NancyJohnson

#1 - Paul @NancyJohnson

Good afternoon If you've been following the old thread, you'll see that me and @prowla are going to try and sort something out for a basscentric get together. Provisionally, we're looking at St Sebastian's Memorial Hall, Crowthorne, Berkshire. The room is decent (and there may be side rooms), good parking, connections, railway. At present, no date...I'll wait until the hall comes back to me with available dates. Here's a link to the hall. Hopefully it'll prove adequate. We'll need raffle stuff, a guest or two, discussions etc. Let this evolve. In the meantime, add your name to the list. Cheers Paul

OK, started forming a queue. I'll wait for the rental quote and hall availability dates to come through. MODS! Can you close this thread to comments and I'll start a new thread.

The hall can hold 90...it might just need to be a bit different.

Let me pick up here. I'd always thought setting one of these up should be pretty straightforward and I have capacity. @prowla (Paul) has just been in contact - we're local to each other AND both @jonno1981 and @ceteralive about a mile from me. How would everyone feel if me and @prowla tried to sort something out? Proposal would be (possibly) St Sebastians Memorial Hall, Crowthorne (see details below). There's a map/link below. We'd need to hire for say six hours (10-4pm) on a Saturday @ £25.00 an hour. I honestly can't remember what Colin used to charge for entry (was it £10?), so 15 attendees and we'd have a enough to cover the hire fee. I'm sure we could rope on the Barry at the Bass Centre and get enough stuff together for a raffle etc. It's a big room and it has a little stage if we do another shoot-out etc. The hall is remore enough so as not to annoy people. Easy connections M3/M4, closest train is Crowthorne (on the Wokingham and Guildford mainline). I'd be happy to do pickups from the station (I'm sure others would as well. @neepheid (I think) may be kipping down at mine. Anyone interested? https://wokinghamwithout-pc.gov.uk/facility-hire/st-sebastians-memorial-hall

"I love this bass so much. It's the best ever, but I want to change it." If you love the sound, anything you install will have a profound effect on that, even in a flat position.

Be nice to the guy at the Parcelforce depot, if he wants to have a look at the bass, let him. If he wants to pick it up and have a noodle, let him. For one of my Ishibashi Thunderbirds he did this, I asked how much the duty was and he he just went, 'What duty?' and waved me on my way. Sometime you can get lucky.

I can't actually grasp why this money-grab has irritated me so much. (Well, I can, but...) Anyhow: Musicman Stingray basses: 1979 (£2.3K) https://reverb.com/uk/item/88807689-musicman-stingray-sunburst-r-1979-sn-b013725-04-07 1978 (£3.6K): https://reverb.com/uk/item/85274423-ernie-ball-music-man-stingray-pre-ernie-ball-1978-sunburst or £3.9K https://reverb.com/uk/item/90415351-music-man-stingray-with-maple-fretboard-1978-made-in-usa Just buy old.

I'm not talking about one of his actual basses. There's dozens of Stingrays from the 70s available for well under the price of this signature model. The thing I don't get to this day with signature models is that the ones PP has - minor tweaks aside - were all just stock/production line instruments. There's nothing unique about them and there's likely hundreds out there.

Six grand? Mother of god. Wouldn't a genuine one from that period cost less? (Checks Reverb, and yes.) Six grand?

Fundamentally you need to look at the festival itself. They love a 'legend'. I'd wager that there were thousands of people gushing over AM that probably knew one song (if that) or hadn't even given her a second thought in the last 20 years. She still has a voice like nails on a blackboard. Some things don't improve with age.

My wife has recently moved from 'Buy what you want/need' to a strict 'Sell one before you buy something else AND always trade up'. It's not really about the delivery, it's about seeding the suggestion well in advance (much like our upcoming American style fridge-freezee purchase). When @cetera sorted out the recent Spector Euro-X build, I was able to spin some kind of backstory about it being a test build and being offered at a healthy discount. If she knew the actual price, I fear I may have been wearing my ballbag as a hat.

