Doctor J

Other way around, I think. Hugh was used for some, but not all, of the studio stuff while Alec performed live. Alec was one of the five, though, he was part of the core band in a way Hugh never was.

Perhaps he never spent years as a bedroom player, tweaking his technique and tone in isolation, and developed lots of good habits as an ensemble player from the very start?

Thanks

I've drummed in a few bands over the years. You see everything, sitting at the back. In one band, the bassist was a talented player and songwriter, but a little work-shy when it came to lugging gear and making sure things were done correctly. One day, he arrived at rehearsals with a new bass, a rather nice Tokai Thunderbird, and a set of straplocks which he proceed to try to install... with a butter knife. Sure enough, the knife was a little wide to get in and fully tighten the screws but he said he'd tighten them properly when he got home. A few days later, we were playing a gig and, just as we started a song mid-set, the bassist jolted like he had suffered a short electric shock and sank to his knees. Sure enough, he hadn't bothered his derrière tightening the straplock screws, the front one had popped out and, luckily, he caught the bass on the way down. After playing the remainder of the song on the floor, hunched over his awkwardly shaped bass, he tried to get the screw back in but it wasn't happening and had to play the remaining songs from the floor, straining his neck upwards to try to sing his BVs into a mic too far away to hear him. It was embarrassing for all of us.

Does such a step really exist?

That is amazing. Have you got a gig with Abba?

Any excuse to post a pic 😂

Alembic Orion, though I'm going to build something which I reckon will be even more of what I want.

Having wanted to try the EMG Geezers for a while, I picked up this old Highway 1 body, a while back, which already had them installed. The good people at Warmoth delivered another lovely roasted J neck last week and, as a result, I can positively and affirmatively confirm without doubt that neither of these are Precision basses, no matter how much they sound like them.

Nice.

The string is a straight line pulled taught over a curved line and, as a result, action is relative. My own preference is to have very little relief in the neck, to have very little clearance between the bottom of the string and the crown of the 8th and 9th frets when holding the string down at the first and last frets. I believe the more time you spend at the higher frets, the less relief you should have. The more relief you have in the neck, the more likely you are to set the action to suit the lower frets which results in a relatively lower action at the higher frets. Relief is like artificially increasing the action at the lower frets, allowing greater fret clearance. The higher frets do not benefit from relief in the neck, so do not see any additional clearance other than that which the strings get from the bridge. To see it in action, pun intended, try a capo at the 12th fret and see what the action is like at the high frets with much less of the effect of neck relief, or just look at the action at the higher frets in your video when you're holding the strings down high up the neck. Then let the capo off and see what relief does to the fret clearance at the higher frets compared to the lower frets. This is why you get the strings bouncing off the higher frets like in your video. If you change string size or type, set the neck relief to suit. Always the first step. Then set the action. Your problem will go away. I promise.

Yep, set it up for the new strings and your problems will vanish.

Well done, Skank, nicely done.

I built a 54 style P recently and spent a long time listening to videos of different single coil and dual coil variations of that pickup style. I listened to demos of small custom pickup builders as well as the big brands and was completely open-minded as to what pickup I was going to go for. Based on what I heard, the Seymour Duncan SCPB-1 Vintage Single Coil is, unexpectedly, what sounded best to me so that's what I went with. It's exactly what I wanted from the pickup in real life, too. I used it for last month's composition challenge. This is the bass strung with Chromes, DI'd with a very small smidge of EQ and some compression applied.

It's almost as if they really, really made an effort to present and perform their music in the best way possible, given the circumstances, and give the audience an experience unlike anything they will ever have seen before with the music they love as the soundtrack 🤔

I've already covered a couple of good ones in the thread below. Another highlight includes: Slipping in liquid spilled on stage by the support band and falling backwards into the amps, in this case a hefty Trace 4x10 combo perched on top of a tea chest, then the agonising wait as it rocked back and forwards above me, wondering if it was going to come down on top of me. When it stopped I got up, the rest of the band were still playing, and continued but noticed I had knocked the mic off the stand and it was now sitting in the spillage. Having narrowly avoided injury already, there was no way I was going to touch it while holding a plugged-in bass so I shouted at a mate in the audience to pick it up and put it back in the stand instead.

No corpses were shamelessly exploited by the living in the making of this show/performance, therefore it's ok with me.

Given the thread title, I was expecting yet another mundane P, J and Stingray effort and was pleasantly surprised to see something very different. Shame on me. An excellent selection, indeed. Very cool.

If it was cheap enough, I'd buy it, fret it and play real doom on it.

Fair play to all of you. I was abroad at the start of the month and didn't even get close to finishing anything for this month. A top selection submitted, as usual 👍

It featured in La Bamba, if I recall correctly.

I love instrumental music. There are some fantastic ones in the Metal world, often a nice change of pace and mood in an album context. And then there's the wide, wide world of Jazz.

There are lots of late 70's and early 80's Fenders getting bought and sold. Anyone who remembers them around the time knows they can't all be good ones 😂

I was probably more sensitive to it when I was younger. A few of the albums I loved in my late teens were played on late 80's Ibanez SR800LE and SR1000E so I have a soft spot for those two models in particular. Cliff with his Aria and, before that, Ric, of course, definitely made an impression. I've tried to play as many different basses as I can over the years, though, and find what's right for me. Much as 4003s are cool, I can do without the bastarding right angle of the body digging into my forearm when I play. I've yet to find a Fender I'd want to keep forever, so it doesn't matter how many people play them, I just have no interest. I know what I like and I like what I like, these days, regardless of who played one or not. There's a definite period of late 80's to early 90's where I am drawn to instruments of that era but not because of any group of players, probably more that it was the time when I was really getting into playing bass and guitar. I also didn't have the money to explore the fantastic exotica of the time. Players, though? Nah, past that stage, I think.

The Original AC/DC isn't taken. Checkmate!