NancyJohnson

I know I've been guilty about moaning about the lack of innovation at the big players (and reliance on core models), here though it's the opposite. Too much so. That said, I skimmed through 100+ pages, got to the end of the bass stuff and frankly saw absolutely zero that appealled to me in the slightest.

New Year's Eve update. Got a note back from Josi (Warman) saying he's off until next week, so decided to just bolt everything together and see how it plays/intonates. Obviously there's no guts in it yet. Neck on and off a couple of times. No issues with straightness, it's fine, however I did put a shim the neck in the front of the neck pocket as the neck was angling too far back; it's got two thin slithers of card from a hot cross bun packet in there. I suspect this is going to be too much, but as strings and neck will come off again next week, I can remove one of them then. It stays in tune and intonated without adjustment. I'm going to let the neck settle at tension for a day or two. *Edit. Took out one of the pieces of card out. Bolted her back together and gave her another quick set up. Lovely. Here she is:

No regret, but I played an off-the-rack sub-£500 Schecter at Andertons about three years ago and it was amazingly good. Way better than everything in the bass room.

I remember him with a Travis Bean.

The BOD plugin is free and works great. The only thing I would point out is that we trouble ourselves so much with 'getting the tone', but by and large once everything is mixed, the nuances we strive to achieve in isolation, just get lost in the final mix (that is, of course unless you have passages where the bass is just playing on it's own).

We got a Sonos Roam thing for Christmas, it's in the bedroom. We decided to listen to Max Richter's Sleep. It's eight hours...very relaxing; been on for about 40 minutes. Wife is asleep already and she REALLY struggles to drop off. The idea behind this is you just leave it on overnight.

I absolutely detest NYE; always felt like I was being forced into spending £££s on rounds, having faux-fun with a bunch of secondhand strangers I couldn't care less about and not getting to bed until 4.00am. I'd sooner - and will - be at home, dinner, bottle of red and having a decent night's sleep. No fecking Hootenanny or Chic on the Beeb, either. That's what I'll be doing.

If I'd had the East installed where the bass was made (Seattle), it would have cost considerably more than doing it myself, so the bass was shipped as passive. It was always going to be active.

No, they swing. Oh, tee hee

The Krankies. They swing. Oh, tee hee.

I suppose I'm as guilty as the next person where tweaking specs/altering stock instruments goes, but in all cases I'll consider the worth of the instrument, the necessity of the upgrade and whether the cost is warranted. Every bass I buy gets Dunlop Straploks. A couple have D-tuners. Both (IMO) cheap and worthwhile upgrades. Stepping up a bit, pickups; I put a (secondhand/as new) EMG Geezer Butler PJ set into an old Hamer as the matched P-unit was hokey. Sub £90, decent upgrade, enough left from £150 for a chip supper. Rule of thumb? Shop around, check the for sale section here. That said, in my case a £200 John East unit on a £5.5k bass? Yes, but on a £350 instrument? No, not so much. As @Raymaninferred, a lot of money is wasted on upgrades.

...which arguably resulted in the best Motley album by a country mile. I honestly wish they'd stuck with John Corabi.

While I did go, 'oooh' when I saw this, a while back, I'd probably have been over this like a tramp on chips, but right now, nah.

Shall we start throwing cabbages and rotten fruit at ol' Geddy?

Allegedly, back in the '60s a load of sunburst Fenders that came to the UK had defective nitro finishes or were blemished. I'm not 100% whether it was Selmer or CBS/Arbiter, but the bodies were reworked with solid colours over the original sunburst (light sanding/respray). I'm intrigued by these. Not 100% whether they went back to the US or whether the work was done here. Anyone?

A while back I had Mustang bass with a maple-board neck. I'd have preferred a rosewood one. I was on a message (or two - from MB1 (RIP)) quoting the no trades thing and saying I needed to quote a price. I didn't want to sell the neck, I just wanted to swap it. It did seem a little odd that board rules said I could sell it (and be without a neck), but I couldn't swap it. While I understand the rules (I'm paid up to allow me to advertise), it did seem a bit odd that there was a no-swapsies rule. Couldn't the same rule apply? If you're paid up, you can swap kit?

If there's one thing we should learn from the last 20 months, it's that the virus doesn't care how many fingers you stick up at it. I stuck many fingers up at it and it got me last month; just be careful.

I will use it, yep. Don't know what on, mind. All my kit gets used in some capacity/rotation.

I need a John East Uni-Pre5 for a project, but that's about it. I spent too much this year, way too much. We all know how this goes though. I might say I only need the East, but if, well, you know.

If they did one in high gloss flamed black (so like the blue one, but black). I'd be giving it some consideration. The only thing in my head is that the desire for a Spectorbird was more about the desire/ownership of something made in very small numbers (if that makes sense). Aside from a EuroLT, none of my (current) flock of basses are particularly mainstream, high volumes. The desire to own one of these may wane when every Tom, Richard or Harry is using them.

When I'm recording at home, someone else's home or studios generally, the process really isn't that much different. The more recent stuff I've been doing involves me basically plugging into a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 , the bigger studio I've used recently (at Miloco, but now relocated to Canning Town) just utilises a bigger Scarlett (18i20), so effectively the same. I will try to record two streams at one time by routing a signal into two channels and assign these to their own virtual track; so, one clean/dry and the other effected (either a Tech21 dUg or GED-2112DI) - as I said earlier, my live tone is generally quite gnarly, so I want to hear that while I record. Engineers however prefer a clean bass that they can effect later. I'll shoot these to different channels which gives the engineer the facility to either go with the dry recording or effected. Or both. Or just use the dry track and apply a VST* to it in post. I would never expect my bass work to just pass through without any work being done to it, so I would expect it to be EQ'd, comped etc. I would not record with any compression. *VSTs (as you asked). Just on the subject of these, most of the guys I know use the TSE BOD plug-in for bass. It's a very close approximation of the Sansamp BDDI and it's free. The Canning Town studio uses the Ampeg Suite VST (or maybe its predecessor Ampeg SVX), so with that you can take the dry signal and emulate different cabs/heads/microphones/effects. Interestingly, the old SVX VST used to allow you to simulate various mics, distance from the cabs, size of room.

Final pre-Chrimbo update. I'm not going to do more on the paint... it's not a museum piece and I'm okay with it. Started assembly. I'm waiting on a replacement J-pick, but this is where we're at. Neck isn't bolted on yet. More soon. Happy Christmas.

I'll just throw something else in here. You can easily assign bass to one track and use VSTs after. My tone is best described as gnarly; I do have a problem envisaging the end product if I record clean, but there's some great VSTs out there, many free, that can shape your vision.

Doris Day. I'm listening to Doris Day

I didn't say she was vegan. I just used her as a point of reference. Keep up, bonny lad.