I put some chromes flatwounds on it and its absolutely lovely - definitely great value.

A little research suggests that there is no such thing as a 6-pin-DIN female to a 5-pin-DIN plug, so I need to create a 6-to-5 converter.  

And a little more research suggests that it is not an Elka pedal board that the seller advertised, but a General Music model, perhaps a GEM WS2 Keyboard Workstation add-on, made in Italy ( see here 

I was considering taking the 6-pin output of the footpedal and connecting it to a 5-pin, using two sockets (6-pin, and 5-pin) and a box to mount them into, and 3 lengths of wire to solder to the tags.  However, without knowing what signals the 6-pin outputs, I can't do that. 

Can anyone advise?

I love the MODX, had a 6 and now a 7+, but of the past year been using soft synths. I think this is going to be change very soon. 

Started formal piano lessons back in August 2024, learnt proper fingering techniques.  I found it hard work, as everything was new to me.  But in March 2025, I passed Grade 1 with a Distinction (136/150).

So far, so good!

Next, Grade 2.  I was aiming for the November 2025 exam season, aware that I would be fully familiar with the pieces and scales by then, and probably will have learnt four or five Grade 2 pieces by then (so, more than the 3 required).

However, my teacher is pushing / encouraging me to go for the exam in June 2025. That 10 weeks feels very soon - but, in reality it is how long I had to learn the Grade 1 pieces. 

So..... do I push myself to do the June exam, or take the November exam?

My aim is to be able to play the piano (rather than collect certificates).

Phenomenal thing, on board pickup; volume/tone arrangement - a tuner and EQ wouldn’t go amiss.

sounds great - doubled up on the A and D (middle strings) - 27” scale.

When I’m not decorating, I’ll do a decent video.

I’m packing a Les Paul Standard, 60’s reissue strat, 50’s reissue Strat with Baritone neck (27” scale) and a Guild Baritone 8 String.

It does seem I’m more the guitarist at the moment…I’ve sold 4 basses recently and @Dankology is doing a sterling job holding down the bottom end…

Enjoying the challenge - Not enjoying remembering to turn pedals on and off and playing the solos correctly…

However, since this morning, the A-flat below middle C is always at maximum volume.  Any ideas on what the problem might be, and how to fix it?

Early impressions are that it's a good 'un. 

I'm sure something like a Nord Electro 6 would be better, but is also more than twice the cost. Or perhaps the Yamaha YC 61. But £750 was about as high as I wanted to go, I play in some quite grotty and boozy pubs, the risk of it getting knocked over or having a pint dropped over it is quite high! 

It seems in my Goldilocks zone for pub gigs: I've got an 88 key home piano that's great for home piano stuff, not great for other sounds though and is big/heavy to move. Also, I've got an M-Audio Pro 49 which is good for using with a Laptop/DAW but I've had hassles using this setup live. I had an MPC Key 61 that was excellent for home use and making full songs, but is complex and doesn't have quite so obvious/simple on-hand keyboard controls as the CK (like organ drawbars) for live purely keyboard playing.

The CK 61 is small (fits in my 49 key flight case), light, decent enough sound for the main things I want - Piano and EP and Organ (not quite so good sounding for some other stuff: Horns sound very digital - like an 80s keyboard, and Bass Guitar players have nothing to worry about being replaced by the Bass Guitar sounds!), seems okay build quality, fast startup, obvious and useful hardware controls that are relatively foolproof - it's really good to have pretty much anything you'll need directly there with a corresponding button/slider/knob (I haven't opened the manual and think I've got it all pretty much figured out within a few hours), semi weighted keys, easy to set 3x split points. Lots of in/outs. Added bonus features of in built speakers, battery power, and bluetooth to stream music through it.

My main gripe (which unfortunatly I find quite an issue) is the keys are slightly smaller than my other keyboards (15.9cm per octave vs 16.4cm), it's the Yamaha synth width keys rather than piano width which is a bit annoying for a stage piano, I find that small difference a hassle for muscle memory while also using my other keyboards and doesn't really save much space so seems a bit pointless (2.5cm over its 5 octaves). It's enough of an issue for me to consider other keyboards, but I don't think there is anything else with all the features and wider keys in this price range so I'd better get used to it. 

The first arrivals came today...

Roland SPD-6 drum pad. We used one of these last summer - a recording session in a narrowboat, and heading towards 'vintage' now, so I've been looking for a good example. I like the instrument sounds, and as a bonus, it's compatible with the Boss FS-6 pedal I already had, adding high-hat and kick. 

