Cato

When Scotts Bas Lesons posted a clip of this on Instagram they got a reply from Dave Hillis, who was apprently one of the sound engineers on the original track, saying there's no acoustic bass on there. I can't 100% vouch that the guy posting as Dave Hillis is who he says he is but he seems to check out.

Regardless of the other equipment used I'd say a big part of the tone on that song and a big chunk of his other work with Alice in Chains comes from brand new, fresh out the packet round wounds recorded before any of the 'zing' wears off.

I gues the people that buy them want a vintage looking Fender but either can't afford one or can't find one in the colour they want. You could probably spend years looking for a genuine pre CBS Precision in Ice Blue for example and never find one for sale and even if you did a really rare custom colour vintage instrument would likely cost well into 5 figures. It's a lot quicker and cheaper to order a replica Having a different logo on the headstock would break the illusion. Wouldn't bother me at all but then I've never really gassed after vintage instruments.

Also Limelight have been doing the Fender decal thing for years, long enough that Fender must be aware of it by now. If it was Gibson I'm sure there would have been a 'cease and desist' years ago but for whatever reason Fender must be OK with it.

Now showing as 'withdrawn'. Good work @Chris26 and those who contacted the auctioneers.

I wonder if it's one of those Limelights with a Fender logo? I can just about imagine a situation where, for whatever reason, the shipping information goes awol and ,after checking the headstock, the undeliverable bass is recorded as a Fender on whatever database they use for such things. When the Limelight is reported missing they check the database and come back saying the only undelivered bass we have is a Fender, Then because no one has reported a Fender bass missing they have no idea where the one they have came from and it ends up at the auction Just a thought. Edit. The final step would be the auction house correctly identifying it but not telling the courrier company, and so the circle of f-ups is complete.

I don't know how these things normally work but , if I've understood the timeline correctly, 30 days from initial postage to turning up in an auction for unclaimed goods seems like a ridiculously short period for a fairly valuable item, especially one that is so unique and easy to identify after it went 'missing' in the first place. I agree it's far more likely to be error that criminal intent, but something has clearly gone very wrong here.

So far Deezer is the only one I'm aware of that's trying it. Nothing I've read over the years about Spotify or it's owner makes me think he cares about much about the content on his platform other than funneling as much money as possible from the music industry into his own pockets. Unless his revenues start dropping off because people are boycotting Spotify in protest over unlabelled AI I can't see them taking any action.

I think you can get too hung up on this sort of thing. If you put stuff up on social media you are going to encounter people who get their kicks from trolling. I see it all the time on the most innocuous clips on Instagram, people obviously just trying to upset other people for the hell of it. What they are after is attention either from the original poster or other commenters, the more negative the better, as far as they are concerned being noticed is a win for them. The best way to deal with it is just to ignore them. Don't give them any indication that you've even seen it. Deny them the attention they are seeking and leave them thinking that they're wasting their time trying to engage with you and they'll move on.

Interesting article on Sky News "Robots listening to robots': How AI music fraudsters are spamming sites and taking cash from real musicians" https://share.google/1KocfxqaVx7QUGx7N Other concerns aside I knew these platforms were being flooded with AI content but the sheer scale of it, apparently 60,000 tracks a day just on Deezer and rapidly snowballing, is an eye opener.

Not particularly practical but definitely an interesting experiment. And always with these things it doesn't seem to matter how radical the design is or how little body there is, let alone what it's made of, it still sounds like an electric guitar.

There are also power supply issues. There's already speculation that the US power grid can't support all the AI data centres that are planned even if many of them build their own generation facilities ,which, depending on the type of generation being planned is it's own russian doll of environmental and logistical issues. There's additional concerns about the water supply for cooling. Again datacentres can build their own boreholes, or tap rivers, etc but there's only so much of that you can do before it starts to affect the local water supply for agriculture and residential use. Neither issue is insurmountable but it's doubtful if it can be done in the same timeframe as the new data centres will be needed to support the expected massive uptake in AI services.

Some of the richest people and companies in the world too. And the UK government wants to give them the rights to use all UK owned intellectual property to train their AIs for free. (on an opt out basis). https://www.forbes.com/sites/virginieberger/2025/02/28/how-the-uks-ai-copyright-exception-hands-creators-work-to-big-tech-for-free/

There's a huge backlash against AI in the gaming community at the moment, especially where it's being used as a substitute for human creativity. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out given that gaming studios are a natural fit to use AI to cut staff and speed up production. I suspect in the end the big studios will carry on down the AI road regardless but it will create a niche for independent companies making 100% human authored content.

It's going to become increasingly unavoidable unfortunately. I don't want any part of it, to the point where I block anyone on social media who posts unlabelled AI content, even if it's just a description of an image. Although the torrent is such that I think eventually it will just be easier to leave social media. I've even seen it creeping into Basschat where people have cut and pasted responses from Chat GPT or some such,omwtime containing glaring errors, without crediting their source, in response to questions posted by other members. At the moment such things are still identifiable, but give it another 12 months and none of us will know whether what we are seeing, hearing or reading online has been authored by a human or a machine. Interesting times.