why my preferred station is W-EQX.

I'd concur on the Queen thing. NATO was the last decent Queen album, but I'd say Sheer Heart Attack was their absolute peak. Again though, it's all subjective. My brother taped SHA for me and I listened to it endlessly, along with Sweet's Sweet F*nny Adams and Sparks' Kimono/Propaganda albums. Time, place and circumstances account for a lot. Would they stand up now? If I told my teen nephew to go at listen to them? Probably not.

Aaw come on W, I think you know more than enough where my musical tastes lie. 😏 'Rock' music (along with all it's sub-genres) is simply too all-encompassing to capture within 500 songs, but you have to admit the inevitably of the tracks peppering the top 20/50. I have a mate called Pete (bass player too), lovely bloke, a few years older than me, who would look at that top 20 and all those wretched power ballads and go, 'Yep, yes, absolutely, yeah, Christ yes,' at pretty much everything in there. He wouldn't be considering, or be remotely interested in Alkaline Trio or Fishbone or Jane's Addiction or The Beths or Momma or XTC or Steven Wilson or Pavement, Primus, Living Colour, Veruca Salt, Jellyfish, Smashing Pumpkins (and so on), as these bands simply aren't on his radar and to him they don't represent rock in it's purest - 1970s/1980s - form. The stuff, as a guy nudging 70, he grew up with. The Planet Rock 500 is like those wretched NOW! compilations; it's the songs Neal Kay would spin before the lights went down for the headliners at Hammersmith Odeon. It's awful populist rawk, filtered down to it's lowest common denominator; Queen (and I love early Queen), Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Metallica, Iron Maiden. The only one that suprised me was Rainbow's 'Stargazer at #3. The only reason Alter Bridge are at #8 is because the station probably play it a lot, because sure as hell, Pete wouldn't have just plucked that one out of the ether.

Stairway To Heaven (#2) Freebird (#5) Smoke on the Water (#13) Whole Lotta Rosie (#10) Sweet Child of Mine (#9) Bohemian Rhapsody (#1) Alright Now (#30) Enter Sandman (#14) Ace of Spades (#22) Like shooting fish in a barrel. Amazingly, only two songs from this effing century in the top 50. Says a lot about Planet Rock and the listenership.

Just on the subject of hall fees,when I contacted our local parish council to hire the rooms for the SE Basheroonie, I told them that surplus proceeds would be going to a local charity where I volunteer and they reduced the fee.

It would be interesting to actually know how many people voted for each song, considering there's 'thousands of YOU, our esteemed listeners' voting; also one person, one vote? Even if 10,000 people were remotely bothered enough to vote, potentially some of the tunes here would be getting single digit votes. Also, by observation, there's an awful lot of ballads and questionable song choices there, too. That Tenacious D scores higher than Black Hole Sun, Seven Seas of Rhye, Little Wing etc. is quite telling how absolute pants these lists are.

Sorry to hear the SW Bash is off this year, hopefully someone will be able to take this on elsewhere locally!

Thing is (and I say this from the perspective of our desired signature tone), we all know - more or less - what we want to sound like and in truth, don't we just dial that in via our amp/cab choice and/or processing? Installation of Fender '62 Vintage pickups might make the owner of a bass feel better and oh, they're definitely going to hear that perceived tonal difference, but the irony is the bass will sound pretty much the same as it did beforehand. @Hobbayne - buy a couple of cheap Chinese Strat pickups and pop 'em in. They'll sound just the same as what is in there now and what you're going to replace them with.

Honest to god, people love to waste £££ on modding. With all due respect to @Stub Mandrel, but what constitutes 'vintage sound'? 60+ years ago, when all this was fields, Fender were producing fairly low quantities of basses and as cited in Tom Wheeler's American Guitars, "quality control was out the window", pickup windings were erratic, there was little consistency in manufacturing and Fender was known to use whatever was on hand. Christ, they were putting Stratocaster pickups in some bass models, then wax potting the covers to hide what was in there. 60 years on and we're all sitting here rubbing our collective chibs, going, 'Mmm, 60s Vintage pickups, gimme some of that, I need more ponk in my tone.'

