NancyJohnson

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If you just want reassurance that the bass is comfortable from a seated position, rest assured that it is.

Don't forget The Shapes.

With the tripod - and despite me just playing at home - I seem the spend a bit if time dancing around the legs...there just doesn't seem to be a best position for it. I'll probably end up with one of their endpins at some point, but then we get into dilemma #2 of how to put it on a stand when you're done (the optional 'stand' brackets do not fit the supplied tripod!).

So, it's been five weeks since I got the NS NXT, so here's where we're at. To recap, I'd only played an upright twice before getting this for my birthday; I've been playing 15-30 minutes a day, generally along with random (slower) music off Spotify. (I've only played a fretted bass for one recording session in this period.) While I'm enjoying things, my only negative is with the (supplied) NS tripod stand; it's perfunctory but not ideal, so I would appreciate some input regarding endpins, which I think would better suit how I want to play. I suppose I also need to factor in whether they would extend far enough (I'm 6'4"). Otherwise, all good though. My wife adores the little Mick Karn mwaahs more than me playing all the right notes, and you know, I think the EUB is actually making regular (fretted) bass playing a bit more effortless.

Just an observation, pretty much any time RGD is on TV, it's like a drinking game. RGD says he's black (glug, glug, glug). RGD says he's American (glug, glug, glug). Yes mate, we get it.

I used to have girlish crushes on bands I'd discovered, the ones that nobody knew about. I do find though that these bands suffer diminishing returns once they become part of the mainstream. Much as I loved (for instance) Japan, the first two albums along with my on/off love affair with Quiet Life is enough; I honestly do not need to deep dive b-sides remixes from the later catalogue. Just as an aside, last year I made the splendid discovery of a handful of long-dead punky/alternative bands (with little or no Wikipedia data) where I scoured Discogs to just get everything.

Somewhere on my computer, there's a photo of a matt-black and de-chromed Jazz bass with a Status StingRay neck on it, which looked the nuts. As the Stingray neck is 1/2" or 12mm longer than a Jazz neck, there's a T*lkb*ss link below covering the process (the owner installed a Bad*ss bridge which allowed significant adjustment, rather than resitting the existing bridge forward). https://www.talkbass.com/threads/its-finished-introducing-the-status-jazzray-bass-long-post-with-pics.376597/ The

Initially (before I attached the neck), I ran a wide chisel round the neck pocket to ensure it was clean(ish) and there wasn't any big lumps of lacquer loitering in there, so before attachment #1 it was definitely a case that the angle of the pocket was slightly off - I can only assume that it's been like this its entire life. It's a tiny amount - I doubt the bit of card that I used was even as thick as a Christmas card, but it did the trick.

Afternoon and HNY. This is a long one - for good reason - and a copy/repost from elsewhere here. Seems an apt question to put to the masses. Anyhow, wife put the radio on, first track for 2022 is/was the final 30 seconds of Le Freak by Chic. There's a story that springs to mind every time I hear this song, although I'd actually also say with some certainty that, like Stairway To Heaven, I've never heard it all the way through. Back when all this was fields and I was in my teens, I played in a punk band called The Crime; I was in the 6th form at Strodes College, Egham, Surrey. Strodes was ex-grammar, the only grammar school kids there though were about 40 of Egham's most gifted, the 6th form were a few hundred oiks. I'd been approached by a couple of kids from the 5th year asking if I was the bass player they'd heard about ('I don't know, am I?'), at which point they told me they were playing the college's Valentine's disco three days time and could I play with them. I declined, they asked me again later in the day, so I said yes, jammed with them the next day and did the gig the next night (Friday). The Friday night arrived, I borrowed some khaki combats from my dad and tore up an old t-shirt; the main hall was rammed, the front half about 150 people dancing to music supplied by a local disco guy everyone knew as Fat Malcolm. Back of the hall and outside maybe 200+ punks. (I spoke to a mate earlier, he said there were loads outside too.) A few minutes before our allotted showtime, we were already on stage, standing behind these big curtains (45 minutes of covers by 999, Pistols, Rich Kids etc.); Fat Malcolm is playing Le Freak and making a Tony Blackburn style comment about, 'This is Chic and Le Freak, after this live music from The Criiiiime!'. Everything was live on stage as the chaos started. I distinctly remember our singer shouting, 'We're already 'ere ain't we?' into a live mic, a power-chord ringing out and the drummer trying to climb up a fairly high riser after throwing the curtain opening switch (he was later berated by staff for unauthorized use of electronic equipment). I peered through a crack in the curtain and witnessed the punk guys rushing to the stage, while the disco-dancers hi-jinked it to the to the back of the hall. I glanced over to Fat Malcolm who was desperately trying to get the lids on his disco-twin decks while all manner of stuff was being thrown (and spat) at both him and us. The stylus on one of the decks was skating across Le Freak under a hail of bottles and phlegm. I was laughing uncontrollably for 45 minutes; I knew right then that this was, after barely playing two years, my happy place and I'd always find happiness in music, whatever the genre. I remember little of the gig aside from the sea of punks pogoing, gobbing and stage diving, wads of phlegm covering the stage and the singer. At one point someone threw a Party Seven can (full of wee) that rose spinning and spraying. Arching away, it sailed past me and hit the drummer full in the chest, knocking him off his riser. We didn't miss a note. So there you are. While I've never actually heard Le Freak all the way through, but just a few bars of it remind me of this.

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?