Behringer UMC204HD to add a 2 channel interface and MIDI ports to my Mac. Early days but it all seems to work as expected.

Ah, this takes me back!

The weekend after New Year's I headed out to the countryside to collect this old East-German mandolin from @bass_dinger. 

I've been a mandolin dilettante for years (family of folk musicians) but I've never had my own one, not really. (I have an electric mandolin I made out of offcuts while working on something else, but I don't play it much). I figured the price was low enough to be worth a punt, and it seemed like whatever work it might need would be well within my skill set as a luthier and tinkerer. (Please excuse the cat, who wanted to be in my picture of the action). As fairly described by Robert, the neck was pretty bowed and the fretwork worn down. It was never a fancy instrument and it had lived a long life. I put in an order with my luthier supply shop of choice and set it aside.

The following weekend, the first job was to take the frets out. I sat down with my special ground-down end-nippers and started the painstaking process of levering them up. No pictures were taken of this process because it only took about a minute. It turned out the tangs on the frets were not only 1.5 mm deep at most, but also completely smooth – no nibs, no little spikes. I could have probably lifted them out with my fingernails. 

I clamped the body into place and prepared my special heating tool. This may look like a crappy old clothes iron, but I promise it's a high-tech piece of equipment. I used a pallette knife to get under the fingerboard after it was good and hot and pinged the whole thing off, perfectly intact. 

I then routed a channel and stuck a length of carbon-fibre rod in there. Not the neatest job because my router plane was being difficult and it took me a while to remember the quirks of the adjusters on that particular tool. 

Fingerboard clamped back on with the rod in place. The rod is the same size as the one I routed into the (thinner and longer) neck on my electric mandolin, so I'm confident it will hold things straight for the foreseeable future.

If I'd been more inclined to take my time with this, I would have spent a few hours planing a backward angle into the fingerboard (it's pretty thick and the neck is dead flat to the front of the body, which isn't great). I decided I couldn't be bothered – if nothing else, I explicitly don't want this instrument to be loud. I had to recut the fret slots because even the finest fretwire I had to hand was much chunkier than the stuff that had come out. I didn't take any pictures of the fretting process – just imagine someone smacking an instrument with a nylon-headed hammer for half an hour, swearing the whole time.

Here's the finished job. I recut the nut and bridge slots, and reshaped the bridge a little, but left it otherwise unchanged. 

As you can see, the action has come down a lot, and the fretwork is now level and even. It plays beautifully and I've already lost several hours to noodling around trying to remember various fiddle tunes. At some point I'll replace the dot markers that melted during the heating process. It sounds like, well, like a £40 mandolin – which is what I expected and what I was hoping for. A fun thing for plinking away at on the sofa and during teams meetings (pro-tip! A mandolin can be played without showing up on the laptop camera if you hold it down low).

The things I want:

• Good sounding Piano, EP, Organ (ideally with drawbars), and synth would be a bonus but not essential.
• 73 Keys (semi-weighted), good keybed. 
• 'Hands-on' design for the controls (for live use without menu diving).
• Relatively light/portable.
• Tough/reliable for live gigs and moving around: Gigs every couple of weeks, rehearsals each week, set up at home in-between.
• Decent professional level type connections and power supply (including a tough IEC type power cable rather than barrel would be ideal).
• Budget: £2k 

I've owned a Yamaha CK 61 for 18 months and it has has had a decent amount of use - both at home and for gigs, it shows me this isn't just a flash in the pan or quick impulsive decision for something that'll gather dust. The CK 61 is good start for a decent enough Stage Piano but I'm starting to feel it is lacking in a couple of areas: Mostly as I'd prefer an extra Octave (especially for split points) and  it is starting to feel a bit on the budget end of being a professional instrument e.g. things like a barrel power connector are not as roadworthy as I'd like, the keybed is just 'okay' and the keys are slightly smaller than standard, and as I get more into playing I think I'd start noticing an upgrade being worthwhile and noticable for playability, sounds, robustness.  

Any recommendations? That £2k sort of price seems to be the level that most manufacturers have their entry-level of professional stage pianos: 

• Nord Electro 6D 73 (this is my front-runner)
• Yamaha CP 73
• Viscount Legend 73
• Korg SV2 
• Roland Fantom 07
• .....or second hand could get to things like a Nord Stage 2.

Or is this just me wanting new stuff?!  A: Yes! ...but I think something like a Nord Electro 6D 73 would be quite a significant upgrade to the CK 61 in terms of feel, sounds, robustness.

