NancyJohnson

I had a sunburst one. £65.00 Adam Music, Staines. 1978. Nothing but happy memories.

As detailed elsewhere here, I was lucky enough to pick up an Aria Pro II Primary Bass via Gumtree about ten years ago. It was part of a job lot of three guitars and a practice amp. £50. The bass was non-functioning and bits were broken/missing, so I'll admit I threw a little bit of swag at it to get it up and running. New bridge, used Delano pickup, I had pots and an old black scratch plate. The finish on the back of the neck was was very unpleasant and sticky, so I sanded that back. Every time I take her out, I put a new ding in her. Here she is in all her beauty.

There's just too much focus on Thunderbird shaped instruments suffering from neck dive. I've been playing 'birds for about 15 years (Gibson, Hamer, Lull and now the Spector) and while yes it's inevitable, I use both hands while I'm playing so it isn't really a problem per se.

I'm loving mine. The Spector/Darkglass AO900 set up just seems to work very well with each other, so much so that I haven't used any of my Tech21 (DI-2112 and a dUg DP-3X) outboard kit for a while now. Desired tone is an odd thing; when I got the dUg pedal I described it as a DI-2112 on steroids and it pretty much is - it'll do pretty much what the DI-2112 and then expand on that. The AO900 is kind of like the DP-3X on steroids; never really bonded with it until the Euro-X arrived and I took a bit of time to actually dial in what I wanted tonally. (With minimal tweakage my Lull has also come alive.)

I suppose you could also look at it by saying the circuit was designed to tolerate 18v and should be 18v, but operates okay at 9v and is sold as such. Oddly - and swerving the thread a little - I have a Geddy Lee Tech21 thing - the DI-2112. It works fine off a 9v PSU, but it sounds better/fuller with an 18v supply (to quote Tech21 'for increased headroom and clarity').

Sometimes I wonder whether the original posts on the occasional thread here are simply put up to disgruntle the masses. Let's see. First off, my Rush experience. Saw them several times from the first UK tour (Hammersmith) through to one of the Wembley shows. Genuinely like them as individuals, adore the rapport and chemistry. My first Rush album purchase was All The World's A Stage on Canadian/Anthem import (double vinyl/triple gatefold), after which I went backwards to the first album; 2112, Caress Of Steel, Fly By Night, Rush. Of the first four albums I only really connected with the tracks that featured in the live album and a lot of Caress Of Steel was frankly unlistenable (it still is). Moving forward, I went up to Grace Under Pressure but probably only listened to it once (looking at the track listing a couple of moments ago I could recall how any of the songs went) and that was pretty much it. I do have some live BluRays and enjoy these, although I'm not familiar with a lot of the material. I don't have any issue with Geddy's voice. Shrill at times, but it is what it is. It's Rush. Moving forward to Geddy's chops. The bloke is off the scale. I know it's all horses for courses, but within the prog/hard rock genre he's easily in the top five bassists ever. I mean the guy is never going to fit into Living Colour or Nine Inch Nails, but he's easily up there with all the greats. Just did a quick search for 'top rock bassists' on google and look at the list that comes back; there's a lot of big names there. He's a country mile ahead of most of them.

Headroom is an odd thing. If you have a 900w amp (yes) and you only play at 30% of it's perceived output because it's goes so loud (yes), the headroom element is quantified as the unused 70%. While that 70% demonstrably represents the ability of the amp to go louder, it also leads that at comfortable levels (the 30%) the amplifier isn't being driven so hard that it goes all mushy. Now headroom in pickups/circuit? If the the pickups work perfectly well at 9v, sticking an additional 9v into the circuit isn't going to realistically provide 'headroom' per se. Assuming the 18v power is within the capacity of the circuit and doesn't fry anything, the additional voltage isn't going to do anything radical; the circuit cannot perform outside it's designated parameters, it won't go louder or add addition tone as it's limited by design (I didn't really notice any difference when I did it). I've read up enough on this over the years, people saying when they hit hard the EMGs would distort/clip, whereas with an 18v they wouldn't (resolution, lower the pickups or turn the output pot on the bass and/or learn how to adapt your right hand technique). Possibly less output noise from the bass (never suffered this with any bass, there's a thing called grounding, or you can drop the earth on a DI box). Thing is we do these tweaks because we're bass players and because we feel we need to. These things make little or no difference once you're in a full-band context.

I had an EMG active pickup thingie in an old Precision bass, ran it on an 18v loom. Allusion was that this would (somehow) allow the circuit to boost things. So of course, we were all running these on two 9v batteries. Uncertain how, if you have a circuit that works at 100% on 9v will work outside of it's specification if you double the input voltage.

