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Yeah, I’m in my 3rd or 4th mode of this. I haven’t got the time for the shite I used to tolerate just to be “in a band” anymore. It’s a choice to be in a band, to wade through weeks of nonsense just to make hours of music makes no sense to me. I don’t really need a band as such. Wish I’d learned how to sing 😆

I was going to @Happy Jack, but as you can tell from the description these are very specialist speaker cables. 200m of cable, 4 square feet in section with gilded banana headsweet HDMI and USB connectors and weighing only 50g would be quite something!

I put up with it for a long time in the 80's. Then one day, on the counter of a music shop in Leeds city centre, there was a sweet jar with hand written label "strap locks". It was full of these curious looking things. Have been using the same pair ever since. I recently took them apart and cleaned them for the first time as they were getting stiff. They must be 40 years old. How wonderful.

All pat of the cycle mate, you'll shed a skin, find something new, and acquire a new skin. I'm on my 5th or 6th now 👍

Quick question : what makes the 1996 version more desireable?? I initially wanted a BTB 6 string lol..

Sublime Dull

Howdy. Not quitting bass, but have just announced to the band that the next gig in September will be my last with them. There’s a lot more behind me knocking it on the head than just being fed up… I just don’t think, after 2 years that I want to be in a band with them anymore. We’ve been recording an album and It’s taken an age and the bickering and differences of opinion are taking their toll. I choose to do this, I’m not earning from it and it’s starting to feel like I should choose to not do it anymore…anyhow. The gear I own is solely down to “need” for the band. So I’m not overly attached to much of it. I’m going to set up sales threads for each part, probably 20 pedals and about 10 basses. I’m starting a project with a fellow basschatter and will just share music online - no plans to gig after September. Doing that “falling out of love with music” thing I seem to do every 4/5 years. Keep your eyes peeled x

Happened to me when the strap button came out on my Thunderbird, it didn’t need that much of an excuse to dive to the floor anyway, but this totally floored it. Fortunately it happened on the last note of the last song in the encore so not too much of a problem.

That clip of Buggles doing Two Tribes is great, I knew Trevor Horn was a good bassist but imo he really shines on that version.

Well, i went and brought one new, and glad i did. 15mins later its boxed up and going back. Maybe i don’t understand what the Ampeg sound is, but i couldn't really get a tone i liked as much as the Nux. But thats not the deal breaker. What is was the fact that with the Preamp and SGT bypassed, and IR on (any IR), and my Lekato 5.8Ghz wireless plugged in, i was getting a lot of digital interference/noise. A huge amount. Used with a cable or even my old Xvive 2,4 system it was fine. Tried different PUS’s and in different rooms. This was on all outputs, even headphones. I think in the real world its not a problem id never not have the Preamp engaged, but at this price thats too big a ‘niggle’, especially as im not over the moon with the tone either. Might try the EBS Microbass 3 next, but it seems the Nux may well be around for a while.

Really good, driving line that grooves hard. All the FGTH stuff has great bass on it though, thanks to Trevor Horn. Here's a live version of The Buggles playing Two Tribes, with Horn playing bass: Best P-bass tone ever though? For me, that's Eric Avery on Deconstruction, the project he started with Dave Navarro in 1993 after Jane's Addiction broke up the first time around.

🙏🌧️

Sure Shot - Beastie Boys

Not for me for sure. Too much string noise. Kinda thuddy. Sticking to spiros ..or Eva's if there's bowing to do that week ( usually)

I'm sure we'll get some nosebag in before then!

Around the time that I made the decision about Marylou's neck, I was putting in an order with StewMac in the US for a different project. So I added a thing called a "steam needle" to my basket. This is essentially just a long, hollow 2-mm-diameter needle attached to the end of a length of rubber hose. The idea is that you attach it to a source of pressurized steam and use it to heat the inside of glue joints. (I believe these days luthiers have mostly swapped over to using foam-cutting hot-wires, but this was still the standard tool back then). I didn't have a source of pressurized steam, but I figured I could find a manky old espressso machine or something. I hit paydirt about three months later, when I was idly looking around a local charity shop. I think the staff were a little baffled when a customer loudly exclaimed "PERFECT!" and skipped to the counter grinning and carrying a crappy carpet steam-cleaner from the 90s. I'd hoped I could get the neck off in one piece, but I realised that it would be very difficult to do that without taking off the fingerboard, so that was the first order of business. There was daylight visible under the upper part of the board, near the nut, so I assumed this wouldn't be too hard. I was wrong. While the upper part was barely attached, the lower part was securely glued in with some very old, very hard and difficult glue. It took many hours of fighting with heating and steaming, and multiple scrapers and pallet knives before I was able to lever the thing off. (This picture also shows my weird yellow carpet steamer). The fight to get the neck off was comparably straightfoward. I drilled a few tiny pilot holes with a hand-drill and pushed the needle in. Into the large voids in the joint, as it turned out. Below is what the heel looked like when it finally came off (with much stretching and squelching). From what I could see, I think it was only really properly stuck to the sides of the pocket, which weren't really attached to the neck block anymore. No idea how Marylou hadn't just folded in half under tension at some point. And here's the shredded interior of the neck pocket. You can see some of the damage from its various falls here. On closer inspection, I thought I could see evidence of at least one prior neck re-attachment before her last one (different colours and textures of glue). There was also a lot of grain tear-out that would need to be repaired. So. That was step one done. I had detached the bits that needed to be detached, and without making them any more broken than they were to begin with. The fingerboard, incidentally, appeared to have originally been dyed/painted black (as can be seen on the back of the extension). This had been scraped off the front some time in the distant past though, revealing an absolutely enormous slab of very nice wood (a very uniform rosewood or perhaps Pau Ferro). I'll continue the tale with the actual fixing soon. Unless it stops raining, and then I'll get back to my other projects.

Kerchinnnnng !! Fretted with dual MECs and Fretless with single homeland

I've had an email from Colin Moulding/XTC: Paul It sounds like a worthy cause, and the money is not an issue , but I can't really say right now whether I’ll be available. I prefer to react to stuff when it comes through, so making a date , 4 months hence, would not be right for me. Sorry for the lack of committal Best Colin While it's a great pity he's declined at this point, I've thanked him for taking the time to come back to me.

Yes! More the merrier!

I've got the Elf 10" combo which I love. I'm currently planning a louder band and looking forward to adding a TE 1x10 speaker to make a cute TE mini stack. I was a huge Trace Elliot fan back in the 90s and it's nice to see the brand doing well. It's also mildly ironically amusing to see the brand doing well with tiny, lightweight amps and cabs...