Cato

Apparently China has been locking down districts and shutting down various manufacturing facilities as part of their 'zero covid' strategy. Last that happened it caused all kinds of supply chain issues around the world with various goods and components, music related and otherwise So in a few months it may not be just valves that are in short supply.

Probably got a bit claustrophobic once they heard about the Earth being flat.

I got serious Big Al gas after watching this a few years back. It's obviously an incredible versatile instrument, but, aside from the unusal aesthetic perhaps, like the MM Reflex, maybe the sheer number of tonal options was a little intimidating. I'd be forever adjusting every parameter in search of the perfect tone rather than actually playing the thing

I downloaded the free Fender tuner app a while back. It works well on amplified instruments but it's not great at picking up the E string on an unamplified bass which is a PITA because I got it mainly to tune the fretless I tend to noodle on unamplified.

I suspect there has always been humor in music. There are historical references to Roman troops singing bawdy songs about their commanders. It probably goes back to some caveman chanting rude things about his neighbours while banging stones together.

A lot of recent chart music has got it's big break on 'viral' Tik Tok clips.

These threads always rapidly end up with everybody acting 'offended' even if they're mainly being offended by others taking offence. It's almost comically circular.

That would be a good looking chunk of wood on a bass of any price.

I always used to get a bit of a nervous buzz before a gig but it never lasted more than a song or two in to the set. There are some very famous names that do suffer from crippling anxiety. I remember reading Adele saying that she was never going to tour again a few years back mainly due to the extreme anxiety she experiences before every show. The other one that springs to mind is Dee Dee Ramone who for many years kept a bucket at the side of the stage because he'd get so nervous that he'd vomit. Bearing in mind the famous Ramones relentless touring schedule it's pretty impressive that he was still going out and playing more or less every night for a big chunk of his life.

I've got a pro ii strat with a similar heel design. Tbh I was surprised how much easier such a small and presumably inexpensive design change made to the upper fret access. It's a shame Fender only seem to feature it on US made instruments.

I'm not quite the opposite as I still do the thing of mentally breaking down the instrumentation down into it's component parts, but lyrics really stick with me. Generally if a song has any kind of rotation on the radio I'll pretty much know the lyrics off by heart before long, without making any conscious effort to do so. Although as I listen mainly to mainstream pop on Radio 1 it's not like I'm memorising Shakespeare speeches.

Just heard it for the first time. I quite like the vocal, reminds me of the pre BSSM albums when Kiedis was more a rapper than a singer. The instrumentation is 'pleasant'. Kind of sounds like a funk backing loop you'd use for practicing. All in all I don't hate it but I won't be going out of way to listen to it again. I say that as someone who was a big Chilis fan from Freaky Styley until they lost me with Stadium Arcadium.

I think you may have found the diamond amongst the manure.

The bass is very prominent on a lot of Pearl Jam's '10'. You can mostly get away with covering the songs without the 12 string or the fretless too.

Slightly off topic but that film was one of the big musical disappointments of my teenage years. I was a huge Zep fan in the early 90s, but I'd only ever heard the studio albums. So when an excited 14 year old me bought TSRTS on VHS it was a bit of a shock to find out how pompous and bloated their live show was at that point in their career. To be fair it wasn't all bad but to a teenager who's other favourite band were the Ramones that interminable version of 'Dazed and Confused' featuring Jimmy Page torturing his guitar with a violin bow for hours on end was bewildering at best.

My favourite is probably 'Rock n' Roll High School' with the Ramones. It's basically a Ramones live gig with a teenage rebellion/high school comedy storyline loosely stitched around it, but it works superbly in a sort of cult classic drive in B movie sort of way.

Certainly one of the more interesting and innovative luthiers of the last 40 or so years. I always fancied trying one of their fretless guitars. Probably be next to impossible to play in tune chords across more than 3 strings, but I reckon you could probably do a great 'fake' slide guitar on one.

I'm pretty sure that people cut and paste tabs from one site and post them on others, that's why you often see the exact same mistakes on multiple sites. Once an incorrect tab goes online it's only a matter of time before it's on all the tab sites.

My guitar and bass collection ranges between about £300 to £1750 new. At the moment my most played bass is a fretless Sire jazz which I think was a shade under £400 when I bought it new.

There was a fairly famous case in 2011 where an algorithm designed to keep a book competitively priced ended up pushing the price eyewateringly high. https://www.wired.com/2011/04/amazon-flies-24-million/ While I was looking for that link I also found this https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/12/16/beware-of-this-amazon-scam-cds-selling-for-thousands-of-dollars/?sh=550eb8401cd5 For what it's worth I don't believe it's a scam or money laundering as suggested in the Forbes article, apart from anything else the affected CDs mentioned in the article are pretty niche and unlikely to sell that many copies even at a normal price. The algorithm thing seems the most likely culprit.

My P Deluxe Special from around 2016 is my go to bass. Slim neck, versatile 3 band preamp that can be switched off for passive mode, tonally it covers a lot of ground. The one slightly odd thing about that version is that there's no tone control in passive mode. Doesn’t bother me but would probably be a deal breaker for anyone wanting to roll the tone down for a more old school sound.

I don't know specifically about EMG pickups but there are shortages on various random things at the moment because there is a shortage of shipping containers in the far east which is causing delays in products manufactured there being shipped to Europe. I know someone who payed 4 times the usual price for some Babylis hair curler gas cartridges on ebay because there are apparently none in UK shops at the moment.

Just discovered this on the Eastwood site. I think I'm in love.

I put a set of Aguilar 70s jazz pick ups into into a VM70s Squire Jazz. I didn't do before and after clips but I definitely didn't notice a radical difference once the new pickups were installed. I have wondered if they were too close in spec to the original Duncan designed Squier pickups in what was after all supposed to be 70s style Jazz.

I love the blocks. It's something a bit different on a P bass, makes it stand out from the crowd.