Cato

If it's like my 2016 VM70s then there's a bloody great channel carved out between the neck pickup and the control plate. (Edited for clarity).

Worth remembering that Fender is an absolute behemoth in the guitar world. Apart from Fender branded instruments they also own Gretsch, Jackson and Charvel and countless others. FMIC accounts for a huge chunk of all of the guitar/bass advertising market. The bottom line is that magazines like BGM simply cannot afford to p!ss them off.

It's all subjective but.... 1970s soul,funk and disco was a golden age for bass. Some might find some of it a bit cheesy but the general standard of musicianship (not just bass) on a lot of those tracks was just sky high.

This is mine. Apologies for the dodgy pictures (I was standing on the bed trying to get as much of the bass into the frame as possible - not the most stable platform) I actually think, visually at least, that swapping the stock metal knobs for classic black plastic ones may be the favourite mod that I made.

I've got same bass, but in a natural finish. I've modded mine a bit with new pickups , wiring loom and bridge, but even as stock it was a damn fine playing and sounding Jazz Bass.

I seem to recall that you found a soiled state Hi Watt in your vegetable patch or did I dream that one?

I'm pretty sure that the guy from Royal Blood played a Junior Jet on their early tours. He may even have recorded their first album with it.

6th form common room, lunchtime, about 25 years ago.

Bass Direct? http://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Home.html

I just realised I don't think I've looked at the top shelf in a newsagents for 20 years. Do the likes of Fiesta and Razzle still exist?

It's not a full justification but I think that each Fodera starts life as a collection of blocks of wood and is hand crafted from the ground up from there. I'm guessing that the process takes hundreds of man hours. Maruszczyk, whilst undoubtedly a quality maker, employs some mass production techniques so the production time for each instrument is much shorter. Having said that there are guys in the Build Diaries section on Bass Chat who also start with a collection of planks and they're not charging anything like 8k+ for their handcrafted instruments.

It's an understandable policy but I'm not going to even try a bass or guitar if I don't know what price bracket it's in and I don't want to be asking 'how much is this one' every couple of minutes. I supposed it's easy enough to find out online, but I reckon it would feel a bit weird, not to mention rude to wander in to a guitar shop to just to sit there googling other music websites.

Burn the heretical bastards, before their foul perversity spreads to the simple minded and unenlightened.

This is how religious schisms begin. One innocent question about an inconsequential point of protocol. A thousand years from now our descendants will still be participating in mass persecutions and guerilla warfare between E starters and G starters.

I can see a sort of of logic in starting at the G in that your'e then not reaching over tuners you've already tuned in order to get to the next string, so you're less likely to knock a tuner you've already tuned. Although that only really works on a 4 in a row or 3 + 1 headstock. It might be different on a 2 +2 arrangement. If that makes any sense at all. I'm not planing to change from starting on E though.

I always start with the E then A,D,G. No logic behind it, I've just always done it that way.

Many years ago I bought a dirt cheap melodica on whim with some vague idea of using it to learn how to play keyboard instruments. My abiding memory of it is just how much phlegm got into the instrument in a relatively short space of time. I still can't play keyboards to this day.

A friend of mine has small collection of no name shortscale basses of various retro designs including an unlined shortscale fretless. It did throw me a bit the first time I played it, not helped by the fact that it was my first time on a short scale bass. As on a 34" scale bass, the closer the 'frets' are together the more noticeable fretting hand intonation errors become. So I did find the shortscale a bit more unforgiving than my own 34" lined Sire fretless but I reckon it's nothing that couldn't be overcome with a bit more time spent playing that instrument.

Led Zeppelin 3 is by far my favourite Led Zep album. They paused for a moment to do the (mostly) acoustic 'folk music' thing before heading down the hard rock road.

The only Rolling Stones album I've listened to was my parents copy of 'Rolled Gold'. It was one of those those double albums that was probably one disc too long for my tastes. Apart from being at house parties where a Beatles mad friend used to put on 'Revolver' and 'Sergeant Pepper', I've never intentionally listened to a Beatles album.

I had a chat with him about defretting a bass a while back. He didn't tell me what I wanted to hear, but he did go to the trouble of explaining, in some depth, why it wasn't a good idea with that particular bass. He impressed me enough that I'm probably going to ask him to take a look at one of my skinny stringers in the next couple of weeks. I don't mind paying a bit extra for someone who really knows what they're doing.

Might be worth contacting Richard's guitars in Stratford-upon-Avon. https://rguitars.co.uk I know he does set up work, but I'm not sure if that extends to fitting a new nut. There's also Guitar Technical Services in Warwick. http://www.guitartechnicalservices.co.uk The guy has a very good reputation, but he does tend to be a bit more expensive than other luthiers/techs. Definitely worth emailing/phoning round to get a few different quotes, there can be quite a variation in costs sometimes even for smallish jobs like this.

Wouldn't a keytar have the significant advantage of keeping the keys player's left hand away from the bass notes, compared to a regular keyboard?

Ring the guy up and ask him when the jobs will be done. If you're not happy with his answer go pick up your stuff up and refuse to give him any payment. If he goes over his deadline go and pick your stuff up and refuse to give him any payment.

The whole original ethos behind all Leo Fenders guitar and basses was good quality but relatively affordable mass produced factory built instruments. No matter how much Fender claim that the Custom Shop signature range are 'authentic reproductions ' they're actually a long way from what Leo originally had in mind for the brand.