Rich

About time you got here bro Witters here is my bestie, a marvellous guitardist and rapidly becoming an excellent bassist too. (will that do? You can give me the tenner next week)

I've always been a singing bassist, mostly BVs but I did shared lead in a blues-rock trio years ago. I've always found it relatively straightforward to sing and play (never done any Rush or Level 42 covers though!), but the one thing I cannot do for the life of me is talk and play. Just normal conversational stuff or chatting to punters, band intros etc. Nope. Can't do it.

Nope. Sixth post on the first page

Very uncomfortable when one sits down, however.

Oh, and 4. Buy as many 50s and 60s Fenders as you can now, while they are still relatively cheap... and when you see that pre-Ernie Stingray for £250, snap that one up too. THERE's your pension plan.

If I could go back in time, I'd go back to visit my 15 year old self and tell him 3 things. 1. Knuckle down at school, do some actual work instead of arsing about, perhaps you might actually get some decent 'O' levels. 2. When you hit 23, your drummer mate Keith will call you from London, begging you to head up to the Smoke and enrol at the same music college as him. Do it. Then maybe you will get a session career like he did. 3. Most importantly: stop being such a disrespectful little bastid to your parents. They are the best people in the world, and you will miss them dreadfully when they are gone.

My bitsa P bass. Body was £20 off eBay, no idea what it was originally but it's solid wood and weighs as much as a car. Neck was from my beaten up old Squier Jazz (yes I added the decal, sue me). Pickup is a hot Wilkinson off eBay, a tenner I think it was. Bridge was a fiver, pickguard was about 20. EMG active 2-band eq came from my spares box, had it for years and can't remember how much it was Vinyl pretend-MOP neck blocks were a fiver or so. Total cost, not very much at all, but it plays very nicely and sounds thunderous. I might get round to adding a J bridge pickup at some point. Shame it's so fecking heavy.

I'm in three bands, and dep for a 4th luckily two of them aren't all that busy. But they all know about each other, and always have done. If they are reasonable people, they shouldn't have any problem with you splitting your time.

For the first time in several years, neither of my kids are going. They have very catholic musical tastes and there are usually some acts that make it worthwhile for them, but they are both hugely disappointed in the line-up. And they're in their mid twenties, so there's no boringoldgit-ness going on there

I have the body of a man half my age. I keep it in my freezer.

I call a comb 'no longer needed'

Back in the 18th century when he and I were first getting to grips with our relative instruments, a guitarist mate of mine initially referred to them as 'plectrons'. Which I think is a far better name than either pick or plectrum. It has a sci-fi/nerd quality which appeals to my inner geek.

'base guitar' is another search I often do.

I only meant shape really. My photoshop skills stop short of adding the Babicz bridge, Dimarzio pickups and ACG filter circuit

Not at all. Give it five strings and it'd be great

That's a whole big truckload of nope.

Now that's a nice 'un. Easy to see where Zon got the Legacy body shape from Seems to be the groundswell of opinion is heading towards a, shall we say, warmer and more vintage-y sounding instrument. Fair enough but not my personal cuppa char.

I'm not 100% positive, but I think that could well be the single ugliest thing of any sort that I have ever seen. And I'm including Jacob Rees-Smugg, Hereford town centre and the SsangYong Rodius in that, so it's up against some pretty tough competition.

So a violinist is really a violin player, a flautist is a flute player? A drummer is a drum player? A vocalist is a git voice user? etc etc etc.

'Jean Luc Scratchplate' would have sounded really stupid though.

I believe it's the beautiful pointy one, yes. How I miss seeing that shape in the sky.

"The nurse would love to know how on earth you got that neat row of puncture wounds in the palm of your hand?"

Quite I thought the whole point of a 'burst-type finish was that it was supposed to be a gradual fade? The colour change on that one is so pronounced, it's almost a line. This is about a million times better: