NancyJohnson

It's odd how familiar I am with this one song; I think it got under my skin as a guy on BBC Berkshire played it virtually every day when he was wrapping things up at the end of his show. I'll profess I haven't listened to another song by this band until about 20 minutes ago when I saw them mentioned on Spotify's release radar/new releases - I listened to a few minutes of the new album - the instrumental intro and I bailed out as soon as the singing started. Shame. So whaere did I go? What is spinning at Johnson Towers?. Bob Mould/Sugar mix.

You remember when I played at that place in Putney? There wasn't even a door on the utilities, just a curtain.

This is it, spot on. India and heavy. I'd add that it's a perfectly decent bass for anyone looking for a project. From memory, the neck was very chunky. I bought one for £20 one time. Sanded the body back, resprayed with matching headstock (which I sanded off again), put a better bridge on it and installed a Warman pickup. Bashed it about a bit. Perfectly acceptable back up bass or for playing those places where you wouldn't lose too much sleep if it got nicked. Sold here yonks ago.

I played one of these a while back at Anderson's. Not really my thing, but it was a country mile ahead of all the other stuff that was hanging on the walls in there. It played beautifully, tonally alive. Also the J4; given that the Schecter J4 Jazz (also nice looker/player) is retailing at £799, you'd think these would come up for £500-600 on the used market.

£700 can buy a lot of bass if you're prudent, you hold out for something you really want and you're prepared to haggle. Recently paid £550 for a 1986 Hamer; US made model. On receipt it needed a decent set up (all good), Dunlop Straploks (which I would have done anyway). I have replaced the stock DiMarzios with a used EMG Geezer Butler PJ set, but I'm still well under the £700 limit.

Whenever I hear PRS speak, always reminds me of Sebastian Bach.

Well, the two most expensive ones (Lulls) were small shop instruments - I do wonder how much input Mike Lull had in the making of these and how things will progress now that he's passed away (the business seems in good hands with his son Spencer taking over). The two Hamers are 1980s models and damn you Fender for shutting them down.

I've got six basses that have cost me from £30 to £5.5k, so a pretty broad price range, but they all give me joy. They're all set up broadly the same, action borderline rattly and in truth with a degree of tweaking amp side, they all sound similar. Thing is, I've always liked to be surrounded by nice stuff and I've worked long and hard paying the mortgage and bills, so with the house paid, it was time to throw some swag at (subjectively) better kit. I can appreciate that more work has gone into the expensive kit - the fit and feel is immediately identifiable - but I can't warrant the £5,470 price difference, no. It's all just wood and metal.

Thanks mate! 14087 & 15433 it is then!

I suspect that the way to go here is an extra long nickel Elixir Nanoweb 4-string set (.45-105, SKU# 14087) and a tapered single (.130, SKU# 15433).

Anyone using Nanowebs on their 5-strings? My Lull has a 35.5" scale, two part bridge, ball-end is about 2" behind the B-string saddle, so I need strings with at least a 37.5" pre-taper length. I just need an accurate measurement for where the taper starts if anyone can help (the more the merrier) - I don't trust the Strings Direct one-size-fits-all method of measuring. Elixir do Extra-Long sets and low-B singles, so it maybe be a case of buying a four string set and an extra-long B. Cheers

Pulled the trigger on a second Tourtech ABS case. These are wonderful things for the price. For the first time ever, I'm hardcased up. If I get a minute I might pull my Hamer FBIV out storage and see whether it fits as well...if so, I may get another one next month and sell on the Epiphone HSC it currently lives in.

My first car only cost £650.00. It likely made me feel as happy as that Cost of credit fee would make the purchaser sad!

My two Lulls are well detailed elsewhere, certainly Bass Direct (who handled the sale this side) took a cut, but to be honest I could have done it all myself and gone direct should that opportunity have been made available to me at the time (it wasn't), but I suppose I can dine out answering questions such as, 'You paid how much??' for a while yet. Otherwise, go vintage.

