Stub Mandrel

Because it isn't described as a Rickenbacker just as having the 'ric-o-sound' (presumably the sound of lawyers wringing their hands in anticipation and frantic writ-serving). I can't help feeling their policy is counter-productive. I don't see the abundance of 'strat-style' and 'p' or 'j' bases having any impact on the status of Fenders - if anything it makes the real thing even more aspirational (a) because the general look has become iconic for electric guitar and (b) and who doesn't get a copy and secretly hope to own the 'real thing' one day? They've also missed out by not having their own budget brand.

It's worth mentioning Epiphone as well, but really in the context of guitars more than basses. Some of the higher end Epis are stunning, especially the Masterbilt Jazz guitars.

I wonder how much a relicked one costs 😈

From the opposite end I used to put a battery powered 1-watt Maplin guitar amp through my 1x12" Marshall cab, just to freak people out. A good way of proving that 10 times the power is only twice as loud, so 10W through a decent properly ported speaker sounds quite loud in a living room! I also had a mate who wired his quad hifi through a 10kW pa in his living room. With part of the lightshow. Obviously only ticking over but Dark Side of the moon sounded pretty good... sometimes I could hear it and I lived about 150 metres away.

Perhaps change the thread name to 'Good Squier - OK Squier'

I hate it when people send me off down the XKCD rabbit hole...

Jerry Lee Lewis's career took a hit when it came out that he married his 13 year old cousin. My assumption is that this was legal at the time and place where it happened, but it got judged elsewhere by different standards.

Certainly. Over the entrance to Broadcasting House are statues by Eric Gill, who had a particularly unpleasant history.

My experience (and I've got two a VM SS Jaguar and a Tele as well as a Fender MIJ bass) and some comparing side by side of 'identical' models is that Squiers generally don't scrimp on build quality but the retro ones are often less accurate in detail (e.g. six part bridge on the tele, different switch knob) and cut corners on pickups (e.g. the tele's bridge pickup was weedier than my garden - now a stacked Dimarzio Humbucker 😈 and I fitted better tuners) and things like not routing the strings through the body, possibly affecting sustain. I'm pretty happy with the jaguar as is, although I plan to try a ceramic to neodyminium magnet upgrade on the bridge pickup - it's reversible and only costs time and a about £2.50. You're also more likely to get things like a bit of extra wood spliced on to make up the width of the head or less well-figured grain on a Squier. 'Try before you buy' and be prepared to consider upgrading pickups and other hardware down the line.

It's very hard to say. It does make me sad, a brother of mine died very young and he loved 'Garold' Glitter's music. I recall being moved seeing Rolf Harris crying while singing (ironically) Two Little Boys on Crackerjack when the audience joined in. One of my steplads was massively into MJ as a teenager, now in his late 30s he's not sure how to feel about the music. 😞 Jimmy Page had a long and well documented relationship with a girl that started when she was 13 or 14. Outside rock, most people accept Wagner was an anti-semite whose music was much used to promote the Nazi's vision of 'Aryan' culture; but it doesn't stop his music being remarkable and widely performed. Churchill was a national hero, but also did some pretty foul things. We should also remember that no-one is perfect; where do you draw the line? Should you play music by someone who once bullied another kid in the school playground or smacked their children? Where do you draw the line? As a society we have to be mature about the difference between the deeds and doer. As things become historical we can enjoy the works but condemn the actions. That said, while things are still more or less contemporary we also have to realise some things might upset some audiences. Some people might get 'offended' by MJ music who just enjoy taking offence, but it might be genuinely quite upsetting to someone who has suffered abuse or be seen as 'flag waving' in support of MJ. I'd tend to err on the side of caution - there's lot's of other music to play while it's at the forefront of everyone's minds. But I wouldn't change radio channels just because Beat It came on.

Err... exactlerly my point, just as 'Sink the Pink' is clearly about snooker whatever smutty minds think 🙂

We Care A Lot About the Garbage Pail Kids They Never Lie 🙂

But how can you do a Billy Sheehan neck-bend with a stretchy strap!?

Most songs by AC/DC...

Is it two really short sets or one really long version to fill the night Jack? That's what I call prog 🙂

This reminds me I once had a jam with the guitarist from Impaler. I basically turned up the bass and daisy chained myself through a HM2 pedal and phaser. This was flat out through 150 watt stack in the living room of the house I was living in. We had a lot of fun and I was later described as a 'def' bass player. They had two guitarists one of whom did the bass, I should have pushed my luck as they might have let me join!

This gorgeous one arrived today! Really long leather tabs and very thick material too and only £3.99 from a UK seller!

You just need three matching guitars 😉

Argh! GAS attack... I'm already obsessed by the Masterbilt six-strings. Hopefully the pronunciation 'zee-nith' will be enough to pot me off.

Might bring my 'stack' then, just for the hell of it 🙂

And something funky I can play!

Silly question... Should I bring an amp? If so a big one or a little one? On the one hand I imagine its a PITA for everyone to be queuing up to plug in. On the other a hall with fifteen people all playing different things at max volume might not be a good idea either...

Interesting reading this, as I'm suffering a fair bit of 'imposter syndrome' at the moment! Personally, I don't think I'm particularly good. I certainly can't keep up with the sort of clips/examples that get held up as skilled bass playing. That said, the majority of the songs I hear on the radio are probably within my reach. I read another thread that said how your fingers turn into rubber in guitar shops - that's me! I do have a few skills. If I have a melody in my head I can usually play it, if I know a song already once I have sussed the key I can usually bodge some sort of basic accompaniment. I do take time learning new songs, but when I was in bands I learned some pretty complex (if not fast) basslines and was able to perform them to everyone's satisfaction and the very occasional compliment. I'd like to think there are two measures of your skill. One is How technically proficient are you? The other is how well does your playing fit in with your band? I guess I score low on the first, but I think I did well on the second - at least for my first and third bands; the second band got a bit fed up of my walking lines.

And I'm sure that when Ian Gillan sang 'I became a cunning linguist, a master of many tongues' he wasn't referring to his mastery of Mandarin, Swahili and Iroquois. 🙂

<falls on sword> Gah! I took square root not square. I blame microsoft calculator....