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But if your baffle is not yet glued to the cab, could just secure it to another bit of wood for the centre hole. Actually, might temporarily fix something to my fully constructed cab to poke a centre hole in… hmm…

I did that with my 12” cab. Was going to see if I could shave a couple of mm off by using a bearing bit. Not thought it through probably yet though!

And very expensive!

It was very impersonal. It was a couple of years past the height of covid, but the examiner was sat behind the sort of translucent plastic curtain you see in supermarket butcher's counters. She wasn't at all friendly and didn't give the slightest bit of body language. In comparison the three (?) Rock School examiners I've had were all friendly and chatty - talking before the exam about things beyond the range of exam - do I play in a band? How long have I been playing the instrument? etc. and a warmer, friendlier dialogue during the exam, smiling occasionally, just little things that put you at your ease. The very first Rock School exam I did was "Grade 1 Acoustic Guitar" and I turned up with a guitar-bodied mandocello and the examiner was really interested in it as she played guitar, and when it got to the chords part of the exam we talked about voicings and how I couldn't really play an E minor, I could only play an Em/G. Anyone who likes to talk chord voicings gets a 👍 from me.

Today’s Logic Pro update has a cool new feature that lets you drag midi or audio to a chord track and it gives you the chords over the track. To me that’s going to be a huge time saver when working out songs. I can imagine it’s not going to be totally accurate, but a good starting block. Another + for AI in my book.

I heard you keep them in a special shed. A sort of Jabba Hut.

To give Aguilar their due, they use genuine ICEPower modules in their amps, so claimed wattages are accurate. 300W, done right, is plenty for small to medium venues unless you are playing detuned doom or similar. Until class D came along, we were quite happily using 100W (maybe 200W at a push) amps and nobody worried whether they'd be loud enough.

And a complete balls up today. In my anxiety to not make the speaker hole too big, I've used a router and circle thingie and managed to make the hole too small. As this means I no longer have a centre to work around, it looks like I'm going have to resort to what I'd been avoiding, using a jigsaw instead. Bollocks.

The wobbly rig was my small one which used light-weight cabs and was under 1.5m high. I never tried it with my big rig, because I was afraid it would have squashed the foam flat!

If you have the money to spare and can afford to indulge your GAS, there's really only one answer... It will certainly be a massive improvement on your old Rumble. In my experience, you can't get a bad sound out of MB gear, especially if you lean towards more old school tones. The 802 N 300 has an effects send, so you could, if you need more volume, run an add-on amp and cab with it if it proves not to be loud enough.

And here it is again

Do you mind if I ask what you didn't like about it? As it happens I did a grade exam around the same time, also with a merit, and didn't much fancy another one. There was no time to warm up and at one point I was surprised by a request to sing from dots, which is never going to happen.

A friend of mine is a poet and has used Suno to put music to his words, he loves it and gets a massive buzz out of it. Its just a tool, if it brings the user enjoyment who I’m I to question.

I’ve been using one of those for a good couple of years now and they’re really quite useful in a variety of gigging situations. Mostly I use it with my upright bass or SLB300 for jazz gigs (clubs, bars, theatres). With or without drums it produces a good well-rounded sound and is more than enough for me on stage. I would normally be going through a PA too though via the DI so it doesn’t get pushed too hard. I actually prefer the sound of the 802 N 300 to my previous CMD121P for electric bass as I think it produces a better representation of the actual sound of the bass going through it. To my ears the 121P had a tendency to sound a bit woofly on its own with electric bass which is why I usually paired it with an extra NY121 cab for electric gigs. I think the 802 N 300 would be a great option in the studio if you wanted to mic up an amp for example… I’d say that like a lot of smaller amps it will lose the tone if pushed too hard on a gig. At a good mid-volume it’ll sound fantastic.

I had the old Minimark 802, but ended up moving it on as I found it to be a bit of a 'solution looking for a problem'. I still have a Micromark 801 as that's a great home rehearsal or small gig amp, and I still have a Mini CMD 121p (LM3 version) as that's a solid pub gig amp. Whilst I loved how it looked (99% of the reason I bought it tbh) there was just nothing about the 802 that I specifically needed, and mine was noticeably heavier, more awkward to carry and less capable at volume than the 121p. I've not tried the new 802 with the Nano 2 bolted into it, but I have gigged with a Nano 2 for some time now and it's a great little amp for travelling light when you know there's a house/hired cab at the venue. Would I go out of my way to pair it with a 2x8 cabinet for gigging..? Probably not. If you've got as far as considering an NY121 cab and separate amp head, I'd give serious thought to a Mini CMD 121p; it really is a great all-rounder. If the pair of TE Elf 110 cabs really appeals and you want some for cheap-er, RichTone currently have a couple for £169 each in the second hand. Nowt to do with me and haven't see 'em, but they look to be in decent condition from the photos and have covers.

Nope but thats interesting. Wonder how good and reliable?

At probably many times the price!

There are also power supply issues. There's already speculation that the US power grid can't support all the AI data centres that are planned even if many of them build their own generation facilities ,which, depending on the type of generation being planned is it's own russian doll of environmental and logistical issues. There's additional concerns about the water supply for cooling. Again datacentres can build their own boreholes, or tap rivers, etc but there's only so much of that you can do before it starts to affect the local water supply for agriculture and residential use. Neither issue is insurmountable but it's doubtful if it can be done in the same timeframe as the new data centres will be needed to support the expected massive uptake in AI services.

They would like to see you too darling.