Doctor J

Save those fingers and just call it wood?

What woods do they reject, out of curisity? What woods constitute non-tone woods? I'm guessing ones not rigid enough to support the stress of strings under tension but if anyone knows of a wood which is hard enough, stable enough but doesn't have tone, I'd love to know. The only one which readily springs to mind is Fender being attracted to pine but finding it too soft and easy to damage, even though the instruments sounded fine and it was cheap and plentiful, their primary criteria for electric solidbody wood back in the 50's. Harder finishes have allowed pine to cross the treshold into Tonewood University, though. Even some Ekos were made of pine 40 years ago. No balsa basses I'm aware of. What wood would be good if only it sounded like it should?

That kind of thing reminds me of the Metal Sludge interview with Jason Ward, bassist from Flotsam & Jetsam who were on MCA for a few albums, as well as a few independent label releases. They sold a decent amount of albums in their day and toured regularly. This bit was an eye opener to me, twenty years ago. http://metalsludge.tv/classic/?p=28283 Jim Sheppard and Warrell Dane worked as chefs even when Nevermore were doing well. The myth of the full-time professional in original music was, and still is, greatly exaggerated.

Those 60's P basses were built with plentiful and/or cheap wood, not carefully selected wood. Fender were and are in the mass-production game. Besides, all the old Fenders seem to be good ones these days, even the ones which barely had a note played on them. How has their molecular structure changed?

Rosewood fretboard, though. It should have a nice, warm tone.

😂

Congratulations! 👏🏻

Sorry to annoy you, I was just trying to understand why you have that opinion in a spirit of open discussion. I'll go back in my box and just post pictures.

So the name matters more than the bass? Sorry, I just don't understand where the negativity is coming from. Surely the quality of the instrument is all that matters?

Really? I have never heard of this. What stuff?

Vote or perish!

The first Metros weren't a dilution of the brand?

Have basses no-one here appears to have actually played yet ever been so unpopular? I don't understand the ire towards this project. Sadowsky knows his stuff. Warwick know their stuff. Despite the shaky embryonic stage we appear to have passed, I can't understand why anyone would think these are going to be anything less than superb.

Your mother should know

I go with what looks nice 🙂

If the truss rod snapped you'd expect all the strings would go flat and the action to increase by about 1cm. Are you sure it's really a truss rod issue?

Martin Ain's "mad monk on meths" was more to my tastes

More than once. The one which sticks out as the earliest was Watchtower - Control and Resistance. I love that artwork and it was on Noise records, where a lot of bands I liked at the time were based, so I reckoned it was worth a punt - at a time and age where disposable income was still a fantasy. It's still one of my favourite albums of all time.

How do they compare to a Spector made in the US though?

There's assembly, yes, but aren't necks and bodies painted and finished by hand too? Don't the same manufacturing processes and automation exist in the USA and Mexico too? I don't, for a second, think your average factory worker in the US or Mexico is living high on the hog, either. Anyway, you can see where I'm going as you expanded through the rest of your post. There's not a lot of the £99 going to the people who made it.

I'd love to know how much they're paid per hour. How many hours of manual labour do you reckon go into your average P bass, let's say since it's as basic as it gets?

Oh? How many smartphones are manufactured in the west? You have a choice, when it comes to instruments and the point of the entire thread is that the choice exists, hence the skewed comparisons.

You may consider Custom Shop prices outrageous but when you consider the instruments they're replicating - mass produced by largely unskilled labour using some of the cheapest, most plentiful woods at the time - sell for multiples of even Custom Shop prices, it might change your perspective, no? What's worth considering is how cheap some instruments are, not just how expensive others are. There's a whole lot of exploitation built into your £99 Harley Benton. When you consider the cost of the raw materials alone, never mind the taxes and duties, the transportation, everyone taking their cut along the way, it does't leave much for the poor bastards who built it, does it? Comparing the cost of something made where worker's rights don't exist and living standards are barely above the level of vermin and using it as means to gripe about how expensive instruments made elsewhere is just a little misguided, in my opinion.

Live At Leeds, The 'Oo, the various incarnations of which eventually wound up with pretty much the full gig. Honourable mentions to: Ronnie Scott's Quintet - Never Pat A Burning Dog Rush - Rush in Rio EST Symphony

Sleep in the Button Factory in Dublin, around 2012ish. Stupidly loud. I had good ear plugs and, if I hadn't, I would have left. There's rock 'n' roll level and then there's permanent hearing loss level and Sleep were wafting in the latter. I was amazed by how many people were there without hearing protection.