Stub Mandrel

What's the nut like? Poorly cut nut so high action at the low frets often leads to too much truss rod tension leading to neck too flat leads to buzz.

A 'kettle' lead has a notch in the bottom of the connector, you'll see a matching oojit inside the socket on your kettle. Leads with this are suited for higher temperatures (e.g. kettles, heaters) but also fit the ordinary sockets. Betch didn't know that 🙂

I bought one of these new for, I think, about £180 with a shop discount. I'm surprised one can make £395 already, but I suspect that in 10-20 years they will be very desirable. The build quality is spot on. The candy apple red is flawless, the fretboard is really nicely finished with rolled edges. The shop said that they were selling as fast as they could put them on the racks. <edit> perhaps not that extreme a price: https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Squier_Jaguar.html £350 https://reverb.com/uk/p/squier-vintage-modified-jaguar-bass-special-ss £305 Black one in Japan: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Squier-by-Fender-Vintage-Modified-Jaguar-Bass-Black-Electric-Bass-Guitar/224237487303?hash=item34359884c7:g:92oAAOSw6DBfsyib $652 (!) (there's another for just over $400 and another at just over $600) I could find cheaper silver and black ones for about £150 - but these were sold without a clear indication of the date. Well I never thought of this bass as an investment!

You've only got to look at the green 'daphne blue' basses on Fender's website to appreciate that photos on a computer are generally meaningless. I emailed them to check: If Fender can't get the colour of their own instrument right, what chance have we got? I have photo editing programs that show the same image quite differently despite much fiddling with ICC profiles. Then there are monitor settings. Then was the photo taken under natural light or artificial. If the former what time of day and weather, if the latter what type of lighting? What brand of camera and sensor chip? What colour settings? What processing applied to the image? Believe me, working in publishing it's a right pain. Especially when sent a batch of photos half of which have been taken under one type of lighting with the camera set for another... even with neutral tones in the image it can be impossible to get a decent colour balance in a sensible amount of time. And then you get cheerful readers emailing in to complain... The most accurate is a DSLR that has had its colour balancing set using a proper neutral grey car under the same lights used to photograph the subject, but it's still going to depend on the program, settings and monitor it's displayed on.

I agree, it does seem that 'Pearl Jamm' crossed a line. Their name sounds exactly the same and that means it could potentially be used to argue it's a 'generic' term as has been an expensive problem for companies like Hoover and Xerox in the past. You could also argue that 'Alexa play pearl jam(m)' could lead to lost royalties. There's little doubt in my mind the merch is closer to real Pearl Jam stuff than the recent 'designer' gear that was done for ripping off Nirvana's logo. It could be very difficult for them not to be falling foul of 'passing off' under UK law. The consequences of these things are not just financial - I had a whole load of grief when someone produced a report for their dad to support a planning application under a name that was the same as my consultancy (less the 'limited' on the end). Sorted amicably in the end, but I had to field a fair few emails from individuals, local groups and even the local authority. There was real potential for reputational damage.

Last night the NI Secretary said that Northern Ireland had the advantage of being in a free trade area with Europe. If the government see that as an advantage, I wonder if they think the rest of the UK should join a free trade area with Europe?

As it is over £135 the prices don't include VAT £200 + £40 VAT + ~£30 import duty + UPS handling charge ~£12

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/isaac-hayes/theme-from-shaft-bass-2375769 (this is the more accurate tab, although the other one is easier to follow)

Is this soul or funk? - But if you get into this, you might grin enough to make the top of your head fall off...

Musical monomania?

Well I bought a £440 (before VAT) laptop for my business from HP and they were quite happy to sell me a full 3-year pick up and return warranty for £40. OK HP isn't Asus but they obviously expect a pretty good level of reliability if they can do that for £40. A similar priced HP laptop from Currys the same cover would cost £130 (I have knocked off the VAT). So two good reasons to go direct to manufacturer: no preinstalled bloatware and less than a third of the price for extended warranty. 🙂

As a result of this thread I did an experiment with my jazz, which has relatively mild 'vintage' pickups not particularly close to the strings and has never exhibited the 'chorusing' effect*. If I fret an Eb on the A string and pluck it I can hear faint sympathetic beating with the E-string, which disappears when I mute the e-string. To me this proves that even without the pickups being too close to the strings there is always some cross-talk to unmuted strings. The answer is two-fold - strings not so close as to make any effects under normal circumstances and good muting technique. *The effect was quite intrusive on my Jag SS after I added neodymium magnets to the neck pickup, until I backed them off.

🙂 Rapture is the sort of thing I meant, simple to learn the notes, good exercise to get it up to speed (I did learn it a few months ago but on revisit I needed to speed up!) Something as complex as the Bruford is the sort of challenge I'd only take on if I was particularly keen on the song and I'm not sure I'd be up to it. Just learning the beginning riff might be worth a look at!

The aesthetic perfection of a CE sticker counterpoised against the do not recycle in the bin symbol.

Hah! Nylon tapewounds, always thought of those for electro-acoustics, but why not?

Got back in touch with the friend who introduced me to bass by lending me his precision(!) He has a severe nickel allergy, so it goes unplayed these days 😞 Unfortunately , even stainless strings contain a lot of nickel, but I was wondering is coated strings might be a solution and if so, which would be the best brand to suggest?

Don't feel bad, I have almost enough spare equipment to set up a practice studio, and I can't even play the drumkit 😳 I'm the sort of person that stuff sticks to... My plan once divorce and Covid are over is to combine forces with my two brothers (one of whom is in a band, the other sometimes gigs as a duo with his wife) and set up such a studio as we have plenty of stuff between us to do it. We reckon the annual cost will be covered by what we save in rehearsal space costs and we can let trusted friends use it as well.

So what's your favourite colour for a bass?

Nixie Clock! K3WL!

It's certainly standard practice for guitar amps.

Interestingly the 'correct' way to set up a Trace Elliot is to max the gain until the clip light just flickers, and use the master control for its intended porpoise. As far as I can tell the input circuit has anon-linear frequency response. This certainly does give a modest amount of pleasant growl when you dig in without entering distortion territory.

Part of my collection, mostly kept in what, 35 years ago would have been known as a 'stash box' - Golden Virginia tin*. A few of these are older than the tin, other beloved ones like my shark fin, mandolin and finger picking ones have long gone. *Of which there are three types: Basic - with the logo scratched out to read "COLD.. VIRGIN.." (How we laughed). Painted - normally used by hippy types (e.g. me). Old Lag - entirely encased in matchsticks.

My longest owned bass is also my cheapest. It's a Hohner B2 and my brother gave it to me, so it was free.