NancyJohnson

I really like Josi's pickups...they're like £20 a pop or something. I've got a pair of his P94s in another guitar and used some of his zebra humbuckers in something else. I've just wired the PJ units straight into the selector switch and then into the volume control. It honestly doesn't need anything else. It's lovely and bright sounding. Honestly can't see why there's a market for all these boutique pickups.

I saw that and just heard cash registers ringing! There's money in them thar hills! I'm not certain (to quote Old Horse Murphy), whether this is a keeper. I'm going to take it up to the studio mid-month and that'll be the deciding factor. I wish the paint job had come out a little better, but it does look mice. I did feel a little let down with the Crimson lacquer, but much like many post-modernist paintings, it looks better from a distance.

In reality, it should be simple to make your own template. There's very likely someone within walking distance of your house that has access to a CNC machine that could cut you a routing template in seconds.

In answer to the OP, no. Cheapest bass is an Aria Pro II Primary bass (obtained as part of three guitar and practice amp job lot/Gumtree £50). Most expensive is a Mike Lull custom build, nudging £6K. I'm happy playing anything to be honest; I can afford nice kit, so why not. I'm not really drawn to commonplace instruments, so I don't own a Jazz or Precision, for instance. I'm drawn to the different.

By way of observation (as I'm always on the lookout for rare stuff), I'm staggered how much some of the XTC boxsets (Transistor Blast and Coat Of Many Cupboards) and Andy Partridge Fuzzy Warbles go for. Also post Seeds Of Love Tears For Fears stuff on CD seems to be quite expensive too. On the subject of Tears For Fears, I have two limited SDE editions of The Tipping Point coming (three bonus tracks on the CD and the Steven Wilson 5.1 BluRay version - 2,000 copies), these are already on eBay - even though it's not out until tomorrow. One of the blurays sold for £170.00, the CD has plenty sold at £70+ a pop.

Just on the subject of Glen Matlock, let's not forget he is largely absent from NMTB (Steve Jones handled bass duties), so it's probably better to listen to the Sp*nk bootleg than what qualified as the official release. Throwing something else into the mix here, to this day (well last Friday, actually) I will continue to point people into Glen's first post-Pistols project (the) Rich Kids. Some 44 years (forty four years!) after the release of Ghosts Of Princes In Towers, this album continues to be in my top five albums. It may actually be my favourite album of all time.

Though I was in my early teens when punk kicked off, the feeling on the ground was that The Stranglers were little more than an (old) pub rock band that got lucky. They were more than twice our age. In a school of 1,500 kids, you fell into one of two or perhaps three (Premier League) factions; Sex Pistols, The Clash or The Jam. That was broadly it. Then a group of us discovered The Shapes (very much a League 2 side).

#snakeoil

The idea of the shielding is to stop/reduce interference from outside sources (dimmer switches/electronic anomalies); the slug tape alternative was suggested to me by John East. I'm not certain that it's necessary to connect the strips together; any adhesive overlap should have sufficient conductive properties to create a sealed enclosure, plus the pots will also be in contact with it as well. This is the first time I've ever seen the words conductive and glue in the same sentence!

It's odd with Queen, for a long time they seemed highly protective of their musical legacy, but the last few years they've been going the whole hog monetising the brand. While we're not talking Kiss levels of branding, it is quite shocking how they expanded things to include the musical, the movie, the various Brian May guitars and how their music is slowly creeping into a lot of advertising. Don't get me started on the almost weekly announcements by the Queen reissue programme. Cassettes anyone? I do feel all this seems to be driven by May; I'm sure Taylor and Deacon are fully on board. Incidentally, Brian May used to frequent the Half Moon in Windlesham for the odd lunch. My god-daughter Chloe served him a few times, explaining he'd have a baked potato with cheese and was not a big tipper.

By way of an alternative, search on Amazon for adhesive copper slug repellent tape. Same thing, fraction of the price.

In our drive for betterment (combined with the desire to get shot of old equipment in trades/part -exchange), this quote alone upsets me a little.

The thing I want to know is you traded all that stuff for that?

I'm still trying to eat an entire Papa John's XXL Mexican pizza (with anchovies) in one sitting, but feel this is beyond me. Wordle in one would be nice. Unsure whether impossible desire qualifies as GAS. If so, then nothing.

So many factors affecting tone that are simply not down to the shape of the pickups alone; avoiding to go down the route of everything sounds more or less the same anyway, I can hear subtleties in the P/J sets on the four basses I own that have them - all have different characteristics (for the record, a pair of Hamers (one with EMG GZRs and the other with the stock 80s DiMarzios), a Spector (Barts) and my Ibanez project (Warmans)). I don't like an isolated P pickup tone (nor for that matter the ponky tone of a Jazz pickup in the bridge position), but both on at the same time just seems to work. I suppose I'm a two pickup bloke. Always have been.

I only do original material, so at the very least I'm not being measured against someone else's lines and all my work over the last two years has been remote; the guys I do stuff for know my strengths so in general I'm good. That said, I did have a similar exchange to the OP where I struggled with a looped live drum thing where the producer had mixed up two very different time signatures (for the hell of it, let's just say 11/4 and 7/6) which repeated on a bar and a half cycle, before dropping into a 4/4 time signature for the chorus. The odd-timing was hard enough to resolve, but the drums on the loop were very boomy (and quite musical, if that makes sense) and it just felt that everything I played sounded out of tune. This went back and forth quite a few times; I wasted hours on it and then it never got used.

