skankdelvar

Good luck with your enterprise and full marks for including Shang-a-Lang. A brave decision, IMO. The Bay City Rollers: Not remotely loathed by a generation of teenage males.

Possibly. I find that toting a car battery and jump leads around is something of a tiresome exercise. By contrast, a handy little .32 automatic slips easily into one's pocket. Cork-sniffers tend to deprecate the .32 as a 'lady's weapon' but they're wrong. Loaded with something like the Lehigh Defense .32 Caliber Xtreme Cavitator you're looking at around 1,100 fps and around 14" penetration into FBI-grade gelatin blocks. Of course, were I to shoot erring retailers in the ear rather than the face I could probably get away with a .22 but I'd feel uncomfortable about the lack of heft and grunt.

His little tutorials are fantastically useful, partic the 'boxes'. Top chap.

Ignore any chafing observations that may appear here. In expressing your dissatisfaction with a musical instrument retailer you are following in the highest traditions of BassChat. Not a week goes by that one of us does not put finger to keyboard the better to chronicle the deficiencies of sundry guitar emporia and / or their carters. Some abhor the over-pushy salesperson; others detest the chap who cannot hand us a bass without first sitting down and slapping away like a spoons-player with St Vitus dance; profound contempt is reserved for the purse-lipped, nicotine-stained geriatric proprietor and his dopey, hopeless shop-boy alike. The happy retail experience is so vanishingly rare that it is greeted with wide-eyed surprise. Even beyond the retailer we hurl our bile at wholesalers and manufacturers and their endorsers and their suppliers and their advertising agencies and so ad infinitum. Frankly, it's the right thing to do. Any erring retailer who gets off with as little as a redacted thread like this should count himself lucky. For myself, when thwarted by some ghastly till-monkey I adhere to a firm two-step policy of (i) a savage, public tongue-lashing followed by (ii) a bullet in the face in a deserted warehouse.

To be fair, it must be a horrible job working in a guitar shop. Went into the local emporium the other day to find four jibber-jabbering teenage Italian tourists gaggled round their mate who was playing ham-fisted metal licks at earsplitting volume on a £1500 Fender. The sales guy was stood behind his counter, rigidly immobile from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. The only thing that betrayed his utter dismay was a wildly twitching left eyelid. Sensing an imminent and possibly catastrophic customer service failure I made my excuses and left.

He's a great player, isn't he? Has his own YT channel - Texas Blues Alley

Approach #1 Sell the BJ and the Kemper. Buy a Clapton Signature EC Vibrochamp or Tremolux. Crank it up and maybe roll a bit of treble off your guitar. Approach #2 Stick a bog-standard Boss EQ pedal between your guitar and your BJ. Roll off some of the bass end, crank the 1.6k fader. Turn your BJ up. See below: In either instance, craft your lead tone first with the guitar volume set to full. Then turn the guitar volume pot down for rhythm passages. If everything sounds a bit muddy when turned down fit a treble-bleed cap / resistor across your volume pot(s). In any event, it still won't sound much like it does on the recording because you won't be hearing it through a high-end mike and desk with studio compression and EQ.

This sort of thing deserves to be recorded for posterity so I've added Redd's first post to the Famous Quotes thread.

You're very welcome

I'm delighted it's working out for you! People often slag off capos as being 'for beginners'. IME, they're the gateway to a world of weirdness. Have fun

Quite right. It's certainly seems a better deal than the ad which ran years ago for a marketing assistant at (I think) Warwick. The money was ... er ... tight, the duties remarkably onerous and it also involved a six-month 'temporary' relocation to Germany.

Well, he used the same argument about his lead so I got him a very early prototype wireless unit and he still did it after every song. Bow, kick, bow, kick, bow, kick. Only years later did I come to realise that the foot thing was a sort of nervous reaction born of low self-esteem and stress. By then, of course, it was too late to do anything other than pen a fulsome apology and stick it in the post. Months went by and I'd heard nothing so I wrote him another letter and was promptly slapped with a restraining order. My wife of the time (a Japanese lady artist) insisted that it was all his fault anyway and I was much more talented so I left her, sh@gged my PA, got drunk for years and eventually took four bullets off a nutter. That's showbiz for you.

