Dankology

I may be wrong but I think Fun Loving Criminals started as the sort of B team band in a bar they all worked in.

Completely irrelevant to your issue but I wanted to say that the Japanese 72 thinline is one of my permanent Ebay searches... Do you happen to have any thoughts on it versus the more common Mex versions?

What an odd point of view. I wouldn't presume for one moment to tell the members of the Who what they should and should not do in terms of respect for each other - I think all four members individually spoke of how terrible were as human beings and the record would suggest none of them enjoyed each other's company very much. But from an audience member's point of view, pretending that a unique musician and presence can just be depped in order to keep the promoters and insurers happy is distasteful. The fact that many ticketholders didn't care (or possibly even notice) is no doubt the reason this sort of thing can happen and could probably account for any number of other issues in modern rock commerce. And that does not speak of a "thirst to be opinionated": it is a (fairly nuanced) expression of an opinion - something that a discussion board such as this requires, the alternative presumably being limiting members to the posting of lists of incontrovertible facts.

I think if I'd paid whatever ridiculous ticket price was and then was given the option of seeing the band without an absolutely crucial element or just taking the hit, I'd be mightily annoyed. I think I'd agree with Rich that much of what is wrong with modern rock commerce is encapsulated here: a whole machine whirling around a "unique" artistic endeavour (ie compare the venue sizes the Who members play/played as solo acts) but the momentum of the machine means that the artists themselves have to be instantly replaceable. The idea of Who fan for whom Entwistle or Moon are replaceable utterly baffles me but there must be enough of them around. So the money men are correct. Without being right.

I'm currently trying a similar experiment and picked up a selection pack of felt, leather and possibly lino plectrums on Ebay for about £5. I can't say that I've really got on with any of them yet in terms if feel although they have tamed some of the sharp attack. Create a lit of dust/fibres too.

I seem to have the same attitude to humour in music as I do in life: I much prefer listening to someone whose wit and intelligence shines through rather than someone reciting jokes, desperate to amuse. Stuff like Tom Waits, the Fall, Leonard Cohen, the Hold Steady and Arctic Monkeys could never be mistaken for comedy acts but I reckon the humour bleeds into a lot of what they do. Having said that, a lot of my favourite stuff can be entirely humourless (Joy Division, Van Morrison)... I'm just trying to visualize the Venn diagram of people who I find funny, smart and have similar taste in music to me - it looks more like a series of tightly concentric circles 🙃

The Revelation was the first thing I Googled when I started losing the will to live several hours into messing with the Squier. They seem to be out of stock in most places but I'm thinking it could provide a model for a possible custom build. Triple P90s do look a bit crammed though. But I too seem to favour the middle position on the Squire (sometimes with the neck switched in too) so I've got a bit of thinking and mocking up to do here. Rehearsed with the Squire VI last night and things went reasonably well but definitely had some slightly grizzly notes on the low E.

@BigRedX Things have got a little better today with incremental truss rod adjustments - I think there was still way too much relief and this was influencing the tuning issue. I can't quantify how out they were but certainly enough for my not-excellent ears to pick up on. It's still not perfect but I can just about play octaves now without cringing. I've still got way more buzz than I'd like but you're quite right - the overall situation is now siginficantly improved. I think the nut could definitely do with a proper seeing to too. I'm definitely not seeking perfection here - I have at least a couple of instruments (a mando and a guitar) that I'm happy to tune differently depending on which key I'm in. The saddles' positions relative to each other do look properly odd though. I was hoping to pick your brain regarding my theoretical custom build. In my head it's looking very much like the Elvis Costello Jazzmaster https://flickr.com/photos/mediawench/4096773922/in/set-72157594485374924 (maybe with a slightly scaled down body size) but almost certainly without the whammy bar and with more orthodox circuitry. I've always been a fan of P90s on guitars and was considering two of these rather than the three Jaguar-style ones. I am a fairly heavy handed player at times and I'm intrigued by what you were saying about your Hooky 6-string - ideally I'd be wanting something that functions as an extended-range bass rather than an extended range guitar, if that makes sense. Not for six grand though...

Tonight's update... I followed @BigRedX's instructions re starting from scratch and initially setting the saddle height at 15mm. I needed to put in a shim of two layers of a plastic RAC membership card going up to the lowest neck screws in order to keep a straight line from neck to saddles. I then raised the bridge up a further 2mm and tuned up. The low E is in tune when played open, at the 12th fret harmonic and when fretted at the 12th fret. But every note from 1st to 11th fret is sharp - this gradually settles towards the octave and is sort of OK beyond there. The A and D strings are similarly affected but to a lesser extent - ie the A's intonation is right from the 10th fret up, the D from the 7th. Perhaps I need to let tonight's adjustments settle overnight but I've not got a great feeling here. I did contact my luthier but have to admit that I jumped pretty much straight to asking about a custom build...

I'm literally minutes away from a fabulous luthier (the guys who do these: https://reverb.com/uk/item/7274703-very-rare-brian-eastwood-bender-distortocaster ) but my pointless male pride means I want to have done as much as I possibly can myself before I send the flare up.

I was nearly there last night, let me tell you.

@BigRedX Thank you for the very comprehensive guidance - I'm very grateful to everyone that has offered their expertise here. I'm hoping to set some time aside this evening to start bottoming this out properly. I'm a bit gutted if I'm honest - the Squire had sat unused for months until recently and has now become absolutely essential to about half a dozen new songs. Will report back!

Thanks for that. I've admitted defeat for this evening but I'm going to try everything suggested so far tomorrow and see how far I get. Re the nut, it seems to have the proper slant towards the bridge but there's also a left/right slant and the slot itself isn't wide enough to let the string get to the deepest point.