I keep trying to put something together to support prices US vs VS, but am struggling to keep it clear. Let's initially agree that street prices for the Snowy Night StingRay are effectively double here against the US (Andertons; £3,000 against Guitar Center; $2,300/£1,750). We have no idea what price Ernie Ball sells to Guitar Center for, nor do we know what they sell into Strings & Things for before they sell into Andertons. Truth be known, every business these basses go through will be adding a charge that ultimately gets passed onto the end customer, so in the US the distribution chain is likely to be short, Ernie Ball > Guitar Center, whereas over here it's more likely to be Ernie Ball > Strings & Things > Andertons; plus you'll need to factor in shipping, tax duties, $/£ exchange rates, to land these instruments here, so things will fluctuate. I worked in retail finance (wristwatches) for ten years, one of the biggest watch companies on the planet, and was staggered at the levels of markup, the manufactturing/parts cost for a watch costing £800 street may only account for 15% of the selling price, so it's feasible that a $2.3k bass may only cost $300 to manufacturer. The key thing here though is we don't know what ErnieBall sell into Guitar Center for, any more than we know the landed price to Strings and Things and what their selling price to Andertons is, but be sure that they won't be selling on for a £10 profit per bass.

Me too. A 5HH. Sold it to cover the cost of a Thunderbird. Well, of course I did. It was a ridiculous instrument, the pre-amp was uncontrollable tonally (long story), but the design, playability, comfort and looks made it just weird enough to make it special. I wouldn't mind mind another one at some point. It would have to be a matt black/stealth one. 5HH.

I understand duties and tax ramping prices up, I'm also cognizant of dealer mark ups as well, but pricewise consider Andertons currently have 53 Musicman guitars and basses on sale for £2K+; these aren't boutique guitars, produced in small numbers, these are production line instruments. Why anyone would want to aspire to owning a fairly commonplace instrument and paying that sort of money for it is beyond me. A quick scan on eBay shows you can pick up a fairly minty vintage Stingray (20+ year old instrument) for half the new UK retail price - I just saw a paid listing for a 1991 Stingray - which had seen some action and looked better for it - that sold for under £800.00. Don't get me wrong, I owned about a dozen Gibson Thunderbirds at one time, so I know what it's like to be in love with an instrument, but only one of them was brand new (I didn't bond with it). I've moved on. Small luthiers (Lull) and discontinued luthiers (Hamer) are the way to go for me; the closest I have to a production line bass is a Czech Spector. I'd concur that we are a fickle bunch that in general find change (or anything new) laughable or abhorrent. All the manuafacturers have tried to do new stuff and met with disdain and discontinuation. The big money sadly isn't in Fender Dimension basses, or Gibson EB4s or Musicman Bongos (and so on); it's in the core models, Stingray, Thunderbird, Jazz/Precision, Streamers, NS model Spectors. These are the models that keep the new bass marketplace active.

They just look like Stingrays to me. All these companies, Fender, Gibson etc. there's nothing new to see really, no innovation. It's just about putting sparkly finishes on 45 year old designs.

Without hesitation I'd say my forte is in arranging, I've never been big on repetition for the sake of it and I do like material to carry interesting/unexpected key/time-signature changes within the confines of the songs to keep it interesting. Yes, I have been called a pain in the donkey because of this and I don't doubt this to be the case, but I'd counter by saying the material has always benefitted from excising chunks and mixing it up a bit. This though, is something different. This is all about (to my ears at least) having some tweak mixes down and then having someone master (never met him, don't know him), who clearly needs his ears syringed. Despite my age, my ears are still working pretty well. While subjective, and within the bounds of our musical genre, I'd like to think I know what sounds like it has some shizzle and what sounds like it's been mastered by someone who clearly doesn't have a clue. It's all a bit soul destroying to be honest.

The second one is up. I'm not making this up, to garner plays (or sympathy) but this sounds even worse. I can just hear the levels going up an down during the songs. You put in so much effort and, well, umm, it just sounds sh*t. https://open.spotify.com/album/6V6syE387dIu2ELc2XUYy8?si=qnUkgglBQAiGZIJLEvE5ew&utm_source=copy-link

Individual Cheese Portions.

Initially, I just de-soldered everything, then popped out the unit and battery box. I found a wiring schematic online and just re-did the wiring. When I installed the John East, I went with a Uni Pre-4 unit (https://www.east-uk.com/product/uni-pre-4-knob/).