musicbassman

Sorry for completely derailing your thread, Juliet...... 😳

Can't remember - maybe John Birch changed the tuners as well - they don't look like the originals, do they ? I realise the picture was taken at Stockton Fiesta, a big cabaret nightclub there at the time. Long gone, I expect.

I very foolishly buggered it up in the early '70's by sending it up to John Birch in Birmingham to have a R... (don't mention that word) pup fitted, to try and beef up the sound. But apart from being a bit louder there was no difference. I didn't understand at the time how important string length was on a bass, so I was really just trying to get the frequencies of a 34" string out of a 30" string. The Danelectro was extremely light and was made of a hardboard face and back with a hollow body. There was no way the poor thing was ever going to produce useful bass frequencies, and really only suited pick playing. So, a stylish and some might say iconic bass ruined through my ignorance. I eventually sold it to a guitarist friend and don't know what happened to it after that. I cannot remember where the R... pup came from, it was one of the early ones with a split magnet shroud. Here I am using the Dan with the pup fitted at some gig around 1973. I changed to a P soon after this.... Yes, and my hair was this long!

In 1968 the band I played 'rhythm guitar' with (using a Watkins Rapier 33) packed up after its first disastrous gig at a local yoof club, and I then decided to change to bass. My first bass I bought was this Danelectro Longhorn, from a local secondhand shop for £45. By the way, the white toggle switches were made of wood. I bet the later reissues were plastic.

Hi Col, If your bass is still in it's original form and you've had it a long time then maybe it's best to leave it as it is and buy another bass to use alongside this one. One persons 'carefully modded' bass is another persons 'non original' (or 'wrecked') and these can be very difficult to sell on., and you'll also be very unlikely to get back what you've spent. But other opinions are available. Actually, this topic has been covered before:

Well, here's two memorable guitar solos - completely different. The first is edging towards chaos theory - it's Jon Poole's solo on Cardiacs 'Fiery Gun Hand' Starts at 3.20 The second is Jay Graydons very carefully constructed solo on Manhattan Transfer's 'Twilight Zone' Starts at 2.35 (By the way, Jay Graydon also played the solo on Steely Dan's 'Peg')

Errr... - I think Golden Brown is in 3/4 ? (with the occasional bar of 4/4 during the main theme) 🙂

As a tribute to Dave Greenfield (kbd Stranglers) Laurence Mason has done a genius level mash up of old footage of the Dave Brubeck Quartet and an instrumental version of Golden Brown, which he created himself. He explains how he achieved this in the notes. Done to perfection ! Enjoy.

Wow, this is seriously excellent! Thanks, TrevorR. Great retro styling too, but speaking as an old git (who was there at the time) I would say the style is 1964 rather than 1970. 😊

Sorry to break it to you, Newfoundfreedom, but THIS is the original!

There, fixed it for you

I find that if I've been working in the garden or similar and I need to wash my hands prior to playing then my hands will be too soft to play for about 15 mins or so after this, especially the vital calluses on 1st and 2nd fingers right hand. Also I can understand that if you have sweaty hands then you will need to at least wipe your fretboard down after playing. Personally I'm lucky to have pretty dry hands so a quick rub down after playing isn't really necessary (Fnaar, fnaar) 😊

I think you'll find that the notes are in a slightly different order on the Jazz neck compared to the P, they're slightly more random as I understand it, hence the 'Jazz' name. Maybe ask at your local music shop about this, I'm no expert.

So, the original link is for the WD40 contact cleaner. On the Amazon page where people have asked questions about this, there is the following: Question: Can it be used on volume controls to stop that awful interference when altering volume levels? Answer: It might help, but only if it is an open potentiometer you are trying to clean. Volume knobs usually are not open. However, a tip I learned many years ago - turn the volume knob from one way fully to the other way at least 10 times rapidly. This cleans the slider and can improve the crackling noise you speak of. By Dave S on 17 October 2017 As far as I know this is what it is made for. I used it on some guitar potentiometers and it sorted them out. By Allypally on 16 October 2017 It should be fine but may not fix your issue, that will depend on whither it is mechanical damage. By Amazon Customer on 17 October 2017 My question is - if you have a noisy pot, is that a mechanical problem or an electrical problem ? And, if the pot is of closed design, then how do you use a cleaner? Do you try to squirt some fluid inside through any convenient small hole in the pot case?

Yep, she (apparently) bought my natural finish '63 P around 1986 which I'd put up for sale through Andys in Denmark St. I remember it sold with it's enormous ally flight case included. You could have driven a truck over that thing. I never saw her use it live, but she did have a natural P with a maple neck around this period also. (mine was a rosewood neck). Maybe she was always searching for the perfect P bass! It's a lifetime's work.

Just for smiles. Genevieve Artadi (Knower) messing about in her kitchen with Aya to reproduce a Disney-esque version of a Snow White tune. She has a real problem keeping a straight face! Look out for the outtakes at the end. 🙂

I agree the one on the right has a face that only it's mother could love, but.... errrr.... surely the question should be which one sounds best ???

Ha ha - many years ago I had a run of gigs with a Welsh comedy showband doing cabaret around the clubs. The band used to play the same half a bar over and over again at the end of one number to imitate a stuck record, and then the singer would produce a comedy sized inflatable hammer and whack it down on the bass amp, at which point we'd abruptly stop playing. On numerous occasions punters would laugh and jeer - but I suspect not because the idea was ridiculous and funny, but because they genuinely thought we were miming to a record. Maybe they weren't the sharpest tools in the box, mind you.

Yep, he's the biz. Here he is having a laugh with the lovely Rossanna Carraro. 😊

She's obviously about to attempt a new World Record in Female Weightlifting (Senior Class)

Yep, this is true. Flats can sound OK for slap with a bit of EQ tweaking, but not the best. I do deps for cover bands, and usually find that I might need to use slap for just a couple of numbers out of a whole evenings playing. And I'm not going to change from my usual PJ with flats just for the sake of a couple of numbers ! By the way, the most common covers I come across that really do need slap are Forget Me Knots, or Somebody Else's Guy (Jocelyn Brown) or Never Too Much (Luther Vandross)

Cardiacs? Yep, we know, they were like Marmite, love 'em or hate 'em. Ludicrously complex music, and very few covers done of their material for this very reason. And the few that are about are generally well meant but pretty poor. But here's Joey Frevola and a few mates doing an excellent cover of 'It's a Lovely Day' I bet they didn't learn this in a couple of hours. Enjoy.

Absolutely brilliant interpretation! 😊 ...and here's the original:

I think that getting ANY gig will be a major achievement for the foreseeable future. If wedding events are allowed in 2021 then I guess there'll be a short lived shortage of decent bands for these due to carry-over of cancelled events from 2020, but apart from that, I'm sorry to say I think the club/pub scene is pretty well over. You all know the reasons, they're well versed, and Covid has been the last straw. And I can't imagine what form of 'social gathering with music' will replace this, if anything. 😳