NancyJohnson

I'm already losing the will to live. The ticketing system isn't working and people are getting restless. I honestly thought people would come knowing what they wanted, in and out, but no. People are browsing. It's been 20 minutes since opening and we're up to about #10.

So it's Record Store Day and I'm here reporting from the front line. It's a beautiful morning here in Crowthorne and here I am at 7.15am at a tiny little place queuing for something I don't even have the hardware to play. Frankly, I'm knackered. My cold woke me from my slumber at 4.00am, a fit of coughing breaking the silence in the house. I am currently surrounded by about 50 equally grey (or balding), dishevelled and tired looking middle-aged men, a few, who I've been told, have actually slept in their cars overnight in their possibly vain attempt to secure a limited piece of vinyl . I suspect many punters will be leaving here empty handed. This is an unearthly hour to be up. The cafe on site probably can't believe the number of cappuccinos they're going to be selling in the next hour. The smell of bacon lingers in the air. On arrival I'm given a raffle ticket to secure my place in the queue. It's number 73. I fear I will be here for some time after the 8.00am opening time. This is Paul Anthony, for Basschat, in Crowthorne.

You know I've never actually gone to a rehearsal place and just gone straight into the PA. Might be fun to just travel light once in a while.

Problem solved.

"Original nut is included"

Well, I've had a reply from Lull and I think the costs will be too prohibitive. They've given me two options, a) Door number one. Find a donor Hamer 12-string that Lull can tear down and attach JAXT4 wings to. They've said that while the ones they've done for JA are fine, they're heavy and suffer from something called neckdive (nope, me neither). Whilst sourcing a Hamer shouldn't be a problem, the logistics alone would just pile on ££s onto the project given Lull are in Seattle; so factor in two/three lots of shipping, along with import duties. There's also the thought in the back of my mind that I could be buying sight-unseen could present me with a dud as a donor instrument. b) Paul Schuster has described a scratch build as being 'super-crazy expensive'...my current Lull pair were this anyway and they're (kind of) stock models. I can imagine the R&D costs just spiralling out of control, especially from the perspective that they've never built one before. So, unfortunately folks, I'm parking the Lull option.

A doctor once told me I was suffering from auto-correction syndrome, but I didn't even know I was I'll.

A-man, you're blessed with the psyche of marathon runner...anything would weigh a ton or look enormous for you! I, on the other hand...

In all honesty, the B12A is the only 12-ver I'm getting a bit moist over, unless: I own a JAXT4 already...I might need to have a noodle in Photoshop and design a headstock. I've wondered for a while whether the existing Lull headstock could incorporate another eight machine heads (probably not). Maybe it could if it was symmetrical.

Hahaha. My trousers are on fire!

Well, I've enquired. Let's see where this goes...

I was giving this some thought last night. My wife just chipped in said, 'Why does it have to have Hamer on the headstock? As you love Mike Lull stuff so much, wouldn't Mike Lull build you one? This actually set me juices flowing somewhat. Mike Lull is Jeff Ament's primary builder and Mike Lull has built two basses for me already, so umm, it's worth a punt. Dollar is weakening against Sterling. Might be a good time to enquire...

I owned a Waterstone TP12 and didn't really connect with it. I found after much trial and error (some of this after the Waterstone was sold) that fundamentally, if you want to achieve that Tom Petersson tone it's not simply the case of plugging in and away we go; my experience led to the conclusion that while the bass was both rich and bountiful tonally, pretty much anything played up the dusty end frankly sounded ridiculous. So how to achieve a good tone? A crossover, some outboard processing and two amps. Utilising the crossover, shoot the lows through one side, the highs through the other. Apply dirt (or go with whatever your amp will provide. TP has used a brace of amplification over the years, favouring HiWatt and Reeves valve heads, before more recently using Orange gear. Note these are not bass amps...he favours guitar ampliifers. Cabinetry, I'm not sure about, I'd like to think he'd favour bass-centric cabinets, but hey, when you're (probably) being given them for free, then you'll try anything.

I own a Hamer FBIV...that's pretty rare.

I've started to put out some feelers...fingers crossed.

Nope. If there's no 'Hamer' on the headstock, then I'm not interested. It's like someone buying a Bravewood or a Nash. £3k isn't an issue.

Conservative estimates put the number Hamer made as 'under ten'. So a bit rarer than the numbers left of my other Hamer, then.

He's [edit] 5'11" and the bass is huge.

Never experienced any grounding issues using Elixirs. That's a weird one though as the core and ball-end of the string is exposed, so dependent on your bridge type the ball/core should allow contact with the metal, rather than the coated area. Maybe the Warwick (two part bridge) needs grounding to both bridge elements. In my 30+ year sojourn in bass, I've never questioned any of those points that so many people raise. Nut width, neck radius (which is right misnomer as most bass necks taper), string tension, neck dive (shudder), weight, electrics, pickups and so on. Sure it's nice to have decent gear, but so long as the bass intonates and the action is nice and rattly, that does it for me.

Does anyone on here own one of these? Just sourcing some information ahead of trying to source one. Ta!

Over the years I've used strings by pretty much every manufacturer and I don't mind D'Addarios, they're cheapish but lack any real longevity (unless dead strings is your thing). It's a false economy though, just switch to Elixir Nanowebs; I've had a set on one of my basses for 14 months and they still sound fresher than a two week old set of D'Addarios.