skankdelvar

The feeblest use of 'Surely' I ever heard was when I was analysing some data and the idiot CEO said 'Surely you can just tap the answer in?' I said nothing but my colleague spat back at him: 'If it was that easy, Stan, even you could do it'.

No, thank you.

For years I played the intro and verse to Gimme Some Lovin' as i - i - i - i - i - iv. Oh, the shame

Oooh! I used to drink in the St Moritz back in the '80s. Ghastly place, I loved it.

Personally, I'm hanging on for Billie Eilish's peppy cover of Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West). "...a stale pork pie caught him in the eye and Ernie bit the dust"

I used to think maybe one could use a landline dial tone but the UK tone "combines two 350 Hz and 450 Hz tones instead, creating a 100Hz beat frequency". None of these tones are bang-on musical notes which makes it damn near useless. The French landline dial tone is 440hz or A4 but you'd have to go France to use it so that's damn near useless as well.

Good tip. By contrast, one should be cautious about drinking pints of Coca-Cola. The barmen put so much ice in them. One time I had three pints of Coke in quick succession then went on stage, felt really ill and started literally shivering with cold. Which was both very unpleasant and quite funny as our set list included Shakin' All Over.

Very much this ↑ If you can drill a hole more or less straight and you can turn a screwdriver that's all that's going on here.

If, like me, you get a bit spooked before gigs try to get there before everyone else and, if possible, while the room's still empty. Just walk around the room for a while and quietly think to yourself 'This is my room. I own it.' Then get on the stage and look out at the room and repeat to yourself: 'This is my room'. It might not work for everyone but it works for me. If you find it a bit scary looking at the audience or making eye contact with them don't turn your back on them or stare at your instrument. Just alternate looking at your band-mates with looking out at the audience; look at a point just above their heads. That way they'll think you're looking at them. Tip: don't tip your head so far back it looks like you're being sniffy; they might think you're Adam Clayton Unless you're a demon dancer, don't throw shapes. A gentle sideways rocking motion will serve for all but the fastest of songs and will help to keep the visual focus on the frontman. The only exception to this rule is if your guitarist(s) stand there like statues. Sidling up to the frontman and giving him a nod looks good and keeps his shaky morale up. If you're going bald, embrace it. Except for Lemmy, hats are for pussies and leather pork pie hats are the work of the devil. If you want to compensate for your thinning or absent hair just shave it all off, grow a long, pointy beard and dye it shocking pink. Be nice to the punters: if someone requests a song and you don't want to play it just offer to dedicate a song to them or someone they're with. "This next one's for Linda, Barry's missus'. If someone tells you that you played a song wrong just smile and say 'Well, you can't beat the original. Are you a big fan of (X)?' Every so often it may be absolutely necessary to punch a punter spark out. Try to keep this to a minimum. Be nice to the landlord / promoter; compliment them on their premises and thank them for the gig. If they ask the band to turn down, comply immediately and without argument. The venue's licence trumps your signature tone. The time to punch them spark out is if they don't pay you. Above all, have fun and let the audience see you're having fun. Happiness is infectious.

$175 for a shim is wildly high unless the tech is proposing to hand craft a wooden shim of precise dimensions and angle of slope and, frankly, that's going too far. Shimming a neck is an easy task which involves unscrewing the neck, slipping a bit of card into one end of the neck pocket and screwing the neck back on. If you want to do it yourself come back here and we'll talk you through it. If you want, PM me and we can arrange a Skype call and I'll talk you through it.

You could. Or you could pop over to the https://www.basschat.co.uk/forum/12-repairs-and-technical/ forum and post a request for advice on how to do it yourself. That way, even if you end up taking it to a tech you'll understand what the job involves. As regards checking the neck relief there's an easy way that doesn't involve any tools. Tune the bass to standard. Hold down a string (the E or the G) at the first fret and also at the fifteenth. If you've got a capo use it at the first so you can free up a hand. The string is now your straight edge between the first and fifteenth frets. Look at the string and see if the fretboard is curving away from it, leaving a very small gap between the bottom of the string and the frets. If the string is actually touching the frets around the seventh then you've got a flat board which needs relieving. If your bass has been de-tuned for any length of time, tune it up, leave it for a day for the neck to settle then check. Whichever route you go, good luck and let us know how you get on.

That's an intonation issue. Normally you'd fix that by winding the bridge saddles backwards away from the nut. Let's have a look at the bridge: Oh, look. The saddles are wound way back already and there's very little backwards travel left on the bottom E string. The bridge is too far forward. To fix an intonation issue, the whole bridge assembly would need to be moved back so that the saddles have got some travel in either direction. Frankly, I'd do this before I tried adjusting the neck relief. If the board is too flat then you'll have to adjust it so that it's concave. Doing so will microscopically shorten the scale length. Even on a correctly placed bridge the saddles would have to be moved backwards to compensate. With bridge where it is now, I don't think you've got enough travel left in them to do so. Get the bridge sorted, check the relief and adjust if necessary. After adjusting the relief you may find the strings are now too high and you can lower the saddles accordingly. If they're still too low come back here and we can all have a crack at sorting it out.

