NancyJohnson

I had a 5HH, same/similar colour. Honestly wish I'd persisted with it rather than just trying to better my bass collection (I did move it along to fund my Thunderbird obsession).

I have a fairly expensive piece of (discontinued) upholstery fabric up on eBay at the moment; it has hundreds of watchers. It's amazing the messages I've been sent about it. Chancers and beggars, yes. Many offers for 30/40% of what it's advertised for. Many requests to sell a metre or two. Many people asking me what I'd take for it (when I reply saying I'll take the buy-it-now price, they get shirty). The best one was a woman begging me to reduce the price because she didn't have much money and she needed the fabric because their daughter's Cockapoo (Trixie) had defecated on their sofa it was somehow my duty to sell it cheap to her so she could get new seat cushions made. It's like a game. For every dumb offer I get, I feel like adding £10 on the BIN price.

I don't think I've seen anyone mention this here, so just a heads up. If you're looking for some drum loops and have a method of routing Spotify content through a hi-fi/bigger speakers, I can wholeheartedly recommend a quick search on 'Ultimate Drum Loops'. There's hundreds of full rock/pop song loops on there, varying tempos, of 2-5 minute lengths.

Moi aussi.

Chortle.

I haven't gigged for about two years now, last one I did I just took a bass, headstock tuner, strap, a Sansamp of some sort and cables. I used to take a lot of kit, but in truth it was unnecessary to do so. [Edit] Earplugs.

I've been using Elixirs pretty much exclusively for maybe 8-10 years. Expensive, yes. Longlasting, yes. Great? Yes. The only strings that have made me question my preferred string choice is the MarkBass LongEvo sets. They're finally available for £34/£39 (4/5) at Bass Direct. Lovely strings.

Two of the guys I was jamming with at the time now own a successful mastering business, I spoke to one of them about five or six years ago and we really had a good laugh about the amp on fire story. Well, one of us did.

I've got a Darkglass 1x12. Small, capable etc.etc.

I had an Orange Matamp in the late 70s. Bought it from an ex-hire place in Chalk Farm, it used to belong to Davey Johnstone, Elton John's guitarist. Carried it home on the train. It always smelt odd, like Scaletrix, and met it's demise when it caught fire at someones house, smoke, spitting sparks and a bit of flame. We yanked the power cable and put the fire out with Coca Cola. Sold it to a place on Denmark Street for £60.00 that I probably spent on records at Virgin right after. In hindsight, I should have got it fixed, these are worth thousands now.

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.