NancyJohnson

Stone Temple Pilots. I'm listening to STP.

Elixir or Markbass coated for me. They're both fantastic string sets. Wouldn't bother with any other coated sets, simple as.

I'm off to Reading this Friday to see Dronningen. Back when I was doing a lot of gigs with the old band, I reckon I gigged with them eight or nine times across London and the home counties. I adore them immensely and they've become great friends. Theatrical Love is the last single (another one next month). If you scroll down, we collaborated with them a couple of years ago; we gave them a rough mix of something we were doing and Beatrice did the vocals and Vito added some extra guitars.

I'm always curious about stuff like this. What are you actually expecting from the swap? The only swaps I felt were absolutely necessary were where the pickup was dead, had an underlying issue or was missing completely. In a blind test would you be able to identify what pickup is in there?

If I can just throw in something else here, the washer is missing here: These are little nylon washers that effectively lubricate the rotation between the machine head peg and the tuning mechanism. Inevitably, the tightening of the tuner will just mean it'll just tighten against the mechanism cover. You do need to have something in there. By way of a temporary fix just get one of these, make a hole in it so it fixes snugly around the shaft, nip off the rest of it and reinstall the tuning key/peg.

Went to a wedding a few years back and sat next to Paul Roberts at the reception. Lovely bloke. During the dessert course, he just got up and sang a short set of big-band/rat-pack standards (to backing tracks) while walking around the guests! We had a long chat...he was always going to be on a hiding to nothing; I honestly felt sorry for him when he talked about the level of hate/indifference he got from early Stranglers fanboys who just wanted Hugh Cornwell to come back. Early in the evening, he did a short Stranglers set, again to backing tracks. It was quite surreal to see all the family elders bopping away to No More Heroes and Peaches.

Loaded question. Why?

It's a bit Jet Screemer.

When I first saw these (see my first post with the two flowery inlays), my first thought was that the fretboards may have been bought-in and perhaps CNC'd in China (or somewhere). Maybe the necks look as lumpy as the fronts.

I found two more. The maker is Hart Guitars...England. Credit to the guy for having a go, but damn.

There's hundreds of them. Noted author Mark Phillips aside, I saw these on eBay a while back and they were so awful it was worth taking screengrabs. No idea who made them. Lest we forget...

I know that the bridge pickup ruins the look.

This is going to run and run. It's all so speculative. In a many cornered boxing ring, in one corner you're going to have the Leo got it right team, who will always say it's all about Precisions and Jazz basses. In another corner, you'll have the Gibson mob, waxing lyrical about various EBs and Thunderbirds. Then you'll have the Modern Crew, which will be all about Spectors. In another the Japanese traditionalists. In another corner, Rickenbackers. And so on. Despite the amount of money I've haemorrhaged on gear over the decades, I'd readily admit that if you have a nicely set up bass with a PJ pickup configuration, tonally you're pretty much good to go for any situation. All these other things, shape, colour/finish, woods, nut width etc. make no difference (*as proven). Just an observation on the whole punk thing, while the ethic was supposedly all about making music from nothing/cheap instruments, but it's not unsurprising that most of the early bands were actually using quite high end gear (Gibson/Fender/Rickenbacker). I do wonder if things might have been different if Glen Matlock/Paul Simonon/Dee Dee/JJB/Foxton etc had not favoured Fender basses long term (yes, I know several used 4001s).

I saw a load of signed Brian May stuff when I went to pick up my EUB from the Bass Centre about a year ago. Barry Moorehouse had been over to see him that morning.

Gold star. Yup, I bought a Gibson Theodore. While I appreciate it's somewhat of a visual oddity (and while it certainly won't win any prizes in a beauty contest, monstrosity is a bit harsh), I had a quick noodle on it and it plays/balances/sounds (and smells) wonderful - it's back in the case/box and probably won't come out until I decide to sell it. It's limited to 318 (106 each, natural, cherry, ebony). There's only a couple left on sale globally (I got mine for well under what these are on sale for).

Nooo. And it's not what you think it is...

I suppose as my signature tone is gnarly/gritty, I can just dial that in and leave the Sansamp(s) on top of the amp. This isn't to say I've never used or bothered with any other outboard kit, but live it's either been plug-in or BassPOD/Sansamp.

Woop.

I must return that to you.

Here's what I do. Nowadays I rarely have anything pre-prepared, so I'll just see what inspiration hits me. Open PC. Open Cakewalk, open new session, drop in two drum loops (beat/fill), set tempo, plug in guitar into audio interface, set levels and see what happens. Mainly I'll just noodle for about 15 minutes and if nothing useful happens, I'll just close everything down and go and read a book.

New album by New Zealand alternative band The Beths. It's just glorious jangly pop. Lovely.

I was just going through some old pages here. I can't believe it was ten years ago. I remember this like it was yesterday. I was young then. Well, younger.

I've got an Alto TX210 (for sale in the for sale section yonks ago folks). It's pretty small, 300w. Cracking but of kit. This should do the job.

If you daisy-chain them from one output, it'll be 4ohms. The Tonehammer 500 has two outputs, I'm not sure how the head handles things if you took an output to each cabinet - so for instance, if you fed an 8ohm enclosure from each one does this load go down to 4ohms ('maximum load'). Don't know.

They're lovely cab(s). Great build quality, lovely tonally, capable.