I think the low E slot is cut slightly wrong - the bottom of the slot is little slanted so the string doesn't sit quite as low as it might. Will try and file it down... I thought I was reducing the relief by tightening the truss rod but met significant resistance. Or should it need a good bit of effort to tighten it up? I am truly out of my depth here.

The shim was a stiff piece of card (from a packet of strings, or something slightly thicker), it starts at the body end of the pocket and reaches about a third of the way up. Photos attached! Looking at the nut, I wonder if the low E slot could do to be a bit deeper.

I've had another mess around but this is driving me mad. There was barely a 1/16 of a clockwise turn left in the truss rod. In desperation I ended up giving it about an 1/8 of a turn counter-clockwise from its original position and this has allowed me to get the intonation right at the 12th fret. But now every note between 1st and 11th frets is significantly sharp and the string buzzes so much as to be unplayable. The other strings are unaffected. I've included a photo to show how high the action remains despite the bridge being as low as it can go plus a neck shim in situ. I'm beginning to suspect that the neck has something horribly wrong with it but would be grateful for some pointers to try before I smash the thing into pieces and throw it on the fire.

A new set of strings has just arrived, funnily enough... Will see how things go with them.

As noted in a recent posting, I'm using my Squire VI more regularly nowadays, in fact it's the only instrument I've used at our last couple of rehearsals. But the more I use it, the more I'm noticing problems. I've already fitted a Staytrem bridge as the original didn't allow enough saddle movement to intonate the low E and have shimmed the neck slightly. I'm currently using the Newtone Axiom strings which have a 100 (or thereabouts) on the lowest string. But I'm still struggling to intonate the low E despite the saddle being maxed out. At the moment it seems I have two options: drop the bridge to its lowest and get decent intonation but rattles all along the string OR raise the bridge and then have every single note up to about the 15th fret sound sharp. The other strings seem pretty fine. Looking down the neck, there seems to be significant relief (I should check I'm phrasing this correctly here: to my eye the neck seems to bow away from the strings around its midpoint). So I'm wondering if an adjustment here might be what's needed. But this is something I've never had cause to adjust on any guitar before - is it really as simple as gradually turning the adjustment clockwise and seeing how things go? Or does what I describe above speak of a more signficant issue?

I quite like a sort of hybrid system I've seen on one of the free online bass lessons sites: four lines representing the strings but with note names rather than fret numbers. I convince myself it encourages me to think more about what I'm doing rather than just mindlessly playing the fret numbers.

Sorry - I missed this reply. I checked the resistance in the shop before taking it home: it was something like 6.4ohm - which reassurred me based on your earlier advice. Seems to be working well and I'm liking the sound too 😀

I've always loved vinyl and when I was a teenager it was a cheap way to pick up loads of classic stuff. Still love big covers, two "programmes" per album and the whole ritual of putting a record on. A few months ago I almost gave up on new vinyl after picking up a run of noisy sounding LPs. Even a new cartridge didn't help. I eventually picked up a much nicer turntable and I cannot express how much better everything sounds, even through a middling amp and low end speakers. Even my other half, who semi-tolerantly indulges this stuff, has repeatedly commented on how good it sounds. So I'm fully recommited now and would strongly encourage any waverers to check out a decent modern deck. Of course, I'm aware that much of what I'm liking will be down to distortion and the limitations of the format but I'm OK with that. In terms of the vinyl revival itself, I'm torn: I love that new music is coming out on the format but the prices are ridiculous, even for nondescript secondhand stuff. I fear lots of nice new stuff is getting wrecked on cheapo pseudo-vintage decks and labels that have always pressed vinyl are now being squeezed out of the production process. On the other hand, CDs are now cheap and plentiful, so I'm filling in gaps in my collection on the cheap again. Jeffrey Lewis wrote a great song about it that I'm sure I've posted here before: https://youtu.be/3urXygZXb74

Well, Squire VI to be completely accurate. I bought mine a couple of years ago on a bit of whim from someone local for about £120. Judging by the comments on his Facebook page after it sold, I suspect it had been an object of derision in his band and, to be fair, in its then state really wasn't much of an instrument. Since then I've picked up one of the Staytrem bridges, shimmed the neck and switched to the fab Newtone Bass VI strings - I'm still pondering upgrading the pickups and nut as well as ditching the whammy bar but for now it is a useable bass and occasionally got used for overdubbed parts on the odd song. But for the last few weeks I've been using it almost exclusively at rehearsal and it's been a bit of game changer. We're a guitar/bass/drums three-piece and using it for octaves, runs against open strings, chords and high register melodic stuff etc has allowed the guitarist and I to blur our roles and the jamming has lead to more bits of new music than we know what to do with. I'm also using more effects than ever before, which is fun. It weighs a ton and the low end is a bit lacking for it to take the place of a normal bass but it is fast becoming one of my favourite instruments. So, is there anyone else in a similar position? These things seem to get very little love online (other than in the dedicated Facebook group!) but I suspect that that is more to do with the crappy bridge and strings that the Squires leave the factory with. On the downside it has made me want one of those Hagstrom 8-strings...

All seems good!

You've obviously never watched me shopping on Ebay... No, I have not considered this at all. In fact, my only process here has been knowing someone with a similar set up and assuming I could do the same with my amp. This is the cab: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Trace-Elliot-4x10-Bass-Guitar-Speaker-Cabinet-/165322491861?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0 And the amp is the aforementioned GP12 SMX combo. Have I done something daft here?