NancyJohnson

I'd wholeheartedly concur. If you're the type of person who gets moist over new Jazz and Precision basses, then you're going to be made up visiting GAK, Andertons, Guitar Guitar etc. There's nothing particularly special about them, they're just like instrument supermarkets, all selling the same price-fixed stuff.

I've always found it odd (and a little quaint) that people will continue to take this stance and shop at places with a storefront. Sure I can understand my 85 year old mother-in-law browsing round department stores, but in the main, we're all net-savvy and should know better. Barring my Barefaced win, all my current kit (guitars, basses, amps, stomps, enclosures, accessories) was all purchased sight unseen from Thomann, Andertons, Bass Direct or Amazon, honestly can't remember last time I bought anything from a music shop...possibly a Laney 2x10 from Kingfisher in Fleet early 90s. As a prodigious reader, the only shop I'd make any effort to use/visit would be Waterstones and even then only if they had a Waterstones-exclusive content or there was a signing I wanted to go to. I even buy shoes online. When all this was fields, I worked for a company that tried to dissuade online sales by the customer-base and only supplied businesses with a regular shops; eventually they trialled one customer online and realised very quickly how many units they could shift and the floodgates opened. Quicker than you could say Where's Montgomery? (chortle) we'd jumped in bed with Amazon and sales rocketed. The High Street as we know it is on it's last legs, folks. Nail shops, beauty parlours and hairdressers.

This came up again over the weekend. Mate of mine mentioned the (now long-gone) Horizons pavilion at the EPCOT centre and asked whether I remembered the small-scale holographic projection on part of the ride ('There's my wife talking to my daughter...'); it was a little 'Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope...' I suppose there's a degree of that concept at work here.

Can someone explain to me what you're likely to see if one were to attend one of these shows? I've seen a brief 50 second promo clip from the song Mama Mia and that's it. I'm interested, but I will not be going. I couldn't give a rat's bottom as to the technology behind it; at the end of the day whatever is up on stage isn't them and irrespective of how they've achieved the motion capture and do the projection isn't it just the equivalent of watching a film or video game? I just took a look at tickets; this thing is running until May 2023 (at least) and tickets are £40-£200, five days a week (Mon/Thu/Fri) with two shows a day at weekends. Jesus. But hey, we're all getting a £400 fuel rebate, so what better to spend it on, eh? Who needs to keep warm. The sadness (beyond the fact that people are shelling out a fortune to watch) is that it's almost certain Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley are rubbing their hands together and going, 'Oh man, do you realise we can sack the two imposters and still make a fortune into our eighties and we won't have to put these ridiculous outfits again.'

It carries the mark!

This, but with five strings:

Issues with both trapeziums, some weirdness with the middle finger on my right hand which may be an offshoot of one of the (difficult) five surgeries I've had on my hands. I take turmeric and gloucosemine phosphate if things get painful. Oh, one other thing, there's no such thing as being double-jointed. You just have the ability of hyperextension in the joint.

They're on late 60s Precisions, too: 1968 1966: 1964 1959!!

I find this mark fascinating...you can't unsee it now. I just spent the last 15 minutes looking at 70s Jazz Basses on Reverb; it's even visible on some of the more lighter-coloured sunbursts.

Most of the bands I like have either broken up, release stuff every three years or have just stopped releasing material. In the main it's more a case about waiting for these super-deluxe things with bonus and/or 5.1 content; Tears For Fears, Bernard Butler, XTC etc. I'm hoping Steven Wilson will be able to do more (pending location of the masters) in the XTC Surround Sound series or maybe do the same for Jellyfish or Sugarbomb. The only thing I am REALLY looking forward to is the second round of Max Richter's Four Seasons Reimagined (June'22). There's a few bands I'll hunt down new releases when they arrive, but I'm not getting particularly moist over them.

Well I guess it was easy to predict Ukraine winning it, but the UK second? Nah.

I enjoyed Eurovision this year. We had my best mate over with his wife; watched the FA Cup (even Chelsea losing didn't dampen things), ordered an Indian in, ate that and watched the last three songs and the voting. We had three cases of Brewdog Hazy Jane and made a decent dent in these.

This year?

A mate of mine mentioned Primus yesterday (and did I know about the Farewell To Kings gig). I know you posted this a couple of months ago, but my comment to him generally about Primus was that the component parts have pretty much everything I should adore, but I find the vocals very hard going. Sure I can live with stuff like My Name Is Mud, Winona or Too Many Puppies, but too much Primus makes my chest hurt.

Marina and The Diamonds. Martha and The Muffins. Martha Reeves and The Vandellas. God, there's tons. Booker T, Echo, Elvis Costello, Gladys Knight, Harold Melvin, Adam (and the) Ant(s), Joan Jett, Junior Walker.

If Gary brings the Axe, I'd suggest he also brings along a pair of boots.

A request; I'm curious about quality/build/tone differences between the US and Euro NS-designed models, any chance of at least one of each in comparable specs?

Weeee! Now you'll have the opportunity to hear what an NS Design NRT5 sound like through a dUg pedal. Can I ask a favour? Everyone who attends needs to have a sticker on them so we know who you are!

XTC Nonsuch.

As a teenager (late '70s), a school friend of mine went up to London (probably Denmark Street/Charring Cross Road) and bought a black Fender Precision (it had to be black, although strangely he sanded off the finish later). Where it gets interesting here was that he wanted some combination of body colour/neck material that wasn't off the shelf, so the shop swapped necks from other basses to suit. He decided he didn't like the Precision neck at all and the shop suggested a Jazz neck, which after a but of fettling was fitted to the Precision body on the spot. This is what he left the shop with. I'm always a little in awe that the shop went so far to satisfy a (young) customer's needs. I also wonder whether there's a late 70s Jazz Bass with a Precision neck in circulation anywhere!

Watched this earlier. Interesting if nothing else Didn't like her so much when I was a kid; she just seemed a bit intimidating and just plain odd. Decent clutch of singles but I know little about the album stuff. Might investigate.

Double posty fail.

[Edit] I've never had any issue with all these little things that seem to bother bass players; string tension, neck dive, nut width, weight etc. etc. I'm perfectly happy just picking up anything (so long as it doesn't carry a health warning) with four (or five strings) and playing it. I have a set of Markbass LongEvo strings on one of my Hamers (there was a promotion here a couple of years ago), I like them quite a bit; they have just the right amount of coarseness and they haven't gone off at all in the last year or so. The only reason I haven't used them more extensively is because of their scarcity although I'm aware they're available from BD now. NYXLs just didn't do it for me in the slightest, they dulled very quickly, a bit underwhelming. Back when I was playing every other night and rotating about a dozen (Thunderbird) basses, I'd favour D'Addario EXL or EPS strings as they were cheapish and cheerful, consistent, worked as expected and boiled up nicely for another gig BUT it was still costing me £50-60 a month to change the strings on two or three basses. Ultimately, string of choice is Elixir Nanowebs, I know they're more than twice the price of EXLs (don't get me started on the exorbitant cost of five string sets or where I've needed to buy a set of 14087s and a 15433 taperwound B-string), but I'll be damned if I've ever had a set that's not lasted five or six times longer than than a standard set of any other brand. It's just false economy. God knows what Elixir does during the manufacturing stage, but Nanoweb strings just don't die.

Out of curiosity, if the 1950s/60s Precision and Jazz basses came with high-mass bridges as standard 60 years ago, would the reaction to installing a BBOT unit right now be derisive?