Russ

There's been some decent rock stuff that might appeal to the white, male, over-40s crowd in Eurovision over the past few years. I'm white, male, and 51 and I thought Baby Lasagna from Croatia were good this year, Voyager from Australia were fantastic last year (Alex Canion from Voyager is a hell of a bass player too), Sam Ryder did a great job the year before, and Maneskin brought the glam the year before that. It's usually in there, in amongst the assorted "quirky" Eurovision fare.

Sam had stage presence, charisma, talent, and, most importantly, a really good song. He deserved his spot. When the UK delivers the goods, people vote for us. Most of the time we don't! Olly's song was forgettable, had no hook or memorable chorus, and, yes, the general homo-eroticism of the performance might have turned some people off. The staging was cool though. Switzerland earned their win. It was the only song with a proper "earworm" hook, and the staging was incredibly clever. And I also liked the Croatian entry - like a more poppy Rammstein. Ireland's Bambie Thug was also a great, very original performance and a good song. They're actually pretty talented - if you look on Youtube, you'll find videos of them performing some of their songs solo on piano, and they're great.

Always wanted a '72 Jazz. Then I played a few. The ones I tried were all massively expensive, incredibly heavy, the condition was far beyond "relic", into the realm of "battered to sh*t", and they all had that horrible gappy neck pocket that a lot of 70s Fenders had. Maybe I just never found a good one, but I'd prefer a 70s reissue at this point! There's probably some other, more esoteric options out there rather than an old Fender, but I haven't come across anything I'd actually want.

I used to have a SVT-7. And I ran into the cutting out issue during a gig, in the middle of the first song. Which is a shame, as it was a fantastic-sounding head, with just the right amount of "hair" to the tone, and gobs of power. I got it fixed and immediately sold it on. Supposedly the defect has been addressed on newer versions of the head. I've been tempted to get another, but it's a gamble I don't think I want to make. Apparently the new Venture series heads nail the SVT tone, but I've not had a chance to try one yet, and it'll be a "simulated" version, since they have no valves. Now that Ampeg is part of Yamaha, the QC is supposedly much better than it was. But, y'know, once bitten and all that.

It's a cool toy, never seen a 3D configurator before. Very nicely done. But I'm a Bongo guy - once they start offering those through the configurator, I'm in. My bank account will hate me though...

Great idea, but it kinda works backwards - the fingerboard should come up rather than the frets going down, otherwise the action is going to be too high for the fretless mode. The Novatone swappable magnetic fingerboards that were a thing back in the early 90s were cool though.

Tesco Value, not even Tesco Finest?

I was in a band 25-odd years ago, and the guitarist just woke up one day and decided he didn't like rock music or playing the guitar anymore. Took his guitars, amp, etc down to a pawn shop and sold it all that same day. It wasn't the sort of band where any of us would have been easily replaced, so we just called it a day. Not nearly as dramatic as some of these other stories, but extremely random, and we were all quite hurt. However, he's picked up the guitar again in recent years, and is in a band with our old drummer.

I’m sure half the stuff in NHME was nicked. I bought some nice stuff from there pretty cheap back in the day. But this was before you had the likes of Chancellor playing them - even Mick Karn was using a Klein instead of his Wal, Percy Jones had moved to Ibanez, Geddy Lee was back to his Jazzes, and so on. They were almost terminally uncool back then.

I passed over a 4-string Mk2 in Notting Hill Music Exchange back in the mid-90s for £250. That would have been one hell of an investment.

Thanks for the clarification, Alan. That’s the other route to getting to filter-based multicoil Nirvana, buy an ACG.

Pretty sure it's a Pangton too. https://www.lefay.de/index.php/EN/bass_models/pangton

There are three that I can think of. Lusithand Devices make the NFP range - they're sonically very similar to the original Wal preamp, but with a wider Q frequency sweep and no "pick attack" control. They made sure to reproduce details to the degree of matching the level of harmonic distortion the preamp generates. Second would be the East ACG EQ-01 - this is the preamp that ACG fit into their high-end basses, with their multicoil pickups. Again, a pretty close facsimile of the original Wal design, but a little more "hi-fi" and maybe slightly closer to Alembic's approach. Then there's the Underhill range - they offer modular preamp components, including filter-based tone controls. I've heard good things, but have no direct experience with them. Currently, if you want an aftermarket Wal-type setup, the Lusithand NFP combined with Turner multicoil pickups seems to get you closest to "that" sound.

