Cato

I think a lot of self taught players from my generation are a bit wary of formal musical education because it used to seem almost like an impediment to playing what you wanted to. When I first started playing in the late 80s a lot of my friends were also picking up guitars and many of them tried formal lessons. Back then it seemed that no one was really teaching 'pop' or 'rock' guitar the only lessons, certainly in my locality, were all classically based and the general advice from tutors seemed to be not to move to electric guitar before you'd achieved a basic level of proficiency on a nylon strung classical model. Sod that.

This makes me think there's more than a dead battery going on here. Unless you'd accidentally knocked the volume on your passive bass down to zero (we've all been there) then with neither bass making a noise then the issue is almost certainly further down the signal chain.

The closest thing I've seen to those pickups are on the Fender Hockey Stick 12 string Although those are rounded and the ones in the TOTP pics look more square. My best guess is that the TOTP bass is a one off, put together with whatever electronics and pickups the builder could get their hands on.

I learnt by working out and playing along to my favourite songs. It helped that my favourite band was the Ramones so the learning curve wasn't too steep.

Kind of depends what I'm doing. One of the things I discovered when I started home recording is that sometimes a bass that sounds overdriven when on it's own will come through as clean in the mix, especially with distorted guitars, but somehow the additional drive makes the bass more prominent Since then I've noticed with isolated bass tracks from a lot of very well known songs where I would peviously have said the bass was 'clean' there's actually a fair bit of drive on there. So sometimes I add drive to boost my 'clean' tone in the mix, if that makes any sense?

Never played one but I love the aesthetics on those old 60s British Fenderish inspired solid body guitars.

I've forgotten that strings with silks still existed. I think the last time I used them was pre internet in the early 90s and the local music shop only sold Rotosound Swing Bass.

I've had a gen1 V7 fretless for a few years now. It's a great instrument, even though I bought as a cheapish first fretless (and back then I think they were under £400 brand new) I feel no need to 'upgrade' to something more expensive. The mid sweep on the preamp is a control too far for me so I generally use it in passive but that's my only niggle and that's definitely a 'me' problem rather than an issue with the guitar.

I'm thinking of the bending the paperclip back and forth until it snaps thing. No idea if the two things are actually comparable though.

To be honest I'm just a massive Thinline Telecaster geek.. I go through a cycle o geting the urge to put the recent CuNiFe reissues into one of my late 90s reissues to make it more 'authentic' but the truth is I really like them with the PAF style humbuckers they were born with. Like a lot of things in the guitar world there's a lot of myths and snakeoil about the original Wide Range humbuckers. As far as I know no other mass production guitar maker even went down the CuNiFe path and Fender only made them for 8 or 9 years between 1971 and 1979. Truth is that neither they or the Deluxe and Thinline Tele models that used them were that popular at the time, partly because the Wide Ranges were significantly lower output than the double humbucker Gibsons of the same period. But because of unique magnet and their relative difficulty to obtain, over the last 40 years or so these original , unpopular, CiNiFe Wide Ranges managed to obtain such a mystique that in 2020ish Fender brought them back for the first time in 40 years for their US Deluxes and Thinlines.

That's the skinny string version, they've being doing those for 3 or 4 years, but the equivalent 4 bass version they've been using on the recent Vintera IIs and Squier Rascals is just standard alnico.

There's one on Reverb that hasn't been butchered for £500 less. https://reverb.com/uk/item/54783511-1985-fender-performer-bass-burgundy-mist-w-original-box-gig-bag As a quirky shortlived bit of Fender history I can see a good example being worth £2000 to a collector of such things. But the refinished PJ monstrosity above is far from a good example. Some would argue, and I'm in that camp, that without the original pickups which are a big part of the original design's aesthetic character, it's barely a Performer at all.

All my four stringers are 34s but since getting the Bass VI I've learned that shortscale can be a lot of fun. I keep half thinking about getting a Squier Mustang to see how it goes but so far I've not taken the plunge.

