Deanol

I had to read that carefully as on first skin reading I read it as Ron Jeremy!!

Never a fan of the band or that type of music, but it is so desperately sad when someone takes their own life. I wish he (and the thousands of others who do that each year) could have spoken to someone to get help. I don't know the circumstances in this case, but whilst ringing the Samaritans might have helped, many never pick up the phone, or try to get help. Never even think about it sadly. I also feel sorry for those left behind, who will question whether they could have helped him more. It's a terrible, terrible shame.

No YouTube links as I am supposed to be working! SRV & Double Trouble Texas Flood Album "Lenny" Super Reverb bliss!!!

As a guitar player I have fingertips on my left hand like leather. No worries. Those bass strings are like wool to me! As a serious tip, if you want to build up callouses on your fretting hand, tune an acoustic guitar down a whole tone (to D, G, C, F, A, D), then play it for a while until your fingertips feel comfortable. Then tune up a half-tone, and repeat. When you are okay with that, tune up to standard pitch and play. I can go from soft fingertips to hardened off enough to play confortably for a few hours in a fortnight or so. Once you have those callouses, remember that if you play like Stevie-Ray Vaughan, with 13 guage strings on your strat, at some point one of your callouses will fall off. Ignore the resulting blood and simply reattach - like SRV did between songs! - using superglue. It was used in Vietnam for combat medics to close up wounds temporarily until the wounded soldier could be taken to a hospital.

Hi, I am trying out the Overloud TH-U amp sim and it's very good. I think I will probably buy it. But it comes with a cabinte that is an impulse response loader rather than one of the standard cabs, which is nice, but I don't know much about IRs, other than they represent a speaker in a cabinet, microphone, room, mic preamps etc. I get them and I want to start playing with them. But I am confused why there is space (in the TH-U IR loader) for two IRs. I don't get why you need two (or more in some third-party loaders I have read about) spaces. Can anyone explain it please? Thanks, Dean.

Never played a Hondo bass, but I did play a Hondo Les Paul for a few years in the early 80's. I decided I didn't get in with Les Pauls so chopped it in for a 1988 G&L SC-3 strat (which I still have!). I know it is a 88 SC-3 because they only had the steel roller nut and Sperzel tuners on the 3 series in 1988. It is a transitional model and therefore, my mercenary nature hopes, rare. Sorry to continue the thread hijack.

I grew up listening to rock-n'roll and 70's radio offerings. Then I got into hard rock as I hit my teenage years (what a well worn road that appears to be!). Nowadays I will listen to anything from classical, Jazz, rock, rock'n'roll, country, blues. Nothing from the pop charts or rap, dance, jungle, hip-hop etc stylee's. No "new" music or stuff that is played on Radio Six or whtever it is called. I might tune into radio one occaisionally but only accidentally and I assume it is static so I move on rapidly. Pop is fine as long as it is prior to 1988. On or after that is a no-no for me.

Terry Wogan walts.

There speaks the truth and t'was ever thus! B. B. King famously named his primary guitars Lucille. Back in the 1930's rural Mississippi he was playing a gig in some road house. There was no power so the light and heat was provided by open barrels of lighting oil that were simply lit on fire. Two blokes got to fighting over some woman and they knocked one of these barrels over setting fire to the place. Everyone ran out of the place and it was only when he got outside B. B. realised he had left his guitar inside. As it was his only way of supporting his family he ran back inside to get his guitar. Inside the flames were worse but he saw that the two men were still fightin! He picked up his guitar and ran back out and then the building collapsed, killing the two men inside. He asked the name of the women the men were fighting over. She was called "Lucille".

These basses are perception changing, elemental works of nature. They are hand-crafted to free the supertonal characteristics that have been breathed into the forces locked within them. They are a timeless testament to the very heartstones that dwell withing all living things, and which bind us all into one. I particularly like the fact that they have a price on them that ends "and eighty-five pence", as though they were washing up bowls from Wilko (which, when I think about it, are also full of water)?

I've been browsing for an amp sim plugin for my laptop. I want both guitar and bass amps, and I will have to pay to get what I want because every damned free one is for stupidly high gain! If someone is going to develop and give away amp sims, which is a very charitable thing to do, why do they always seem to come with gain structures appropriate for German bands named something like "Satanic Angels of the Night" or something. Le Pou is guilty of this. Why not knock out a nice, clean AC30, suitable for The Shadows stuff. So I have downloaded the new version of TH-U, which does contain a lot of stuff I will use, and much more stuff I won't. But I will still have to pay for the stuff I won't. I also want to cost out the Amplitube Custome Shop stuff, to work out how much it will cost to buy just the amps and pedals I am interested in. Anyone else struggling with this?

The cynical part of me (the bit between my toenails and the tips of my hair fiollicles!) says Rod knew exactly what the reaction would be but wanted to get one over on the Bluenoses anyway. How can you be from Glasgow and support either Caltic or Rangerzs, and yet not know the reaction of the other half of that city? I don't buy it. I think he wanted to parade his Celtic allegiance to annoy half of his audience. My toenails on the other foot say he is innocent and really didn't think anyone would mind (I am giving them their bi-annual cut this afternoon (it invoves wire cuters, a hand file, and plenty of paper towel for the blood spillage).

I am not a fan of Led Zep (mainly because of Plant's vocals and Page's lead work - his rhythm playing is sublime though), so other that a rarely-listened-to greatest hits album I have no real knowledge of their work. I have seen it mentioned that they ripped of work, and though I have no reason to doubt it, I don't know what they ripped off. Can someone post a list of a few songs they ripped off, and where from please? On your second para, I am remined of a story about Paul McCartney when he was writing "Yesterday". Apparantly he woke up one morning with the entire song in his head but wanted to make sure he hadn't ripped it off from someone, so he was playing it to people for weeks replacing thelyrics with "scrambled eggs" , asking "have you heard this before", before Lennon told his to stop being stupid and get it written up and published. Must be nice to have that kind of talent, where you can write something like "Yesterday" in your sleep!

You beat me by a year! I started gigging (but as was said by Baxlin they were bookings back then) when I was 13 and did so as guitar player and then guitarist/singer later on. I gigged for 20 years until it became too difficult when we had kids. I finished in 2000. About five years ago I started jamming with a few friends. We are all guitar players and use drum tracks, and very recently I started playing bass with them to fill out the sound. As we all have kids who are growing up now (17 and 21) we have a little more time on our hands and are making noises about getting back out. We are working through Mustang Sally, Sweet Home Alabama, and for the last song of the "more-more bit", Hi-Ho Silver Lining.

A professional! What a refreshing change.Well played that man.