NancyJohnson

As a grown up big boy, I'm beyond the whole my little secret/guilty pleasure thing. If The Carpenters make me feel warm and fuzzy, why keep it to myself? What next for Basschat? What's your favourite colour?

I suppose the one prominent voice here over the last week or two is/was Bjork, claiming Spotify was the worst thing etc. It's worth bearing in mind that irrespective of the royal rate per play, she could potentially net $3-5k per million plays, she has one track that's off her first or second album that's on 79 million plays, so potentially $300k for one song, recorded and released 30-odd years ago. There's others over 50m plays. I've no idea what her deal with Elektra/One Little Indian is/was, so any revenue from sales is open to supposition, but let's say she's made a comfortable income from this platform and she's on Apple/Deezer/Tidal. If she hates Spotify so much, come off the platform. Don't bite the hand that feeds.

There's a red Scarab for sale in Brighton. Gumtree (mucho £££, lots of wear).

We've gone the Sonos route throughout the house; stereo pairs around the house and our main listening room (lounge) has a stereo pair and a mini-sub. I'd say without hesitation that tonally the lounge set up is easily on par with what it replaced (Arcam/B&W), irrespective of the source.

I'd concur about the discovery factor. Streaming platforms are a bit divisive on several levels; people taking this stance about royalties and audio quality. On the first point of royalties, I often wonder why people feel so hard done by for artistes; I worked on projects decades ago and I know some of my work is still being used today in old employers systems. Why should I expect ongoing royalties, whereas musicians/bands still expect a cheque once in a while. Don't get it. Audio quality. Argument is subjective and let's face it, I doubt 99.9% of Spotify users would be able to tell the difference between a FLAC/MP3/whatever file format.

Screams - Screams Charlie Sexton Sextet - Under The Wishing Tree Blue Tears - Blue Tears XTC - Instruvenus/Waspstrumental Straw - Keepsakes Green wheel - Soma Holiday Girl - Sheer Greed Fortune Drive - A Modern Question

Wife asked, 'Why isn't everything on Spotify?' Went through a brief thing about rights issues, ownership, disputes, maybe artists just don't want their stuff on an online platform. I just mentioned there was stuff by a few bands that I'd love to hear again but because my taste is a bit eclectic and much of this saw release on small (now defunct) labels, this material is never going to resurface. So this weekend's question, what's missing for you?

Many moons ago, I witnessed a headline band in a small club drink through their rider (which, as the venue refused to provide more alcohol, resulted in me walking into town with their frontman to Oddbins for more spirits). Frontman of said band (according to another guy present in venue), did 'two massive lines of coke and slumped into a big chair, his eyes were rolling in their sockets.' He'd recovered sufficiently and was smoking a huge doobie on the way to the stage. I can testify they played an absolute blinder. They ran out of songs and played a couple twice. I would also cite the many times I saw Motley Crue early on. Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee were clearly under the influence and seemed to pull it together for showtime. Over the years I've been around an awful lot of drugs, but I've never been interested in the slightest, I've never even tried smoking, I just knew from my parents that it was just horrible. In the main, all these guys using were great players. Maybe drug usage just made things flow better. In answer to the OP, I suppose yes, sometimes.

Cheers, bonny lad! For the record, if you need a guard cut, hit Tim up. Great comms, top work! I think he laser cuts on clear acrylic, so you can have pretty much any design you want. Top bloke!

In answer to your last paragraph, it's going to be a little difficult to identify a bass based on a photo of the control cavity and a description that it's got two holes on the headstock fascia. There were dozens of brands coming out of Japan in the 60s/70s; more photos needed!

I'll say from the outset that I'm not a fan of PP; I can hear the talent and realise he's a bit of a journeyman player but, as a player that is fundamentally from punky and alternative background, I was certainly not a fan of the mwah that was synonymous over so many records from the early 80s. I absolutely hated that he became a member of NIN for a while. Moving along, he's had a signature Fender bass, endorsements from other bass and string manufacturers and now we're at these strings. His early signature tone was created with a stock bass, off the shelf strings and un-modded amplification; he sounded like he did largely through his technique (which he openly admitted was drawing from Percy Jones and Mick Karn - two people not mentioned on his Wiki page). So, an open question here: what do you guys think a signature set of strings is going to bring to your game? Just because they have his name on them, what are you expecting they'll do for you?

I caught up with Barry about a month ago, he's a top bloke and it's always great to have a natter about Wapping and his trade show experiences are priceless. Ask him what SWR and Hartke stand for!

