NancyJohnson

Reading the comments here (and elsewhere) about belt vs direct, how to get the best out of your system etc. What I never seem to read much is how vinyl is a flawed and degenerative delivery system (but plenty about how all those rumbles, crackles and pops add character to the music) or how turntables are trying to negate outside issues. Christ, I remember how even walking across the room would cause my old deck to rumble. My brother had bricks in his rack in an effort to negate outside influencing effects. We've come so far, haven't we? My mum was playing Led Zeppelin albums on a stereogram which played at 16, 33, 45 and 78. The stylus being able to flip 180° dependent on what you were playing. She regularly played old 78s. Nobody cared about whether you could hear a bit more high-hat or low end. Now it's all, 'I paid £500 for a tone arm and it makes such a difference.'

Redux. There's a load of photos from Jersey. Stuart We were crawling over the soundcheck: St Helier airport 7.00am (note t-shirt that Stuart gave me). I'd just come back from Spain, hence my complexion reflecting mu Portuguese heritage. And glasses!: I had nothing to sign, so I bought a book and they signed that!

Despite moaning frequently about these younglings buying vinyls (😏), I'm getting a bit of a vinyl itch on. I don't know whether it's the having or the getting tbh. There's about 100 albums and a few boxes of singles in my spare room, plus I have access to a ton of vinyl that comes through the charity where I volunteer. For me, I just need a built in phono stage and wireless (Bluetooth) connectivity so I can squirt the output into a Sonos system. This isn't going to be a full blown addiction thing. It would be nice to just hear a few things that aren't on Spotify.

I saw Big Country a few times. Just before The Crossing was released, me and a mate flew to Jersey to see them. He worked for an airfreight business, they had an office in St Helier and he got someone to procure tickets; both of us had family working at BA, so we got cheap flights out. We had nowhere to stay and travelled in shorts and t-shirts. Found a room in Pontac. Gig day we thumbed a lift to St Helier (in a Lords Taverners minibus!), found the venue (Fort Regent Centre) and just holed up in a bar there. We saw the load-in and then Stuart and Bruce came in. This was mid-afternoon. Drink was drunk. They're stunned that anyone would want to fly somewhere to see them. We were invited in for the soundcheck...it was just me and my mate and a couple of crew (private gig!), more drink (Stuart gave us fresh t-shirts), then the gig. It was a great gig. Next morning we were on standby flights, so we're at the airport at 7.00am, same clothes. Band come in, see us, Stuart cheers (I remember him putting his arms up like he'd scored a goal), he tells me proudly that he's bought a wristwatch for £2.99 (this memory has stuck with me, him just going, '£2.99!'.). It's noticeable that despite the hour, he's not holding back in the spirits. Cleared to fly, we're on the same flight...Stuart is cheering when he sees us boarding. He's in the row behind us. Amazingly, Kenny Dalgliesh us sitting in the row in front of us. Over the years, we run into Stuart a few times and he always made some remark about the Jersey blokes. I genuinely miss him, it was a tragic, terrible, lonely and pointless death. I often wonder what could have been, but at least his legacy us pretty much intact.

This one and the XB Driver, I reckon.

So. After three-odd years containing knee surgery, a pulmonary embolism, torn rotator cuff, additional knee work and hand surgery, Sunday sees me back in the studio. I'm genuinely feeling energised to dip my toe into things. It's a blank canvas, we just go in, write in the fly and hit record. Old school.

I had Mike Lull build me an NRT5 (see below) with Bass Direct having to handle the logistics. I'd gave preferred to have gone direct, but Bass Direct were the business handling UK distribution, so I pushed to go through them. By way of advice, check your build specs several times and contact the builder directly for confirmation of these. From memory, I specced out everything in finite detail; woods, pickups, hardware, colour etc. but what was confirmed back was littered with errors. I was forking over more than £5k for this and I wanted it to be right, so I was a bit frantic. Eventually, I just went to Lull direct to firm things up.

I've been searching for an answer on an FRFR unit. All I'm seeing is people jacking in HX Stomp type boards...my question is whether an FRFR unit will work with a rudimentary distortion pedal (in my case a Fender Pugilist).

Four grand. Jeepers. It's an SB-1000 with his name on it. Can't you pick up an original one for a quarter of that? Maybe this'll be the start of something for Aria. The Buggles edition. The Planet Earth edition. Take a stock(ish) instrument, slap a facsimile signature on it, sell it as something special.

Well, as NAMM 2026 is more or less done and dusted, my personal opinion is that it was pretty underwhelming from a bass perspective. The majority of (new?) basses just seem to be reissues/reboots of decades old designs and the amps/processing all a bit meh to be honest. Where's the innovation?

I was honestly of the belief that it didn't go into production! Apologies.

I think it's a curse.

Don't we see this type of scenario periodically? Harley Benton announced an (orange coloured) EB2 style bass a few years back, I think it was @neepheid that bought the prototype and did some mods to the guts, but from memory the bass never went into production. Possibly something similar here? Fanfare for a model that may not appear?

Yep. And all the patches.

Darkglass stuff is stupid money, and I own a pair of their 1x12s.

Just got my amp back from a bloke who's had it for about a year, old Line 6 Spider IV 75 combo (incidentally @jonno1981 sold me this when he was in the business); that said, I'm not really a huge fan of this amp, only really used it for home recording. The pickups are really quite decent, suprisingly so; I'm actually wondering whether it's worth dropping in a new pair of P94s to be honest, although I do prefer the visual aesthetic. It's completely silent from a grounding perspective. Nice!

For me it just offers a slightly phatter tonal output on the D&G strings. It's not much, but (to my ears) enough that all the strings sound similar, rather the E&A booming and the D&G twangy. Pickup here is a Tonerider unit.

It's a belter. You remember those 'Rock Family Trees' things? I often thought it would be a blast to have one with this band's history on it.

I'll admit I chuckled at bangerfilms.

The disc is years old and out of print, so I doubt the maker will honour anything.

My old band went through many iterations before I found it all somewhat exasperating and jumped. Reckon we may have got up to A (me, obvs), D (second drummer), H (third guitarist) and L (third singer) before things really hit the fan. L decided he didn't think D was any good and argued that we should try out ¥ (a drummer we all knew), to prove a point. So we did, but ¥ wasn't remotely interested in joining, but L thought ¥ would. A knew ¥ wouldn't. A knew D was a bit crap and H was on the fence, but L decided D needed to go and said A needed to tell him. So A told him. It was horrible for A. A then found a new drummer through Facebook (let's call him P) and he was a great player, although Ps raison d'etre was primarily for shagging audience members even while his wife was there. 'Where's P,' she'd say, 'Have you seen him?' L started to make life difficult for A, despite A writing the bulk of the material, and A left, eventually being replaced by Q, R and S, before the band imploded.

I've seen some horror stories, broken headstocks, heels etc.

No. It was pixelated out on the original sale advert, so pretty obvious what was going on. There wasn't any communication from the seller.

Your wish is my command.

It's based on a Gibson Futura, not an Explorer: