NancyJohnson

My first bass was one of these beauties, an Arbiter shortscale SG/EB3 style thing in creme. 40+ years ago. I have no pictorial evidence, I'm afraid, and I have no memory of where it came from. Distinct memory of it having shiny flatwound strings until the G-string went and I bought a roundwound for it - I didn't know better. That string was so zingy I played it exclusively for a while. [It] got sold to a hippie guy I was at school with; I remember he came to our house with an older brother, who noodled on it while sitting on the stairs without plugging it into anything. £35.00 changed hands and off it went. I did see it occasionally after this. Beyond that, I have no idea where it went. Interestingly, I remember picks being in short supply and the guy who bought it used to use a green figure of 8 toy-soldier base as a plectrum. Odd what you remember.

Last year, we had a brief rehearsal and video shoot in The Engine Rooms in Bow. In the main room (where we did the shoot), they'd just piled in backline to make us look big rawk and there was an SWR Workingman's 8004 going into an 8x10 (the photo below is off their website, ignore the thing sitting on top of the 8004). I just plugged in without any talent boosters and had a noodle. Quite stunned at how good it sounded, little bit of grunt/dirt, scooped mids. Quite lovely really.

We used Teddy Bears Picnic.

I watched the Anderton video where they were on the Sire stand and to be honest the only thing I got a bit moist over was the matte black Larry Carlton L3, I've already enquired whether (if I bought one) they could get me a tortoiseshell scratchplate (which Sire do on the goldtop version. £349.00. It's perfect.

It's odd how moist people get over some new finishes. Where's the innovation? Where's the new designs? Much as I detest Fender, at least they gave it a go with munters like the Dimension or the Meteora.

People! (Deep breath) We really need to move away from the thought that just because something looks similar to something else that it's going to deliver something similar to what it pertains to be. [Sorry deep EDIT here: I've seen too many posts here and elsewhere where someone buys a Harley Benton Stingray clone or a Chickenbacker and goes, 'Yeah it really growls like a Stingray' or 'It clanks just like the real thing.' These remarks just seem to be some kind of affirmation by the buyer of a bass costing 10% that of the original that it apes, is somehow vindicated. I will continue to cite the blind test at one of the SE Bass Bashes, which kind of proved that a) people don't know what basses sound like at all and b) people couldn't identify their own bass from anyone elses.] Voice of reason here. Again. I'd argue 'til the cows come home that tone is subjective ('all basses sound more or less the same and nobody aside from you gives a rats as to what you sound like'), more to the point tone is about synergy; the interaction of all the component parts, from your fingers/pick, the strings, pickups, wiring loom and cap, lead, stomps, pre-amps, power amps, speakers and your ears. Apart from saying the stock pickup leaves you a bit flat, you're not really saying why. What do you want a replacement to do for you that the original doesn't? I'm genuinely interested (see elsewhere), having swapped out a fair few pickups in my time and finding that a non-badged pickup from an old Strat' copy sounds virtually the same as the Mike Lull hand-wounds on a £5K bass. I'm very much of the view that it's not worth changing anything on a whim; you'll have a perceived opinion of how much better the pickup sounds (which will be a direct correlation to how much you paid).

I've investigated smaller stuff previously, so am familiar with (for instance) GSS and Demeter kit; I'm currently running a Darkglass A/O 900, all in all small and compact-ish. With such a plethora of stomps out there, my main point is/was that you let your XB Driver shape everything and just let a poweramp drive the output from that. I'm not particularly fussed about arguments pertaining to amps colouring the stomp tone; I would always defer to plugging into the effects return on an amp to bypass any pre-stage shaping and tone. It would be dreamy to just have a simple signal path; XB Driver > similar sized class D poweramp.

