Cato

Think about taps, for example, especially in a public or office toilet. People generally handle the taps at the point at which their hands are most contaminated, ie. just after they've done their business, just before they actually wash all the bacteria and microscopic mank off their hands. By the end of the day there's probably enough biohazards on the average public tap to wipe out a small country.

I'm not sure that's a particularly useful statistic. It's not 1 in 340 from a random sample of the population. Until quite recently the only people being tested were those who developed symptoms after visiting high risk countries or had direct contact with people who have been diagnosed with coronavirus. So that's 1 in 340 from a fairly small and very specific subject group that were thought to be at a much higher risk of contracting coronavirus anyway. It doesn't really tell us anything about how contagious the virus is or what's happening in the general population.

Without accurate data from China it's not really possible to predict what might happen over here. But what data there is suggests that coronavirus was spreading completely unchecked in Wuhan city and Hubei Province for one to two months before the government took action to contain it. In which case the official figure of 80,000 people in China getting infected, whilst admittedly a lot of people, is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall population of Wuhan city of around 11 million, let alone the 1.3 billion population of China. Bottom line, it's probably nowhere near as contagious as the 'worst case scenarios' currently making the headlines would suggest.

It's easy to appear perfect when you have as many takes as you like to get it right before posting the final video. Although in fairness I suspect that a lot of the guys and girls on youtube have put in a lot of practice to get to their current standard. Davie 504, for example, may be a bit divisive among bass players but there's no denying he's got some very impressive skills that I'd guess took him years to hone before he started putting stuff up online. I'd bet he's still putting in the practice hours now.

I'm fine with either rosewood or maple, but the slightly orange pau ferro board was the biggest factor in me not buying a Jazzmaster guitar last year. I wasn't sure I could live with it and there were indications at the time that the relaxation in CITES rules might mean that Fender will be going back to rosewood in the nearish future, so I decided to wait.

Yep. You can bet they won't be going after Jackson for their Vee and Explorer inspired shapes, because Jackson is part of the Fender group which can afford to contest these lawsuits. Gibson seems to focusing mainly on companies which would struggle with the legal fees needed just to fight a case, let alone win it.

Both the V7 and the P7 come with a 3 band preamp plus mid sweep and run in both active and passive modes so they cover a lot of sonic ground. Either will work well in just about any genre. I've got no personal experience with the P7 but I do have a V7 fretless which isn't going anywhere, I'd be surprised if the P7s weren't of the same quality so I suppose it comes down to which pickup configuration you prefer.

Personally I think rap tends to divide people along generational lines. My parents can't stand it, they still seem to see it as some some of unmusical upstart fad that will eventually fade away to be replaced by 'real music'. Where as for me growing up in the 80s, it's always been part of the mainstream and there have been rap/hip hop/whatever albums in my music collection since I was a child.

When Bruce Springsteen did his Broadway residency at the Walter Kerr theatre, (capacity of around a thousand), the cheapest tickets had a face value of over $1000. They were changing hands on the secondary market for far more than that. And that wasn't just a one off show, he was playing 5 shows a week over a period of months.

Powerful performance. I'm guessing he'll get a few negative headlines regarding the political elements of the song in the press tomorrow.

What's the capacity at Ronnie Scott's? I went to the one in Birmingham a couple of times and I'd be surprised if they could have got more than a couple of hundred people in there, even if they took the tables out.

I really like that. The Alternate Reality/Parallel Universe series has some really nice quirky guitars, which defy Fender's reputation for churning out the same models year after year. Hopefully they've got some basses in the pipeline for the near future.

I bought some double ball end GHS Boomers for my Washburn Status a few years back, looks like they may have discontinued them as part of the Boomer range but they still do double ball end bass strings.

