NancyJohnson

They're expensive new, but secondhand they're way more reasonable and owners seem to take care of them, so it's not difficult to find a good one. Insofar as them being poorly made or being one trick ponies, well nah on both counts. OK, they're a two pickup bass with independent volume and tones for each pickup, plus the ability to select either pickup via a switch, plus the newer ones have an additional tone circuit, so far from one trick. Build quality on mine was fine...robust even. The only bad bit was the bridge, which IMO was worse than a three-pointer, if that was feasibly possible. The worst thing about a 4003? It was a thief-magnet. These b'stards know what it is and I had two occasions where someone tried to steal it.

If we're going the gif route:

Well, let's initially just consider that Matsumoku were producing a lot of guitars for several companies, so it is feasible that parts could have gotten mixed up/shared during production. They were producing Aria Pro II, Vantage, some Greco basses. When I was researching my 1978, insofar as the serial number goes, I read yonks ago that the month of production is designated by the letter, A for January, B for February and so on, with the next two numbers being the year (1977) and the rest are the production number, so it's April 1977. I don't think it's an Aria Pro II from that year...the 12th fret dots are too far apart (see below, this isn't mine BTW); they did go wider, but not for a couple of years. Yours also has a skunk stripe on the back of the neck too (Arias from this period tended to be one-piece, with glued in pieces to allow for the Fender style headstock). However, the bridge does look the same as the one that came off mine - with the two additional screws at the front. Are you able to get a shot of the front of the headstock? There's evidence of basses coming out of the factory without a logo...if the face of the headstock has been sanded, there's a reasonable chance that the facia will still carry an echo of what was on there originally (the wood behind the long gone logo will be lighter than the rest of the headstock colour).

Or these. I'm just waiting for someone to start advertising their Gibson as pre-Chapter 11, or whatever.

Please let's not say these three words again, eh?

I've never owned a Stingray and I doubt I will any time soon, but in the unlikely event Sterling called up and said, 'Hey Paul, we love what you're doing, go ahead and pick a bass,' I think I'd have to go with a 4HH in the black and ebony combination (I just pulled this off the configurator): ...interestingly, there's a bass shown on the current EB Stingray promo that has blocks on the neck, so those over dots please. The 5-stringers have never done it for me...I've often wondered why MusicMan have a different design set for the 5; the champfers, that monstrous scratchplate. Why can't they just make a 5-string version of the 4-string?

You saw the Johnsons...nearly every gig prior to my departure was quantified as being an extra rehearsal. There's really not a thriving live music scene in London, especially where original material is concerned.

Josi is a top bloke. I've used his stuff in upgrades. His humbucker sized P90s are fantastic. Frankly couldn't care less where they're made (or the price point), they're just so damn good.

The problem with this is that the posting up of venues and promoters who are terrible/crooks does have this way about bouncing back at you and biting you in the donkey. There's a few promoters/venues in and around London that network to such a degree that they can blacklist you from playing places pretty easily.

From memory, they had a couple of very bright LED lights on stage; the one on my side was under six feet from my face and if you looked forward you just got a face of red light. This was one of the worst gigs I've ever played.

About a year ago, my old band played the St Moritz on Wardour Street, Landaan. Our singer said it would look good on our CV. Hmm. Journey up was fine, got parked north of Oxford Street, half-mile walk to the venue (locked on arrival), easyish load in. The venue is a basement (a warren of rooms) under a cheese/fondue restaurant. It reeked of cheese, old beer, old sweat, old smoke and god knows whatever else. It was like an oven in there. Stage was maybe eight feet square - barely wide enough for a small drum kit, our amps were set up angled as there was no space and seven feet high (of course our singer insisted on standing on the stage). There was an air conditioner (off, I mean why would it be on?) attached to the ceiling in the middle of the stage (cue head bumpage). The venue didn't promote it, we didn't get paid (nor even offered a beer) but they asked us back. Err, no. I remember me and the drummer stopped at a McDonalds on the way home and for some reason I sniffed the upper arm of the shirt that I was wearing and it stank of cheese.

The dye went off very quickly, but then the grain on the fingerboard was unfinished and open (aside from a handful of previous oilings). I'd doubt that product would set up that well on a waxed surface.

I suspect not!

If you have a search on You Tube there's some Living Colour footage from the Primer or Time Tunnel VHS tapes with an extended live version of Muzz Skillings noodling through Broken Hearts....it's not very long, perhaps 30-40 seconds, but it's a wonderful clip. The studio version is great too. Other than that, a nod in the direction of Norwood Fisher of Fishbone for his frankly mental breaks in Bonin' In The Boneyard. Any of the versions are belting.

Also the first Van Halen was like this.

Mick Karn hated that track.

For me it's Mick Karn. I was fortunate to see Japan several times before they really broke big and he was phenomenal, but let's not forget all of Japan were great players. The first two albums are five star for me to this day, Quiet Life less so. It was very much a case of diminishing returns as the band evolved and they fired Rob Dean. To echo an earlier point, the solo albums were a tad lacklustre IMO; he needed to be part of a band for the real magic to surface. I'd suggest sourcing copies of the JBK albums or the Polytown CD (with David Torn and Terry Bozzio).

Nothing wrong with Three Lions. It's lifting. I like Blue Day by Suggs too, but being a Chelsea supporter I have some bias. The turgid songs? Quite possibly where actual footballers are singing on them; those uncomfortable videos of the squad standing in a studio miming and holding their headphones a large ABBA. Just one other thing here, a couple of nights ago the BBC showed some footage of the (West?) German team singing Three Lions from a balcony after they'd won the World Cup. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Old school remasters, for me at least, just added a bit of gain and seasoning to otherwise quiet and lacklustre releases, nothing wrong with that, even if it is a bit of a cash cow. Buyer beware. On the subject of digital remastering, pretty much everything undergoes a digital transfer of some sort now; it doesn't matter how precious you are about your analogue tape masters, this will get transferred into 1s and 0s for CD or digital releases, obviously many recordings are recorded digitally, obviating the necessity for tape. I'm pretty certain that digitally remastering these 1s and 0s isn't as hands on as the blurb seems to infer and there's feasibly automated software analysing, compressing, EQing and adding sparkle to lifeless recordings. On the subject of specific tracks, hmm. I do remember there were some early Madonna tracks that went through DR to make them sound super-wide, they sounded fine, but if you didn't have an initial point of reference, then you wouldn't know any different. I do love the track Cherish, it did sound different, if nothing else. So, summary, remastering good or bad? In the main, bad. Albums are so overproduced now, there seems little point in remastering anything from the last 35-odd years, unless it's to fix major errors in the mastering process (read up on Skylarking by XTC). Prior to this period, there's an argument for remastering, but only from the viewpoint that the early analogue to digital transfers were pretty poor (I'd cite here that the recent Fleetwood Mac reissues, especially Rumours, sound amazingly good).

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Keep the Sire.