Curiosity piqued by the new Sansamp XB Driver pedal, while I'm not on the market for new kit in my head I'm silently thinking how I could integrate this into a usable setup. Last year the guitarist in the band I was playing in had one set up where everything was on a largeish Pedaltrain board; ampwise he was running one of the Victory V4 things and I was kind of intrigued at how portable it all was. This got me wondering about how dreamy it would be to run <insert stomp here> into a no frills class-D amp with just a big ol' volume control on the top of it. Checked several sites, there really doesn't seem to be anything aside from the Seymour Duncan Powerstage. Are manufacturers missing something here?

I just watched this presentation through some decent speakers. The 'effing brutal' setting is about what the Darkglass A/O spiel might describe as 'picking daisies with your loved one, tra-la-la'. Not really that brutal at all, it's more like the entry point for them.

I have little GAS desire or a need for more basses, but there's always going to be the odd thing that is so out of reach they're rarely going to come up for sale. The good thing is that I actually have funds to pretty much scratch any potential itch. Anyhow, these: #1 Mike Lull NR Thunderbird (JAX edition, oversized/chambered body). This is still out there somewhere. I know it sold for about $2K in 2018. It was commissioned by Branden Campbell of Neon Trees. #2 Hamer B12A, commonly described as the Jeff Ament specification: #3 Kubicki Ex-Factor. One of the early ones, not the Fender models. I was offered one of the last handful that Phil made and turned it down. It was ridiculously cheap EDIT#1 (possibly the first of a few) #4 Now while I wouldn't necessarily pull the trigger on another Rickenbacker, I would consider a Rickenbacker Blackstar. 200 globally. Another one that got away. Had the opportunity to pick one up for £900.00 a few years back, now maybe five times that if you could find one. EDIT#2 #5 MusicMan Bongo Stealth 5HH. I had a 5HH in Desert Gold a few years back. God it was lovely, but I never really tamed the thing; pre-amp was waaaay too hot, you'd start a session and it would sound great, but then you'd keep notching it up and up, three hours later it would sound like mush. Fantastic design and playability.

A while back I lost a hard drive containing a load of audio. There was an album on there called Shrapnel & Bone by @Wolverinebass which he released under the name of Wolves On The Ithica Skyline. I found the drive, got it in a caddy and attached it to my PC yesterday. To my delight, there it was gathering (digital) dust. Listening now. It's great thing. Very Tool. Very A Perfect Circle.

You're probably more than aware of the set ups I've had, squire. On paper it looks like a one box solution to an old set up I was running with a Rolls crossover, into a BDDI and a VT Bass. I'd be interested in seeing what your Hamer would sound like straight into the dUg funbox.

This looks interesting because of the crossover element, might work to your advantage if you have a 12-string bass.

At 6'4" and built like a rugby player, I certainly wasn't a shoe in as a Japan fan, but I adored them. At the time I was listening to a lot of North American stuff (Kiss/Rush/Starz/Angel/Cheap Trick, and so on) and Japan were a gateway into something entirely different to that. They just felt like my little secret, nobody (and I mean nobody) in my circle cared about them whatsoever until they started getting popular. When I listen to the early stuff it just makes me feel a bit sad at how the whole Japanese musical/cultural influences (Sakamoto etc.) shaped how they changed over the next two years. I still don't get how they fired Rob Dean and replaced him with a couple of players that added absolutely nothing musically. My wife made some remark about Masami Tsuchiya just making noise; figuring the choice of him joining may have been calculated to sell more records in Japan (much like Manchester Utd buying Korean players). Anyhow, back on track here, Karn. Polytown is great. Really enjoy his stuff on the Gary Numan album 'Dance'. Some of the solo work is outstanding.

I saw Japan quite a few times in the early days (around '78-79), when they were a) in their ascendency, b) being derided by every weekly music paper except Sounds and c) very limited fanbase, so audiences were fairly small. I'm almost certain I saw them at Dingwalls, definitely at The Venue, Music Machine, Lyceum. My last gig was at The Theatre Royal, Drury lane with David Rhodes on guitar (Christmas 1982). I’d argue that the first two albums and the Live In Japan EP were all 10/10 releases and Quiet Life, while decent, just didn’t match AS & OA; beyond this very much a case of diminishing returns. I didn’t gel with GTP so much or TD at all; at this juncture it seemed the fanbase were too obsessed with their clothes and hair styles rather than the music. It just became fashionable to like them if that makes sense. With me, bands metaphorically tended to fall out of favour if Janice from the typing pool said she liked them. I detested the Masami Tsuchiya period. On the subject of Mick Karn, he was phenomenal live. Such a presence. I just wish I’d paid more attention to what he was doing at those early gigs rather than appreciating the band as a whole, if that makes sense.

