Cato

I took the plunge at the start of the year with a Sire V7 fretless. The bass is great. It sounds lovely on the rare occasions I manage to to get the fingers on my left hand in exactly the right positions on the fretboard. My only tip, as a novice myself, is to record yourself playing along to songs you can play easily on a fretted bass and then listen back. Only then will you hear just how good or (in my case) bad your intonation is.

I don't understand why Fender are replacing rosewood boards with pau ferro. There are much nicer dark wood alternatives. I saw a Squier Mustang Bullet with an Indian Laurel board the other day and it looked so nicer than the orangey, streaky pau ferro Fender are using on their midrange guitars.

Hang on, does this mean there's going to be a general end of line sale like there was when the American Deluxes and USA standards were discontinued a few years ago? Sh!t, someone hide my wallet.

Thats about £100 up on the old standard model. Don't get me wrong, personally I think MiM instruments offer the best value in the Fender range in terms of quality vs price, but I can't really see what extra bang people are supposed to be getting for their buck over the old model here.

The amount of new (to me) music you've introduced me to over the last few years, I should either buy you a pint or send you a bill.

Have you seen this? It's worth watching for the performance alone. I bought her last album on the strength of it. That one was a bit of a mixed bag IMO, the good tracks were very good though. I'll definitely give the new stuff a go.

That felt like it went on for a lot longer than 44 seconds.

I'm not sure I can name a bass player I don't like, not on playing grounds anyway. Normally I appreciate the skill even if I'm not that keen on the music. Guitarists on the other hand...I can't listen to super distorted overly shreddy stuff no matter how much skill it takes. So that's most online guitar reviews out.

As you say, it's the different nature of the amps. Valve guitar amps need to be pushed to a certain limit before they produce 'that' tone. Even a 50 watt valve amp needs to be pushed to a level that's far too loud for most pub venues. Bass players tend to have much higher wattage amps, but we're more concerned with headroom, how much we can turn it up before the cabs start distorting.

It's the 70s Fenders that used to get the most serious flak. Although prices for instruments from that era have been rocketing up in recent years. I don't know how bad QC was at Fender in the 1970s but it doesn't take that many instruments leaving the factory with a serious fault to tarnish the reputation of an entire brand. If everyone knows someone who has owned or played one of the dodgy ones, word soon gets around.

I avoided them for years because I thought they were boring. Then one day I decided to see what all the fuss was about and instantly fell in love with the sound.

There's a couple. Status would probably be the most high profile.

I admire your optimism. It's quite unusual for a President not to get 2 terms George Dubya got re-elected even after his Iraq intervention went completely pear shaped. I think his dad was the only president in the last 40 years who didn't get a second term.

Exactly. It's not the core Gibson guitar business that's caused the problems. It's the period during the late 90s to now during which Gibson borrowed a load of money to buy up numerous other businesses, some of them not even remotely related to instrument manufacture, then proceeded to run those businesses in to the ground without ever coming close to recovering the cost of their initial investment. If they'd stuck to just making Gibson and Epiphone guitars they'd probably have been fine.

If you're using roundwounds I don't think a lighter gauge would make much difference, it's still going be like running the back of your thumb up and down a nail file. Flats would be less abrasive but you probably wouldn't get the sound you want. There's no shame in the electrical tape, I've seen countless pros using it over the years. I use it myself when I periodically restart my efforts to get good at advanced slap techniques.

I've always suspected that all the slides and ping pong and table football and such at whizzy tech companies like Google are actually a trap. Anyone who gets caught playing with any of that stuff in work time gets instantly sacked for gross misconduct.

I play bass fingerstyle. I always assumed that I can play bass with a pick because I play guitar with a pick. This thread inspired me to actually try playing bass with a pick for the first time in about a decade. Turns out I'm really bad at it.

If you look around the band and can't find the flake...you're the flake.

I feel it's my duty to strongly encourage you to take this path.

What's his average build time? Having seen that clip about Prince's bass I'm guessing it's a fairly lengthy process even without factoring in that he's probably never built a bass vi before.

Chvrches are one of my favourite bands at the moment. No idea where they fit genre wise, but their stuff is very synthy.

That's interesting. I found a review here. The reviewer may or may not be Vladimir Putin in a bad disguise.

I'm definitely thinking single coils or p90s as opposed to the humbuckers on more modern versions such as the Ibanez. If someone made a bass vi that had a 3 saddle tele bridge and pickups in the Telecaster positions that would, theoretically, be perfect for what i'm after. As it is I'm still leaning towards the Burns. Maybe with a cheeky cheap and cheerful second hand Danelctro Barritone on the side, just to cover all options.

I'd completely forgotten about those. I think Jason Newstead of Metallica played a Silhouette live for a while on certain songs like 'Sad but True'.

That would be ideal for me. Duane Eddy has pretty much the exact twangy 60s instrumental/surf sound that I want. At 3k though I can't see me getting one anytime soon.