Cato

I've heard a couple of guitar bands have a crack at this. Tough one for singers though.

That was an experience. Some of the comments are hilarious.

In some ways it could be argued that they were ahead of their time. It's not a million miles from the vocoder/autotune rap combo that Drake and to a lesser extent Kanye West have had great commercial success with over the last few years.

I keep thinking that this should be the perfect opportunity to sit down and hone my skills. Instead it seems I'm spending most the potential extra playing time gassing over guitars and basses on youtube.

'Better' is subjective, but I've seen quite a lot of Far East made guitars and basses recently that, on paper at least, are as well or better specced than the equivalent US Fender model, let alone mex models, but for around 2/3 of the price of a US Fender. It just seems to be substantially cheaper to make quality instruments in that part of the world than even Fender's Mexico factory. Part of it is lower wages, part of it is that every part needed to make a quality instrument is already being manufactured relatively locally in that part of the world so it's cheaper to put the whole thing together. I'm sure there are other factors at work as well.

I'm sure there are genuine benefits to roasted necks but it's also become a bit of a fad. I'm looking for a new skinny stringer at the moment and about half of everything I've looked at has a roasted maple neck. Someone somewhere is roasting an awful lot of maple for the guitar and bass market rignt now, which has to be why we've started to see it on lower budget instruments. Much like the relicing craze a few a few years ago, I'm sure roasted necks are here to stay, but in a couple of years the balance will adjust itself and they won't be anywhere near as prolific as they are right now.

I saw that offer in conjuction with a £4000 custom shop Fender Jazz. Nice gesture, but I couldn't help but smile at the idea of someone spending £4000 on a bass then putting it through a £100 combo.

That looks pure class. Excellent result from Douglas. Is that the restoration finished now @Maude? Any chance of some pics?

If want to dip your toe, Harley Benton do a fretless violin bass There's a B stock one here. https://m.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_beatbass_fl_vs_vintage_b_stock.htm It's Thomann though so difficult to accurately predict the final price on delivery. If nothing else you could find out, relatively cheaply, whether a violin bass feels 'right' for you? Edit: there's a nice demo on the above page that I can't work out how to link to.

Might be worth emailing Andertons or someone else that sells the Minion series to see if they've got any suggestions. There must be a simple solution. Surely no one is going to market a guitar that's primarily aimed at beginners that you can't easily get replacement strings for.

I really like the look of that, but then I'm a sucker for anything vaguely tele shaped.

I'm getting flashbacks to the chill out room in Oz nightclub in Plymouth circa 1995.

I wonder if we're going to start seeing European imports being held up by a UK customs backlog. I remember reading last year that the government hadn't come close to hitting it's target for recruiting thousands of additional customs staff for post Brexit Britain. They've got to be up to their eyeballs right now.

A lad I went to school with c1990 had an Aria SB1000 that he'd picked up for pennies as his first 'starter' bass. I always liked that guitar but I'm genuinely surprised to see them go for four figures these days. I wonder if he's still got it?

Remember when 70s Fenders were considered the absolute nadir of Fender's production history? When I stated playing in the late 80s they were so badly regarded they were almost like the bogeyman of musical instruments. Look at the prices they get now though.

There's also the whole quarantine issue which has to make the whole European/UK festival summer circuit a bit of a logistical nightmare, with bands and crew potentially having to isolate for days everytime they move between the UK and Europe. That's got to make the previous scenario where bands could be playing a couple of festival dates a week all over Europe and the UK throughout the summer impossible.

In the same article there's a guy who got hit with £147 of import duties, taxes and other charges on a pair of £300 boots. I was aware that there would be increased costs for buying goods from Europe but I would never have put them as potentially high as 50% on top of the listed price. I seriously doubt many people would. I buy a lot of outdoor gear from Alpine Trek and I was considering Thomann for a new guitar as they're one of the very few places that actually seems to have stock at the moment, but I won't be ordering anything from Europe until I can see a set-in-stone price for the whole transaction before I buy.

I'm not confident that I could get back up from that position.

It's always been a bit murky how much the festival makes. Theoretically all the profits go to good causes, but at the same time the Eavis family pay themselves a fairly large wage for organising the festival and I believe they also pay the farm maintenance and 'rent' for hosting the event. Even so I don't think it's super-lucrative on the scale of earning the organisers tens of millions.

I can't see any of the big festivals taking place this year. Even if it's looking like the vaccine is doing it's job by summer there will be a fair few baby steps before crowds of that size are allowed to gather and mingle again.

The verse and chorus sections of Chic's 'Good Times' are pretty straightforwards. There's a guy playing along with tab here. But there's quite a lot of other YouTube lessons on this.

I'll be the first to suggest Sire. Most are active but the V5 is a passive Jazz for around £400.

Card fees used to be a problem for small retailers because they hit the profit margins on low ticket items disproportionately hard, hence the reason that a lot of small corner shops used to have a £5 minimum card payment limit. But these days card fees are much lower, the shop I volunteer at will take card payments for 50p newspapers. And even if as a business you were saddled with a high % card charge for whatever reason, surely on a £2500 bass you'd just pass that on to the customer.

Pearl Jam don't like their fans getting ripped off. Their one band war against Ticket Master in the 90s started over a 1$ admin fee that Ticket Master wanted to charge people for tickets for a free concert that Pearl Jam were putting on and rapidly escalated to Pearl Jam boycotting every Ticket Master associated venue in the US and testifying before congress over Ticket Master's monopoly. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/pearl-jam-ticketmaster-1995-boycott-booking-fees-gigs-ticket-prices-a8989516.html

I've been listening to hip hop since the late 80s and, to honest, I think the whole 'gangsta' thing may have been a little over done over the last 30 or so years. Rap is a fantastic story telling medium, but the genre could definitely do with some new plots.