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Let The Sunshine In - 5th Dimension

IMO just about any guitar or bass that isn't made individually to order by a luthier counts as mass produced.

I like this one

I was more thinking about 0.0050 bucks...

If Fender know what they are doing, and I'm sure they do, they have the flexibility to build to demand. They know the value of some models is influenced by perceived rarity. Also Fender Japan are going to be less profitable than Fender USA for the parent company; it makes sense to manage/avoid competition between their premium products. Presumably it isn't a cartel as they are part of the same group.

What about this one ? 😮‍💨

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Cold- at the gates

Rega turntables are great , and look real cool imho . For the money you can’t go wrong . The planar 2 I had at the time was a big upgrade from the previous Dual CDs-505 I had. What I have noticed over the last decade or so, is the expansion of quality and choice of colours etc in the £250-£500 price point . A decent cartridge works wonders also as mentioned above .

Let It Snow, Let It Snow - Dean Martin

Rain - trouble

It vindicates me when I think of the circumstances of the split.

Some of the JHS Vintage range are very good and excellent value, but watch out for the weight. Some of the P's & J's can be mightily heavy.

My dad was against us going to university, not to the point of forbidding us to go, but just that we should be out working, so we both went out to work at 16.I went to the Open University later on

I've just stumbled upon this and it might interest people looking for a new mixer. I stress that I've not seen one yet or tried it out but it looks like a really useful addition to what is available and has a very different approach to what is already available. It skips on the touch screen and everything is 'physical' controls; note the parenthesis. You can control it with an app but that is via bluetooth not via a router. To me it is set up for live work more than a studio it only seems to allow two channel recording and it has a very physical, practical set of facilities. Andertons have it in for £499 So basically it is a 12/16 channel mixer with 10 XLR/mixed inputs and a couple of stereo inputs, standard stuff. Four main outputs, four submix outputs and three Aux outs. Mixing is via 6 capacitative touch faders, effectively a separate touch screen for each channel, No more problems with dirt in the faders I suppose. Faders are arranged in two banks Everything else is accessed by touch switches and rotary knobs at the side of the screen, which is not touch sensitive it is just a display. Eq is fully parametric with three bands and HPF on every channel. Compression is available on each channel as is phantom power FX is a comprehensive collection of reverb and delay, again with all the parameters adjustable by the rotary controls. To me the facilities are pretty much all you need for a typical pub band and very similar to the offering I have on my RCF mixer. This is going to be much less flexible than the Behringer X18's but so much more intuitive than any of the current stagebox mixers. The use of physical switches and rotaries is going to be completely comfortable for anyone who has used an analogue mixer and much better/simpler for anyone mixing from on stage. All the channel fx are available with one click and completely flexible, you can do as little or as much as you want. I have to say that this might be a game changer for many bands, physical controls are so much simpler when you are also playing. Alto have clearly looked hard at the shortcomings of other budget mixers and this looks to have come up with fixes that make sense. I've no idea of the build quality or long term reliability of all those knobs and buttons but Alto have been producing reliable and well loved speakers for a while so no reason to doubt them. I haven't found a manual yet so there are many questions I couldn't answer, primarily if you can save scenes and waht is on the app but this looks promising

Very underrated instruments, from what I understand.

First gig of 2026 up in cold Manchester at Band On The Wall, was ace. Surprising number of people showed up for a two day mini-Americana festival celebrating the 10th anniversary of the bigger Buckle And Boots festival held at Whitebottom Farm near Stockport. Katy Hurt had a 45 min slot on Saturday evening and we played pretty well I think (save a few little fluffs from yours truly). It was LOUD onstage but actually very well balanced. Bass was my ACG TKO, which interested one fan to the extent that he’s contemplating commissioning one purely to hang on the wall…! Rig was house-supplied TC Electronics something with an Ampeg cab, so I just used my Digbeth pre for the FoH and to sculpt the onstage tone. We had a blast, got back to Katy’s house around 1.30am and now I should probably get out of bed 😆

A couple of weeks ago I was having no end of problems with my digits. I’d split a thumb nail right the way down one side, which got infected, making using it incredibly painful to touch anything with. I also had several rat bites (got a bunch of new pet rats) one of which got right down in between the bones of the first knuckle of my index finger, which got very infected (which I fixed by injecting 99% isopropyl alcohol into). Then one morning I woke up with a horrible pain in the pad of my other thumb. A few days later I discovered that it was a tiny, metal splinter, I have no idea where it came from. A few days after that I started getting the same pain in the pad of the index finger on the same hand. It was another metal splinter. I suspect that I got both at the same time, but the callous on the index finger meant that it had to bury itself deeper before it started making its presence known. That was a whole heap of fun to dig out!

+1 for the Crimson guitars notched thing. I have bass and guitar ones