Winamp. Been using it for years.

I found a review of mine online a few minutes ago...one of the worst things is the tuners. It stays in tune to a degree, machines seem to slip equally.

That's extremely kind! PM incoming!

One Christmas a few years back, wife bought me a (soprano) ukulele as a bit of a joke; it was a Lidl central aisle purchase made by a company called Clifton, £18.00. It's been stuck on a shelf gathering dust for years, honestly didn't even have a clue how it's tuned. I have a couple of mates who play in a ukulele band called The Mighty Lemons, and they seem to have a beery-riot doing stuff. Over Christmas, my wife is like, 'Are you ever going to play it or shall I charity-shop it?' Went online, found out how to tune it, found a tab for 'Tonight You Belong to Me' and off I went. I've got biggish hands (oh, to lament why isn't there a luthier who customises guitars for people with big hands, eh?), but while I'm far from sausage-fingered the chording is a struggle, but it's a lot of fun. As an instrument, I'm finding that you can pretty much make any chord shape and it just sounds rather lovely, so much so I'm thinking a better specced one may make the experience a little better.

I'm not doing anything bandwise right now, but I'm contributing some bass stuff remotely for a studio project. I have a couple of basses out and I'm getting more pleasure out of looking at them than I am actually playing. Once the project is done, they'll just go back in their cases. Mindset now is I can just take it or leave it.

Owned a Lakland Skyline DJ5 a few years ago and have played other Lakland Skylines and their US versions; if you're going to a public forum for affirmation that ANY manufacturer's USA Series models (at $4-5K a pop) really worth double/triple the price of the Korean/Indonesian versions, then you already know the answer. Sure these companies (Sadowsky/Lakland/Lull/Sandberg etc) have a business in which their core models are largely based off Fender copies, but at ridiculously expensive prices. As I've posted elsewhere this week, the market has swung from original basses and cheap copies thereof, through to original basses and very expensive copies thereof; the bass market is broken. We've already proven that people can't even identify the tone of their own basses in a blind test, I'm sure that the temptation of custom colours, clay dots etc. are really worth the extra £££. Just go with the cheaper models. You won't notice any discernible difference, your bandmates/audience/soundguy won't give a rats what you're playing. As an additional bonus you won't lose so much when you sell it on!

Struggling to remember, but aside from my old Aria (which I still own) my only other Fender copy was a £65 Columbus Jazz Bass that I started out on. Reckon that taught me enough about how little the difference was between cheap copies and the real thing. Fast forward 40-odd years and we're at the point where there's the real thing and some very expensive copies. I honestly don't get why people will pay equivalent Fender money for a Limelight and then put a Fender decal in it. WTAF? I can see Winyard have posted here, credit to them, but how anyone expect people to shell out £2k+ on a Precision bass copy is beyond me, especially considering anyone who is adept enough with drill and screwdriver could put together something similar from parts for £200-300 and then dragged behind a car for a mile or two. Don't get me started on tonewoods; most people here couldn't tell the difference between ash or alder.

Lemonrock has been kicking around for years, while it can't hurt to set up a profile, I doubt that any of the things I've done in the last 15 years has come from the site.

I had a Streamer five-string about 20 years ago. Bolt on version. Body was cherry. Just used to use Mr Sheen on it once in a while. Worked fine. I just don't get all this, 'Ooh, use a lemon oil, but make sure it's applied with a lint-free cloth.'. It's wood. Mr Sheen. None of my kit get grubby/manky. Where are you guys playing? A slaughterhouse?