NancyJohnson

180° turnaround from a few years ago. Little Gator padded bag. Darkglass head, power cable, Speakons, spare 9v battery, little pouch of picks/pens, a few sheets of A4, strap, lead, headstock tuner.

I tend to buy all my strings from Amazon; pricewise there's got to be a degree of price-fixing given the similarity of prices elsewhere (and I mean, how much markup are there on strings, it's bonkers), but I'm a Prime member, so free shipping. Background behind a 5-string string change, my Lull is a 35" scale, checking my Amazon orders at the end of April 2021, I ordered a set of 14087s (45-105 XL nickel plated steels) and a 15433 (.130 XL taper wound). Like @glassmoon, I too was a bit surprised that Elixir didn't make XL five-string sets, so had to resort to two purchases. To compound issues, there was a really long lead time on the low-B, from memory it took 6-8 weeks to arrive (I suppose we were still in lockdowns of some sort at that time, so the world priorities were elsewhere at that point). Given we're nearly two years on, the bass hasn't seen a lot of use since I put them on, but I did have a noodle on it yesterday. They still sound fresh as.

Of the dozen or so Gibson models I owned, I'd say two were head and shoulders above the rest - a white one I imported from Japan (sold to @police squad) and a limited run Gothic (which now resides in Spain). This was nothing to do with tone or anything; the neck on the white one was skinny as hell, the black a bit more chunky. Both these had additional bridge replacements (Babicz FCH). To be brutally honest, I don't buy the 'ironically the sound...' argument...we've done the blind tone test at a pre-pandemic Bass Bash and scores were exceedingly low; all of them sounded more or less the same. Tone comes from a combination of many things, from your hands through to the backline the bass is going through. Nobody could tell the difference between Precisions, Jazzes, Musicmans etc.

I played Gibson Thunderbirds exclusively for about a decade and while I'n still using basses of a similar shape (Lull/Spector/Hamer), they're all different to the Gibsons I owned. In answer to the OP, I'd consider three things, price, how long you're going to keep it for and resale value once you decide to chase down a Gibson (because you will). A while back there was a configuration tool on the Phoenix page and obviously I had a play; it spat out a purchase price and it wasn't cheap by any stretch. I mean, it looks similar to the model it's apeing, headstock is a little odd, maybe the body geometry is a bit off too. You're going to be buying blind unless you can work out a way to play before you buy it and most of us have read the manufacturers feelings about QC and aftercare. So, not for me, no.

On the 'what's the difference?' question, Fender are as guilty as all the prime movers in instrument manufacture, reinventing 60 year old designs year in, year out. I'd say pretty much all of us here wouldn't have a clue what bass we were hearing unless we had some kind of visual clue; a few basses do have a distinct/identifiable tone out of the box (IE Rickenbacker 400*), but let's face it, even then what we thought we were hearing, wasn't necessarily what we were actually hearing (point of fact, Geddy Lee's using a Fender Jazz). I know this may sound odd coming from someone who has basses costing thousands, but it doesn't (and shouldn't) matter whether anyone is using a non-US Fender, a Squier, or an Epiphone or a Sterling? Not in the slightest. If the decal on the headstock facia says Fender, nobody will know where the thing was made and frankly, nobody will/should really care. There shouldn't really be any stigma using something made in Japan, Mexico, China or Indonesia. If anyone does look down on someone because of their gear choices, then f*ck 'em.

I've lost count of the different amp/cab set-ups I've gone through since I started playing, arguably I'm the happiest I've been set the outset of this 30+ year sojourn, just running a Darkglass AO900 and a pair of Darkglass 1x12s. Last week I was at a rehearsal studio, the place hires out gear to musicians who turn up without amps, so the place is rammed with backline of all shapes and sizes. The owner casually says to me that, '...everything along that wall is for sale,' at which point my eyes start moving very quickly as I peruse the treasure trove of stock. Lots of Orange stuff, lots of bits and pieces I don't know anything about, Fender combos, Soundcity and Ampeg cabinets, Marshalls. I casually enquire the price of an American made Ampeg/SVT 8x10, to be told he'd probably take £400.00. I mean, it was a bit road worn, but £400.00?? It did get me thinking about my 'little' set up. I guess my outlay was over £2K for this. Easy to cart about, loud when it needs to be and sounds thunderous. I genuinely felt sorry for the old fridge and the other stuff in there just gathering dust when, if you went back 25 years, running an Ampeg 8x10 would leave people a bit slack-jawed.

Thank you to everyone who voted. As I said, god knows how this is compiled but we're at #10 this week. 😊

I played the Tower of Song in Kings Norton, Birmingham yesterday. Bit of an odd one; it was a Sunday matinee - three bands, doors at 3.00pm all done by 7.00pm. Early start, terrible traffic snarl up near Oxford (biggish detour) Venue is quite lovely to be honest. Clean, tidy, small bar, fantastic PA (all iPad/tablet driven) - two each side of HK Audio Polar 12s. First band were Year Zero - four piece punky band, the meat in the sandwich was The DC Spectres (the 'DC' being club owner David Checkley) - they reminded me of early Soul Asylum, then us (Eddie Roxy & The Adjacent Kings) headlining. We're only a handful of gigs in and I reckon this was the best one yet. No major f*ck ups (although inexplicably our drummer stopped playing during the first song...probably lost where he was) and pretty much everyone we spoke to after was very positive. So onwards. We're playing the Alice's Wicked Tea Party festival on 3rd June. Two weeks off.

