Muzz

A career in IT, not as exciting as people think, tho I've seen huuuuge change in my time - when I tell the younger engineers here I started programming lathes using paper punch tape, they look at me like I'm Gandalf... Poacher turned gamekeeper after the Bafta-winning CGI company I was IT Manager for went bust overnight a decade ago, and I was invited by our small ISP to cross the line and join them. It's all about Cloud Services now, tho I look after our Data Centres in Manchester and London. Still not very exciting. My retirement plan consists of me slumping sideways at my desk and being put out by the bins.

Oooo, Shouty Jazz...you might have inadvertently created a whole new subgenre there, Bilbo me old chum 😁

I'm a big fan of figured woods, but I've never troubled myself massively over the sources thereof. I've also liked to have basses made from woods from this country, tho it's not a complete deal-breaker, if the right piece of marmalade-looking birdseye maple came up from elsewhere, for example... You may have something to talk about in a marketing sense with ethical wood supply, as long as you've done your homework. Even concentrating on domestic woods might bring an advantage in the marketplace; there are plenty of people who Buy British (and it only takes a cursory glance over on The Other Place to see there are even more in the States who are pretty rabid about Buying American)...personally, it might be on my shopping list, but it'll be a loooong way down past the actual bass itself... As far as the tone is concerned, exotic timbers definitely...look nice. It's been done to death on here, but as there's very very little actual scientific evidence for the tone of a wood (and given the natural variation in different pieces of even the same wood, there's unlikely to be), it may well have a small influence on the tone, but many other factors (like construction, pickups and placement, EQ and hardware, strings, etc) have a much, much bigger effect on the tone of an instrument. HTH... M

The jar thing is rare in my experience; we've had it a couple of times, and the jar's never been counted, just handed over to us; it's always been 'for the band'. We've used it before ourselves: we do an annual Charridy gig at a local pub, we have the bucket out front, and it gets hawked around, but it's always very clear it's all going to a Charidee we've picked and announced.

Exactly my experience with MB heads (LM, LM Tube, etc) - I found the preamp I used was always on (for assorted tones, a fair amount of rock), which suggested to me I was simply using the wrong amp... I did like the F1, tho - I was using my iPad with BIAS software as a modeller to get the core tone, and the F1 (filters off, EQ set flat) provided the amplification...and it's very, very small...

#sorrynotsorry... 😉 If I was in the market for a Class D there'd only be one I'd bother with. I still kinda regret selling mine, but my amp circumstances changed (IEMs), and I needed the money... 😕

Just run the strap across the front of the rear wing...forward roll cured... 😉

I've had more than a dozen, from most of the Usual Suspects (MarkBass, Aguilar, Ashdown, GK, TC, etc, etc), the two best were the GB Streamliner, which was very warm and valvey, but the very best by a good way was the Magellan - tons of power and heft (I had the 800), two channels giving lots and lots of flexibility, will run down to 2.67 ohms, and it can sound quick and clean, or valvey without having any actual valves in it. A very musical amp... Edit: I forgot; it has a very useful HPF built into it, and when I asked Genzler about it, I got a very nice and comprehensive answer from Jeff G himself...

For the He Man perspective, if anyone's familiar with the film The Princess Bride, Andre The Giant was 7ft+, and weighed near a quarter of a tonne, but he couldn't catch and carry Robin Wright, the titular Princess , at that time because his back was so bad...she had to be suspended from a wire. A Danelectro man if I ever saw one... 😁 Just in case anyone is unfamiliar with Andre, here he is with that well-known midget, a Mr Schwarzenegger...

We get two free drinks each...it's part of the contract, even for pubs...but then we are a trio :0) Actually, there's a couple of regular venues which don't adhere to this, but only a couple.

Warmoth necks are all 2 1/2" = 63.5mm heel. I don't think 0.08mm will be much of an issue... They're great quality, and you can spec away to your heart's content on the site... If that's not what you want, speak to Jon Shuker.

Following a discussion elsewhere on the relative/non-relative descriptions of Light/Medium/Heavy when it comes to basses, what do we think? Am I being a glass-backed wuss or not? I think of Light as < 7.5lbs, Medium as 7.5 - 9.5 lbs, and Heavy as anything over 9.5 lbs. I won't buy anything over 9lbs, unless it's only going to be used sparingly (things like 8-strings and 12-strings fall into this category for me). Not whether it's an issue for you personally, but whether you'd describe your bass as one of the above, and what it actually weighs...

Possibly....some maniac out there bought my old 78 Jazz, and that was a sniff under 12lbs...it was so dense it bent light around it...I'd be surprised to hear anyone short of a professional powerlifter describe that as anything less than Heavy... Let's find out...new Topic incoming... 😃

I think 'He is the one and only' could only improve the tribute experience...

It's still about whether the bass is lightweight or not, no matter who's lifting it...I categorise <7.5 lbs as Lightweight, 7.5 - 9.5 lbs as Medium Weight, and >9.5 lbs as Heavyweight, even though I back away from anything over 9lbs... Might be interesting to see what the rest of us glass-backed old geezers think...hmmm...

I've had a couple-three Epi bolt-ons which I've Fenderbirded, and none of them are much more than 9lb (they're alder, and the TB body is pretty thin; getting an East U-Retro in to the cavity was a bit of a squeeze, depth-wise)... and I'm proper picky about weight. I've added better, heavier bridges (Supertones) and ultralight tuners, but that was only because I was building the things, and I could... The neck dive thing is a simple move of the strap button...they can, however, sort of fall forward from your body a little, but if you can't cope with that (it's not a problem for me) run the strap across the 'rear wing', and problem solved... And I can sympathise with Mr B above; there's no bass that cries out to be low slung more than a Thunderbird, and definitely none that looks cooler at knee height... 😁

Playing with Cheesy H W*nks? Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner... 😃

Any other manufacturers do it?

Yep, that's how it works for me; I can look at a bass and know I wouldn't like it, whether it's colours, woods, shape or the pickup type/position... It took several attempts with various basses to get to that point, though...

Barefaced offer a try before you buy/returns policy, so if you're serious, that's the first point taken care of...I'm not aware of any other manufacturers that do this. Trying cabs in shops is never a fantastic gauge of how they'll work for you.

One of the best pieces of live music I've ever seen was a cover of Teenage Kicks performed by my pal's younger brother and chums at their first pub gig. The oldest in the band was 16 (I think the drummer was 13), they were so fresh and enthusiastic; it's a simple song, but needs to be done right, and a bunch of kids were perfect for it... I'd agree nothing's off limits: there's only good and bad versions, and if a song's strong enough, it'll survive - and in some cases, like Johnny Cash's Hurt - it can transcend the original. The recent plethora of smoky-voiced younger females dolefully covering everything with just a piano or single guitar accompaniment is getting really old really fast, though...

I've had a maple boarded Ric and still have a maple board T-Bird (kinda)... 😀

Birdseye maple or ebony for me. The only bass I have which isn't either is a BB414, which had a rosewood board. Past tense - a slathering of some nice Ebony wood dye, and and it's now dark enough that I can look at it without curling a lip. Can't be doing with brown boards of any ilk...

We don't have a female singer, but we still get asked for Tina Turner songs...😕

I remember this being in a setlist for a band I was in when it was in the charts...IIRC, it was before the TV show aired in the UK, too: it was just a catchy pop song... ...maaan, I'm old... 😕