NancyJohnson

I'm assuming that anyone with the proper kit should just be able to spool up the tape, hit play and record on a computer? I wouldn't need anything mixed, but assume I'd just get a bunch of wav files that I could just load up into ProTools? How long are those Ampex tapes, time wise?

I've got several reels of 1" Ampex in my spare room that I have zero idea of their content. I'd love to get these converted just so I can see what's on them too!

There's a handful of bass players out there that indirectly owe Pete Way a huge debt of gratitude, Nikki Sixx top of that list. And yes, Strangers In The Night is certainly one of the greatest live albums ever released.

The little alleyway shop was Adam Music, the old bloke who ran it smoked cigars, every time I smell a cigar my head thinks it's Christmas (when my dad used to have one) or Adam Music. The Watkins place. I remember buying a big old 1x15 cabinet off a guy in Egham, but it was open fronted. My dad knew about the Watkins place...we bought some heavy plastic speaker grill stuff from there.

It's odd that, in these days of having pretty much every concievable instrument purchaseable at the touch of a button or two, that reading some of the comments here, how much we used to pine for the Bell catalogue, Beat Instrumental or as @58Bassman remarked, our noses stuck to the shop window perring in at the goodies inside. I remember going to the old Woolies in Egham High Street and getting excited about the deeply sunburst and chromed up guitars that were hanging up in there. Thing is, in general nobody was really that interested in Fenders or Gibsons when I was a kid; it was just about having guitars and amps, going to the local church (St Mary's, Staines) on a Saturday lunchtime, carrying the drums up from a few hundred yards down the road and just trying to play the rudiments and having a laugh. They were very happy times and I think we'd all agree that our weekends would be ruined if it didn't happen.

There's a really lovely red LT for sale on these very pages...

Tut tut. Just curious, I've found a Mike Lull bass online, decent price, but I'm not really in a monetary position to pull the trigger on it; I have money I could throw into this, but not the full tilt. The seller is up for trades (Zon or Dingwall) neither of which form part of my armoury, but I do have a recently acquired Spector Euro LT that I consider throwing into the mix. This isn't any kind of backdoor selling thing...subs all paid...I'm just curious whether there would be anyone interested in doing the great Basschat swap. Lull>Zon/Dingwall>Spector>??? Anyone?

Nothing for a few days, no. He did post up a couple of things where a business he owned was fraudulently sold without his knowledge and a missive from Warner Chappel dissolving a contract and demanding return of an advance.

We didn't get paid by the St. Moritz and it took days to get rid of the stench of cheese.

Have you actually looked at the bass? lol

£50 for 45 minutes. At this point DM hadn't actually released anything either, so one does wonder how they got that gig.

Google tells me it was Ultravox (plus four others, Shock, Wonder Stories, Barbie Wilde and Metro). Nope, me neither.

I've been following Rusty Egan on Facebook for a while, he drummed for the Rich Kids and The Skids amongst others and has a long history of DJ-ing, club/shop owning. Some of you may know of him. More recently he's been posting up loads of old stuff on Facebook, some of it hilarious. This one caught my eye...in these times of either not being paid for gigs (or even getting a free ice-lolly after playing some sh*thole in Worthing after driving 100 miles there and playing 45 minutes because 'it was good for our musical CV'), it was enlightening to see how much Depeche Mode got paid for a 45 minute support slot at The Rainbow in February 1981.

I'm listening to doom and gloom on the radio.

I think the roots for this malarky came from a conversration many moons ago, when we discovered that there was actaully a song submission process carried out by labels and you were either lucky enough to have your song accepted or not. I used to be a biggish fan of band from Bristol called Straw; they submitted the song below, only to be usurped by Garbage.

I'll profess that making music has been a struggle at times, but over the last few months our erstwhile guitarist/producer Pete has been finishing off stuff I recorded back in February/March and doing cut and paste arrangements pending a return to getting us back in for vocals, so all good. I haven't really played a bass for more than a few minutes a time in over four months. That said, the cupboard is now effectively bare so me and Pete were looking for inspiration and we've hit on subject matter that we feel really has legs. We've decided to do a James Bond themed soundtrack album, drawing inspriation from post-Fleming Bond books - Kingsley Amis (Colonel Sun), John Gardner (who also penned License To Kill and Goldeneye) and Raymond Benson (who wrote the Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough novelisations). I got a rough of Colonel Sun a few days back and it's goosepimples-on-the-forearms brilliant...all those Bond hooks seem to be there, the old orchestral 'ba-baa ba-baa' stabs, the twangy guitar hooks. I'm very excited.

Years ago (early 80s), a mate of mine bought a new Fender Precision in Landaan. At the time Fender either didn't make the combination of body/neck that he wanted and, get this, the shop just swapped necks with a different bass.

I'd love a St Vincent. When my mum passed away, I inherited a bit (let's not talk numbers) and promised myself (and her too, as she did say to spend some of it friviously) an instrument of some sort. Actually popped an email to MusicMan about and asked whether they could tweak one of the grey-sparkle ones for me...single bridge pickup, coil tapped, volume control only, plain scratchplate. I mean, how difficult would that have been? I actually wanted less than the stock specification. Didn't hear a bean, so bought a Spector.

I've only owned one MusicMan (a Bongo 5HH, that I wish I still owned TBH), sometimes get an odd wobble for a Stingray, but it always passes...reckon it wouldn't be about the having, the thrill is in the chase. I like they're actually making a 5-string Stingray that looks like the 4-string. I love the St Vincent guitar.

I used to bloody love Angel.

Crikey, now there's a band I hadn't thought of for a long, long time. A mate of mine was a huge fan (he was also very big on getting groups of people who didn't know each other together as well); he organised tickets for a Hue and Cry gig at the Wilde Theatre, Bracknell about 20 years ago, perhaps longer. I can't find a single reference to it online, so I could have dreamt it, but unlikely. I guess there were about 20 of us. I'll profess I only knew Labour of Love (as did about 18 or us)...they did two coma-enducing sets with an intermission between and I swear about half the audience didn't return for the second half. I couldn't tell you what they played, how many were in the band, anything. I do however remember eating a rather splendid cheeseburger beforehand and had a pint between sets, beyond that? Nada.

Amazon. Avoid sellers and just go with Amazon. I've not changed strings on anything for a while now. Elixir prices are pretty eyewatering.