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Behringer BDI21, a great pedal, not just for the money, sounds great, ideal backup to have in the bag for those just in case moments.

Wax candles work well on stiff zips too.

Did it not come out roughly at the end of Covid that Ernie Ball was keeping the price of instruments in the US low by price gouging everyone else? I mean, fair enough, if you want a new one go for it, but they're almost double what they were pre covid. I would imagine second hand would be best. However, if you want a better one. About 10 years ago I bought some pickups from Status. The shipping was £20. Imagine my annoyance at the fact they sent them royal mail for 2 quid. Maybe the screws are more cheeky as they cost a lot less.

The irony for amplifiers is these numbers matter a lot less now that power is cheap and light. Just makes it even more confusing pairing with appropriate speakers. Having said that, subjectively these micro amps don't quite seem to match up to older class AB amps with nominally similar ratings. Whether that's because their power supplies can't sustain the demand for as long under load, or the older amps have more forgiving distortion characteristics at higher loads, or it's all in my head, I don't know enough to say (it's not all in my head though it's really reeeeeal :p). BUT, with my £150-when-new Bugera Veyron it's all immaterial. Weighs not much, fits comfortably into a laptop bag. Claims 2000 fictional watts, supposedly measures a hair under 800 watts, in reality it doesn't matter if that's not ultimately as loud as 'old watts'. I drive 2x 250w RMS 10" drivers and it's always enough. Played the Fleece in Bristol a few nights ago, it filled the stage easily and it sounds great, and the subs/PA take over for the venue anyway as is required in a place that size whatever you put on stage.

OK, it's an aquarium hood, but I've not long cut all the pieces out of 8mm ply. Got fed up with the slowness with the saw dragging and remembered the trick my dad taught me when I was a pre-pubescent teenager. I rubbed candle wax on the saw. I roughly tripled the rate of progress. Kicked myself for not bothering earlier, 'it's only thin ply'. A waxed rip saw is faster than a jigsaw and not too far off a circular saw - and you can see what you are doing well enough to follow a straight line.

… my fretted board, I thought the Fliptop would knock the Grizzly off, but it knocked off a HP/LP filter instead as I have a Sfx Microthumpinator on the utility end board anyhow! Now I have a clean and three levels of grit should I need to ‘ramp it up’ a bit at church 🤣 … I’ve currently got a Novation BB2 going into the second channel of the Red Pander 3 way mixer. I’ll shortly be putting together a board that has a tap tempo tremolo on it, should be great for that! 3rd channel will be for a fretless at some point also.

Could also be if you have a MIDI channel open in your DAW.

This week these two Master Effects pedals arrived from Canada - the Transmission, which mimics the EQ of Hooky's early Yamaha basses, and the Golden Ratio chorus, which is based on the original 70s EHX Clone Theory circuit. The latter is a little bit noisier than I would ideally wish but Tim (Mr Master Effects) said its inherent to the original circuit and it certainly sounds authentic.

Mine - TC Electronic Spark Booster. Full size. (Acutally it was free because I got an Amazon voucher for Christmas!)

My Peavey Dynabass 5 is lovely, but suffers from neck dive. I’d like to put some lightweight tuners on it, but also don’t want to spend more than necessary. Tuners are 4+1 and black. I could probably get away with only replacing the 4. Any thoughts?

Absolutely love the Handbox WB100, very glad I didn’t sell while I was between musical endeavours.

I had a look at the Blue Arran site and the amp "specs" are slightly lacking on watts rating info...RMS, Peak, AES, WTF etc?

Ah, those were the days ... my mate's 4kW PA was capable of levelling buildings.

Touring, like everything else to do with bands, is what you make it. There are always ups and downs, but if you're serious about playing in a band, think you've got something for an audience and if you've chosen the right guys, you'll make it work. As Charlie Watts said when the Stones were celebrating their 25th anniversary, "5 years playing and 20 years hanging around!" IMO the end justifies the means. 8 hours driving to a gig and 8 hours driving back again depends on the gig. A good gig and it's worth it. A bad gig and you put it behind you and look forwards to the next one. If you can't do that become an accountant etc.

On a Knock Off tour, we played in Antwerp, Belgium. First off when we drove through the area where our hotel was we saw some rather mean looking people on guard duty at various properties, complete with machine guns. Turned out we were staying in the diamond district. Hence said machine guns. At the gig itself, at about 9:45 when we were nearing the end of the set this chap in a police uniform (later found out he was the Antwerp Chief of Police) got up on stage and started speaking/shouting at me. Now my Flemish isn’t that good, as in don’t speak a word of it, but I could tell from his tone of voice, expression, and hand hovering near his right hip he didn’t want an autograph. So we stopped playing. Our singer had the hump and went to have it out with him but I just said it’s the first night of the tour and said policeman has a gun so don’t Fosters him off. Turns out the venue had a 10pm curfew, and after a chat with the owners the Chief allowed us back on til 10pm. We didn’t ask him which song he wanted, miserable so & so!

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together - Taylor Swift

What happens on tour stays on tour... I did a full year on the road over 97/98 with a charity/fund raising/gospel band linked to https://www.mercyships.org.uk mainly in Europe but also South Africa and Ghana. It was fun especially for an 18/19 year old. Started off as a roadie/sound engineer but then got promoted to bass. Learned a few things: 1) No amount of hard work/practice will put you in the same league as naturally talented pro musicians with a good ear (and when you find them just play what they tell you) 2) Gear breaks/goes missing all the time so the simplest set up that ideally someone else has paid for works best 3) Make good use of caffeine especially if you are voluntold to drive the van 4) Music is a fun hobby but too much hard work for not enough reward to do full time

That will be it, thanks 🙏