Cato

Apparently it's not quite as straightforward as as that. https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/plastic-bag-for-life-waste-5p-charge-michael-gove-iceland-tesco-pollution-a8699441.html In brief, whilst the sale of 'official' 5p 'single use' bags has indeed fallen significantly, the sale of 10p 'bags for life ' which contain twice as much plastic has risen exponentially, presumably because people are only reusing each bag a couple of times at most. So the 86% reduction in the number of 5p bags being bought doesn't reflect anything close to an 86% reduction in the amount of plastic from shopping bags being thrown away each year.

Finally getting around to learning how to play slap properly a few years back got me out of a playing rut that had gone on so long that I was almost at the point where I didn't want to pick up a bass anymore. These days it's far from the majority of what I play but it definitely reignited my interest in the instrument. It opened up a couple of new ways of thinking about my standard finger style playing as well, as an example, before slap I barely knew what a ghost note was let alone how to use them effectively. Suffice to say I'm a fan.

If you haven't already done so, it might be an idea to leave it in a warm (but not hot) place like an airing cupboard for a few days. Just to make sure you get all the moisture out of the bits that might be prone to corrosion. Apart from that, congratulations on an unusually durable microphone.

It might not be the strings, the tension on standard steel or nickel roundwounds isn't going to be massively higher than it is on the phosphor bronze it presumably came with. Flats might be pushing it though. It could just be that the pins/anchoring hole thingies are knackered. I've got an acoustic guitar which has a tendency to pop a couple of pins when I tune the strings up to tension after restringing. Believe it or not I solved the problem with a bit of blue tack around the heads of the pins in question. The blue tack thing really shouldn't work on a guitar and I reckon there's no chance of it working on a bass with the much greater forces involved. I think you might have to get a tech/luthier to take a look. Edit. But definitely try @hubrad's technique first.

I'm in. I had no idea that Parliament had released a new album. Likewise Janelle Monae.

Youtube tutorials can be confusing too.as tutorials on the same song often outright contradict each other, are simplified versions or are flat out wrong. The other day I was trying to find an accurate version for the guitar part of 'I Want You Back' by the Jacksons. I watched four videos, each with their own unique (and often wildly inaccurate) take on it.

Now I have lute gas...

Once you learn your way around the fretboard on any guitar type instrument ,in standard guitar tuning, everything else is just a matter of adjusting your technique to suit the wider/narrower/longer neck and string spacing.

At least it wasn't Gibson The music tech world is littered with the corpses of companies that were acquired by Gibson. Fender's track record in that department isn't exactly sterling either.

That Bona bass looks like it should be headless. Other than that neither of them illicits strong emotions of either like or dislike from me.

That's exactly what I thought I remembered seeing when I took the lid off mine. Glad to know I didn't imagine it.

Every bass design I've ever hated for aesthetic reasons I've ended up wanting to own a few years later. At this point I've given up having strong opinions about these things because I know I'll probably change my mind at some point.

I did it when I installed new pickups and a new wiring harness. I was sure it had the control cavity/neck pick up rout, but some of the other answers have got me doubting my memory. I reckon you're just going to have to bite the bullet and spend the 10 minutes or so it will take to take off the plate, have a peek, then decide if you want to take it further. Fnarr fnarr.

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.