NancyJohnson

I caught up with Barry about a month ago, he's a top bloke and it's always great to have a natter about Wapping and his trade show experiences are priceless. Ask him what SWR and Hartke stand for!

I will cite the XTC/Tears For Fears boxes here (again), but with all these - obviously original albums aside - you do genuinely seem to get a ton of bonus audio material bundled in, in the shape of demos, unreleased, 5.1/Atmos mixes and all fairly reasonably priced. Dare I say it, I feel a bit disgusted at the route that Rush are going with their reissue program. How many times can you resell/repackage material? Most of these albums have been expanded and reissued in the last decade. Does anyone really need a comic book? Does anyone need to shell out $400 for maybe six (exclusive) recordings. Perhaps Ged needs the swag to bolster his wine collection or baseball ephemera. I'm holding out for the $1,500 wax cylinder edition in a limited edition picnic basket, with a Snow Dog action figure. Save your money. Take the missus out for a nice dinner instead.

I've had Fabrique by Fashion on rotation yesterday and today. Fantastic early '80s electronica. At my wife's request of, 'Can you please listen something else, eh?', I'm listening to the deluxe version of Throwing Copper by Live. Handful of bonus tracks and their Woodstock '94 set. Quite maaaarvelous.

I was firmly in the passive camp until I got my Spector Euro LX; I just found the Darkglass preamp added enough to my setup to brighten things up. On board circuitry beats all...plus (in most cases), you can turn it off. I've put John East and Darkglass preamps in pretty much everything that was originally passive, but the active circuit in my Spector Euro-X probably edges everything. This one is a Spector Tone Pump (I think).

Don't think there was any discernable first track...in all honesty, I started playing with another couple of schoolfriends (we were 14 or 15, I guess), we didn't practice away from that environment and we just made up our own three-chord songs. I used to play along with All The World's a Stage by Rush and Sweet F*nny Adams by Sweet. That's pretty much where I started, so it would have been Bastille Day or Set Me Free.

There's no need to wind anything in in the slightest. I'd concur with you that a lot of amps that contain some kind of drive circuitry (to my ears) just sound like there's a loose wire in the circuit that's causing the signal to break up and while these can sound quite nasty in isolation I guess that breaking-up just disappears in a full band context. Certainly, from my experience, the Tech21 heads are/were simply power amps being driven with either a dUg and (in the case of the Landmark) both an RBI and RPM as the front end. While the Darkglass AO900 didn't work for me in the slightest, it followed the same route as the Tech21 stuff; pedal and powerstage in one box. I still think it's a great pity tha @Tech21NYC have abandoned heads, but I can understand their reasoning. I loved what MarkBass did with the MoMark stuff; it would be dreamy to buy a carcass, jack in a power amp, jack in a BDDI or dUg in one tidy rack unit.

I think (as a bit of a Tech21 whore), the Landmark and dUg heads were fantastic. I suppose you could also factor in some of the Darkglass stuff too.

Last year he had a wall of Mesa stuff, prior to this he was using Hartke. Ol' Rex probably has a very good agent shopping his name about. He gets around so much, I just don't understand how manufacturers have so much trouble seeing through this endorsement cycle he operates under. This is likely a huge win for Ashdown, but will he actually ever use them?

It doesn't sound that great on this demo TBH; it's 2025 and it's Premier Guitar. They've got a long enough track record of rig run downs...they should be able to get a half decent sound off trade booths like this. Also, no idea who that is demonstrating (someone is going to say, 'Oh, man. That's <insert name here> and he's played with <insert name> and <insert name>'), but the playing was astonishingly bad and doing the gear no favours at all.

Have you seen how far the tuners extend beyond the confines of the bodies? They're only going to last five minutes etc. 😏

Starts today. I'll admit once the videos start hitting You Tube I'll be planted in front of the TV for an hour each evening. Don't have and real bass expectations to be honest; it's all likely to be rehashes/repackaging of the same old stuff. I'd like for Gibson to announce the long rumoured reissue of the Thunderbird II and would like some more intelligence on the Sterling Bongo 5HH, but beyond that, no much.

Any movement from the SEBB massive for a Spring '25 event?

I loved my old 5HH, but the EQ was mental on it, which kind of ruined the experience. Admittedly, I adore the shape, but at £3K+ for a MM, nah. My only real opinion on any Sterling vs Music Man debate is that I've seen a few MM Stingrays live and I've seen a handful of Sterling Stingrays in action and while they look similar, the Sterling models are just missing something tonally; quite thin, not as full and not as burpy as the Music Man models. Now this might be down to Sterling users not sharing the same level of attention to set up/tone in as much of that curated by Music Man owners, but they just didn't have the oomph/rumble. I suppose if I could coerce my brother-in-law to pick up one at sub-$800, then maybe it could be a decent platform for customisation, but that would obviously come later.

I had the rack version (didn't like it), then (for some reason) bought the VTBass-DI version. Didn't like that either. Both got sold. I've been way happier with the BDDI/RBI, the dUg and the 2112-DI. If you want something that pretty much does the VTBass and the BDDI, just buy a dUg pedal.

Yup, delicious.

You know, I've seen this picture dozens of times and despite the ridiculousness exhibited, every time I see it I consider how useful (and more accurate in use) a soldering iron you hold like a pen would be. You'd be closer to what your soldering, less rotation.

I've fitted several John East preamps, I don't recall having to break out the soldering iron. The only fiddly bit is screwing the pickup wires into the terminals. As an aside, you're saying you're installing an East MM preamp into an ATK; I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of every ATK model, but the MM preamp is on a Stingray-style control plate and it's almost certainly not going to fit any ATK model without the necessity of carving out the front of the body to accommodate it. You may want to investigate the rear mount Uni-Pre circuits.

Baby Sumo.

When I think about the stuff that was available to us late 70s kids, it does make it all the easier to pillory people going on about nut widths, weight, pickups etc. when everything back then weighed that of a small child, never stayed in tune, had action a half inch off the fingerboard and pickups that hardly had any output. I think we were lucky that we all seemed to know someone that had a dad with rudimentary carpentry and wiring skills to keep us in business.

Hamer did mess around with their bass headstocks, but this version of the 12-string is a belter.

I just keep looking at it. These pictures don't do it full justice. Thing of beauty.

Heads up. There's a special edition the new album by Envy of None (Alex Lifeson's ,post-Rush project) coming soon. If you're quick, there's a BluRay/5.1 version too but it's limited to 1,000 copies and only through the Super deluxe edition website. If you want one, be quick! First album was a belter. Head over to https://www.thesdeshop.com/collections/envy-of-none

A couple of years ago I bought a Hamer Cruisebass; it was a second year run and came without a scratchplate...always wanted a scratchplated one. Had a short dialogue with Tim at Gig.Ink, got a scan if a plate from a chap in the USA and got one cut. Arrived today. Before and after vanity shots below. I am so happy.

Nice. Go on. Buy it.

It's not seen much in the way of real action since early December TBH. Home use, more than capable. The amp seems happier/louder with a Barefaced Big One (uncertain what the ohm rating is) over a single Darkglass 1x12. Maybe a pair would be louder.