Cato

If someone had told me that had been written and performed by a human I wouldn't have questioned it. I might have questioned "why?" but that's not the same thing. Stylistically it's on a par with the radio jingles and ads I grew up listening to in the 80s and 90s that were written and recorded by real people, even if they didn't always feature 'real' instruments.

If I understood the Andertons video below, you can export presets from the amp to the Go, but not from the Go to the amp, if that makes sense.

I've been thinking about getting a plug in and play practice set up for a while. I've already got a Katana guitar amp so it makes perfect sense from an already knowing how it works point of view. So I've ordered from Andertons and it should be with me in a few days once they get new stock in.

I quite often get tunes in my head, usually melodies but sometimes basslines that I then work out how to play on an instrument and record before I forget them. I even have a 'memo app' on my phone so that I can 'sing' the tunes into it and preserve them as and when they occur in places where there's no instrument to hand. I've built up quite the sonic scrapbook over the years. Problem is I'm never 100% sure if it's something I've come up with spontaneously or whether lt's something I've heard at some point somewhere beore, that's for some reason re-emerged from my subconcious, that I 'm then basically plagiarising.

I've seen a few people doing that 2 handed 'piano' stlye tapping on extended range 'basses' over the years. Charles is certainly one of the best I've seen, it's undeniably impressive and it works very well as entertainment in the short video format he excels at. Would I choose to listen to an albums worth of it? Probably not.

That's more or less what Gibson were charging for a US Firebird 2 years ago, just before they stopped making a 'standard' model. The only Firebirds Gibson have made in the last couple of years have all been Custom Shop or Murphy Labs limited editions, starting at around £6k. Even given that I can't see many people handing over that amount for an Epiphone.

There does seem to be a concerted push to reposition Epiphone as an upper midrange and beyond brand. There were a few skinny stringers last year that they put out around the £1.5k mark which I'd say is getting into the top tier of massed produced guitars. Interestingly though when I was looking at the new years sales at places like Andertons a lot of those Epiphones that had originally been priced at £1k plus were being offered at significant discounts, often £300 or more which suggests that people don't really see Epiphone as a brand that they're willing to pay that kind of money for.

I'd have the green one in a second if I didn't already have an Embassy.

That's a stunner.

Mine is one the puprle ones that, I think, were exclusive to Andertons but as I recall they and the limited run pink and blue models all came out at about the same time so are almost certainly identical apart from the paint job.

I think the newer models may have been tweaked a bit. I got mine brand new at the end of 2022 and was suprised that the two things that most people seem to have a problem with, the bridge (particulary with regards to intonation) and the stock strings, weren't an issue for me.

I love mine, I use it both as a bass and as a baritone guitar for surf style leads. The pickup switching options and the 'strangle' switch mean it functions very well in both roles. Great fun can be had with a looper pedal and a drum machine with the bass VI playing all the parts.

You see that shape in funk music quite a lot. Try barring just the G B and E strings at the 7th fret then move to 6 on the G and bar the 5th on the B and E. Repeat. That's a fairly common sequence.

I'm not sure about the others but The Cure are pretty big in the US. US sales make up just under a third of The Cure's 30 million or so career album sales and in 2023 they played to over half a million people on the sold out North American leg of their 2023 tour.

Not music related but... I think the only company I'll never use again is a local Ford garage. It's about 3 minutes walk from my house so it made sense when I first moved here to take the car there for MOTs , services etc But they always found stuff that 'needed' doing. The tracking would be off or the tyres were worn or the air conditioning fluid needed changing. The final time I went there I got a phone call saying I 'needed' over 1k worth of stuff doing or the car would be undrivable. I declined, took the car back and took it to another local garage where they told me they were unable to find any of the issues the first garage had warned me about. So now I take my car to that garage, and if anyone ever asks me if I know a good mechanic I 'll warn them about the local Ford garage that tried to rip me off.

Same and I've listened to few bits and pieces down the years since they impressed me at Glastonbury in 1994. I think that would have been the year before Justin joined.

Just when you think films can't possibly get any longer someone comes along and decides to make 4 full length films on the same subject.

I definitely woudn't say that. Any design that has no only remained in production for as long as Leo Fender's guitars and basses but actually still retains it's place as a market leader must be something a bit special

As I mentioned in another thread the Fender Custom Shop is a bit of a paradox. Expensive versions of instruments that were specifically designed to be mass produced on a production line by people with no luthiery skills to be sold at an affordable price point.

Not much wrong with your English, it's infinitely better than my Danish. Sometimes on the internet (although it's rare on Basschat) you find people who are determined to have a fight. Best thing to do is ignore them and move on.

Chances are even if the tech did it they didn't notice. As everyone says, these things are inevitable.

I've never heard anything but high praise for Enfield basses. You sometimes see them at absolute bargain prices too, presumably because Enfield are a fairly low profile boutique maker. As for the Quad system? I'm sure that the pickups are excellent in all configurations but a fairly large chunk of tone comes from pickup position rather than pickup type. So switching from a split P configuration to a full fat Music Man type humbucker while the pickup remains in the same position probably isn't going to produce the massive difference in tone which you might expect. Having said that I don't doubt that with the Quad pickups placed in the correct position they will do a spot on P/J/Ray impression on a single instrument.

That's the the kind of bass I'd happily hang on a wall as a piece of art even if it was unplayable. I suspect after a clean and a polish it's going to be very pretty indeed

One of the great things about now vs when I started out is the whole YouTube tutorial phenomenon. It basically means you can design your own 'course' , concentrating on the stuff you want to learn be that theory, technique or just learning the tunes you want to play. An you can do it in your own time, on your own terms. Having said that I don't regret the hours I spent playing rewinding cassetes to listen to the same 10 second passage over and over again until I could play it perfectly. I still use the 'listening' skills I developed back then today.

I think there's a particular paradox in play when it comes to custom shop Fenders that tends to get people's backs up. The original models, the really highly valued pre CBS models, were all made on a factory production line by a labour force with no luthiery training and designed to be affordable to working musicians. So Fender custom shop is left trying to justify sky high prices for a recreation of something that was designed to be made cheaply. In recent years they've done it by offering various relic'd finishes that are allegedly unique to each custom shop intsrument , now that the relic craze seems to have calmed down a bit maybe they've decided figured tops are the way forwards.