Ī'm not good with dates but. First: Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation/Pump tour NEC Birmingham 1990ish Last: Robert Glasper - Birmingham Town Hall 2017 Best: Ramones - Hummingbird Birmingham - Brain Drain tour - 1992? Worst: Eagles Birmingham NIA - European leg of Hell Freezes over tour - around 2000 - we has the worst seats in a not great venue, right at the back so the sound wasn't good. Also I later heard that the band were barely talking to each other during by that point which might explain while they just seemed to be going through the motions. Loudest: Brittany Fox, third on the bill on the Alice Cooper Trash tour at the NEC in the early 90s. When they played the first chord I swear everyone in the first couple of blocks took a step back. Much louder than the headliner. Seen the most: There's a few contenders, there was a period in the 90s where The Almighy seemed to be supporting every band I went to see, similar thing with The Editors in the mid/late 2000s. Most surprising: Skid Row - Monsters of Rock 1992. All my mates loved the album, I hated it, saw them at Donnington, thought they were outstanding, listened to the album again when I got home and still hated it. Wish: I'd like to have seen the Chilli Peppers during the Mother's Milk tour, before they shifted direction

I'd just leave it there, I'm not sure the email needs a response, maybe just a brief 'no hard feelings' if you think there might be some useful contacts for the future but there's no point telling them how P'd off you actually are.

Presumably they've stopped doing now, although I haven't noticed online prices for Fenders suddenly plummeting as a result.

I reckon you'll hear a bigger difference in sound by waiting for the new strings lose a bit of that brand new zing than you will by changing the electronics. Might be worth trying put a few different brands and types of strings as well. Just putting flatwounds on instead of rounds will make a big difference to your basic tone. I went on a bit of string journey a few years ago where I was trying a different brand every couple of months, I was quite surprised at how much difference there is in sound, feel and response between the various different makes.

That's just the nature of late 80s/early 90s guitar hero rock. It always seemed to be more about displaying very high levels of technical proficiency than writing great songs. Generally the rest of the band is just there to provide a framework for the guitarist to do his 'thing' It never did much for me but I had a few mates at school (all guitar players) who absolutely loved it.

I've got a 2016 Deluxe Precision Special. As far as I can tell the main difference between the deluxe and the American Performer is in the electronics. The deluxe is active, with a 3 band EQ, it does have a switch to make it passive but (on the 2016 at least) there's no tone pot in passive mode. The other difference is the country of manufacture - the deluxe is near the top end of the Fender Mexican range (not counting signature models and special finishes like relics) whilst the American Performer is at the lower end of the US made range. In real terms I doubt there's much difference between the two in terms of quality of components and finish and they're so close together in terms of price that I suppose it comes down to whether you want the active electronics on the deluxe or not. For what it's worth I love my deluxe but the active Precision thing (especially with the added J) definitely isn't everyone's cup of tea.

Booking fees are basically a historical left over from the days when venues sold all their tickets from on-site ticket offices and had to employ staff to work the counter, take phone bookings and post out the tickets. These days the process is largely automated and centralised on a national scale, yet some somehow not only do the booking fees remain even for home printed and e tickets, but they seem to keep increasing as well.

I don't know if any of them ever featured a compressor but there have been various basses and guitars with various built in FX produced over the years, from the Gibson RD Artist to the recent Ibanez SRKP4 with it's built in Kaoss pad. None of them has ever really set the world alight. Edit: Just checked and amongst other effects the latest version of the Kaoss pad does indeed feature a compressor, still not sure if the Ibanez had one though.

Just heard this on Radio One of all places. Lovely song, very nice bit of double bass too. I'd heard some of the angry protest/social commentary stuff like 'The Revolution Will Not Televised' and ''Whitey on the Moon' but this is a side to Mr Scott-Heron that I was completely unaware of. I didn't even know the guy could sing, let alone that he had a voice like this.

I got my first fretless a couple of years ago. I'd say at least 90% of the technique needed to play fretless is exactly the same as that required to play fretted. I can sort of see the 'it's an entirely different instrument' argument but it's not like the difference between say, a piano and a trumpet. It's not really even the difference between playing a bass and a skinny string guitar.

Grrrrr.

You're better off out of it. If it hadn't been the old guy wanting back in there would probably have been some other daft drama shortly down the line. Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. @rseholes gotta @rse.