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"If that buffoon @bass_dinger can do it, then surely i can, too!" If you elect to put yourself through the small Hell that is the face-to-face exam, then the timetable is April and October/November. So, Grade 2 by the end of 2026 is entirely achievable. And the really good news is that you can spend the price of a nice bass amplifier on lessons and exams, yet not exclude yourself from the 2026 Gear Abstinence Challenge! However, if it is focus, purpose and a direction that your want, then the ABRSM grades and lessons will give you that. From reading your musical biography, we both had the same background - playing chords, but nothing much of the fancy stuff (so, just like an acoustic guitarist, then....). You may find that you can teach yourself a lot of the stuff - with fingering annotations for the scales, it's just a case of working through them, and having a lesson every other week to help you play the pieces. Well done for taking the leap! Robert

That Was The President — Phil Ochs

David has just purchased my GK Combo from me. My wife had the pleasure of meeting him in person, rather than I, but the whole transaction - from first contact, through to collection and payment - was carried out with complete ease; it was a real pleasure. Please do 'deal' with David with total confidence - he's one of the great ones, here on BassChat. Best wishes, Greg

I love this! ❤️ Not dissimilar to what I did with my BBN5 😊👌

Peter's advice, and courteous patience, is worth a lot more than the price anyone here is paying for it. The only completely foolproof, stable, reliable MIDI I've used that involved a computer was in the days when Atari ST ruled the roost. Sadly I don't think it's feasible to expect ANY MIDI gear to work out of the box across multiple OS, interfaces, device hardware and updates thereof. Especially when you consider how important MIDI is to the OS manufacturer, ie not in the least. Meanwhile I'm having the devil of a time getting an Allen & Heath digital mixer to just talk to it's dedicated (and entirely mandatory) control app, and they are industry leaders with a relatively huge development team. The FI4 manual layout could be done several different ways, but FWIW seems fine to me. It can't be ordered in a way that anticipates every use-case scenario and it seems fair enough that it prioritises basic function for less technically ambitious users, with other info present but less prominent.

Yes, per preset. Basically a 4-slot mod matrix. If you read the section on Flexi Controllers it should show you how powerful it is.

American Idiot - Green Day

No problem. I hope you enjoy using the FI once you’ve got your head around it and its idiosyncrasies.

As I stated earlier, this is being addressed in the forthcoming update: all global menu parameters will also be accessible via the editor.

I'm probably going to set up a couple of banks with colour washes, then program a few banks as short chases.

Yes, but they are quite subtle and hard to see aside from a few obvious things... the condenser traces (three at top right) have MUCH higher frequency response and are much more sensitive. The drum mics and the (very old, cheap and nasty) Ross 338 have better low end, even though the T-Bone one has a cheap as chips insert chosen for a claimed good low-end response (it also has very low sensitivity). The SM58 is low sensitivity as well. Some have a distinctly lower response below around 32kHz and a few have apparent extra dips and peaks, but hard to be definitive.

So who's upgrading to the GP-50? Already placed my pre order in.

Breakfast in America - Supertramp

My cheap generic controller arrived today. £21 posted. It's good at creating scenes. Less good at programming chases as editing an error in a chase is awkward, and it seems to automatically play a chase then move to the next one, rather than keep repeating the same chases as I'd expect. I bought it for a gig next week, though we only have 4 LED par lamps. I'm thinking to not bother with the chase and just have 8 scenes in the first scene bank for colour wash.

Some really nice gear listed so far. That blue Sandberg i especially like. 2 purchases for me this year not including stage gear. #1 Barefaced 212 cab that is now my main gigging cab along with the HB WB-100 amp. Could do with a little more mid punch but i've recently increased the mids to 3 o'clock and its made a huge change in tone. Not much happened from 12 to 2 but 3 was a WOW moment. #2 Next off was a set of nut files to let me lower the strings a touch on my Overwater J4 and that now feels a lot better. First time i've ever adjusted the nut height and it could come down a little bit more. No worst purchases this year. Excuse the stage mess. It was a sound check and cleared for the show..............honest.

Just bought a Cali76 from Ian. Splendid chap to deal with, good comms, super quick delivery (arrived next day), well packed and pedal in excellent condition. Thanks Ian!

I had a pretty bad face-to-face viola exam, just after covid. I got a 'merit' but it still put me off doing face to face exams. I have since done a couple of grades with Rock School which I found to be a little less formal.

Lady Marmalade — LaBelle

So it is. Confusingly it's 3/4 of the way through the manual rather than being at the end where I would normally expect to find it. It is also rather sparse and AFAICS I will need to use the 4 flexi controllers if I want to do anything interesting with MIDI control of a program's parameters. I assume that since they are in the Editor their assignments can be changed per program rather than being global? The MIDI implementation chart does answer my question regarding program mapping - it's only available on send and not on receive. Which you have just confirmed. It's a little disappointing that not all the parameters are accessible from the Editor application. It would be a massive improvement of the usability if everything was accessible via the Editor, or at least those parameters that can only be changed from the pedal interface itself were made A LOT MORE OBVIOUS in the manual Thank you for all your help, I realise that as a new user with unconventional requirements I'm probably asking lots of weirds and difficult questions that never occur to most potential users of this device. I appreciate the time you've taken to help me. I'll email the maker now requesting that the Instrument mode either be changed on a per-program basis or separately by MIDI command in a future update.