NancyJohnson

My old Sennheisers stopped working today, wife has offered to get me a new pair of headphones for Christmas. Just need some recommendations, there's too much choice. They have to be wired, preferably enclosing the ears, nothing mental pricewise...up to £50 would do (I think my old pair were under £25) . Erring on the side of caution, I'd prefer to avoid any fashion branded product (Beats/JL Lab).

I was sacked from Last Three Standing because I didn't find the continual pink torpedo jokes just hilarious. I rejoined them for a gig, then left of my own accord.

I bought a Travis Bean TB2000 bass in the early 80s, #222. It had an issue with the fingerboard wood lifting off the aluminium neck, so I had an ebony board put on, but for some reason it suffered deadspots in the F#/G/G# position on the E-string. I kind of fell out of love with it and traded it in at ABC Music in Addlestone, Surrey. Amazingly, it cropped up on the Travis Bean resource a few years back. After I traded it, it didn't stray very far from Addlestone and is now in the hands of a chap called Julian who lives in Oxford (he bought it on eBay). He offered to let me use it at a gig I was doing at the Bullingdon.

It looks like something a kid would knock up as a woodworking project at school.

I'm listening to the 4 CDs of Super Deluxe now. It's rather splendid (I'm also a bit sloshed). Thing that always astounds me is that all this additional material has been out there, albeit unreleased, for decades. It sounds wonderful.

...Oooh...and as if by magic, the doorbell rang...

Tears For Fears. I'm waiting for the super-deluxe of Seeds of Love to arrive, so while I wait, I'm just doing the super-deluxes of the first two.

The Gene Simmons Zero Demos are good...they're easily available. I've got a very decent bootleg of a one of the Rainbow, Finsbury Park shows. Allegedly they were recording constantly, if there is a vault, it has to be brimming over with material.

I really don't get the whole bedroom warriors putting their playing-along videos up. I never have. It's doesn't matter whether the poster is just starting out (and playing not so well) or whether they're a seasoned-pro (Tim Starace), I just detest this whole look at me vibe; those facial expressions, the getting the stance right, the body language etc. What this all comes down to for me at least is to my core I detest the idea of playing covers and where YouTube is concerned, I'd be far more attentive and engaging if these guys were actually posting original material, you know, stuff they'd written and created themselves. These people didn't write the notes they're playing. Grrr. Anyway, I'll stop here in case I pop a vein. Going a little off track here, concerning Eddie Van Halen, I've not seen any tributes (apart from the old Phil X stuff) and nor do I want to. While he was a fantastic player, I would concur with @ped in that his passing hasn't affected me in the slightest apart from the matter of factness that the resurrected VH never made it back over here, so I never got that one last chance to see them live. I had a mate text me when the news broke that he was very upset. I mean, whaaaat? His passing will at least stop Sammy Hagar's ridiculous and frequent social media posts asking why Eddie hasn't contacted him in ten years to get him back in the band. What is tragic (for me at least) is just how little Van Halen actually released in the 42 years since the first album. Six albums in the first six years, seven between 1986 and 2012. The whole Van Halen saga just seemed to be more of a soap opera peppered with inactivity and lost opportunity. Sure they were huge, but the live shows are just memories. Hopefully, Wolf and the the other guys might sanction some releases of some sort. So it goes.

Ordered.

The culprit:

I'm more interested in the audible coupling with my ears and having things at a comfortable tweaking height. Furthermore, I have a skittish Birman cat who has marked her territory elsewhere a couple of times; if I can lift said cabinet above squirt height, it'll also set my mind to rest.

I was thinking about this! Old school. For a bit of a Borg Cube look, I might consider soakaway crates.

Does anyone know of a LEVEL amp stand (I suppose like an X-braced keyboard stand)? I'm retiring my #1 prototype Barefaced Big One and replacing with a pair of 1x12 cabs; for home use I'll only be using one and want to elevate it about 12-18". I don't want it tilting or need something plastic from B&Q. Anyone?

I've listened to tons of stuff over the last six months, but to be honest it's more about delivery as opposed to things hi-fi. The only thing that disappoints me is that I haven't used the time to discover new music, but I have so much to listen to that I do enjoy already, I generally feel a little let down when I hear a lot of what constitutes hot new things. I used to have so much kit, all gone in favour of stereo pairs of Sonos Ones dotted around the house; I just create playlists in the Spotify PC app or stream FLAC content off a NAS into the Sonos. Two boxes of vinyl up in the loft, about 2,000 CDs in boxes barely two metres from where I am now.

Slade - the new best of collection.

I bought a Squier Badtz-Maru Bronco here a few years back that went through some changes. The headstock suffered catastrophic damage when I was tring to rout out for new machines, so the body sat under the bed for a while. I bought a loaded 1978 Fender Mustang neck from the US, but the truss rod was maxxed out and it had a horrible front bow (it did look superb if nothing else). The body sat under the bed for a while. Got a second (third?) neck from the Stratosphere - a Squier one, all maple - which fitted like a glove. The stock bridge was a bit crap, so I eventually fitted a Mustang bridge. Finally, I was doing a project for someone else and I had a hotrail pickup left over...I think it was a Warman...so I put that in for a hoot, it had to be better than the stock pickup, right? (I was shocked to see that under the cover the original pickup was a six pole Strat style one.) I think I gigged it once, much to the amusement of everyone on the bill. It sounded bright...quite shrill, but it didn't suit live; it was a bit like a toy. Used it on a few demos, then the Lulls arrived and the rest is history.

These were studio recordings with audience added. Apparently they weren't actually the headline band when they recorded Strangers... Allegedly supporting Rush! The audacity!

That's a particularly nasty looking bass.

UFO today. News of the upcoming Strangers 8CD boxset made my heart jump. What a band.

I've been using Elixir Nanowebs for years now, no issue and they stay bright for ages. The only string I stray to are the DR Jonas Helborg sets (which I think have finally been discontinued, but I have two sets). Ordered some of the coated MarkBass strings a few days back, they arrived yesterday and willbe going on my Spector LT later today.