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Today, I went to each of those three shops. I took with me my AKG headphones, and some sheet music Rose Morris had the Kawai ES60, and the Kawai ES120. I preferred the ES60 - great feel, strong and boldly realistic sounds. There was an immediate and lively response to my playing. The keyboard felt a little tiring on my fingers, but I put that down to fact that I rarely play a proper weighted piano, and because the device was mounted quite high up. Slim form, good speakers, entry-level pricing: if that was the only option available to me, I would be entirely satisfied. The ES120? On paper, the specifications were better. But under my fingers, it didn't work as well, for me. It was somehow more polite, more sophisticated, and it lost the energy of the ES-60. The sales guy explained that the ES-60 had a shorter travel on the keys than the ES120. So, shorter travel means that there is less delay - and more immediacy. On to the Kawai ES920, just to see what a blank cheque would get me. Incredible feel and sound, and clearly a stage piano. However, the sound of the keys was the noisiest of the bunch. Not a problem for the stage, but potentially annoying when someone else is listening to the noise of the keyboard, without music. The quietest keyboard? The ES-60. Next door but one, and into the corporate world of Roland. No entry level Roland FP10 Digital Piano on display, but the Roland FP-30X Digital Piano had the same piano action. An incredible instrument! Lively and responsive, allowing for lots of expression and emotion when I played. And that model (unlike the FP10) allowed for three expression pedals, which is essential for Grade 4, I am told. The grand piano sounded huge, the string sound lush and expressive. For me, the Roland was the instrument that I wanted to play at home. The Yamahas? I tried a P145. It was....okay. Again, I would be perfectly grateful for it. However, it didn't excite me. So, in conclusion, it was important for me to have tried the keyboards, before I invest in one.

We moved to Horton in Ribblesdale when I was two. Then to Burton in Lonsdale from the age of three to the year I was ten.

Glad you made it back around!

Mine is like the Aldi version of yours! 😆 I'll consider some posh upgrades if/when I get involved in some live playing. I'm hoping something may come to fruition next year. I do really like the Boss AD-5 though to be fair. The Aria really is a lovely sounding and looking bass for the money. Tightened the truss rod, a little nut filing and it now plays amazingly well. If you do get one, be prepared to upgrade the tuners as that is where they have skimped a bit. I'm just waiting on some new ones to arrive.

The first VS5 Superlight with swamp ash. Not bad.

I won't keep you in suspense Richard 🙂 Scratch plate got pickups marked on then cut out yesterday afternoon. Did a wee bit tweaking this afternoon then when I was happy everything sat nice I switched on the soldering iron. 4 lipsticks in parallel, 250k pots and a 104 cap. Just the pickup heights to balance and the cling film to remove; might swap stings for something looser than Fender flats 👍

Now, I agree with 99% of your posts BUT not this one; music for me is about feeling and irrespective of all the total audio logic you’ve talked, a big rig makes me feel good when I play and for me that beats the logic. My Mesa rig makes no sense acoustically but a lot of sense emotionally, and that what works for me, it’s not an objective space after all 👍

Excellent, I'd like to try one of those. Here's my board...

Pearloid material arrived and I got the jitters 😀 Get one chance cutting plastic, likelihood of failure was high 🙁 Thought about ordering up a blank scratchplate, having a custom one cut, getting a pickup template made; anything to avoid cutting plastic 😁 Stern talking to and I came to my senses. Scratch plate cut 😀

It's for an Aria FEB electro-acoustic.

Praying to a Malamute God - Mute Gods

Shiba - Smashing Pumpkins

Cool looking bass! One you would actually want to own and play. Mine was a short scale Vox. I think it was called a Clubman or similar. It had two surfy looking chrome covered pickups and an ashtray bridge cover. It got off loaded onto me by a school friend who had decided he wanted to play drums instead. I had not idea about scale lengths, truss rods, or intonation. I remember it being horrendously out most of the time but I had no idea how to fix it. After leaving that school band, I didn’t touch a bass again until I was in my 60s, the experience was so traumatic. I definitely would not want to buy that bass back!

At last, someone else with an acoustic bass bo... Hang on, is that an acoustic bass rather than an upright?

I've not seen that before, looks rather good. Waiting with interest....

Same here, you can’t beat it, if I had the space (which I’m working on) I’d have the biggest Ampeg rig I could get

Main purchase was lipstick pickups. I had 3 in the drawer for an un-yet started Dano build. Buying a 4th was complicated, the 3 Dano lipsticks came from Ali-Ex several years back so the chances of finding a matching 4th were slim. I also had a slight concern regards polarity. Artec came to the rescue by selling Strat lipstick pickups where the middle pickup was RWRP. 2 Bridge and 2 Middle were ordered. A wee play-about in Photoshop showed me just placing them next to each other wasn't going to work. What I really needed was 52mm between the top adjusting screws and 54mm between the bottom screws. Drawing on paper followed while I waited on the pearloid scratch plate material arriving.

WHIPPET - Devo

Had the main elements for the bass at hand. A Paulownia P-bass body and maple neck purchased from @tom1946 a year maybe 2 years back. The body is nice and light plus Paulownia is dead easy to work with 👍 All I had to to was copy the scratch plate, cut out the pickups and a wee bit router work to the body.

Yes, 100% agree with this 👍