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Check my YouTube channel for a video later today. Exciting times!

It's great to see a fun finish. Don't get me wrong, black and white basses are all well and good, but not exactly much fun. With Sire and Sterling now doing swirl and sparkle finishes, bring on the the fun revolution!

That's a great question and I had to think about the answer. Part of this is that I rely on experience, I've spent a lot of time building and modifying cabs. When I build pairs of cabs I'll often try modifications on one cab and then A/B them next to each other so you do get an instinct about small changes The first thing is that the efffects are slight. First of all most of the 'sound' of the speakers is what goes on above 200Hz and the box modelling is about the response of the true low end below that frequency. The other David has tried the cab out as a sealed cab andit 'works' and it probably sounds OK, even though he will get 3db of boost of the low end with a port plus a lower roll of frequency. Secondly the calculations give incredibly percise answers but in real life it's a bit messier. Manufacturing tolerances mean measured speakers vary and the published figures I use can't always be trusted. Thre are always air losses from a cab which are allowed for in the calculations but I use a 'standard' value of Ql=0.7 which is middle of the bell curve. Importantly I then build the cab so ay significant error would show up. I'ver no control over how accurately people build the cab so calculating port sizes to 3 decimal places doesn't make much sense. You can build the cab successfully even if you make small mistakes, which should be reassuring Anyway I've looked at the responses with the same tuning and the box sizes increased and decreased by 10% but tuned to the same frequency. This is the box you are all building with the Fane in blue. You can see that increasing the cab by 10% (red) gives you a bit more bass but reducing the cab 10% makes a smaller difference. The red trace gives 1db extra at 60Hz and you'd hear that with the cabs next to each other but only just. You wouldn't be able to detect the difference with the smaller cab in this case. This is a 2l shift in volume and the increase in port size is only 0.2l so insignificant. It looks like my instincts were good in this case, Phew

Hey all, just wanted to check in and see how you're doing with the books! Happy 2026, and wishing everyone lots of good musical momentum in the new year.

So yesterday I sold the last of my SWR gear. This ends what has been a thirty plus year obsession with the brand, started by my love of the bass playing of John Paul Jones. Over the years I have owned and gigged: 1) Black Beauty combo 2) Black Beauty combo with Workingmans 210 3) 750x head with Goliath III (4x10) and Son of Bertha (1x15) 4) 750x head with two Goliaths 5) Grand Prix preamp (twice) 6) SM1500 head with two Goliaths 7) SM1500 head with one Goliath Senior (6x10) 8).SM1500 with one Goliath 9) SM900 with one Goliath 10) Marcus Miller preamp (twice) 11) Marcus Miller preamp with Amplite poweramp (the setup I should have kept). I know that Fender swallowed up the SWR brand and then promptly did nothing with it, but boy would I love an SWR pedal sized preamp with the semi-parametric EQ and the famous aural enhancer (marmite to many),

Yes, Tempera strings are not cheap but I am currently loving the hybrids! Stupidly easy to bow. They seem to do what Evahs claim to but are so much nicer. Rufus Reid uses them and he was on Animas before so I guess they are similar. I was a Velvet Garbo fan back in the day.

I was listening to the What Makes This Song Stink (Lenny Kravitz special episode) podcast yesterday. It included a spoof advert for bandcamp which used the slogan "...because three of your friends have to listen to half of one of your songs somewhere" seems accurate to me.

Something like this I would think https://magman.co.uk/product/n52-4mm-x-1mm-disc-magnet-291g-pull-force/

Terry, I should have asked you yesterday when you (very kindly) flagged up the BTB805 in florid natural, have you ever played a BTB ideally one of the later models. If so, what did you think?

That might be referring to the fact that the “speed” option in the pitch tracking priority mode can now be used in the mode out too (previously it defaulted to “accuracy and so was a bit slower).

Tracks just as well as it uses the same pitch detection routine.

Had a pretty full card tonight. Postponed from a couple of weeks ago as the organiser was unwell, there was a fairly small number of performers and as that included one drummer and one bass player, we were quite in demand - plus me playing guitar for Mrs Zero for four songs, and then we got called back for another couple later. We have another open mic night with the same organisers tomorrow night too.

Here you go... Noble with flat EQ followed by Luce. Noble is about 4/5db louder in this setting.