If it's one of the original 60s ones then the 'mudbucker' at the neck will likely produce a much less focused sound than most basses, hence the nickname I think they changed the electronics for the later reissues. For a while in 60s the Rivoli was a more common sight in Britain than probably any other electic bass. They're mostly associated with Merseybeat and British Invasion bands but for a while they were really popular in the UK across multiple genres and were used on some very famous recordings by some of the biggest British bands of the day.

Never heard of this I had a Gretsch delivered to me in near zero temperatures in either November or December of last year which was actually left outside in full view on the doorstep outside because the local DPD driver often arrives anything up to an hour before the given timeslot and I wasn't home. No I wasn't happy. But I took it straight into my house and unboxed it where it will have gone from 0° to 20°C in about 3 minutes with no issues.

They're local to me. It's quite a quirky little place because their USP is not selling the common stuff. There are no new Squiers, Epiphones, Fenders or Gibsons in there. Instead you find stuff like Danelectros and Guild along with various boutique electrics and quite a big acoustic section, again not from the usual subjects. They do have basses but it's not a huge selection. They're only 15 to 20 mins from Bass Direct and Bass Bros so it's possible that's a deliberate choice to not try to compete with 2 of the most prominent bass places in the country. The shop is by appointment only. I've never bought from them but I did take a couple of skinny stringers in for some maintenance and a set up at the end of last year which was largely arranged by email, I think we maybe had one phone conversation. The whole process was smooth and I was very happy with the results. All in all they've got a very good reputation locally. I'm currently in the market for a baritone guitar and I'll certainly be popping in to check out Dano stuff and whatever else they've got and will happily give them my money should I like what I find.

I was shocked to realise my Washburn Status will be 34 years old this year.

I'd go with age. Although it kind of gets stretched out over time. In the 1980s Pre CBS Strats could be less than 20 years old. We're now well past the point where post CBS 1970s Fenders are described as Vintage and we can't be far off the point where the 80s stuff gets described the same.

I prefer BC to magazines, either online or printed. Just as example, taking into account their other brands such as Gretsch, Charvel and Jackson, Fender account for a huge chunk of all guitar related advertising revenue. No commercial guitar related business can afford to give a Fender product a negative review. Here on Basschat people offer up honest experiences and opinions and have no problem describing the negative aspects of any instrument or amp.

First thing to do is raise the P pickup. If that doesn't sort it there may be a problem with the pickup Generally on a PJ bass I'd expect the P to be louder than the J because of their relative placements and because Ps ten to have higher output than Js.

I love the look of these, Brian and his dad knew how to make a beautiful looking guitar. Although I just went on the website to check out the current range and it looks like something from the late '90s.

As I posted in another thread recently I nearly bought a Wal for £500 in about 1990 but went for a Washburn Status instead. At that time they weren't a well known brand and they had none of the mythology that they've acquired in the intervening years. I'd never heard of them before that day If I had bought it I'd almost certainly have kept it because I still have the Washburn. With the benefit of hindsight do I regret not buying it for that price? Not really, the potential windfall would be nice, but the truth is I spent hours in Birmingham Musical Exchanges going between the Wal and the Washburn and 17 year old me preferred the Washburn.

Not sure if it counts because it's not programmable but I got this a couple of months ago for home practice. To be honest I wouldn't have much of a clue with programming my own rhythm tracks so the presets on this do the job I need them to do. It's mostly 4/4 stuff but there's couple of more unusual time sigs in there.

Can't help with makers but for authentic Wide Range pickups you'll need to go for CuNiFe magnets, that's what made the original Fenders unique. The Creamery version above has that as an option but a lot of the Wide Range offerings from other manufacturers, including the current Fender version do not.

I'm another one in the take them all off at once, clean the fretboards and oil the boards that benefit from it camp. To be honest I'm not someone who regularly wipes their guitars down after use, if I didn't make a conscious effort to make it part of the string change routine, I probably wouldn't do it at all. I used to worry that the sudden lack of tension on the neck might cause problems but I've gotten away with it so far.