They surely did and I watched it one time. A total brain-f__k of neo-psychedelia, social comment and a raft of cameos from people like Frank Zappa, Toni Basil, Dennis Hopper and, er, Victor Mature. Sample sentence from the Wikipedia plot synopsis: 'Then the opening song plays, filling the screen with images from the film, and ending with the execution ↓ of Nguyễn Văn Lém followed by a woman screaming'. As one might expect, Monkees fans were shocked while the hippies rejected the movie as pop trivia. It effectively ended the band's career. The execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém

Thinking about 1960's beat bands... Herman's Hermits made a movie called Hold On about naming an American space capsule after the band. Further wyrde fact: the title song (and others on the OST) were written by PF Sloan, he who penned Barry McGuire's hit Eve Of Destruction. The Dave Clark Five and Freddie and the Dreamers appeared in their own movies but not as themselves. I vaguely recall seeing the DC5 movie Catch Us If You Can one time and thinking it was quite well executed, if a bit silly. Turns out the movie was John Boorman's debut feature film as a director. Judging by synopses of the Freddie and The Dreamers movies, they appear to be truly awful examples of cheapo British offerings of the time, with plots as bad as any Norman Wisdom film and where the band members are being propped up by more proficient character actors.

PM'd

Congratulations to everyone who entered. You're all winners in my book. Ta, Skank

Yes, that works

One could delete one's own posts on the old forum software. The new platform doesn't offer this facility, which is a PITA if one accidentally double posts. As for the site acting oddly: 'The Management' has been struggling with technical issues for a few days, one of which issues is an apparent 'stalling' when one posts a comment.

"It ain't what I've done, it's what they done to me" Lyrics ↓

I don't quite get all the angst about an ad posted by a bedroom player with scant hope of ever setting foot onstage. If it were an ad by a working band with a full diary then one might understand the obloquy but no one who hooks up with this guy is likely to achieve anything much so he might just as well have written 'no people'. For myself, I once desperately tried to get my band to hire an amazing female drummer so devoted to Bonham she had his rune tattoo'd on her wrist but - no - the guitarist (who was a simpering, upper-middle class lecturer) didn't want a woman in the band because of 'the look'. So I quit. On the other hand, one band I was in the drummer kept bringing his morbidly obese wife to rehearsals where she would offer unhelpful 'suggestions' and knit jumpers. So I quit. Another time I joined a blues band fronted by a female guitarist. We got to the stage of talking about image and she instructed me to wear only black jeans and t-shirt. 'Fair enough,' says I. 'While we're at it, you'd look good in a newsboy flat cap and a sort of Janis Joplin style'. She looked at me and said 'I'll wear the blouse I always wear'. I got home afterwards and discovered an e-mail firing me for making 'inappropriate comments'. Go figure. The other thing about this teeny-tiny storm in a teeny-tiny teacup is that there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of frothing nutters out there with the most outlandish beliefs. This guy doesn't even move the needle on the dial.

Thread about playing old cassettes here on Tapeheads. Useful stuff about common problems / tape failures and how to fix them. https://www.tapeheads.net/showthread.php?t=57112

Fun fact Back in the mid-1970's the mother of my then-GF paid a visit to her sister (my then-GF's aunt) in that London, during the course of which visit she accompanied her sister to her sister's masseur of choice, there to receive a relaxing, osteopathic and entirely non-erotic massage. As the masseur was kneading my then GF's mother's iffy shoulder that gentleman observed that the client who had immediately preceded them on his couch was none other than Mr Frankie Howerd. 'He's got a bad back, you know,' observed the masseur. 'He's a bit handsy but I can usually dodge him and he pays well'. As my then-GF's mother imparted this news to me and my then-GF a look of incomprehension appeared on my then-GF's face. 'I don't understand what you mean, Mummy,' said my then-GF. 'You're so naive, Elizabeth,' huffed my then-GF's mother. 'I mean that Frankie Howerd is a homosexual'. My then-GF's father looked up from his copy of The Birmingham Evening Mail. 'Don't be silly, darling,' he said. 'Frankie Howerd can't possibly be a homosexual. He's much too funny'.

Hi Ebenue and welcome to the forum

Randy Meisner - good call. Assuming we're talking about bassists who sing lead or bass-playing frontmen I have been known to admire the work of: Sting Lemmy Phil Lynott Macca Geddy Jack Bruce Greg Lake Suzi Quatro Gene Simmons Rick Danko Benjamin Orr (The Cars) Burke Shelley Brian Wilson and for his ethereal harmony vocals, Mr Timothy Schmitt.

Far be it from an idiot like me to offer advice to a man of your engineering calibre but I'd imagine it would be a complete bastard trying to centre up a tiny drill on those screws, even with a drill press. Coring them out then re-drilling for a dowel might be a less exacting task. As for threaded inserts, well, are you going to be taking the neck on and off with any degree of frequency? If not, why bother? The 'simple' repair will hopefully last you for another 40 years