NancyJohnson

Just to recap my position, while I'd said previously that they'd peaked with Drums and Wires, it's certainly one of several peaks. After hours and hours and hours of immersion, I think it would be easier to quote the stuff that I don't like ('My Weapon') rather than what is great. It's all pretty good. On the subject of TC&I, EP aside, there's a live album coming out in about ten days too, the content was drawn from a handful of dates in Swindon last year. Incidentally, I did have some contact with Colin Moulding recently, I was trying very hard to get him to attend the SE Bass Bash last year and had made contact through Mark Fisher, the guy behind the XTC/Limelight fanzine (and the Bumper Book of Fun collection). As TC&I were in the middle of rehearsals for Swindon, he politely declined. I tried again for this year and while the invitation is still technically open, I think it's become pretty clear that making small talk with a bunch of guys he'll never see again and then sitting in front of 30 people playing along to The Mayor of Simpleton isn't really his bag, so I doubt we'll see him in Addlestone and time soon. He seems a very private guy, someone who actively shies away from public interest.

XTC. I put together a 30-odd track playlist to accompany the book Complicated Game; it just cherrypicks tracks from White Music through Wasp Star.

I actually listened through all of them about a year ago...the stuff I remember and believed had achieved gold-star status in Chez-NJ really didn't seem to hold up. The early material suffers from very poor production values, they sound thin and nasty. Things do get better around the time of Moving Pictures, but a couple of albums on from this, I'd moved on. The beauty of Rush is reinvention; the stream of live albums and DVD/BluRay, to my ears at least, make the live releases eminently listenable, plus, they always come across as very likeable guys. So best album? In my opinion, there isn't one, largely because their better material is peppered over many albums, but more collectively on the live sets. All The World's A Stage holds high, it's my first exposure. Of the rest? R30. Belter. Images And Words was great as well.

To be honest, me neither!

I did think the bridge looked quite forward, but didnt make the connection with the geometry, especially as the spec gives a 34" scale.

I've been thinking about getting a Spector for a long time now and in the absence of availability of a Forte 4X (or a series one Hamer Cruisebass), a Sweetwater video of the Rudy Sarzo Signature model dropped into my YT feed yesterday and it seems to be the one. The SIMS pickups and switching, along with the Tonepump, seems to make for a fantastic level of on board configuration. No UK stockists yet.

Just to weigh in here, I'd always assumed that when defective finishes went back to paint, it was always for a solid colour over a sunburst (which is why there's a few older <insert colour here>-over-sunburst guitars about), I've never heard of a sunburst over a solid colour. I'm going to go with @bartelby here. Reckon the lighter colour is either the undercoating to either fix the paint to the wood or to hide defects in the wood. Is the sunburst transparent? Can you see the woodgrain through it?

Concerning the Spectors, I've only ever played Gary's and the lone Cruisebass I played and fell in love with years ago (from memory) was more Precision chunky than Jazzy skinny. Neither really matters, I have hands the size if shovels!

I'm very happy with my lot, but I still carry out a daily search (generally while I'm taking a dump) for Hamer Cruisebasses and Spector Forte 4X basses, either of which I'd pull the trigger on if available.

Well this was interesting. Jonestown got at airing on New Music Saturday last week. The guys who do the show post all their content up...if you're quick, the bit we're on on will be towards the top (if it's a few weeks after this post, you'll need to scroll down the pop-up). Locate the showpiece that reads 'Interview with Cut Throat Francis' and scroll along an to hour and 22 minutes. To be honest, these guys have been very supportive in the past and their response after it finishes was laugh out loud priceless. https://www.newmusicsaturday.com/?fbclid=IwAR2W3atJmRjgEXuibVoTry0bDC7Hs1KgU_njw4tu3mzE2t-gKRgFwVq45w8

I think you need to source a Thunderbird body and get the chisels out...

@EJWW I've read down your OP, interesting. You spend the first six stanzas doubting your ability and the final one of which you're saying these guys were PROS; you then follow this by saying you had an uninterested audience, you started Teenage Kicks in the wrong key (I'm sure Michael Bradley would be having a meltdown at this) and that you got the evil eye from the singer. Never feel that you need to be in awe of other players and never be scared of whatever ability they may allude to have. While you may consider them as being PROS (your capitalisation), they're just a covers/wedding band; testament to the fact that they're covering 40 year old punk covers to an uninterested crowd. I've encountered many bands like this, many Creme Brulees.

I bought a Badtz-Maru that was based off a Bronco I believe. The machines were terrible so I decided to enlarge the holes for better tuners. Catastrophic headstock failure. I looked for necks for a while. Bought a 70s one from the US; it looked great, but (unbeknownst to me until arrival) had a terrible front bow and the truss rod was maxxed out. The body sat in a box in the spare room for ages (two or three years) until I finally got a Squier neck from the Stratosphere. Back then, they just didn't come up anywhere.

Get one from the Stratosphere. Honestly, life is too short.

Isn't the four-at-a-time thing just about assignment in your DAW? On my DAW, you just select the output route off the interface; the DAW recognises the total number of outs on the interface and allows them all to be assigned to individual tracks.

Broken arm/collarbone aside, guitarist/producer still throwing stuff out there:

Gibson have made a statement: “The Firebird X destruction video was an isolated batch of Firebird X models built in 2009-2011 which were unsalvageable and damaged with unsafe components. This isolated group of Firebird X models were unable to be donated for any purpose and were destroyed accordingly.” If the components were unsafe, what about the components in the ones that suckers people actually shelled out $3K for?

Did anyone see this? I know the Firebird X was a bit of a munter, but couldn't these instruments have been distributed to good causes or stripped and retooled? I've no idea how old the footage is, but it does seem horribly wasteful. Even the pickups (Gibson mini-humbuckers) are the same as the ones in regular Firebirds. Maybe it's a way of giving ol' Henry's legacy the finger, but like I said, Gibson just get weirder and weirder.

Back in the day (damn, I hate that expression!) or when all this was fields, weren't Carvin guitars kit built things? Also seem to remember Schecter being the same.

I'll admit we borrowed from Public Service Broadcasting on a sampling level, but musically we're totally different. Umm, the process? We don't write in the construct of a regular band; the guitarist just records and records constantly, I'll pop over to his home studio without the slightest idea of what he's done, he'll loop sections of music of which I'll track bass against on the fly and all the while he's recording everything. We'll cut and paste my content and then I'll rerecord. I'll do a four or five hour session, then go home. A few days later a rough arrangement will arrive. I'll go his studio the following week, we'll fix the recordings of the previous week and then record more. And repeat. At this point it's just guitar/bass/drums (some live, some MIDI, some live loops) and maybe some keyboards. At this juncture, we just start arseing around; guitarist has terrabytes of samples, noises etc. which we'll just start dropping in to complete the music. Once we have this, we decide the subjectmatter, locate voice samples and just drop them in. It's really easier than it actually sounds. On Jonestown, that's actually Jim Jones talking, just prior to giving the instruction to his followers to drink the flavour-aid. It's harrowing.

You're very kind!

I have nothing to really add to the map you've posted. If that's us, then good company. We're definitely called Lutz - we only chose it because we couldn't find anyone else with the same name at the time. There's another (very recent) thread elsewhere on these hallowed boards covering the newer stuff we're in the process of unleashing - there's a Soundcloud link to a new track called Jonestown. We're very close to finishing album/collection #2, but our producer/guitarist broke his left shoulder and upper arm in a motorbike vs. car accident two days ago, so things will stall for a few weeks unless I pick up guitar duties in post.

Please, nobody mention shims.

My mate will be at the Opera House on Friday night with The Members.