Doctor J

One of the very best.

Do it. You sound like you want to do it. Possibly there's an expectation you shouldn't which is weighing on you? If someone wants to have a 74 and not touch it, let them buy one. That one is yours. Do as you want with it but, most importantly, play it.

I would have said guitar based rock is a broad enough church to house both but hey ho, no biggie. Anyway, keep an eye out for my next project, SPICEGIRLS!

They should explore a new name to avoid confusion. Gilla Band were formerly called that and released a couple of albums on Rough Trade under that name. Similar genre, too, and the first results in web searches send you to the Gilla lads. It'd be easier for them to do when the profile is lower.

The Ironbird which really grabbed my attention first was Johnny Rod's yellow one, love this bass.

Ah, I remember it being reported as the Ironbird in Kerrang or Metal Hammer at the time. He used the Ironbird for the full set at the show I was at.

I saw them on that tour, the bass was stolen in Nottingham a few days later, as I recall. Savage gig, although quite short as it was all of the first album and one song off what would become Legion.

This doesn't really make sense. A passive bass doesn't have detents either, would you say the range of detent-free travel on a Precision tone pot means you can never get the same tone twice? A two band Stingray has bass boost only, along with treble cut and boost. The way I set them up was to use the grub screw on the knob as a marker. For the bass knob, turn it all the way down, no boost, and have the grub screw pointing straight up, from the playing perspective. Then you know when it's flat and, if you boost, by how much. For the treble knob, I move it to roughly half way, then set the grub screw pointing straight up, from the playing perspective. You're roughly flat, at that point and it's very easy to see whether you're cutting or boosting and by how much. Very simple. FWIW, I would set passive basses up the same way, the grub screw pointing up when the controls are up full, i.e. flat, not cutting. That way you can see very easily how you are set on any bass, passive or active whether you have detents or not.

Yeah, I remember a discussion about the Lynott bass a few years ago. That is sad news.

The R was used on sone Japanese models and some also had complicated switching. I would lean 95% towards it being USA but there would be a little bit of doubt.

Again, varifocal lenses are the answer here, a different prescription for different areas of the lens, no magnifying effect up close at all. Talk to your optician. Edit -> there's nothing happening here which hundreds of millions of people haven't gone through already. Your optician will be your best source of advice.

I tend to run no EQ on the amp so start with everything flat and adjust to taste for what I'm playing, with no preconceptions of how it "should" be set. It depends on the room, my mood and the song. I use as little as possible to get the sound I'm after and I'm as open to cutting frequencies as I am to boosting. I have a few 2-band EQs on basses, often I will cut both low and high to accentuate the mids. If the bass sounds great with everything flat, you win, just leave it alone. If it doesn't, then the EQ is there to help you win. In short, let your ears guide you to the sound you're after and don't think you need to boost the bejesus out of everything just because you can.

Kahler bridge too, they did the works on that one. If it's US made, you got it about a grand cheaper than it should have been.

Lovely, always wanted one of them. What a steal of a deal too. Well done.

Lose the vanity and wear glasses, varifocal lenses allow you see up close and far away.

The picture of Judas Priest means they're supporting, right? 🤔

I mean, don't get me wrong, Breezysports are usually my first port of call for music news but, this time, I fear they dropped the ball. Perhaps it's... windy... out there.

Fakey McFakery

It looks like a Fender width neck but the bridge is a narrow-spaced Hofner type. It'd be resolved by putting a 19mm spaced bridge on there.

It doesn't matter if they're in other bands, however it does matter if they use this as an excuse not to be prepared when it's time to be in your band. People who think it's ok to waste other's time need to be cut loose, in my experience, even if this means short term pain.

I had this problem with E strings many years ago and stopped buying Rotosounds. That solved it.

What do you feel the current pickups are missing?

I would say no. That bridge P will be next to useless other than to add the thinnest of flavours to something else. I built this a few years ago, interesting experiment but, in the end, there wasn't really anything in it I couldn't get close enough to from the likes of a L2000. Unless, of course, you're just playing solo in the bedroom and are feverously chasing microtonal changes. In a mix, nobody will notice how clever your pickup choices are 😄

Is it just me or is the neck pickup route bigger than the bridge pickup? I was just about to say how nice it is to see a body which could be used without a scratchplate, unlike what Fender do these days.

Strings should get proportionally bigger as you go lower in pitch, in my experience, to keep consistent tension. I use a D'Addario .145 for my B (sometimes drop A) on my 34" ESP Jazz 4 banger which I have tuned BEAD. It's a mighty low, nice feel to it, doesn't feel like overcooked spaghetti like a lot of light B strings. The full set is B .145 E .107 A .80 D .60 Simple rule of thumb is whatever you use for E on a 4 string should translate to your E on a 5 string. Hops of .20 as you get lower simply don't do the job, but a 34" scale bass is just fine for low tunings. Go big with the string.