Muzz

Shoes? Waaay too polite: black 10-hole Doc Martens...I had a pair of them, too... 😁

Not so much a still image, more seeing this lot repeatedly at the Apollo in Manchester... And this...but you have to hear it at the same time... 😁 Oh, and this 4-necked bonkersness...

I cannot be doing with headstocks which have been badly designed - and by that I mean from an engineering POV: the strings shouldn't veer off sideways at the nut, and they shouldn't need afterthought string tensioners because they don't have enough 'downward' force into the nut to stop them popping out. Sadly, an awful lot of the ones in this thread fail at that very basic first hurdle, even the eye-wateringly expensive ones...

Singlecuts (sit-down basses, nobody makes a neck so weak that it needs reinforcing like that...) Tort. Why not tartan as well? From the same era that thought it was a good look. 3TSB (especially the really crappy 70s ones that look like they've been sprayed on from a rattlecan...I'm looking at Fender here...) Fingerboards with face dots, blocks or binding. Headstocks where the 'designer' couldn't be bothered, given a blank sheet of paper, to design something that pulled the strings straight across the nut in the vertical plane, or downwards/backwards in the horizontal plane enough not to need a nailed-on, afterthought tensioner. Oh, and mahooosive paddle headstocks a la Fodera. Blingy gold hardware. 98.6% of Jazz copies out there, no matter who by. 99.6% of Fender Jazzes. All relicing. Fake. About as desirable as one of those CBGB pre-greyed t-shirts from Asda. That's it for now. I'm sure I'll think of something else... 😁

This, for the last six years, since I had her built for my birthday. She's been to every gig and every rehearsal I've played, and she's the first to hand every time.

Oh my worrrrrrd...now there's a Stomptastic resource; thanks for that, Al 👍

Where might one acquire the details of this preset/settings? I neeeeeeed to have it...

I struggled with that years ago, until I looked up some live versions of it...wow, there's some car crashes out there, including a couple with Paul Simon himself...I felt a lot better about it after that 😁 Story goes it was Bakithi's birthday when they were recording it, so they all packed up early and went out, and the engineer took the first half and just reversed it for the second half...

This. 15 seconds in. Boom.

Nooooo, but I've wanted one since about 1978. I do know that if I ever got one it will be proof that I have too much money... I have a very soft spot for pretty-much-redundant 8 and 12 strings: I got my first one (a Washburn B20-8) in the mid-80s, and I keep buying them, then realising they're next to useless for what I need, and selling them again...

I'm sure they're very well made (which puts them in company with a lot of luthiers out there - 'the finest'? Hmmmm...), but personally I wouldn't be seen dead with one.

I borrowed one...they're a Class D, they're not as heavy as the normal ABMs, but they are as bulky, which for me kinda defeated the point (tho I'm not a massive Ashdown tone fan)...I rather like the RMs, tho...

Most of the difficult ones are about getting the feel right as much as the notes: if there's lots of notes (like Hysteria* and the Chilis By The Way) and they're not kept in check, they sound like a car crash...a poor (or even average) drummer can do that, too...I'm lucky in that my main drummer is fantastic...although that means any pink torpedo-ups are down to me... 😕 At the opposite end of the scale, we do Hold Back The River, and though there's very few notes in it, it needs really good dynamics to ebb and flow properly. Same with Elbow's One Day Like This: octave E's only, doesn't get any simpler in terms of actual notes, but it's the feel, especially in a trio... * Oh, and starting this at the right speed, too...I always think I'm rushing, then it turns out when the drums start, I'm not...

Badgers: I used to work with a chap from a farming family in North Wales, and he'd go home at the weekends to help his Dad with the farm stuff. They were losing chickens at a rate to a fox being in the area, so his Dad had knocked up a cage/trap from wire mesh and 2x4s (something he'd used before) - his Dad didn't want to shoot the fox, the MO was always to trap it, drive it a long way away and release it. So they baited it and once it was dark settled down a way away to wait. After about an hour, they heard a kerfuffle, and set off with their torches at a trot. My friend told me the noise got louder the nearer they approached, his Dad was about ten yards in front of him, when suddenly his Dad shot back past him, all knees and elbows and accelerating, with the single cry of "stinky poo! It's a badger!". My friend followed suit, and the pair of them retreated to the house to sip tea and not make eye contact. They went back down in the morning and the badger had destroyed the cage completely, and given the 2x4s a good splintering, just to make the point...

I'd vote No, too...

I think 14 days would be just about long enough to work out what the holy hell all those knobs and switches do...plus, I'd be sitting/lying down, so the mahooosive weight wouldn't be so much of an issue...

Wait till Mr Hall sees the one on the right...he'll be all over him... 😀

Noooo, that's not how it works, at least IME; I've found that the rate of Pick Loss is directly proportional to how many you have: I buy them in 24s, and immediately lose half a dozen, whereas the last half dozen seem to hang around forever...until I buy some more...

If we use the formula 1 x guitar = 0.25 x bass, then you're golden...

Eight at the moment, tho three of those are cheapos in bits and haven't been touched in a lonnnng while. Three main gigging basses. Oh, and a Shuker build (still) underway...

A few years ago my other half bought a couple of tickets for the Hebden Trades Club - it's a great venue, and one of those 'Never heard of them, but we'll give them a try' kinda places. Young lad on his tod, just him and his acoustic. You know that goosebump thing when you're in the presence of The Real Thing*? I think tickets were £8, about 30 people there. We chatted to him afterwards and wished him well. I recall he was a big lad, very nice. It was George Ezra - next thing I heard from him gigging, he sold out the Manchester Arena... * Not the 70s disco band...tho we did accidentally audition their singer once...another story entirely. It didn't go well.

Not on the scale of some of the fantastic ones on here, but in the early 80s we used to rehearse at the Boardwalk, and some evenings we'd go to the Hacienda afterwards if there was a potentially interesting gig on, in the days before the DJs took over, and it was more often than not half-empty. One evening we were in the City Road pub opposite wondering whether to go, and my pal said "I heard it's some American bird shooting a dance video, she'll be miming..." so we all went 'Pffft' and didn't bother. Madonna.

Al. Not always the case, I'll admit, but it had to happen sooner or later... 😁

Finally, someone talking sense...