Doctor J

You have had a good year.

Thanks for that. I have just subscribed to the podcast.

It seems like there are quite a few of us on the site who play drums but I can't find a thread which just covers drum... ehhh.... chat. Who out there is also a drummer? What are you playing?

or have asking prices gone absolutely f**cking mental? I've been doing a bit of browsing recently on Reverb and Ebay, as well as some local sites over here in Ireland, and everything is at least 50% over where it should be, I would say. I'm all for profit and such, free economy and all that, but some of these asking prices just beggar belief. Old Squiers ad Mexican Fenders hovering around the 1k mark. I feel like I have been in a coma and missed something important.

I will keep you in mind if an affordable, white 2024x ever crosses my path 👍

I live in a place where you'd get battered by import duties and VAT. I actually took it personally that no-one wanted this bass so it has been transferred back to the "keep it and f**k the non-believers" pile. I dream of a white 2024x but, in the meantime, the 1100S is a good placeholder 😃

It's almost pelham blue, no? You could spray brussels sprouts pelham blue and they'd be desirable. Spray a foxy bass like this that colour and... wow. Very, very nice.

They're a fantastic bass. Desirable? I have no idea what that is anymore now that I live in a world where Squiers and Mexican Fenders regularly graze 1k asking prices. I had my 85 MIJ 1100S up for sale and didn't get an offer above €350. It's a crazy, crazy world. They're a proper, proper bass. Fashionable? No idea. Pro quality bass? 100%.

Billy calls his battered old Precision his "wife"

The oul DVDs never let me down 😁

My missus is not too familiar with the Beatles minutiae, being Italian and raised on opera etc, so we have been watching the Anthology series in preparation for the release of this. I am now ridiculously excited about this being released 🙂

If you've got a Japanese 70's Jazz in Lake Placid Blue with matching headstock, blocks and binding and it doesn't work out... you are the problem.

Brentford Bees?

My old 924 had an additional hole, on top of those drilled in the factory. Rather than try to hide it, they always look terrible, I installed a series/parallel switch which added a useful tonal option.

The red diminishes with exposure to light over a long period of time. You can see it's still visible on the back.

And nowhere near enough fire.

.

They're owned by Fender and are adopting the Fender design philosophy from the last 20+ years, namely jumble up a load of existing parts and give it a name to pretend it's something new. That Fender are now trying to cash in on Ric aesthetics is a very interesting development. That thing is a very ugly mess, it must be said.

At one gig I played back in the early 90s, the band I was playing very raw and heavy doom stuff so, not wanting to be tempted by any fancy notes, I removed all but the biggest string, which was tuned down a long, long way. The bassist from one of the other bands came in looking to borrow a bass but wasn't desperate enough to rock a one-stringer. Quite ungrateful, I thought.

Think about it for a while. Did the basses which created that classic vintage tone have high-mass bridges? Were they old/vintage basses when the classic vintage tone was being recorded?

I'm not sure I would have been so charitable, especially to someone who has broken two strings. How the hell do you break one bass string, never mind two? I once loaned my Rickenbacker 4003 (when they were very hard to come by over here and very, very expensive in the days before online sales really took off) for a soundcheck to a guy on the bill who had "forgotten" his bass. All I did was worry about "what kind of bassist forgets his bass"? My conclusion was "one not to be trusted with my Rickenbacker" and he was instructed to use the time between soundcheck and their set starting to unforget his bass, he wasn't getting my one for their set.

The Black album is at least 50% filler to these ears, so there's no problem dissociating the sound from the songs. It sounds huge, punchy and everything has its place in the mix, which is exactly what they were trying to achieve. That mix tricked loads of people into thinking it's an album full of great songs 😁

You wouldn't say Metallica albums 5, 6 and 7 have good mixes? They're not my favourite, musically, by any stretch, but they are sonically magnificent, no doubt about it. That entire OP video is a sham, by virtue of the fact that the AJFA bass tone is on there. Nobody heard that bass tone until the Guitar Hero stems came out. You can't hear it on the album so how can it be a bad tone in the context of the album? If it's just a load of bedroom maestros judging based on hearing it in isolation, and beaching about what sounds bad in isolation, which it is, then it's entirely pointless. How much sneering has been done on here about guitarists with bedroom tone, rather than a tone which works in a band context? I appreciate the guy needs to continually get hits on his channel, but it's a tabloid-level approach to what could have been an educational discussion.

Since music itself has become worthless, bands are exploring other revenue generating opportunities. Tat, for want of a better word, sells. That's quite tasteful and actually useful in comparison with much of the other crap out there.