The major problem with these Top <insert number here> things is that they're so subjective. Thing is, you're almost definitely going to get the same turgid 50-year old stuff because that's pretty much the listening demographic is of the station. Add to this that the demographic in question are generally somewhat blinkered and unwilling to step out of their comfort zone, hence the same old song choices. Believe me, I know plenty if people who would prefer to listen to Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple rather than even considering anything from this decade. Mark my words. The top 20 will be peppered with Stairway To Heaven. Freebird. Smoke on the Water, Whole Lotta Rosie, Sweet Child of Mine, Bohemian Rhapsody, Alright Now, Enter Sandman, Ace of Spades.

Just got notification the guitar has shipped. Will find out soon enough if it's terrible. What a hoot.

Early Motley were fantastic. To be honest though, beyond Too Fast For Love they was always going to be going downhill. A slight spike to proceedings being when Corabi replaced Vince Meal.

Over the years been around an awful lot of drugs but never felt the pull of taking anything, so didn't. Never really felt that whatever these people were taking particularly enhanced playing or performance. Considering my exposure, I'm pretty proud of that, too. My parents instilled the "drugs = bad" thing from an early age and I've stuck with that. I've never smoked or even tried smoking. Interestingly, over the last 15 years or so, the musicians in my circle are incredibly clean. No drugs, no smoking, the odd beer. I only know of one guy that enjoys weird beers. That's it.

I'm a huge fan of early Tears For Fears, but only really developed a love of XTC about 20 years ago. Personally I adore the 5.1/Atmos mixes of both bands that Steven Wilson has curated, they're bonkers good. I've read enough comments from the naysayers to the contrary, but it's not as if the release of these versions erases all those that have gone beforehand.

Pretty certain there's some Steven Wilson hero worship going on here. I've come a bit late to the Steven Wilson party; I've loved the work he's done resurrecting/elevating the Tears For Fears and XTC back catalogue to spatial audio and Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Welcome To The Pleasuredome Atmos mix is an absolute delight, but (and there's always a 'but'), I find his total output somewhat overwhelming in a musical capacity. So much content to play catch up. No-Man, Porcupine Tree, his solo stuff, Blackfield ...and so on. I own a few albums/BluRays; more recent live stuff (Home Invasion/Arriving Somewhere/Closure Continuation Live) and some solo stuff (The Future Bites/The Overview) and I dip into Spotify for short hits of audio, but just want to throw something cohesive together (Spotify) that I can just stick on in the car, at home etc. My good lady happened to be sitting in the same room when Pariah (from To The Bone) came on - she said, 'I like this,' which was then swiftly followed by, 'I don't like this, there's too many notes,' and I can kind of see her point. Gimme you favourite tracks.

I've found another guy who bought the same model through the same seller and he seems fine with it. Five week delivery, only criticism seemed to be lack of comms post purchase. Electronically, the plan (assuming it arrives and arrives in one piece!) is to whip out the humbuckers and drop in a pair of Warman P94 pickups and pop in the appropriate pots (assuming it's shipped with 500k pots, I'll install 250k ones to subdue the higher frequencies. Might be interesting to source some 300k or 330k pots...best of both worlds. Beyond this, dependent in what's supplied, bridge and machine heads, but who knows, they may be great.

While I didn't use them for this, I have been perusing Cathy's Custom Guitars on Facebook. They don't sell from the page, you need to PM one of the site mods. They seem to do four main (Gibson copy) guitars, Les Paul, SG, Vees and Explorers, although I gave seen 335.

In answer to the original question, yup, I have signature sound. Gnarly. Any bass into a BDDI/XB Driver, clean power stage, cab(s). Easy.

Rainbow - Rising What a cracker!

Remove the machine heads and ferrules. Assuming the decal is under clear coat, gentle use of a high grit wet and dry to get through the clear and then the transfer. You should be able to just apply a Fender decal direct to the headstock and clearcoat over it to make good.

As I understand it, you have a degree of recourse if things go awry; Paypal dispute etc. I have seen a few posts from people who've bought the same model from the same seller and things are generally OK. End of the day, it was only £200! I can hang it on the wall.

I've bought a couple of knock off Fender Jazz/Precision necks in the last year, but have never gone the whole hog with a completed guitar. I'd sold a few books pre-Christmas, had a little surplus and decided to take the plunge. I've always adored the original Gibson Futura shape (with the split headstock), so pulled the trigger on this: So long as the body and neck are OK, everything else is dispensable. Gawd help me.