Beedster

So, Warmoth versus Allparts anyone 😀

A slot, luxury, in my day......

Agreed, some great contributions 👍

A good friend of mine who builds highly regarded (and very expensive) guitars was also there. In fact at one time most of Denmark Street's guitar techs (and a couple of shop owners) were MIT graduates

Brings back so many feelings of the time. In 1982 I was hugely fortunate - on the basis of having no A-levels and quite poor O-levels - to be accepted into one of the first Electronic Music Technology Programme (EMIT) which, rather oddly at first sight, was newly offered at the London College of Furniture, the chronological logic being along the lines - teach people to build furniture - teach people to restore furniture - teach people to restore pianos - teach people to build pianos - teach people to build other wooden instruments such as guitars - teach people to record these instruments ergo the EMIT course. The main difference between your story and mine was that in an equivalent small room we had the opposite problem, stinky poo loads of expensive gear including one of the first Fairlights in the country (Trevor Horn at Sarm East just around the corner also had on, so as postcodes go - and perhaps rather appropriately given the genre - E1 was a well endowed area for digital music tech) that almost no-one at the institution knew how to use, I suspect a lot more funding had been thrown at tech than at expertise. Anyway, having until literally weeks before been using cassette machines as above, suddenly I was in a dark room sampling random noises and creating even more random recordings (IIRC one of my colleagues played the national anthem in dog barks which seemed quite radical at the time). But even given the emergent digital tech we had, we were still at heart analogue cassette recording engineers and carried that vibe into the room. It was exciting. And yes, we were often told to turn it down also

This could be relevant

I think you've found the problem 👍

A work of art

Folks, love these tales, thank you. I posted this thread having spent a few days sorting out some recording gear here ahead of some voiceover work I'm doing, and having had to move the important gear to a new location, I realised that in no more than a 4u rackcase and a rucksack I have more gear than I could have dreamt of in the 70's/80s - 8 lovely mic pres and a whole lot of digital processing emulations courtesy of my UAD Apollo x8p, a rather special analogue processor in the shape of an SSL Fusion, and in the Townsend Sphere L22 a mic that can get pretty close to replicating many of the classic mics of the last 50 years. But there's a part of me still wants to do it all with two of these

Our synthesist spent 80% of gigs in a completely different key to the rest of us 😀

Glorious stuff, love the creative approach to setting pitch, are you suggesting that you synths stayed in tune?

Sound? Luxury, in my day….. 😀

Strings, who mentioned strings, luxury, all I had was a fret 😀

Although you're right Luke, I'd not pay £300 for that particular neck I think it's quite low-spec for Warmoth (there is a 'Best Offer option, I'd put in a cheeky £150, you never know.....) Having said that I steer away from 'not new but unused' necks, as the whole idea worries me. Why has someone bought it new, drilled holes, attached tuners etc, yet not used it?

Especially if I were de-fretting, I'd be buying the Warmoth

Tuning! Luxury. When I were a lad….😀

Not for the £3-5k basses these days, Masterbuilt possibly but they’re way north of £5k

I always did, and still do, find that video alarming, and for so many reasons. But it really is a damn fine song 👍

You are joking? Luthiers at Fender? You mean CNC operators and 'build technicians' who screw things together and check the really nuanced stuff like the strings passing over the PUP poles and not straying off the neck. the PUPs work and the pickguard fits (OK, In the case of Custom Shop there might be some skill in selecting woods, as there is also in relic finishing, although the work of @d_g here is as good as any I've owned from FCS),. None of this is luthiery. But anyway, Warmoth are also US built as are some Allparts, and assuming these often better than Fender necks and bodies don't build themselves, I really don't see any logic to your point. You buy Fender Custom Shop 80% of what you are paying for, as was correctly identified above, is the writing on the front and back of the headstock 👍

So, inspired by this....... ...and by some reflections recently about just how easy it is to play music these days, and especially to record it, I thought it would be interesting to see how folks made do in their early playing careers? Fpor example, in the early 80's I used to multitrack using two cassette tape players, record a rhythm track using block of wood, play that back on one cassette machine while playing the bass part and recording that and the rhythm track on the second cassette machine etc, as you can imagine after four or five tracks the noise floor was not low 🤔 Did I mention that the 'bass' was a down-tuned guitar

I would not put Allparts and Mighty Mite in the same category, IME Allparts necks are often better than Fender MIM and USA necks and on a par with Fender MIJ/CIJ necks, while the more expensive Warmoth necks of £300 upwards compete comfortably with Fender US Custom Shop. I bought a Fender aftermarket neck (MIM) for £325 for a build during lockdown and it went straight back due to poorly dressed frets, a badly cut nut, and a general sense that, without wishing to be overly technical, it was flipping stinky poo. There is not one component of a Fender bass that can’t be bought at far higher quality for lower price. A Fender US quality bass can easily be built for £500-£600, Custom Shop quality for £1000, and that’s a new prices for the parts, shop around in eBay and here and it can be done much cheaper 👍

Now, how did I overlook this in my first post.........?