NancyJohnson

When I was doing the Eddie Roxy stuff, there was a degree of urgency in getting everything together reasonably quickly; obviously I knew Is Vic There? but for the rest of the material it was a case of tabbing off songs that were still evolving or had changed significantly from the original format. At some point you just have to decide to leave the crib sheets at home.

Looking at my gear ins/outs this year (so far) and am treating it more as an exercise in trying to keep in the black. Currently at about £75 in the red.

Odd post. Buy crap, do it up. Just buy a serviceable Squier, Harley Benton or EastCoast. And what exactly is a 'Hipshot rip-off tuner'?

Seen loads of bands where members have a pad on a stand next to their mic-stand. It's an absolute turn off for me. Would confidently say that if you need a comfort blanket like this, then you really shouldn't be gigging. Brutal opinion, eh? You learn your material, you rehearse and rehearse until the songs become muscle memory and then you go out and play live. The only prompt you should need is an A4 sheet of paper with your set list on it, beyond this, no safety net.

Mine did have the names. Scott was the white, Virgil the Hamer, the black/white Alan, and so on.

On the bee string. Chortle.

There's so many factors that can result in fret buzz; poor set up, high frets, wonky neck, wrong neck angle, action too low etc. All are pretty much easy to solve. If you're impartial to a bit of sweary media content, fire up You Tube and watch some of Milehouse Studio content from Paul Richards. He's done a series of videos fundamentally about turning around (unloved/bedroom player) guitars into decent playable instruments, using budget tools/gadgets. He makes no bones about the fact that he wants to entertain people 'while they're on the toilet at work' and regardless of the fact that his vernacular and delivery is very amusing, there's a ton of sound content in these videos; it's a lot easier absorbing these than reading how to do stuff.

Jokey aside, the red Cruisebass.

Over seven years on, the board still looks fine and dandy. I may do it again at some point, but don't think it's strictly necessary. I did my Hamer Cruisebass as well.

Gig ink.

Dare I say it, Gig Ink?

An Argosy of Thunderbirds. There were others after this, too. The Lull, the Spector, more Gibsons. Oh, an Epiphone and another Epiphone that was in bits. And another Lull. Damn.

More:

Here's some more (all departed).

These were some of my old Thunderbirds. I still own the Hamer and (to a degree) I wish I'd had been able to hold onto the white one, but hey-ho.

Literally five seconds through the front door and my wife is going, 'You have to watch this!' May I present to you, San Jose's 'The Graystones'. These guys are not even teenagers yet. The burpy tone that the bass player gets is quite glorious. They're covering Sade, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, Adele. 10/10.

Given the thing that appears to be dictating the dimensions of said bag may be the double-bass stand, I would always advocate looking at Gator bags. Their website is nightmarish from a navigational/user perspective (Come on, guys! It's 2025. Do better!). That said, a search on Andertons and Gator throws up plenty of stuff. I think it's more a case (no pun) of finding something that suits sizewise, rather than discounting something that purports to, for instance, be a keyboard bag.

Umm, Crowthorne to Queen's Club, Hammersmith. 80 mile round trip. Lakland DJ5, black sparkle. What was I thinking.

Excitement mounts. Sweetwater were great, easy transaction. Shipping (UPS) should have been three days (Fort Wayne, Indiana to Houston), but it took double that, so there was a logistics concern if the package hadn't dropped before today. Brother in law flies back to 'blighty tomorrow, should have it in a couple of days.

Now sorted. Got an offcut of some (cough, luxury, cough) foam underlay for nowt! It's 8-10mm thick, so easy to scissor cut. Cut to size and glued in with spray adhesive.

It's quite odd, but just the change in one component (albeit a major one) and the bass is so much more appealing to me. Been able to get the action down very low (maybe 2mm at the octave), much lower than the old neck, and acoustically it just sounds more resonant. While I don't need any more basses, I genuinely find joy from doing stuff like this. I can't believe that what I've done here is realistically that different from what (I can't remember their name) Limelight etc are doing, by sourcing and selling on cobbled together kit. [Edit: I notice that all the Limelight stuff is now showing as Prices On Application on the classic and cool guitars site.] My wife is now going on about me starting up something to earn a bit of £££ as I slip into an early retirement. 😂

With my old Aria, I used a brown liquid shoe polish as a stain on the body dings. The bottle with the little sponge applicator. If the wood has a fresh ding, just blob the polish on, let it set up for a few minutes, wipe it off. Dries in seconds.