When I was in The Beatles it always used to annoy me that the bass player insisted on doing this silly little backwards kick with his left foot when he bowed (see above). He wasn't a bad singer but after one gig we had a huge row about his foot so I left the band. Losers.

Just noticed this: you won't need to bend it. The Shubb will fit the radius at the 12th fret of most every neck.

When I said upside down I didn't mean back to front! (Though using it back to front as a partial capo is an approach). Lots of people put their Shubbs on like this: The Wrong Way Done as above the locking mechanism gets in the way more than doing it... The Right Way ... with the mechanism on the low E string side of the neck. That's what I meant by 'slotting it of from the top'. Sorry, should have been clearer. If you're interested in partial capo-ing then Shubb and others make partial capos. The Spider Capo is a complete brain-melt. Spider Capo - clamps individual strings in multiple combinations

These days I call him Steptoe.

Best bass for a flounce-smash? Probably a standard-scale hollowbody with no centre block. In advance, fill it with confetti for that extra touch of class.

Looking back over 40 years-worth of drummers it's clear that the softly-softly approach is a complete waste of energy. However nicely one puts it, drummers always get the hump. This being the case, I have eschewed diplomacy and now adopt a more robust approach e.g. 'Play it like that again and I'll f**king kill you stone dead on the spot. Savvy?' OK, they still quit the band but it saves time on all the pussyfooting around.

Shubb capos are curved, are 2" wide and will fit a radius of 9.5" - 16". They're not that expensive, last forever and the mechanism is much less intrusive than other types, partic if fitted 'upside down' i.e. slotted on from the top downwards. I just tried my Shubb at the 12th fret of a fattish Fender neck and it just about covers all six strings. If you've got a particularly wide neck you might consider the Shubb 12-string capo which is 2.25" wide but might protrude beyond the edge of the board. Me, I prefer the original Shubb C1b Capo rather than the upgraded C1 with the little wheel; the retaining bar on the C1b is flatter and less obtrusive.

True dat. Nice old school tone you've got going on there with either neck. Still, if it feels nicer to play then that's a good thing.

One of the grand things about messing about with instruments is that unforeseen delights ensue from initially uncontrolled experiments. Glad you're enjoying your new configuration. As regards the mismatched headstock colour: a quick overspray would sort that. Something close to Fiesta Red (or even black) would do the job. Nice work, Sir

Another testimonial: "If by cruel and awful happenstance I were to be exposed to this sort of music I would at least think twice before un-holstering my revolver" - Mr D, Wiltshire (As you know, I hate jazz but I quite enjoyed your stuff there. Perhaps it's because I know you, Rob ).

Most readily available guitars have fairly similar fingerboard widths. Modern Fenders and Gibsons are mostly 1-11/16" (43mm), reducing to 1-5/8" (41mm) for some vintage models and some Squiers. 'Wider' nuts are usually 1-3/4" (44mm) - so not much bigger. Super-wides are around 1-7/8" (48mm) and pretty rare. Warmoth do a super-wide Strat neck for bolting onto a conventional guitar but gawd knows what it would cost. Super-wide guitars are pretty rare off the shelf and you'd need to search for them. Another option might be to buy an electric 12-string (e.g., a Yamaha Pacifica) and get a luthier to fit a six-string nut. That should give you some more space to work in, but it's still a compromise. Perhaps a better way to look at it is that having big hands brings certain advantages and disadvantages. Stretches and thumb-wrapping are easier on a conventional neck; having big hands didn't stop Gary Moore, Jimi Hendrix and many others from making great music on normal sized fretboards. On the downside one may have to adapt one's technique a bit when venturing up the neck to where the frets get closer together. Work with what you've got and try out some guitars with the conventional 1-11/16" (43mm) width. Choosing a guitar with a flatter-radius board may help - ie. a 12" radius. The older style narrower 7-1/4" radius boards can feel cramped at times. Final point: I've got stupidly short, stubby fingers and would love to have bigger hands. Hendrix's big hands: Thumb halfway across the board up around the 12th fret(!)

By coincidence I've just been watching the same vid. Very informative.