thodrik

For sure.

It has taken me a while. I have never had lessons on guitar and my main 'teachers' consisted of watching guitarists in my bands over the years. I bought my first guitar at 20 and really only started to take it seriously after I treated myself to a nicer guitar at the age of 31 (I'm now 36). Through 5 plus years of semi-regular practice I have improved from 'woeful' to 'distinctly average'. At this point I can even manage a vaguely cackhanded medium paced pentatonic blues solo in various keys. Loads of guitarists and bassists play without their pinky. Improvement takes time, don't rush it and don't get frustrated. If you are playing for your own enjoyment then just focus on your enjoyment rather than your technical limitations.

I just treat Green era and Buckingham/Nicks era Fleetwood Mac as completely different bands. I enjoy both. However, I like watching retrospective documentaries on the band more than I do like listening to the music. The infighting, internal affairs, membership changes, mental illnesses, massive drug binges, joining of cults, fallouts, songwriting and royalty clashes and general willingness of members to air dirty laundry in public is fascinating viewing. As a purely technical guitarist however, I consider Buckingham to be one of the more unsung guitar heroes of the 1970s and 1980s. A phenomenal talent and great songwriter.

Or that!

'Can I play with Madness?' by Iron Maidan will always sound like 'Can I play with Magnus?' to me, as if Bruce Dickinson is a 5 year old asking his parents if he can go on a play date. Also, I have heard many a lyric which is so naff that I thought that I must have misheard it when I heard it for the first time. Hearing James Hetfield scream 'I AM THE TABLE' repeatedly in the Metallica and Lou Reed collaboration in The View will live with me forever.

I am sure that the usual bunch of YouTube influencers are preparing their absolutely glowing '100% honest reviews' as we speak.

I won’t dispute that, for me it is part of the charm.

I still have never tried a proper World Tour head. I really enjoyed the Bass Pod Eden sim back in the day. At the right price used I would certainly consider one. In terms of the Marshall DBS amps, I liked them but they never appealed to me and I didn't think that they offered the flexibility of a Trace Elliot, Eden or Mesa or the 'cool factor' of Ampeg. However the VBA 400 was an absolute monster, if they had just downsized it to 200 watts it would have been a brilliant gigging amp.

It’s actually cherry sunburst but it had faded quite a bit over the years. My brother called it ‘rotten fruitburst’

It’s weird but I actually really like it!

Vigier Excess: bought new in 2004. If you like really closely you can see some wear and tear from 18 years of gigging and rehearsals and years of carting the bass around in whatever gig bag I could afford for £30 in taxis, busses etc. Generally I'm not overly precious with instruments either. Two chips. That is pretty much it in terms of cosmetics however I am onto the second nut, second zero fret and second jack socket. I have had my Fender since 1999. It is an S9 series so is probably anywhere from late 1978-1980. The lacquer on the neck has started to flake off, probably from years of sudden temperature changes from being transported in the cold and then brought into warm venues etc. The neck was actually pretty much in mint condition until about 2013-14 and then the peeling started. The actual body is perfectly fine and hasn't got many scratches, chips or dings whatsoever. Scratch plate 'work' was done by the previous owner. I think that is the original scratch plate but cut in two to allow easy access to the jack socket for repairs. However I haven't needed to ever repair the jack socket in 23 years. I thought about getting the neck re-lacquered but I would probably go for a satin refinish rather than nitro. At this point I don't care about devaluing it because I will never sell it and I will never realistically consider late 70s Fenders to be 'valuable' commodities. I just got this because it was significantly cheaper than a 'new' American Standard when I was 13!

I love the V2 as well. I love the mids control boosted at the 1K setting. Really allows that bass to cut through the mix a lot better than the old V1 which I used on and off for about a decade. I thought about getting a Para Driver, however nearly all of my amps have a sweepable mids feature so I didn't need that. I just wanted a little bit of the Sansamp flavour by running the blend at about halfway.

I did but then LED blew as well after 18 months. During the pandemic though I bought a red LED which is still working two years on!

Being serious, I have always found D'addario to be very good. I once received a set of D'addarios with a missing E string from Stringbusters who went bust immediately after I received an order. I contacted D'addario UK, who promptly sent me a whole new set free of charge. EBS are also great to deal with when I contact them every 3 years to get a new replacement red bulb for the Fafner when it blows.

I thought it was obvious on account that I am not Henry Juszkiewicz and he is the only person on planet earth who thought it was a good idea.

When Gibson put automatic tuners on all their instruments with no option to request the outdated 'normal' tuners. Designed entirely with the musician in mind, this innovation allowed musicians to spend more time playing music rather as opposed to wasting time tuning their instrument. Unfortunately the general public were too resistant to change to truly appreciate this groundbreaking consumer-friendly technological development.

Great collection! I have an Excess and Arpege five string. Need a Passion to complete the set!

I don't have much familiarity with the basses, but the Yamaha guitars like the Pacifica and now the Revstar are seriously good value. In general Yamaha just do not make poorly designed products: pianos, keyboards, guitars, basses, woodwind etc, you name it and they will generally have produced a very good product for the price point and the top end stuff is generally outstanding.

I love the look of the them but the neck radius is a no-go for me irrespective of the weight, even though the neck radius is 'period correct'. I learned to play on 9.5 inch radius late seventies Precision (back when they were cheap because they were considered to be worse than the new Fenders in the 1990s) I tried playing on a few Fender custom shop jazz basses which all had the 7.5 inch radius a couple of years ago in Guitar Guitar and I just really didn't enjoy playing them as much as I thought I would. I'm much more at home with a slightly flatter radius. In terms of looks though I think that these are step forward from the previous AV line.

As someone who is constantly struggling with website guys in my own job, I really do sympathise with the frustration that it can bring!

I like the fact that listings for all amps, cabinets and effects on the site include a statement detailing 'A professional setup will be carried out on this bass'.

I really like the stylings. The green would go perfectly with my Trace Elliot V6. Interested to see the release of the 10 inch speakers in due course.

Thanks for the insight, that is interesting to hear. Stunning basses there! I didn't actually like the neck proline of the Laklands I tried. Solid and versatile basses though. Clover basses though, I haven't seen them for a while. I quite fancied one of those Xpression basses about 12 years ago but their website just stopped getting updated. I heard that they moved production to the Czech Republic.

I think that both models are in stock at Bass Direct in Warwick. I would definitely give them a call with a view to going for a visit. Neck shape, neck radius, body shape, number of frets needed, string spacing etc is down to personal taste. I would highly recommend trying both, or even whatever other basses are in stock. Between the two I would go with the Warwick, on account that if I wanted a Warwick type bass I would get a Warwick and if I wanted an active jazz style bass my first choices be a Sandberg, Fender Ultra or Sadowsky Metro (which is now made by Warwick) over the Maruszcyk. However that is my view and lots of folk on here really rate the Maruszcyk basses. As a compromise the Warwick Streamer LX5 might offer a compromise of Warwick growl and more traditional jazz style pickups. The Maruszcyk will have wider string spacing at 18mm whereas Warwick five strings have about 16.5mm spacing (so less space to slap, double thumb if you are into that kind of stuff).