I will cite the XTC/Tears For Fears boxes here (again), but with all these - obviously original albums aside - you do genuinely seem to get a ton of bonus audio material bundled in, in the shape of demos, unreleased, 5.1/Atmos mixes and all fairly reasonably priced. Dare I say it, I feel a bit disgusted at the route that Rush are going with their reissue program. How many times can you resell/repackage material? Most of these albums have been expanded and reissued in the last decade. Does anyone really need a comic book? Does anyone need to shell out $400 for maybe six (exclusive) recordings. Perhaps Ged needs the swag to bolster his wine collection or baseball ephemera. I'm holding out for the $1,500 wax cylinder edition in a limited edition picnic basket, with a Snow Dog action figure. Save your money. Take the missus out for a nice dinner instead.

I've had Fabrique by Fashion on rotation yesterday and today. Fantastic early '80s electronica. At my wife's request of, 'Can you please listen something else, eh?', I'm listening to the deluxe version of Throwing Copper by Live. Handful of bonus tracks and their Woodstock '94 set. Quite maaaarvelous.

I was firmly in the passive camp until I got my Spector Euro LX; I just found the Darkglass preamp added enough to my setup to brighten things up. On board circuitry beats all...plus (in most cases), you can turn it off. I've put John East and Darkglass preamps in pretty much everything that was originally passive, but the active circuit in my Spector Euro-X probably edges everything. This one is a Spector Tone Pump (I think).

Don't think there was any discernable first track...in all honesty, I started playing with another couple of schoolfriends (we were 14 or 15, I guess), we didn't practice away from that environment and we just made up our own three-chord songs. I used to play along with All The World's a Stage by Rush and Sweet F*nny Adams by Sweet. That's pretty much where I started, so it would have been Bastille Day or Set Me Free.

There's no need to wind anything in in the slightest. I'd concur with you that a lot of amps that contain some kind of drive circuitry (to my ears) just sound like there's a loose wire in the circuit that's causing the signal to break up and while these can sound quite nasty in isolation I guess that breaking-up just disappears in a full band context. Certainly, from my experience, the Tech21 heads are/were simply power amps being driven with either a dUg and (in the case of the Landmark) both an RBI and RPM as the front end. While the Darkglass AO900 didn't work for me in the slightest, it followed the same route as the Tech21 stuff; pedal and powerstage in one box. I still think it's a great pity tha @Tech21NYC have abandoned heads, but I can understand their reasoning. I loved what MarkBass did with the MoMark stuff; it would be dreamy to buy a carcass, jack in a power amp, jack in a BDDI or dUg in one tidy rack unit.

I think (as a bit of a Tech21 whore), the Landmark and dUg heads were fantastic. I suppose you could also factor in some of the Darkglass stuff too.

Last year he had a wall of Mesa stuff, prior to this he was using Hartke. Ol' Rex probably has a very good agent shopping his name about. He gets around so much, I just don't understand how manufacturers have so much trouble seeing through this endorsement cycle he operates under. This is likely a huge win for Ashdown, but will he actually ever use them?

It doesn't sound that great on this demo TBH; it's 2025 and it's Premier Guitar. They've got a long enough track record of rig run downs...they should be able to get a half decent sound off trade booths like this. Also, no idea who that is demonstrating (someone is going to say, 'Oh, man. That's <insert name here> and he's played with <insert name> and <insert name>'), but the playing was astonishingly bad and doing the gear no favours at all.

Have you seen how far the tuners extend beyond the confines of the bodies? They're only going to last five minutes etc. 😏

Starts today. I'll admit once the videos start hitting You Tube I'll be planted in front of the TV for an hour each evening. Don't have and real bass expectations to be honest; it's all likely to be rehashes/repackaging of the same old stuff. I'd like for Gibson to announce the long rumoured reissue of the Thunderbird II and would like some more intelligence on the Sterling Bongo 5HH, but beyond that, no much.

Any movement from the SEBB massive for a Spring '25 event?

I loved my old 5HH, but the EQ was mental on it, which kind of ruined the experience. Admittedly, I adore the shape, but at £3K+ for a MM, nah. My only real opinion on any Sterling vs Music Man debate is that I've seen a few MM Stingrays live and I've seen a handful of Sterling Stingrays in action and while they look similar, the Sterling models are just missing something tonally; quite thin, not as full and not as burpy as the Music Man models. Now this might be down to Sterling users not sharing the same level of attention to set up/tone in as much of that curated by Music Man owners, but they just didn't have the oomph/rumble. I suppose if I could coerce my brother-in-law to pick up one at sub-$800, then maybe it could be a decent platform for customisation, but that would obviously come later.

I had the rack version (didn't like it), then (for some reason) bought the VTBass-DI version. Didn't like that either. Both got sold. I've been way happier with the BDDI/RBI, the dUg and the 2112-DI. If you want something that pretty much does the VTBass and the BDDI, just buy a dUg pedal.