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A slightly quieter night than usual at the Black Horse in Whitwick. Still, we had a great time with the crowd that were there, especially the landlady's mother, whose birthday it was. Stingish bass again, GT-6B, Rumble. Converse feet. The cheese and onion cobs from the bar were fabulous! The guitarist is off touring now so I have just one gig in the next six weeks.

It would have to ge a real rubbish 410 to fail to make more out of 30w than the BF 115 cab. Still not a sensible swap. Lugging a hulking 410 and losing dispersion for a measly volume bump is not my idea of upgrades.

Not long back from rehearsal. Hard work to start with. Took a long time to sort levels, the room acoustics didn't help, and the studio bass stack, a TC Electronics BQ500 with a Hartke 4x10 and TC Electronics 1x15 sounded appalling. Ended up using my Peavey Vypyr VIP 3. Managed to play all songs in the set list, so worthwhile as the next gig is on Thursday.

I cobbled this board together for a couple of gigs last week. Ok, the switching is a bit random atm but have a Morningstar MC6 to integrate when I have the time to get round to it.

Immediate red flag for me.

Under The Boardwalk - John Mellencamp

I'm very attached to my two 4-string Thumbs, even though I'm now a 5-string player. They get occasional outings for open mic nights. If I return to 4-string they are exactly the basses I would want so I may as well keep them. I did have a 4-string sitting in the wardrobe that I wasn't attached to, and saw an advert from someone wanting to swap an OLP Tony Levin (which I had kept an eye out for for a while) for a 4-string, and he fancied it so the deed was done. So I can see both sides of your dilemma. But as Stingrays aren't as rare as JD Thumbs, and definitely not as rare as Thumbs with reprofiled necks and replacement fretless ebony fingerboards, the sensible thing seems to me to be to try for a swap.

This is all just other-worldly - I don’t get how anyone can do this

They do it in subtle 3tsb with maple I am in so much trouble- all it needs is red tort

What about those cream pearlescent pickguards?

Only if you have a grip of steel and press the strings right down to the fretboard.

Pure Tone are great and that’s what I meant. For some reason I keep calling them True Tone. I only opened a packet the other day, doh!

Effective cooling needs turbulent airflow. That means if you have to shift lot of heat, it will be noisy unless you have huge heatsinks or heatpipes served by multiple low velocity fans.

30 W x 16 ≈ 500 W QED

My bandmates wanted a different sound to certain songs. I put an SWR Interstellar Overdrive to the Glockenklang Soul power amp in. I can say that the power amp sounds really good with another (good sounding) preamp, too.

That is actually illegal under UN convention on torture you show it, but it’s not for sale. you bastard - I assume you’re off now to drown some kittens …

In that case, my irrational prejudice is that I don't know if the fretboard inserts make a difference, but I believe that they do, without any evidence either way.

Another gap occasioned by visiting family, holidays, and a load of gigs. Tonight I wired up the input socket, deep switch, and some connections on the preamp valves.

I want to load an EMG system into my Sterling Sub Ray 4. The pickup I want is a MMHZ model and want a three knob layout with volume, stacked bass/treble and stacked low/high mid freqencies (plus jack socket). Might seem a stupid question, but can I get an EMG onboard preamp (say a BQC) which comes with four knobs (inc a balance pot) and just leave the balance pot off? The Sub doesn't need a balance pot obviously as it's only got the one pickup. Can it be wired vol > bass/treble > mids > jack? I want to keep it as simple as possible, and I don't want to start soldering or drilling into the bass to fit a side jack. Does anyone have experience of doing this, and have you had any problems?