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Yep i ended up deleting all my very old pics. Dave

Defo take a towel at least. And water. You don’t realise the heat that can be on stages. And you’ll hopefully be having a great time so end up a sweaty mess. Maybe that’s just me. 😂

Horses - Patti Smith

Could go for an SR5 neck, on the basis that I could just find a body to attach it to easily.

Two x 2 hour gigs at the Dereham Blues Festival on Sunday. These were the inaugural gigs for the Checkmate Kings new line up and the first the band has done since last year’s festival. The first was outdoors at the George Hotel to a packed beer garden and pub. Despite some significant cock ups it went well and we got plenty of positive feedback, including a possible return match later. It was pretty hot but we were under two gazebos, which gave us the space to spread out. Gear was 2 x LFSys Monzas, Blackstar U700, MB LMIII 500 back-up, Mooer Envelope filter pedal, Boss Tu3, Maruszczyk Elwood 4a 32” and Greco Atomic 32” as spare. Everything was DI’d, so the master didn’t go above 9 o’clock on the U700. One of these days I’ll get the chance to open up the rig! The second gig was early evening at the Red Lion and indoors. Hot, hot! We were squashed into a small space at the end of the bar. It’s a small pub, so pretty tight. However, our keyboard player wasn’t able to attend as he was playing at the Ely folk festival, so at least we were down to 5. Minimal equipment, just vocals, kick and sax into one PA column. I only used one cab and the guitarist used a small combo. Without the keyboard player we had to drop some material and rearrange on the fly, which had mixed success. I had some brain farts, which was embarrassing given some of the people who came to see us. Just as we were starting, I noticed that one side of the bridge saddle on the A string had dropped, which explained why I could hardly hear it (choking off). Fortunately I had my guitar multi-tool with me and I was able to fix it. Ah! I can’t post the pics, I seem to have a 43KB limit! That’s tiny these days!

My Shuker 5 string has been my main bass for 13 years now. Dabbled with others, but nothing has ever ended up being used in anger. I have a 4 string fretted bitsa P bass that I may pure a mute on and use it on a couple of numbers in my new band.

The epoch you describe is exactly when I started playing the bass and yes, Rotosound was the default bass string. My first set of strings were Swing Bass in the plastic pack with a picture of John Entwistle on the back. I do also remember Superwound and occasionally Ernie Ball bass strings being available locally, but Rotos reigned supreme. Fresh out of the box still the best tone of any roundwounds strings in my opinion. It's a shame they die off so quick and then sound not so special. Flatwounds are for hipsters nowadays. Back on the early '80's they were for old men who liked arm wrestling. I still feel subversive playing a bass with flats nowadays because it was drilled into me by my bass teacher back then that they were to be avoided at all cost because you couldn't slap on them. And slapping was essential. Such a great era for playing bass. Someone please invent a time machine.

My Embassy, with friends 🙂

Sheep - Floyd

The system you’ve got is easily enough for your needs. As Dad has said you will have feedback problems way before damaging the speakers. The amp is excellent, the mixer is fine and the speakers will probably be reliable though the vocal sound will need some tweaking. They’ll do a job for you but might be the first things to replace if you are unhappy with the sound. You might need to address the room acoustics too but you’ve nothing to lose by just setting up and giving the system a try. Again once you let us know where you are based I’m sure someone will help you do the basic set up

So I had it like this for about 12 months. The bridge (and later pickup cover) were opportune Fender branded buys from eBay and such like which were about £35 each. The inserts and bolts were a bit of a bulk buy only thing so came to about £20 if memory serves.

Headless may be doable, too. Although not all bodies work well with headless design.

Mrs S and I had eaten dodgy onion pakoras the night before and were taking it in turns to go to the toilet. I remember most of it - recorded most of it on my betamax video machine and still got the tape somewhere. At the time I thought it was utterly brilliant. Still do tbh. For all sorts of reasons 1985 was a magical year for me and I will always have the fondest memories.

Tuners to both sides of the headstock, like 3+1, 2+2, 3+2. I also like the idea, that the strings are inline from bridge to saddle to tuner. Zero fret and string retainer if needed, phosphorescent side dots are a must. I hate front dots/blocks. I am very bad in designing, that's why links: https://gb.pinterest.com/b25976y/guitar-headstock/ https://www.shutterstock.com/gb/search/guitar-headstock https://www.guitarpedalx.com/news/gpx-blog/the-shape-of-a-guitars-headstock-has-a-significant-impact-on-tuning-stability

First I added a bridge cover. I've not had covers on any of my basses before, apart from a really cheap thing as a kid which had threaded bolts sticking of the body that you spun a knurled nut on to. This made the cover much more easily and quickly removable than having screws through it. I was discussing it with some friends and started looking online. We came up with the idea of threaded inserts in the body, with knurled top bolts that screwed into them. This would avoid having two prongs of death sticking out of the bass when the cover was off. So, off I went (as gingerly as I know how) with my trusty Makita. I was worried about drilling too far into the body so thick the thread was only about 4mm deep. It worked great but if I had my time again I would have ordered a longer insert and kept the 4mm bolt. As I had to add some foam as a spacer to the pickup cover edge to allow it to fully tighten against the body without rattling. (Pics of that later).