meterman

I use a secondhand 1990's TEAC amp with some secondhand Technics speakers. Easy set up, sounds really good for my needs and the lot cost me 40 euros. You can go higher spec and spend tons of cash but it depends how far you want to go with it all? Can have a laptop, a CD player, and a turntable all hooked up and ready to go. Have used the same setup to listen back to mixes, as I'm familiar enough with the amp + speakers combo to check for balance or phase issues. Worth thinking about, for sure. 👍

Can confirm the Squier Sonic Precisions are excellent for the money. Mine cost £100 secondhand. The only changes I made was to swap the neck from my Squier Jazz bass because I prefer darker fretboards, and put some La Bella flats on it. Oh, and a tugbar cause I use them. For £150 all in, I’ve got a super lightweight, excellent sounding Precision. Don’t need to upgrade the tuners or the bridge or the pickups, it’s fine as it is. Probably one of the best bass buys I’ve ever had.

Blimey!

I don't know, I think it was the sweaters that really did his head in. I reckon if he'd gone to a reputable gentleman's outfitters and got properly attired he might not have ended up so radged. If I'd had to wear any of those I'd have been livid.

Tackhead? He wasn't doing too much freaky dusty-end stuff when I saw him playing with them. Them Spectors though. Crazy money for horrible looking basses 😂

The production of "There's A Riot Goin' On" have been fairly well documented. Shocking to read about, but still "Family Affair" is a brilliant record, despite the production (like Sly) being all over the place. There's also "Revolver" by The Beatles. Marijuana and LSD get indirectly name checked ("Doctor Robert", "Got To Get You Into My Life, "Tomorrow Never Knows", etc). I'm not the biggest Beatles fan but that is an amazing album. Don't do drugs though, kids, or I'll leather yer 😂

Me and a mate started a list each one night down the pub. I got as far as 114-ish guitars and basses and he had a much more conservative 80-something. But this was over a 40 year period and neither of us ever kept receipts, photos, logbooks, etc. At the moment I've got two basses and 14 guitars and he's got one bass and 5 guitars. Stuff just ebbs and flows. Nothing really settles.

I don’t think so, except some amazing records have been made when the artists have been completely out of it. “Family Affair” by Sly & The Family Stone would be one example. Around the late 80’s / early 90’s I was in a six-piece band where four of the band were dealers. It was absolute chaos, all the time, every day or night there was a fresh disaster or an amazing lucky escape. When people talk about the Happy Mondays or Flowered Up, well it was like that except without the big record company budgets. We’re all still alive but in various states of disrepair. Drugs never ever made us personally better players, or writers. Similarly my bipolar medication now has a negative impact on how I play and sing, my voice is a pitchy rasp compared to when I was a kid, and was a soloist in a choir. And my hands shake now because of the lithium, which definitely affects my playing. But, you learn to get by. I don’t touch recreational drugs at all and don’t romanticise them or recommend them.

Couldn't say one way or the other about the bass but I love that period of Fairport Convention. The pic is from the "Liege And Lief" era, or thereabouts isn't it?

The Farfisa and Acetone simulations aren't bad, it's only really the Vox that I struggled with when I bought it. A period of experimentation led to an acceptable compromise. These are a couple of hundred quid and will fit in a backpack, I'm more than happy to accept the differences between the combo organs for the price. I paid £1600 for my first Hammond (a C3 with a Leslie 147) and once I'd struggled to heave it upstairs to my 1st floor flat, I couldn't take it out on gigs. So glad things like the YC exist. I might have bought one if they'd been available back then.

A volume pedal for swells is essential with the YC. And you're correct, the distortion on the YC isn't anywhere near a real Hammond. Not even Nords get this right, despite the price of them. For a time I had a Hammond XB-1 as my live Hammond, and the distortion varied from key to key, whether you were doing swells or not. I make do with a Nord 5D-61 now, which I run through either one valve guitar amp, or two in stereo if I'm recording it. The natural drive of the amps, although good, is not quite the same but close enough to record with I'm lucky enough to sometimes have the use of a 1967 Hammond M102 plus Leslie 145, as an old boy in the nearest town lets me bring my portable recording rig over to record with it. He used it for years in a cabaret band but when you hear it in action it's instant late 60's. "Whiter Shade Of Pale" was done with an M102, as far as I know. Same with some Spencer Davis Group and Small Faces records. A lot of the UK groups used the smaller Hammonds. I had an M102 myself and depending on the Leslie setup, the tone is there 👍

It does put some folks off, but I think it's a cool feature 👍

I've had 40-100 Fender strings on Mustangs before and the silks cleared the nut, it wasn't an issue 👍

Yeah, imho they're really good value for money. I've owned a lot of the 'real' keyboards in the past (Hammond C3, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer 200, Vox Jaguar etc) and honestly the YC and CP are brilliant. Yes, there's only 3 octaves and they're mini keys, but you can always hook them up to a midi keyboard and get full size keys and extra octaves if you want. The original Hammond M3 that was used on "Green Onions" by Booker T & The MG's only had two offset 44-note keyboards. A lot of players want at least 5 or 6 octaves but depending how and what you're playing, you can get away with three. And the Refaces have an octave transposition dial so you can do Doors-style piano bass, or pitch it up to get the higher octaves. I've seen Refaces in quite a few studios, they're definitely worth a go 👍

Yep, twice a year for me. I never have the drugs beforehand though. I've seen YouTube videos of drooling colonoscopy patients and thought, "nah". I'm all over the place as it is.

Oh no, that's just awful, awful news. Rest In Peace, Herbie you legend 🙏

Sorry 😔 But I bet the person who thought that finish looked cool, or ehrmazing, has never had one. Urgh.

Not so keen on the colonoscopy finish on that last one. 🤔

Honestly it was like being handed a bag of crisps or something. Actually, Hofner ought to start making crisps. There was already some crisps called Ringos in the 1970's, they ought to get some more Beatle themed crisps on the market.

I cut down some 34" scale La Bellas to put on my 25" scale Precision copy. I found the La Bellas in the pocket of a gigbag I'd bought so they were free and I thought "what the heck" and cut them down anyway. They're still on the bass 10+ years later. I know now that cutting down flatwounds is a bad idea, as everyone says they can unravel, but I got away with it on this occasion. But if I was going to cut them down again I'd use £8 Harley Bentons instead of £50 La Bellas. I got the bass in a charity shop for less than a fiver anyway, so I didn't mind experimenting on it. Good luck with whatever you decide to do 👍

Apologies for being a bit slow but do you mean the Vic Firth iso's that have a cable, like regular headphones? I meant the ones that just act as ear defenders, like you'd wear on a building site or something. I had a pair, the red £89 jobs. No cable. Not sure how a mic and mixer would help with those? Or something else?

The Vic Firth isolation ones are good for cutting mostly everything out, but I don't know how suitable they would be for rehearsals. I'm not sure how much of the rest of the band you'd be able to hear?

I like the Dunlop 0.73mm (yellow?) ones, they're a good balance between being too flimsy and they still have a decent percussive attack. When I started playing electric bass I used to use the 3mm purple Dunlop picks all the time, but I tried one again recently and it was like trying to play with a Lego block.

They should get Matt Lucas in his Adidas tracksuit, not to play bass, just to annoy all the dad rock Wellends in the audience who spaffed thousands to see Oasis. "Peanuts!!!"

That'll be why when the courier delivered it, I thought he was handing me an empty box!