Nicko

I have the Precision and haven't tried the Jazz, but if the PB is anything to go by I wouldn't hesitate. I bought mine as a backup to my US made but its now my main bass as its that good.

I have a small pedal board, Tuner, Compressor (rarely on), POG (used for a few songs), overdrive (never used nowadays*) and Graphic EQ (used when I need a bit of extra cut through). To be honest apart from a couple of Muse tracks where the POG is really required I'd leave it behind if I could be bothered to take the tuner off. * Not used for bass, but I use the board with my six string and therefore the pedal stays.

Doesn't anyone on BC actually like "rehearsing" simply for the fun of it? My current (covers) band is almost gig ready, we are improving the songs we know and adding more material, but even if we weren't I'd be happy to meet up and just play. Last rehearsal started with the drummer asking wheter I#d prefer to play throughh the whole set list or work on specific songs - I could see the benefit in both but we agreed to work on specific songs anyone was having troble with. Started with a new song which everyone had learnt. Rough around the edges but not bad. The singer worked on singing without referring to lyrics The drummer had been working on adding fills The guitarist wanted to work on the endings of a few songs I worked on BVs - only he second time I've tried, and fills on a few tracks We stopped for a break midway through, and jammed a new song suggestion at the end. Best rehearsal we've had for a while even though we had no clear plan because we all came aay thinking we sounded bettter after the session than before. I should add I do not practice at home. I work on learning songs, or adding fills but playing bass along to pre-recorded track is deeply dull. If you are gigging weekly theres no need to rehearse but frankly I wouldn't want to gig every week.

I fail to se how engeretic I could actually be whilst holding a bass and singing BVs. I used to play rugby when I was younger and played touch rugby untill wel into my 40s, and have occasional guilt induced trips to the gym. Thres no way a 2 hour gig is going to be as energetic as a 45 minute trip to the gym. I sweat - a lot - when exercising or when playing but I've done gigs when the temperature has been in the 40s and the humidity has pretty much been 100%. No amount of fitness would help, but water does.

As someone who grew up on the Heathrow flight path, I get frustrated by people complaining about noise from the airport. Given that the airport was opened just after WWII, there can't be many people affected by it that bought their hose before it was opened. In fact my dad still lives in the house i grew up in, it was bought new by my grandparents in the 30s, so I guess he could complian but he doesn't.

You could wel be right - well before my time.

Ths is why lawyers earn a lot of money. In the case of Gibson lawsuits they were successful in the 70s in taking Japanese manufacturers to court for making what could only be described as copies. The guitars were virtually identical, same dimensions, same headstock shape, the diamond inlays etc, and manufacturers were using similar scripts on the headstock even though they stopped shortt of actually writing "Gibson". It would be argued that this was a clear attempt to decieve. You cannot copy an Explorer and call it an Explorer. Dean call ther V a "V", not a "Flying V" and their explorer an "Z" but more importanty the designs are very different with only the body shape being similar. The tailpiece on the dean is v shaped through body strung unless its a Floyd model, there's no scratchplate and the headstock is a completely different shape. Curiously the early Gibson Vs were through strung but then changed to the traditional tune-o-matic stop piece. I'm not sure when production periods started and stopped but its probably worth mentioning that a large part of the demand for Vs and explorers is due to the use of those dsigns by ESP, Jackson and Dean which are associated with the thrash metal bands (ie the market is created by the "copies" not ed by Gibson). The Dave Mustaine signature V looks less different, but the defence here woud be that anyone wanting a Dave Mustaine signature guitar would surely know that Dave doesn't play a Gibson - he's played pretty much everything else - BC Rich, Jackson, ESPs and Dean.

Didn't mean to be aggressive. The law I stated relates to registerd design and contains several tests to establish if infringement is present. One of the tests is that the buyer of the goods could believe that the "copy" was in fact the genuine article. If it can be demonstrated that the buyed will not intentionally or unintentionally choose the copy believing it is the real thing then infringement is not necessarily present. Therefore a Dean V with a V headstock is not infringing the Gibson V with a diamond headstock because the buyer would know the diffrenence, even though the Dean body shape might be close/identical to the Gibson registered shape.

I posted my original again as you seem to have failed to either read it or understand it. US law requires there to be a possibility that the customer buying one product is actually buying a different product which is protected by registration. If you dont believe me fine.

