12stringbassist

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.

Justin Currie. Have also booked for Del Amitri for next year. My footage...

As Blue says, "He who pays the piper calls the tune". If you can tell from knowing who is arranging the work, or who you know may be playing, that the gig is going to be enjoyable, all the better. I tend to make sure my choice of gigs is enjoyable these days and have turned down an amount of stuff I don't want to do (that includes venues as well as dep jobs).

If the studio actually HAVE wiped your bass parts, good.. They may not interfere with a recording (unless you are really matey with them). Did you co-write the songs? You can block their use. Was the Nancy Johnson name your idea? You can block the use of that too.

I wouldn't worry about the age of the bass or its history as it has already been refinished once. If getting it done in another colour would please you more than its current colour, then just get it done. As for relic-ing it. I'd personally say no.

Prince [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmL_LbGBmpA[/media]

The Waitresses [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SzjDOk_u9I[/media]

XTC [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DBJRSMP8Uw[/media]

I have a bag of songs that I wrote years ago and have been re-recording some of them recently. I have some sequenced parts that I have re-used from the original recordings. Playing along with a few of them has been a utter trial, as - as someone else said earlier - they now feel like they were written by someone else. Old cover versions I have tarted up in the same fashion were much easier.

Best purchase Fender Precision Deluxe Bass (Mex) Runner up Fender HSS Strat (Mex) - Only bought one bass this year. Best value purchase Bass strings at a guitar show. Worst purchase Nothing I can think of...

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfeERGq86Tg[/media]

You do get some bedroom boys who think that because they can string together a half decent tune, when playing along with their record collection, and that because they get no complaints from their mum, that they must be pretty hot. This is not the case. I have auditioned other musicians in the distant past who honestly could not hold a tune in a paper bag and couldn't believe it when told that they didn't get the guitar job. After getting a few people who damned me to hell for not realising that they are the next big thing and I should be happy to tag along with them, I have learned from my mistake and instead told them they were nearly perfect, but someone came along who has played 99% of the set before and just slotted in. This saved a degree of angst.

Bought brand new in 1983 and I've gigged with it every year since then. I've had this Avon copy since 1975, but I couldn't say it ever saw a stage from 1980 onwards. It's been on long-term loan twice (the first time it came back with a Gibson logo on it - I went mad). Then my daughter had use of it for a good old while to learn on.

Looks fine to me.