Cato

You've just given me a flash back to this. For the benefit of the unitiated Mr Rose only comes on for the heavy bit and they only sing together over the very last lines, but it's it's not beyond the realms of possiblity that Elton could assemble enough of the original personel to recreate it.....

Read an interview with David Furnish this morning where he mentioned that Elton is going to be bringing a couple of special guests out for his Glasto set. No hint as to who though.

I've never been to Bass Bros but I live locally. Their contact address is Harbury lane in Leamington, which is not far at all from BD in Warwick, although there can be heavy traffic in the area at peak times.

I'm fascinated by these. Much like the esteemed Mr @Reggaebass I'm a bit baffled. I'm certain that somehow all the strings maintain a relationship with fretboard that's more or less orthodox, ie: lowest action at the nut gradually increasing evenly across each string to the bridge. But my eyes and brain can't quite work out how it does this when I look at the pics.

Personally I find that a lot nicer looking than the Gibson version of a Les Paul bass.

Coincidentally I got nearly £100 off my Bass VI from Andertons by cashing in several years worth of points. The loyalty scheme isn't the main reason I usually look at Andertons first when the GAS hits (I think that's a combination of a good website,lot of stock and me being slightly brainwashed by all the Andertons clips I've watched on Youtube) but it's certainly a nice bonus.

Just in time for my birthday.

I'm also very taken with the pink one, although at the moment I acn't find anyone offering them either I suspect it may be a limited dealer edition, like the purple metallic Squier Bass VIs that were exclusive to Andertons in the UK recently and I'm fairly sure also to a single chain in the US. Really hoping that they will be available sonewhere in the UK.

Radio 1 Big Weekend isn't a new thing, they must have known they were signing up for a pop festival aimed at 16-25 year olds. Although if they'd been on one of the smaller 'alternative' stages they'd probably have found a much more appreciative audience. Going on between former One Directioner Niall Horan and epic sing along balladeer Lewis Capaldi on the main stage was always going to be a hard sell for them

Looks pretty good to me too.

I'm no afficionado, but it looks like a Thunderbird to me, presumably you did this on the configurator and chose the exposed pickup poles?

Whilst slightly put of step with it's predecessors I'd argue that You Only Live Twice was one of the very best. The villains secret lair in the volcano, the piranha pool, the gyrocopter. The ninja army. It's got it's own subgenre of subsequent action/comedy movies that were directly influenced by elements from that film. Agree the theme tune, while decent in it's own right, is below par for a Bond film.

I think one of the problems with the last 3 Bond themes, Adele/Smith/Eilish is that they've all been written to incorporpate more or less the same elements of John Barry's original score. Which, to me anyway, has had the unintended consequence of making them all sound pretty much the same, I've got various sections from all 3 in my head and, apart from the choruses, I'm hard pushed to say which bit belongs to which song. The result is to make all unmemorable in their own right.

I didn't watch the show but I heard the UK entry a few times on the radio. My take was that it isn't awful. It's just very generic, like someone asked an AI to write a pop song based on the most prevalent UK chart music trends of 2022-23.

Like many things the market will decide if crowdfunding the album is a viable proposition, nobody is getting their arm twisted. Either a person wants to donate money or they don't. Personally I don't think £10,000 is overly ambitious for this kind of fundraiser. I hope he gets there.

I've always been fascinated by the moving concept, simply because IMO pickup placement has the single biggest affect on how a bass sounds. The Verso is interesting but the I would consider selling an internal organ for the 2 moveable pickup bass Warwick built for Guy Pratt. I'm not sure that they ever did a production version or whether it would even be available as a custom build, but for me it's a dream bass.

I've used 14-59 strings on acoustic guitars, although normally I favour 12-53. The obvious difference is that they are much higher tension than the 9s or 10s you usually find on electric skinny stringers. It's difficult to do string bends, even more so than on a bass. I've never done anything that could be described as a scientific test but my perception of heavy gauge strings on an acoustic is that they are 'punchier' and also louder, but the real benefit for me personally.is that the higher tension makes the more complex barre chords a bit easier because the strings don't bend out of pitch as easily. None of which is an obvious benefit to an electric bass guitar,even one downtuned a tone. Maybe Mr Sixx decided he needed as unique USP for his strings?

Another Felder bass line, 'I Wan't You Back' is a joy to play. Also Stuart Zender's 'Too Young to Die' line is also one that always makes me smile.

It's a lovely looking thing.

Difficult to say for sure. The pole piece arrangement on the covers is how fender traditionally package their humbuckers. This is my 72 Thinline tele from c2000. Regardless of what the pole pieces might indicate there's a traditional double coil humbucker under there. I think they started doing it with the Tele Deluxe in the early 70s, maybe to diffentiate their humbuckers from the standard Gibson PAF type. That's not to say it won't eventually turn out to be a split coil in humbucker housing, but we won't know until the specs are released. Edit: Note to self, clean tele pickups at next string change.

I'd have to go proper top end, stuff I probably wouldn't feel able to justify even if I had the spare cash, so Alembic, Fodera, maybe a particularly high spec Ritter. I'm intrigued to find out what the additional outlay gets you. I kind of get that much like Wal, nothing sounds quite like an Alembic because of their unique electronics, but with Fodera and Ritter, aside from body shapes, the differences between them and other basses are less obvious.

I have the techinical ability and dexterity of a drunk Koala and I managed to do it. You'd be fine.

If the bass has the standard Fender 5 screw bridge arrangement and spacing then it's one of the easiest mods you can do, there are many after market replacements that will drop straight in at price points from £20 or less to upwards of £100. I put a Baibicz on a Squier a few years ago and it really was as simple as unscrewing the original and then putting on the new one, maybe a 20 minute job to make the change including taking the strings off and putting new ones on. Obviously setting up the new bridge takes a bit longer. If it's not a standard 5 screw fitting then finding a drop in replacement may be a bit more difficult and the choice will be more limited.

16 years old. A group of six formers at school had a sudden explosive falling out with their bass player about 2 weeks before they were due to play a local village hall. Someone told them I owned a bass and an amp which immediately made me the most qualified person they could find to fill in at short notice. Learnt all the songs off a C90 before a single full rehearsal the day before the gig. It was an eclectic setlist of stuff the guitarist/band leader liked from Pink Floyd's Run Like Hell to Birdhouse in your Soul and Walk This Way. I was playing my Axe Bass through a Hartke 350 watt head (which I still own) and a Carlsboro 4x10. Ended up staying with them until they all left for Uni about 18 months later, long after they'd resumed their friendship with the original bass player who went on to form his own band who we regularly played gigs with.

I'd be very interested to hear some clips. If this does a decent imitation of the Gibson shortscale neck mudbucker thing I may find it difficult to resist.