I refinished a Ibanez with leather dye, Crimson lacquer, then spray clear coats. The leather dye was fine, just make sure you've got all the old finish off. The leather dye may raise the grain, so just lightly sand it back and reapply. I wasn't happy with the Crimson lacquer at all; I tried applying with wadded kitchen paper (as recommended), then brushed it on. After several coats, I knocked it back with wet and dry (1200+) and it came off very easily, so I had patches where I was back to bare wood. I reapplied the leather dye and just bought some clear coat rattle cans from Amazon. These went on easily...couple of coats, light sand with wet and dry, repeat. And repeat. It just got to the stage where I was losing the will to live, so decided to just park things at this point. It looks fine, satinesque, but it's never going to be a showroom finish. Fine for me though.

People get paid for gigs?

This rack was the backbone of my live sound for a while. In the main there was an RBI in the preamp slot, which I upgraded to the Geddy Lee unit (which stopped working properly very quickly). The Aguilars were a short-lived experiment, not lively enough for me (too hifi).

I'm probably too far down the thread for this but here's my opinion. Back in the 70s, never really had a huge vinyl collection, but what I did realise early on was how fragile it was, so whatever I bought was immediately recorded to cassette (even home taped cassettes sounded clearer than official ones). I embraced CD, MiniDisc, MP3/FLAC, streaming services and right now I'd say that I'm more interested in convenience and listening to the song rather than getting into protracted arguments about the whys and wherefores of the format it's derived from. Concerning the uptake of vinyl amongst the younglings, the siblings of friends are buying records like they're buying clothes, if that makes sense. They don't seem to care about what they're buying, it's just about 'buying some vinyls', like it's a fashion statement; also an observation from said parents, once bought, they're never played again ('they just use Spotify'). There also seems to be this thing that they'll avaoid certain records if they don't come with some kind of download code as well, which leads the question of, 'So what's the point?' One last thing, do records made now sound the same as the same ones made 30 or 40 years ago? I was played a Led Zeppelin album from the 70s, the old vinyl was big, loud and full-sounding, the same album from a recent reissue was quite thin and considerably less robust. This raises the question of mastering and what new albums are mastered from. A couple of years ago, there was a lengthy thread on a Japan Facebook page about the Abbey Road half-speed masters of Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Tin Drum. I think these may have been on heavier vinyl too. Many posters were berating the pressings (surface noise/warpage/general quality control/sound generally), but aren't these bumps, crackles and pops the facets of vinyl that people love as much as the music thereon as it provides character?. There just seems to be this thing (ignorance/stupidity?) that because Abbey Road is associated with the mastering process it's got to be good, hasn't it? [Edit] In the last few days I've worked out that I can integrate a turntable with a Bluetooth output into my Sonos network without having to fork out for a Sonos Amp or a Five. I was thinking about getting a Pro-Ject deck to facilitate this so I could have a listen to some records that aren't up on any streaming platform; I have no desire whatsoever to start buying records, new or used. I'm not a sap. My wife kindly offered to get me one for my birthday (ten months off in December), and didn't actually baulk at the cost (£400). I don't know. It's a lot of money just to listen to a handful of records.

OK, moving along, the attachment mechanism is held in place by a split spring roll dowel pin like the one pictured below. It passes through the main pole and the bracket that holds the mechanism. I'm not even certain how I'd get it out, to be honest. I've gone back to Barry the Bass Centre to ask whether they carry spares. They're only a couple of miles from me, so we'll see what they have.

Haha. Sorry, I have quite an intense day job and I'm not monitoring Basschat 24/7. OK, to follow on here, the pole in the speaker stand is 35mm, the lower part of the NS stand is 30mm and the top part (where the attachment mechanism is) is 25mm. As you'll see from this image, the 25m post is crimped and the attachment mechanism is either compression-pressed on or joined by an (invisible) weld, irrespective, there doesn't appear to be any easy way of pulling it off or unscrewing it. Now then. I've done a few searches already to see whether there's any off the shelf parts to facilitate a step down sizing thing from 35mm to 25mm; there is something called a top-hat converter made by a company called FBT in the UK, that might do the trick (similar things seem available). This fits over the top of a 35mm pole and has a 25mm top, that said, I'd still need to attach the NS attachment to it somehow.

We had a sound guy once who said something about owning your own frequency; adding a bit of mids will allow you to own the low-end wobble and effectively cut through into frequencies that aren't really evident...it's like magic and doesn't really change your perception of what you sounded like in isolation. Our guitarist at the time loved a very dirty bassy tone, so by way of compensation I always rolled the treble up on whatever amp set-up I was using. Pre-gig this one particular time, the sound guy and I nefariously changed some of the guitarists tone settings while he was getting a beer and then I did mine on the fly a few seconds before we started playing. Guitarist said afterwards that even from his position he thought we sounded awesome compared to previous gigs.

They should do some with Gibson headstocks.

I'll admit I was suprised to see the BH550. What is the tone in your head? A close approximation will suffice. You mentioned this in your OP. What are your current cab(s)? What style of music do you play?