Doctor J

Doug Keyser from Watchtower. That band forged an entirely unique sound in the early 80's and he was the heart of it. At ease with immensely technical material, he knew the bass was keeping it grounded and moving. I recall seeing a picture of him playing a G&L SB2 around the time of Control And Resistance. He was a massive influence on almost every Metal band who veered towards a more adventurous approach to songwriting in the late 80's, in particular the likes of Roger Patterson and Tony Choy.

Beaten to it. Just 😂

That guy made 5ers out 4 string basses, with incredibly narrow spacing and tuners which didn't clear each other on the ADG side. This is an actual 5 string Ric, one of the new ones with the triangular pickups, given a 4000 flavour aesthetic instead of the 4003 vibe they're made with.

I think more work goes into writing and rehearsing an original set than regurgitating a selection of music which already exists. I've played in both original and cover bands, in the last 30+ years. My stints in cover bands were always when standing in, helping out mates with cover bands while they searched for replacement members. I don't find playing covers stimulating at all. The money helps but there is no artistic fulfilment in it, for me at least. I appreciate how pretentious this sounds. I much prefer the attention to detail of originals and am happy to live or die on the strength of our music. My attitude is that if we're happy to cut one of our songs from the set to make space for a song written by someone else, then we need to write better music. The type of music I tend to play tends to be quite extreme - of quite selective appeal, if I may - so the adulation of punters is never something I ever became accustomed to and never feel it's missing in my life 😉 I'd rather play to a largely empty room and be met with indifference, but be proud of the music, than play Sweet Caroline to a bunch of singing and dancing oul ones. The creative process is the where the satisfaction lies, for me. It's definitely not where the money is, however.

Having spent years in a band who had a few songs in dropped G, there is a massive difference between playing the real low note and playing tuned an octave up. You definitely get meat in the low note, whether the fundamental is strong or not. Meshuggah have a very specialised sound, built on tightness for syncopation and what they do works for them, but the OP might be playing something with a bit of space where not having the lows would leave the sound quite thin and very unsuitable for what his band does. It's down to the music style.

Nice. Are they the same pickups that were in the Roscoe Beck model? Is there scope for coil serial/parallel shenanigans? It would be a cool platform to really mod the crap out of.

Yowsers! Very, very nice!

I love the Krell shape. Nice one.

D'Addario do a .147 string. That'll do it. Tune all the way down. Chuck that and the heaviest three strings from a heavy 4-string set onto that Precision and you'll be just fine. Pedals and other electric gimmickry can find it hard to track downtuned basses accurately.

If I knew who to kick to get another Rival Schools album, too, I'd be putting my boots on.

If you survive 3 you become immortal, no?

Surely the Levis ad songs qualify here? Stiltskin and Babylon Zoo IIRC?

Well, we don't stand under Dad, for a start.

I genuinely don't care. I have a mix of active or passive and don't feel biased in either direction. I don't see it as one vs the other. Either the bass works for me and fills a role no other bass I have does, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it gets eased on out the door. Regarding tone sculpting, the one rule I have is that the bass sounds good with any onboard and/or amp EQ bypassed. It needs to sound good in its raw state, essentially. I enjoy having onboard EQ but my view on it is that it's there for fine tweaking an already good tone, it's not for trying to salvage something usable out of a sow's ear.

It's not just wacky theories, there has also been a lot of subtle manipulation which has worked on large swathes of the population. I've yet to be convinced that B****t was anything other than a Russian-financed effort to destabilise Europe. I firmly believe the EU was stronger with Britain and Britain was stronger with the EU, but I appreciate this is verboten so I'll jog on. Carole Cadwalladr had quite a few articles linking many of the protagonists to Russian money at the time, though, and it's becoming clear now just how deep Russian money has infiltrated the government. They also latched onto the Trump presidency effort very quickly and few could argue the USA hasn't been massively destabilised since. They were setting up social media groups to subtly disenfranchise and demotivate black voters while selling Trump as traditional white America's messiah. Gentle sewing of discontent. The right wing resurgence in central Europe is no coincidence either. The west has been under attack since the advent of the smartphone and social media provided an individualised manipulation portal from any interested party into the eyes of almost anyone. A quick read up on Russia's Internet Research Agency and Sam Harris' conversations with Tristan Harris are strongly recommended.

On a more serious note, filtering based on location, e.g. UK, EU, Rest of World, could be useful given the tax implications now beset upon us.

The line should be after the Mojo levels sub-sections, graded from one to five: one for some mojo and five reserved for those being anointed with sacred lemon oil on the day of the Feast of the Sacred Tonewood by the ghost of St. Leo.

It's an easy trap to fall into. The wife of a friend of my missus spent a fair bit of time devolving into a conspiracy theory believer after she spent more and more time on the internet while on maternity leave. She has recently started spouting the official Russian line on Ukraine which, while that isn't good, at least indicates where much of the misinformation originates which she is snared in. How you pull someone back from the state they've been manipulated into, I don't know, however. Some people just get caught up in these things unwittingly. It's easy to laugh at them, but much of this stuff is a state-sponsored attack on our societies via social media which has been going on for quite some time. It's dangerous and intentionally so.

If it means more Quicksand then I heartily support this development.

Think of the intro to Enter Sandman, hear it in your head, that's in E, tune the E string to that and use 5th and 7th fret harmonics for the rest.

Humour definitely belongs in music, just like love, life, sorrow and death. I appreciate that reads a bit like one of those tacky living-room wall slogans which are all the rage these days. A bit of light-hearted wit does not mean the music is not taken seriously. More humour, please, the world will be better for it.

I make sure the serial number is visible and clear in pics, when I put up an ad, and I usually put up at least 15 big and clear pics of every cm2 of the instrument. Let the pics say everything there is to say about it and then you don't get questions. Other than "Would you trade your nice bass for three not no nice ones and a red lawnmower handle" or "Can I pay you much, much less since you don't live on my street" types which, sadly, seem to be unavoidable

Soundcloud, I suppose?

It's still not working for me. It doesn't really do anything or say anything, just... inoffensive again. I mean, it's fine, there's just nothing in it which would make me want to put it on ahead of anything pre-By The Way.