Which fits my point exactly. No one buying a Dean V with a V headstock is going to think its a Gibson with a diamond headstock. I'm not familiar with the Dean Moderne, but the original Gibbo prototype had an odd shaped headstock, and theres a limited edition with a headstock looking very much like a Dean but that wasnt put into production until the early 80s - after Dean started. I don't know when Dean first started using the V headstock though.

US Trademark law includes the Langham Act which includes various tests to indicate whether trademark has been infringed. While Gibson can claim the shape of the Les Paul, and even elements of the Les Paul, they would need to prove that the intent of the other manufacturer is to confuse buyers into thinking they are buying a Les Paul. It shouldn't be difficult to demonstrate that anyone looking for a £1000 Gibson Les Paul (I think thats base price for the two pickup, single cutaway design) will not buy, for exampe, a £400 ESP by mistake, especially as the ESP ony has three control knobs. Most manufacturers modify the headstock shape and this is probably enough to argue that its not a copy designed to confuse. The PRS single cut which was the subject of a successful suit, overturned on appeal, is is the same market place and price point as the Gibbo, but the court decided anyone buying a PRS would know it wasn't a Gibson, but more importantly that PRS did not intend to deceive buyers into thinking they were buying the "real thing". Unfortunately for PRS quoting guitar players ability to tell a quality PRS form a botched Gibbo doesn't come into it.

Have never tried the Epi basses, but my Epi 339 is good quality, and at 20% of the price of a USA made. Gibsons prices are utterly ridiculous. Even a Gibson branded hard case is more than twice the price of an Epi branded hard case.

Gibson successfully stoped a bunch of Japanese manufacturers (Ibanez, Tokai etc) who were using diamond headstock logos, Gibson type script on the branding and headstock shape, as well as use of the Les Paul name back in the 70s. It should be clear that if they couldn't claim the overall shape of the guitar then, there is no prospect of them doing so now. In fact Fender were defeated when they took Schechter to the Trademark appeal court in the late noughties when they tried to claim the shape of the Strat, Tele and P Bass.

Bass payer, solo record. Be afraid. I'd probably pay $30 to not listen to it

Oh, I was expecting this to be Jazz basses are better than P Basses. I'll get my coat..

And we have a winner for word of the day too.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Not offensive, but the innuendo in Pull Up To The Bumper by Grace Jones is pretty thinly disguised.

Does the fretboard material affect tone? I can't see how it would as the vibrating part of the string is between either the nut nd bridge or the fretwire and bridge. I can't help with sounding like the Clash, but for curttng through it's +1 for backing off the low end and boosting the mids - my 5 band graphic is set as a sad face and it really makes a big difference in my band's mix.

You Outta Know by Alanis Morrisette also contains some explicit lyrics which are also faded out for radio, but the context if the song isn't really that risque. Catfish and the Bottlemen's album "the Balcony" is also edited widely for radio play but I'm not sure the content is likely to be offensive. IIRC theres a song on Run DMC's King of Rock called It's Not Funny, to which the reposte at the end is "Motherf***er", again the sentiment of the song isn't offensive.

....Brown Sugar. Talking to out vocalist the other day, she said she woud never sing it because the lyrics were offensive (not that it would ever get on the setlist anyway) I'd never really listened to the lyrics but they are a bit, erm non PC. Any others?

The Arctic Monkeys come up with some good stuff And I've seen him with girls of the night He told Roxanne to put on her red light (When the sun goes down) Likes her gentlemen not to be gentle Was it a Mecca dauber or a betting pencil? (Forescent Adolescent) But Billy Bragg is the master In the end it took me a dictionary To find out the meaning of unrequited While she was giving herself for free At a party to which I was never invited (Saturday Boy)

Walking through a shopping centre in Doha I was approached by a couple of guys who wanted to tell me how much they'd enjoyed the gig the night before - about 50 miles away from Doha - mind you there wasn't much inbetween apart from some dust and a few camels.

They don't play the same song twice during the 9 to 5 period - they often play songs before 9am, then during the day and sometimes in the evening too. For some reason they seem to play the same stuff day in day out as well. Mrs Nicko quite often remarks that they're playing the bands's playlist - and its only 25 songs long.