It's odd, these festivals. I'd never go to Glastonbury; to me it's a four day hellish version of Later... Likewise Download. Aah, I remember the old days, drive up, backstage parking, watching Motley Crue and Aerosmith from the side of the stage, proper bogs home and asleep in my own bed about 2.00am the next day. Now? Four days of bands with vocalists just clearing their throats. Nope. When all this was fields, the events that got my attention were just 12 hours. It's difficult to fully quantify but take the old Monsters of Rock things at Donington. 70,000 people, one stage and (usually) seven or eight great bands. Now it's all multiple stages, dozens of bands no one has heard of etc. The day long Donington has evolved, but the 1980s type event would now be supplanted as part of a tour itinerary (if this makes sense). It would be like Green Day just playing Wembley Stadium with a decent undercard, then this moving to the Manchester City stadium.

Here we go. The top-hat is unobtrusive, albeit non-reversible. W for the win.

Just another thing...I have a surplus PA speaker stand and just bought a pair of 35mm top-hat fixings. I've cut a core out of one of my Darkglass 1x12s, installed the top-hat and have stuck it on the stand. It goes up and down, it rotates. Neat job, lovely. Sweaty now.

I've used a ton of Tech 21 stuff...BDDI, VTBass, Geds, GT2, RPM. The only one I didn't get along with was the VT Bass, which I disliked as soon as I put it in my rack. The racked Ged had QC issues that were never fully resolved. I'm currently running an XB Driver, but it hasn't left the house yet.

Oooh, 19 pages in. I watched for about 15 minutes on the BBC, and that was it. Alanis Morissette. Honestly, I can't stand her. Never could. A voice like nails on a blackboard. There are phrasing and inflections in her voice that just make me want to listen even less. Next day I just read comment after comment about how wonderful her performance was and I'm thinking are these people insane? Is there something wrong with their hearing? Do they not actually like music? Thank you and goodnight.

It's a one-size-fits-all contraption manufactured by NS Design that connects to the EUB at the same point as the tripod mounting bolt, allowing you to 'wear' the bass and move around with it. It took a bit of time to get everything in the right place, but as a consequence it won't go on a stand. I was looking for a stand of some kind rather than leaving the instrument propped up in a corner.

Well, in an interesting twist in my search for a stand for my NXT5, there's been an odd twist. I'm not using (or plan to use) the supplied NSD stand; I'm fully paid up for the Framestrap. A few months ago I bought a Hercules GS4stand, possibly the smallest one they make, a GS402B: ... amazingly, the EUB sits comfortably on the two front legs and the swing arms swivel enough to add a bit more support. I've stuck some heavy duty felt pads on the legs to protect metal on wood damage, but frankly, jobs a good 'un. The bass is a couple of inches off the floor and pretty secure.

Just while we're on the subject of Living Colour, are many/any of you aware about the version of Stain with the alternative guitar solos? The original US CD (catalogue# EK52780) was issued in two versions, one of which was very limited and contained totally different guitar work on Ignorance Is Bliss, Leave It Alone and Bi. There's no discernable visible difference in the CDs, just the content thereon. You got lucky or you didn't. I was a huge fan of Living Colour from the outset and bought a copy of Stain when I was in America; there was a bit of a WTAF? moment when realisation struck that the versions were different. Interesting stuff.

Me too. I like Doug Wimbish, but just felt Living Colour were more, umm, colourful when Muzz was in the band. They just seemed a more happier/fun unit with Muzz; when Doug came in, things just got a bit darker and moodier.

Jim Marshall signed me a copy of the 'It goes up to to 11, dunnit?' poster. God know where that is now.

Many, many moons ago I did a stint on the Conklin stand at a guitar show when it was held in Docklands. Honestly no idea how it came about; drummer at the time had a Yamaha endorsement and he seemed to have this lucid connection (by association) with the UK importers of Hamer and Warwick (who were based in Ascot at the time). So we drive up. Get lost in Docklands, are followed, then pulled over and questioned by the police. We're late and arrive, I'm in the booth and told to play the seven-string. I notice that the bridge doesn't fit the body shape and was told to try and cover it up with my right hand while playing. I do 45-60 minutes and it's all over. I'm rewarded with an EBS Octaver pedal for my trouble and as I had a lanyard, I have blagging rights (so free Rotosound strings and I get to meet Jim Marshall). What a day.

Aah, in the decades I've been playing I've used everything from hotwired bell-wire through to my current @obbm Speakons. Never suffered damage, any (noticable) loss in sound, no explosions etc. Maybe I've just been lucky, or maybe we were too stupid to know better.