NancyJohnson

The bushings are made of a hard nylon type material that allows the machine head key to rotate against the underlying metal of the tuning shaft (effectively it's self-lubricating the joint) - it also allows different shaped keys to be installed on the same tuning mechanism. Personally, the design aesthetic of these is a bit Heath-Robinson; while I'm no fan of Fender generally, this is one aspect of their guitars that got it right. Moving along, if you're struggling to find these washers, you can adapt one of those little things that are used to close bagged up loaves of bread. Just drill a suitable sized hole in one, nip off the surplus and install. Easy.

I listened to Breakfast In America yesterday. Genuinely surprised that I knew most of the tracks. Today I'm dipping into Supertramp. Crime Of The Century currently spinning!

My old band would do 1-2 a week and gig Friday and/or Saturday. I'd say that live we were well rehearsed and pretty tight although we may have come over as a bit chaotic at the same time, but by and large we knew every song backwards and we were good enough to get out of jail if everything went down the sh*tter mid-song. Right now it's a little different. We rehearse in a recording studio, everything is miked up and we're all on headphones; it's a little bit clinical for me. Last weekend we had a room in a proper rehearsal room and it was marvelous to be able to ramp things up and play through amps. It made the previous studio rehearsals feel more worth it.

My perspective here. Current band is trying to get one in each week (3-4 hour round trip) until we're gigging properly (end of the month). I'm firmly with @tauzerohere; there has to be purpose to rehearsals.

I'm firmly in roundwound territory here, but about five years ago I put a set of Fender flats on my old Aria-P for a dep thing I was doing. Surprisingly, it didn't really go all that ponky, it pretty much sounded like it was strung with rounds that had been on for a bit. I didn't particularly like the smoothness of them and took them off after a couple of weeks. From an historical perspective (and perhaps someone can answer this), I'm assuming flats were always about back in the 40s/50s...no idea when rounds came out to the masses. It begs the question that if rounds were the order of the day 60/70 years ago and flats were the new kids on the block, would traditionalists be waxing lyrical about rounds at the moment? Ooh, and what if CDs had come before vinyl? 😂

I think most DiMarzio pickups had extra magnets hot-glued on the underside (the glue being prone to failure over time, the magnets coming off and flipping 180° in the pickup cavity).

Let's edit this. Over the last 20+ years, I've had an assortment of Thunderbirds pass through Chez Johnson, some still resident. About a dozen Gibsons, a Hamer FBIV, a Hamer Scarab, a Lull, one of the current Spector run, two Epiphones (junk). Despite my indifference to neck dive, the point here is so what? With the centre of gravity and the weight there's an inevitability the headstock will dip. It's a small cross to bear considering what you have in your possession. It shouldn't realistically mess up your playing; if you play close to the bridge, it's easy to keep the instrument aligned correctly.

If/when you watch any of the You Tube content supporting these heads, the prime focus seems to be on a handful of pre-set/emulated tones that can be tweaked/saved/utilised via the Darkglass Suite; these can only be used for post-DI purposes and it's hugely problematic trying to dial these in from the controls on the fascia. Both drive engines are extremely aggressive and it's a bit of a fine line between getting a controlled dirty tone and unlistenable mush. With this head I just kept adjusting and still not getting anything like the sound I wanted; I knew the tone was in the amp somewhere, but in the few times I used it, it was more a case of giving up and reverting to the tried and tested route of Sansamp>effects return. A few weeks back I just decided to spend some time trying to dial in what I wanted; I'm so used to the easy route tonally... I've never really worked at trying to sound right (I mean, if Tech21 could produce a 900w head with a BDDI engine, they'd clean up the class-d market). I sounded decent enough at home and within seconds I knew the head sounded great in a live setting.

I bought the Darkglass head about three years ago, pretty much as soon as it came out. I'll admit it was the headroom that appealed more than anything else and I was more in love with plugging a Sansamp into the effects return and I'd never really bonded with it. Had a session yesterday and left the Sansamps at home; 100% determination to get this amp to resolve the one box solution I've been looking for for years and spent a bit of time trying to dial in a gnarly tone earlier in the week. Ran the head through a pair of Darkglass 1x12s and took the Spector X. Man alive. I honestly can't get over how awesome this set up sounded; the amp was pretty much as I'd set it at home other than notching up the output volume and then tweaking the Spector Tonepump a little. Whumpy, dirty, gnarly. Beautiful.

Wouldn't that be a thing? I'm supposed to be keeping it quiet. Lol 😂

My band seem to have been in with a shout for Rebellion but it's gone very quiet. Two of our number are fairly well connected with the people behind it.

It honestly shouldn't be too much effort to build a scratch setup from BC classifieds. There's enough kit on there. My only observation with the basses for sale is the distinct lack of sub-£250 stuff (IE Sterling Subs) I'm playing some dives in the next few months and would prefer to use something I wouldn't miss if it got lifted.

It's funny seeing this thread resurrected...some seven years after my reply, I still advocate Dunlop Straploks and as and when I buy something new, I'll order a new set for immediate installation before I'll even put a strap on it. They're on all my basses and guitars. Just don't get the, 'Oh, they're too fiddly,' argument. I nearly spat my coffee out while I was reading the @Bolo comment that they get 'noisy after a while'. Whaaaat? Dunlops take a couple of minutes to install on the bass/guitar and same again to attach to other fixings to the strap; in 20+ years of using them I've never had a single failure or heard a mouse while I'm playing. Unless you're installing the flush mount ones, any strap should go over the body-lugs (and probably more securely than the standard lugs too).

I'm listening to Stampax, the live album by Rachel Stamp. Honestly, why these guys weren't massive is beyond me.

Just thought I'd share this. New band - Eddie Roxy & The Adjacent Kings. This drops to all streaming platforms in a couple of weeks.

Here you go pop-pickers.

Oh, we do, my friend. We do.

I worked with the wife of the drummer. When word got around that I played bass, suggestion went that I should have a word with her as her husband played drums. All in all, that went very well.

It's a matter of semantics. In my case I didn't want a direct sale, but I still had to list my item as being for sale (with a price). I don't really know how the sub-forums get set up, but honestly feel an I Got Swapsies area would see more activity than the backdoor selling in the what's it worth area.

A few years back I wanted to swap a Fender maple neck for a rosewood boarded one. It did seem somewhat counterproductive to have to list it for sale (and add a price) when I didn't really want to sell it, just change it. I'd say yes to a swap area, most definitely.

It's like Top Trumps here. I've looked at small amps, currently running a Darkglass AO900 (into a pair of DG112s). To be honest, I could probably have gotten away with just buying the Microtubes 900v2, as it's a little less aggressive (anyone fancy a swap? lol). It's smallish, not much bigger than a Stephen King novel. Honourable mentions? GSS Baby Sumo or the Demeter Mini 800D.

I know this is going a little off track, but I do find the attitude of many members of the Hamer Fan Club a tad abhorrent. While it's all reasonably civil, you have a group of people who are just, 'USA! USA!' and fairly derisive of anyone who bought non-USA Hamer models. It's a crying shame Hamer got shut down and in truth their core models were probably infringing on Gibson rather than Fender. Hamer and Fender could quite easily have co-existed. As an aside, one of the ex-Hamer employees, Mike Shishkov, has set up shop and is making instruments...his first ones were essentially Hamer Standards with Shishkov (in a fairly familiar font) on the headstock.