12stringbassist

Apparently appearing at NAMM...

That's my wife's idea.

£2300 plus in PMT last week. A joke... Good job I bought mine before the prices went stratospheric (or before they reached the partway point they are at now.

As Midge said in his rather good autobiography, he 'had a relationship with Jack Daniels' for some time and that may have done him no good. He seems to be quite sober these days. Being unfairly 'in the shadow ' of the more media-savvy Geldof, who bumped Ultravox to a different spot on the bill at Live Aid, so that The Boomtown Rats could play before Charles and Di buggered off elsewhere, hasn't helped either. Midge had enormous involvement in that and it distracted from his career at the time.

If you fancy the fortnight's work and possibly some more to follow, take the rules as read, but ask another band member when on board. If someone was paying me good money to play bass on a cruise ship, I'd go on the lemonade for the duration.

My mate has a Dean R12. Looks aside (and I didn't mind it), it was really VERY playable.

Ha! Your wish, etc, etc.. From GIRLFRIENDS on ITV last night. If you watch it on catch up, the bass I played on the actual live recording of the song was a Ric 4003W

Adding chorus to an 8 string bass will not give you a 12 string bass sound. It will sound like a 'confused' 8-string bass, with the output signal rather messed up. I have a Dean Rhapsody 8-string bass and can attest that it is one of the best basses for all over intonation of its type. My two Hamer 12er's are also excellent for intonation (both are different scales). The sound is 'bigger than the 8-string, especially if you do not tune totally precisely. They are both active. They sound pretty thunderous through my Hartke rig.

This other one of mine is a bit better than the first for bass tone...

Try this one...

CT in Manchester last year... My favourite band. Tom is totally to blame for me getting into using 12-string basses.

Excalibur..

Here are mine... Recently, I ventured up to the excellent Promenade Music store way up North in Morecambe to try and then buy this Vintage Midge Ure signature guitar. I'd never visited the shop before. They have a huge and stunning stock of instruments of all types. I was quite amazed by the place. As for the MU, it's a Les Paul styled guitar, obviously. After a quick remedial setup in the shop, which worked a treat, I parted with my sheckels for this lovely instrument. The story behind me going miles and miles for this particular guitar? It's quite simple. I went to see Ultravox on their reunion tours in 2010 and 2012 and Midge Ure used two Vintage Les Paul type guitars on the latter tour. They sounded unbelievable. He is an absolutely impressive guitarist and as a result of the second show, I convinced myself I needed a Vintage Les Paul type guitar. The signature model wasn't available at that point. Not too long after the gig, I went to Reidys in Blackburn and found that guitars they had in stock were nearly unplayable. I then went to PMT in Salford and spent comparatively silly money (about four times as much as the eventual cost of the Vintage signature model) on my genuine Gibson Les Paul Traditional guitar. It turned out to be a fantastic investment and it really made me take my guitar playing a lot more seriously. More recently I bought a Radiotone LP goldtop replica guitar at a guitar show and I thought I was 'there' as far as Les Paul guitars went. Then, the inevitable happened... Ian - the guitarist in my band, the Three, turned up at a recent gig with a standard Vintage LP goldtop and handed it to me to try out. It felt great and I started to get the bee in my bonnet again. This guitar plays wonderfully. The pickups sound great and once I have played it in a bit, I am quite sure that I will use it regularly. It is a convincingly weighty guitar, compared to the standard Vintage LP-type goldtop model, which I also tried at the store (and which Midge Ure also used on the tour). It is fitted with P90 pickups and a Vibrola arm. It really looks The Business and has a great sound. I have told my long-suffering wife - many times - that each guitar I have gone out and bought was the last one, sometimes even believing it myself. Then the next thing has come along. This brings my guitar and bass total to 50 and I REALLY don't want any more. It's the end of a glorious and expensive era.

The answer to the initial question (I haven't read the whole topic yet) is that a good guitar is a good guitar. Older ones can have a higher resale value, according to make / scarcity / condition. And of course they can all sound pretty much the same. There's a Flying V from 1969 on the front of this month's guitar magazine going for £30k. Would I pay that? No, it's way way out of my league money-wise. If I spent a big chunk of our savings on that, I imagine Mrs 12String would speak to me even less. Someone else will be able to easily afford it and relish having a historic guitar. I'd be as happy with whatever recent Gibson, or similar, that I could afford. Horses for courses. Dealers set these somewhat excessive prices and they only matter when someone actually pays that asking price.

Need I say more? (Actually, this is from a soundcheck, a month or two back. The place filled up nicely for the actual gig).

Roll some bottom end off the amp. Good neighbours are worth having.

The logo on the headstock nearly spills onto the back of it.

My website has a page about my 12-ers. There are also some video clips with it on the 'Entertainment' page. I don't use the black Chaparral very often, so may think of parting with it.

111 last year and a day's TV filming for 'Girlfriends' on ITV (our spot on the show will be shown in episode 3 on the 17th). This year, so far, looks like the same number are booked, but we still have a few venues to talk to about free dates.

Fairly dreadful. It must be really awkward to have someone play one of your songs at you at some event and to have a TV camera catching your every visible reaction as the song drags along. There's the odd second where Sting looks a bit taken aback at what is going on, on that stage. Jose Feliciano should have known better than to maul that song.

Reverb is a licence to print money. I just go there to laugh at the prices.

The Rics are going to go for VERY silly money. They can sometimes see approaching £5000 without having a celebrity owner.