Doctor J

I love that. I think it's brilliant. It's Spinal Tap in the real world. How a band who were so, so good could become so utterly inept, it's fascinating.

Middle age millionaires, completely disassociated from that which made them great in the first place, struggle and fail to capture anything of merit while unable to relate to each other or their music, incapable of critiquing or being critiqued, then subtly blame the whole mess on Bob Rock who, wisely or unwisely and under great pressure from management, went shoulder deep to extract turgid offerings from far, far up their rectal passages and piece it all together in some sort of cohesive and musical way. What more is there to understand? It was embraced all the way to the charity shops. The documentary is wonderful, as is Berlinger's book about the experience, but the soundtrack should be buried under lava 😁

I don't think they had an anti-bass agenda, as such, and given the developed the Bongo and Big Al it's not like they were against trying new things in bass world. It's an interesting one, alright. If anyone is brave enough it would be worth seeing if Sterling would open up about it on their forum 🙂

Of course, I forgot the EVH guitars which came out in 90 or 91 - now called the Axis after his defection to Peavey, I believe.

They've had Steve Lukather and Steve Morse models since the mid-90's at least, definitely before 95, and the Albert Lee model even pre-dates those, I think. As I recall, I read Flea wanted the Stingray renamed after him and got the PFO. At least, I read that somewhere shortly after he started his relationship with Modulus. Only recently have they adopted the more scattergun signature model approach though, to be fair, their signature models usually are something quite different from standard stock. Certainly, they tend to go further than stock-with-a-particular-colour-of-paint you see elsewhere offered as "signature" models.

Geezer says "yes"

The Bob Geldof interview was fantastic. I listened to it a couple of times. It's a great podcast.

Use a DeLorean somewhere in your imagery and you can make out you travelled through time to get a sprinkling of hits from the future - once they're performed in the 80's style, of course.

After many years of trying all kinds of different strap lengths, the bottom of the bass on my belt line is what suits my left hand best.

Ibanez SR are narrow, some are as little as 16.5mm spacing at the bridge, other models like the BTB keep a traditional wider spacing.

Steve, something worth considering might be a longer scale 4 string. The likes of the older Japanese Yamaha TRB are 35" scale and can be picked up for very reasonable money. The build quality is superb and, tonally, they're very flexible. There is enough fun in the preamp to get a modern metal tone your bandmates seem to be pushing you towards. You'll get a very solid low A and consistent tone across the neck no problem (speakng from first-hand experience with this one 😉). Unless you prefer the feel of a five string bass and will be using that high G enough to make it worthwhile, I'd be sticking to a four string.

Sometimes the truth hurts 🙂

Yes

There's an old Levinson Blade for sale in the ad section here. A wonderful, very high quality Jazz bass for well under a grand.

It has ripped any fun out of the classifieds here. Annoyingly, both Reverb and ebay still include UK sales in 'European Union' based searches. The prospect of buying used gear from UK sellers is a big fat zero now.

Oh yeah, definitely, they were a gateway band for me in the mid 80's. They were always a bit heavier than a lot of their peers which worked for me. I was one of the few who loved, and still loves, the Corabi album 😁 Poison just weren't acceptable to me on any level back then but, now, I can see there was a little bit more behind the make-up than I gave them credit for. Not much more, but still more 😂 If I'm feeling brave, I might pick up some Ratt soon.

The big one for me was probably Steely Dan a few years ago. I went from complete novice to near obsessive in a very short space of time. At the moment, I'm going through an 80's hard/glam rock appreciation phase - I believe the young people call it "hair metal" these days - and most recently took delivery of 'Look What the Cat Dragged In' and 'Open Up and Say... Ahh!' on CD. The band is called Poison, to the uninitiated. The kind of thing my teenage self would have scoffed at back then as I was a devotee of thrash at the time. They're actually ok, it turns out 😂

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/online-music-marketplace-suffers/

That looks fantastic, very nice indeed.

Pete's a great seller with excellent communication and packs gear superbly. Plus, he's a gent to deal with. Highly recommended.

I wasn't joking, I have done it in the past. It works, it really works 🙂

Did you buy it in pre-sale, like, before it was on sale?

Nice! I have a first gen TRB6 which is a little similar and it's outstanding. This is a level or two above, it must be a beast!

Use superglue to stick a biro shell to the existing scratchplate in your preferred position. Over the next few years, save 10p per week and keep an eye out for a cheap second hand scratchplate in the FS section here, should you ever wish to move it on. If the thought of someone saying "Why have you got a biro stuck to your bass?" causes you unwelcome stress, simply cut the tapered end off so it's just a clear tube. You can also put different coloured paper inside the tube to jazz up the look as you see fit. Bic use toneplastic to make their biros, so you won't lose out tonally, either.