NancyJohnson

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.

I started a band over ten years ago, we limped along (the various line ups read like a version of one of Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees), but there was chemistry and fun. We bought in a singer that needed us more than his old band; don't get me wrong, he was a great lyricist (let's leave it at that), but he kind of took over. Toxic personality. Guitarist left. Drummer sacked (because he didn't like him). His entire outlook was that despite the band being mine (in the purest sense) and although I was writing 95% of the material, I was made to feel dispensable and easily replaceable at his whim. When I'd had enough, I left. That SoaB broke me and it hurt deeply. They went through five bassists after I left (which must say something) and the band folded for good earlier this year. If you're doing something and you're made to feel worthless, just walk. It took a long time for me to accept that. Plenty more bands out there. I've done some of my best playing since I left.

To hell with auditions, every gig I do can't remember the songs until we start playing them.

I have a real soft spot for this; we had the soundtrack on vinyl when I was a little kid.

CD is a contraction, yes, but it's also an abbreviation of compact disc, with CDs representing the plural abbreviated term for compact discs. There's probably some term like abbreviated contraction that can be applied, but I don't know. It's all down to ownership; John's car for instance. John owns the car, so it's John's car. A pluralised CD's implies CD has ownership of something. It's no more valid than banana's or sprout's. In answer to @tauzero, the apostrophe in greengrocer can be greengrocer's (singular) or greengrocers' (plural). Right, enough. All this is making me giddy.

My mum (bless her) taught English and in later life taught English as a second language. She literally forced me to learn about so many grammatical terms before I was ten years old. In these times of the crazed masses adopting descriptive pronouns, oh how she'd chortle (if she was still alive) about how anaphoric words will probably become redundant in usage because we'd be too scared to use them. Anyhow, nope it's vinyls, not vinyl's. Gotta love those apple's. 😉

I've been listening to Journey all day.

Can we stop with the greengrocer's apostrophes when we're posting about CDs? Just because a word or abbreviation ends with an s it doesn't necessarily need a leading apostrophe; it's CDs, not CD's. Records, not record's. Albums, not album's. Does my freaking nut in. Going for a coffee.

My wife isn't a fan of having big hi-fi and all the playable media out and I'll profess this has forced us me into a solution to still have access to the media while not having access to the tangible element (CDs/Blu-rays etc.). All my music and film content is now housed on a NAS (where I have all my CDs ripped to in FLAC or MP3/320kbps), but in the main the majority of the music we listen to is from Spotify. It's delivered to four stereo pairs of Sonos One and One SL speakers dotted about the house with the pair in our lounge benefitting from being twinned with a Sonos mini-sub for a bit more oomph. In the little room where I work, I have a PC with a pair of M-Audio BX5s - this has the same access to audio as the Sonos kit. In addition, I have a few audio boxsets which contain Dolby 5.1/Atmos Blu-rays (these are predominantly XTC, Tears For Fears, Steven Wilson)...if I want to listen to these, the content is all ripped to the same NAS and is delivered to an Onkyo surround amp via Plex. I've got about 100 albums up in the attic, some of which aren't on Spotify, so I have been toying with buying a Victrola turntable that's a badged collaboration with Sonos, so it serves as an input source - it doesn't require a fixed input in a Sonos amp, the turntable works as an input device on the Sonos MESH network. Bit expensive at the moment, unnecessarily so.

You should leave that body as is, too. The bridge looks a dawg - stick a hi-mass thing on it - but the rest of it? People pay good money for distressing like that.

There's too many (Fender-style) basses out there that look great(ish) from a body perspective but have just awful headstocks - I suppose we all have a degree of familiarity to Fender (and they're ilk) and I'm certain that there's many of us who would happily pull the trigger on a cheaper bass (perhaps as a backup) if the headstock was more Fender-alike. Even Squier models have a slightly redesigned headstock to their Fender badged cousins. I'm not advocating the use of Fender decals, just a redesign of the headstock. If there's one thing about the Harley Bentons, Arias, Vintages etc. the headstocks can be converted to something akin to Telecaster/early Precision headstock specs if that's your thing, and quite easily too if you have access to a oscillating spindle sander. I'd love to see what people have achieved.

While we're all suspectable to make the odd speling, typo or other inaccuracy - and I understand that for @Baloney Balderdash English may not be the first language - but I find it quite tiresome trying to actually work out what was actually said on posts when they're constantly being edited seconds after they're posted and/or being quoted in responsive posts. It would be great if the forum worked in such a way that we could go in and look at the pre-doctored amendments to posts. Just saying.

I owned a Line6 wireless system which worked fine but was a bit battery hungry. I ended up buying a Lekato 5.8ghz wireless: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07TWQL2JS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 Don't have any issues with it whatsoever; range is decent enough, rechargeable battery will last longer than our set (about an hour) and it's ideal if you need to move around a larger stage. That said, I still use a cable most of the time!

I've had an AO900 for a while, pre-pandemic. Took an age to bond with it - at one point I just wanted to get shot of it I was so unhappy - when I got the Euro-X about two months ago, I spent about an hour at home just tweaking things in an effort to get a usable tone out of it. It's really not a unit that does incredible tone out of the box. I run it through a pair of DG 1x12s with the tweeter set about half way. Definitely an Alpha guy, it really doesn't need much gain/distortion to achieve a pretty good/gnarly Geddy/dUg tone, anything else can be dialled in from the bass.

I wouldn't do anything with the neck. A black body might look saucy.

The King & I original soundtrack. Yep. Honestly.

A thousand pounds to spend frivolously? While it would be great to throw it at gear, I simply don't need anything. I'm content. There, I've said it. Umm. I'd probably give my wife some of it and would throw a chunk against a new (inexpensive) TV for the bedroom. Some would go on book purchases, a new pair Converse/Vans hi-tops. A case of red wine. I'd like a sausage maker, a pasta machine and some new bread tins. If anything is left over, Indian takeout for a few mates at mine (if I'm paying, I ain't driving).

I played The Fighting C*cks in Kingston last night. The day was a little less packed/stressful than our last live outing...we haven't played for three weeks, so a brief session at Silent Hill in Guildford, then off to Kingston. Three bands (we were the meat in the sandwich), decent soundcheck, then loiter for three hours. Used my Spector Euro-X, Darkglass A0900. They had a GK enclosure on stage, so I left my 1x12 cabinets in the car. Come gigtime, there was maybe 40 people in. Sound kind of went to hell. Monitor mix was pretty awful, the tightness of the stage meant (of course) the whole box we were in was just full of drums. The sound guy did mention that they have an issue with harder hitting drummer's cymbals affecting the vocal mics, so 'could you drummer hit the cymbals softer?'. Sheesh. Anyhow, we laboured through, a couple of mistakes, nobody seemed to notice. Good general reaction and feedback. Home by midnight.

I remember there was a WEM location in Chertsey, Surrey - I had an unbranded 1x15 cabinet that lacked any sort of front grille and my old dad took me over to the place and got a couple of square metres of heavy plasticky stuff to protect the speaker cone. Watkins also used to sell bodies and necks direct to the public - when I was at school one of the guys we used to jam with built a Super Six model with his dad. Unfinished (second) body, 3-a-side headstock; it played OK but the bridge was mispositioned and it never really intonated 100%. There was also an older guy who lived near me, who had a Type W bass (a single cut, Les Paul style thing) and a Dominator combo!