My bad. Maidenbower. I lived in Winchester when I was a kid, so I guess that town name stuck around in my head. Plus I guess it shows how memorable my time in Crawley was...

Lived there for a little while about 15 years ago - Micheldever, right next to Three Bridges station. Depressing AF, as the kids say. But, at the time the alternative was Croydon, so, in retrospect, it doesn't seem so bad!

One of the most popular stations on SiriusXM (American digital satellite radio service) is called 1st Wave, and it's back-to-back synthpop/new wave/new romantic stuff. It's not classed as such though, it's all "80s alternative". They did mostly ignore the Britpop stuff, with the exception of Oasis, Blur and maybe a couple of tunes from Pulp. You hear them back-to-back with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc on the 90s stations (SiriusXM has a station for that too, called Lithium). And yep, The Cure are huge in the States. I saw them about 12 years ago in Philadelphia during my first stint over here, massive arena venue, and was completely sold out. They played a nearly 3-hour set. 😮 Bob from Crawley did good.

Tinie Tempah did OK for a while in the US - he had his music used in WWE wrestling for a bit. But Stormzy, Dizzee Rascal, etc had no success whatsoever. You're right, it's pretty dark, plus It's not "aspirational" like modern American hip-hop, which seems to mostly be about the accumulation of money, drugs, fancy cars, "cribs", b**ches and so on. A lot of old hip-hop was a lot closer to what grime is now, with lots of social commentary, but you don't hear much of that kind of thing any more.

I've owned 4 Bongos (but am currently down to one), so I know them quite well. They're unmistakably Music Man basses. They have that extremely distinctive upper-mid bite that MMs are known for, and solid, wide bottom end you can stand on. The pickups and preamp are extremely powerful, with a ton of headroom and almost every kind of tone you'd ever want is in there somewhere, between the two pickups and the 4-band EQ. Ergonomically, they're a little weird. They don't sit all that well on the knee, but they're well balanced, reasonable in terms of weight, and have slim, comfortable necks. Overall, they're great basses. And that's a good price. I say go for it, you aren't likely to be disappointed.

D'Amour wasn't nearly as fond of effects as Chancellor. Clangy Ricky/MM/Magnum bass sound, lots of high mids, and just a touch of reverb.

The semi-hollow Status signature bass was pretty much the template for the bass he ended up making with Warwick, with the pickup right up against the bridge, etc. I wasn't that much of a fan of it, to be honest. It had quite a harsh tone, all high treble and low bass, and not much in the middle.

That's not that much more than older non-Pro Wals go for these days, to be fair. And you get that extra bit of New Romantic cachet. A lot of Gen-X'ers who grew up with that music now have "spare" money for stuff like that! Scott Devine paid a similarly extortionate sum for a Wal that was used in the Do They Know It's Christmas video.

One of Maruszczyk's latest creations, a Jazzus with Turner multicoils and a Lusithand preamp. Pretty much nails the Wal tone to my ears.

I recall that his signature Status had crazy 36V electronics, with four batteries! I loved the design, with the downsized body - shame it was during Status' wooden neck phase (which they appear to have gone back to), would have loved to have seen one with a graphite neck.

I think you're right. Looks like a Mk2 in the Suck My Kiss video. Another player who was a prolific user of Wals back in the day is Jonas Hellborg, before he went off doing his Status and Warwick things. There’s some footage of him on YouTube back in 2020 at NAMM playing a Mk3 through EBS gear and he sounded fantastic. Has Hellborg’s endorsement deal with Warwick run its course? They don’t have his bass or his signature amps on their website anymore.

Some of the album is Stingray too - Forty-Six & Two is all Stingray, and I think Third Eye is too. It's kinda the reverse of Blood Sugar Sex Magik by RHCP - everyone at the time assumed the whole album was Stingray, but almost all of it was recorded with a Wal (with the exception of two songs where Flea played a 5-string Stingray). That's another quintessentially Wal-sounding album...