With the best will in the world, think about the size of the screws that are holding the neck on - they may only be 2 or 3mm in diameter - so you're not going have have much left to get once you've Dremelled out enough metal to get a flathead screwdriver in there. You're going to need to factor in the level of torque to get the screw turning AND the risk of shearing off whatever metal is left at the top of the old screw (at which point you'll be wondering why you didn't make a pipe tool as covered above!).

We have it rammed down our throats daily that diversity is supposed to be a good thing. Personally, I'm of the belief that it's a good thing to have a broad musical spread, it certainly helps when trying to convey feel and and ideas, but that's probably too eclectic in these days of swipe-left/right mentalities. Played in a punky band quite a few years back where the guitarist's only point of musical reference was an album called Foot In Mouth Disease by a Canadian band called Gob. That was it. You made reference to populist punky bands of the time (Blink/Alkaline Trio/etc) and he'd look at you like a quizzical dog when someone says walkies.

Delighted to get an email yesterday advising that XTC's 'The Big Express' has undergone the Steven Wilson treatment and gets a 5.1/Atmos release in mid-September. This will be the 7th release that Steven has curated and what makes this even sweeter is that Andy Partridge has gone on record saying there were no more masters available to generate 5.1 mixes (which is alarming, given that the Apple Venus and Wasp Star albums are only about 20 years old and we're overseen by Andy Partridge, so must be on hard drives somewhere). Anyhoo. A little bit of joy.

Similar principal in this video, albeit with homemade tooling.

Late to this thread. Simple fix. Drill out the screws with a plug cutter as shown below. These are effectively drill bits to make your own dowels. Just drill down through the body (put some tape on the cutters to ensure you don't go too deep). And repeat. Neck should then just come away from the neck with a collar of wood around the broken screws. Chip away the wood, turn/twist out the dead screws with a pair pliers. Next redrill the actual body with a wood drill bit to make the new holes up to a standard dowel size (6/8/9mm or whatever). Glue in a new dowel with PVA glue or Gorilla stuff, cut back flush to the body once the glue is dry. Redrill for new screws. Easy really. All this work will be invisible (hidden behind a backplate and in the neck pocket.

Gotta say I prefer Lol and Eric's vocals over Kevin's, but it's very much horses for courses. Couldn't imagine Eric singing Donna or Rubber Bullets, any more than I could Lol singing I'm Mandy Fly Me or I'm Not In Love.

There was always this thing that Queen said the last band they ever supported was Mott The Hoople, but the book lays claim that it was 10cc somewhere up north (wherever that is).

Over the last few days (laid up/knee), I've been reading Liam Newton's rather excellent biography of 10cc; 10cc: The Worst Band In The World and in keeping with the Supertramp thread, I've been immersing myself in their back catalogue while reading. I'm enjoying this immensely. My brother is ten years older than me and as a kid fed me with cassettes of his purchases, the first 10cc album was in there, still buried deep in my conscience. More than aware of the do-wop and powerpop stylings the like of Johnny Don't Do It, Donna and Rubber Bullets, I've dipped into the catalogue beyond that previously (Sheet Music, Original Soundtrack etc.) and I'm more than aware of their singles. It's a phenomenal story, from Graham Gouldman's pre-10cc career (in his mid-teens he was writing for The Hollies, The Yardbirds, Herman's Hermits and Wayne Fontana), Eric Stewart's work with The Mindbenders and setting up Strawberry Studios in Manchester (with the fledgling 10cc effectively becoming the house band and providing music for a lot of Jonathan King's UK Records projects/gimmick singles). Did I mention Neil Sedaka? My heart pines for times when music was like this; I grew up on a steady diet of Sweet, Sparks, Mott The Hoople. I honestly wish I'd paid more attention to 10cc. There's a rather splendid BBC documentary from 2015 up on You Tube - link below - that's well worth the watch if you need a primer before exploring:

Don't you remember that a six-string version featured in that horrific cough, custom, cough Bongo?

If you look at the scope of 'metal', it really is a case of anything goes though. You could argue the genre is littered with Fenders (Precision, Jazz and to a degree Jaguars), Thunderbirds, Spectors, anything in general anything ridiculously pointy or covered in a bloody-looking paint job; there are almost zero sunburst finishes on anything. Oddly on the circuit I play within, you hardly see any Thunderbirds or Rickenbackers, which I would have expected to see.

It's 2023, haven't we really gone beyond the, 'What's good for <insert genre here>?' Anything goes for any genre. It should be pretty easy in this day and age to dial in any tone, irrespective of the shape of the instrument delivering it.

Fender: "Coming in 2025! The Vintera III series! Because you suckers will happily buy the same kit again and again if we give them a new name!"

£99.00. Anyone here snag it?

The original basses all had these - they carried a Hamer logo impressed into the string block.