Thank you! Wrote and recorded the audio about a year ago; there was a rough vocal. Drum loops. When we hooked up with Eddie (he fronted Department S), he redid the vocals, the guitars were rerecorded and our drummer redid the drums. The bass is the original recording, because I'm a machine, eh? I'm happy with the end result.

I'll profess that I haven't a clue what's going on here, but my band are currently #12 in the UK Legacy 365 Top 40 with a track called 'Let's Go'. (This kind of mirrors how one of my old bands were #6 in an Amazon chart for a few minutes.) The position seems to be driven by a multitude of things, streaming, voting, You Tube. Look, I know it's all a bit of nonsense, but if you can help to skew the numbers then put a vote in for us here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/TheLegacyChart ...just scroll down to Eddie Roxy & The Adjacent Kings, check the little box, hit enter. Much appreciated. P

#3 in a continuing series. I'll be making a rare trip to the Midlands on Sunday 21/5 to play The Tower Of Song on Kings Norton, Birmingham. Bit of an odd one (and something that echoes another gig we're doing at Islington's Hope & Anchor); doors are at 3.00pm and the place shuts at 7.00pm. We're last on, so if you're local you could be home by 7.30pm.

I only saw them once and then saw Corey Glover (with a different backing band) in New York about five years ago.

I read a little piece yesterday about how Living Colour's Stain album was now 30 years old and how the initial US release had different guitar solos on tracks 2-4 (Ignorance Is Bliss, Leave It It Alone, Bi) - I was a huge fan (although it has to be said, I'm more Team Muzzy that Doug Wimbush) and have both the alternate and regular versions. This was kind of enough to kick off a bit of a Living Colour deep dive - been working though from the original demos, the official releases, bootlegs, the lot. This is a crazy mental version of Funny Vibe. Muzz was so great.

I adore Straw's entry for The World Is Not Enough (pipped by Garbage).

If you're interested: Two or three years ago, I was asked to do an oddish project. To explain, I'd go to this guy's studio and spend the evening doing bass; a few days later I'd receive emails with MP3s...rough arrangements. I'd absorb these, go back in the following week, re-do the bass from scratch. This continued for a couple of months, maybe more. The vision/concept the producer/guitarist had was that he wanted to record an album of Bond themed songs for the books (Fleing et al) that hadn't been filmed. Despite all the work, most of the work I did evolved into other songs, however one did get finished. Robert Markham's 'Colonel Sun'. End production really sucks - the mastering leaves a lot to be desired and the demos were way better, but the version that went up the streaming platforms kind of captures the spirit of the Bond ethic.

I had one a while back - it was one of the ones with the scratch plate and bell-control plate (uncertain whether this is classed as the export or non-export model). Black. It was alright, lightweight, sounded OK. Someone said it looked like something, '...that bloke in ZZ Top might use...' after which I lost any love I had for it and sold it on shortly after.

There's a guy on You Tube (channel name @twoodford) who does some frankly fantastic work on acoustics - a lot of which (kind of) have similar separation issues to yours. There's been some fairly interesting recent work done on a pair of 80 year old Gibson acoustics, a lot of focus on neck removals and resetting; the dovetail tenon joints on both really weren't that accurate and while you're looking for a reasonably tight fit in both the tenon AND where the heel meets the body, he's very much of the opinion that Gibson (and others) would get reasonable tenon fit and literally fill the joint with shims and use either hyde (animal) or fish glue to ensure any gaps from the manufacturing process were filled. Scroll along to the 25 minute point on the video below. Jikes.

He only needs one string.

I think most of my better work came post-50. You slow down a bit; you realise that it's not all about playing everything at 100mph.

I've always liked T-40s, but not really so much as to pull the trigger on one. I think this is something to do with seeing Ross Valory/Journey using one. If I were on the market for one, I'd sooner go the whole hog and buy the real thing (there's a nice black one on Reverb for £1.2K) rather than chucking £500.00 on a Retrovibe, that'll be worth half that if you want to resell it.

10cc.

Just flicking through Instagram and saw Nikki Sixx is now endorsing SIT strings with his custom set gauge coming in at 55-115. He's actually replied to one poster questioning the gauge saying the band tune down a full tone live. (Let's not let this thread deteriorate into claims about whether they're using tapes live.) I tend to favour lighter strings and I'm pretty sure I've used 5-string sets where the low-B is only 120 (so 40/60/80/100/120) and never really experienced flappy strings when I was tuned up. I can't work out in my what's going on here; these gauges are closer to what you'd use tuning B-G. If a 120 works for a B how can a 115 work for D-tuning?

Velvet Revolver today.

That headstock looks familiar. Didn't MusicMan put out a Bongo with something similar?

We've just had a band call on Zoom. Strategy. We're going into the studio in three weeks to record four songs. To be honest I was a little distracted with a work thing on another screen, so I'm just listening and sagely nodding my head. Turns out I've agreed to record one song is something I've never heard before and a cover of Suffragette City. I have absolutely no knowledge of these being discussed. Must pay more attention.