My 'buy stuff justification' maths says:

• £1,920 for the Nord Electro 6D 73. (or about £1,500 with part-ex for my CK-61, and I do also have a MPC Key 37 that could potentially get sold/part-ex for about £500, but I thik of that as a different thing I'd like to keep - as it's more for home production, sampling, sequencing and synth sort of stuff).
• After 10 years (about the time that updating a Nord seems worthwhile) it'd still be worth about £1k (given that the asking priice for an Electro 4 from 2015  is about £1k). So that'd cost me less than £100 per year (or £50 per year if you include the CK-61 being sold...or free if I also sell the MPC!). Who can argue with that?! (I'll give you a clue: I'm married to her!).

In a word that is increasingly asking for subscriptions/pay monthly and throwaway stuff/things with planned obsolescence I do find that my 'buy stuff justification' for musical instruments a wonderful thing!

It's chorus but not as we know it Jim.

Recently got one of these before the prices shot up! Great sounds can be had, would have preferred a higher level of QC but all works so overall okay.

Now to see if I can transfer the lines I can play on my basses to this ha ha 😁!

Unusual request, just looking for some advice please. I've joined a jam band with an old friend and we're at the point where we're going to start shopping for gigs. Out of the 5 of us, 2 of us (me being one of them) have played in plenty of gigging bands before and we have hundreds if not thousands under our belts between us. The drummer and the singer haven't gigged before but they are sorted. The issue is with the acoustic guitarist. He's a nice fella and a great player but never left the bedroom. Currently they own a nice selection of acoustic guitars and that's it. No stage gear to speak of. I even had to show him how to plug into the amp at the rehearsal space, no joke he had the instrument cable from the guitar in the speaker output of the head.

Have any of you ever played acoustic guitar in a band or been in band with someone who has? Advice for what gear you need to be able to actually do that? I would lend him my Fishman Platinum Pro, but once I've done that once I'll be doing it at every gig and I don't want to start a precedent. 

We have a full pa setup so he could go ampless and then rely on the wedges I suppose. I get the impression that most acoustic guitar amps are relatively flat anyway? Or do nice-but-mid-range acoustics benefit from some tone sweetening? So is it just a plain DI box then to get the guitar into the mixer? I think that all of his guitars have built in preamps and tuners, so just a passive DI would work. But then wouldn't it be nice to have some eq and feedback fighting options on the floor? Or a better tuner? Do the inbuilt ones on guitars work on loud stages under bright lights? What's a good budget acoustic guitar amp? Or preamp pedal? I have seen the Sonicake ones that look alright but they don't have a tuner. Do multi effect pedals work well with acoustics? It occurs to me that something like a Mooer/NUX/Valeton 'hx-stomp-alike' might be a good solution to this? I don't even know how to ask an intelligent question on this as you might have guessed. I own an electro acoustic and if I had to play it live I'd just plug into the quad cortex or the aforementioned Fishman, but that's because I already own those solutions and I'm not an acoustic guitarist by trade. I'm trying to remember back to when I've shared a bill with acoustic guitarists or when we've worked weddings and I've had them through my desk and pa as the first acts. I think most of them have had some sort of pedalboard, mostly with looper pedals, but I guess that's not appropriate for a band.

I guess what I'm asking is: for a player who has been playing for a long time but who is brand new to playing live (and who is on a tight budget) should we go amp or pedal board? If so what are some good cheap options in those categories? Is there anything else here that I haven't thought of?

Thanks in advance. 

I am assuming that I need an add-on box to the PC, plugged into a USB socket.

I want to be able to play something (a bass line) on the midi piano, and have the notes appear in Cubase, so that I can print out the sheet music for playing from.

Can anyone advise?

so after enjoying my novation circuit I decided to go a step further and treat myself to an MPC one +
was also because I wanted to use more electric pianos and other things that were probably doable on the novation, but easier on MPC

and also because, I’m worth it 🤣

points were converted into Amazon vouchers and it was purchased along with a 128gb SD card, arrived Saturday as I’m out all day tomorrow 

Tony 

I've plumped for the Akai MPC Live 2 along with the Akai MPK Mini mk3 for a fully portable solution that will fit in a backpack. Not sure I'm ready to sell my vintage MPC's just yet.. but looking forward to this journey with the new one

This wonderful thing arrived a few days back - initial impressions are very good! 🥰

Over the years, I've owned a number of classic synths including a Roland Juno 60, a JEN SX1000 and my all time favourite, a vintage Korg MS20. I still have the '20. Whilst a much newer machine, I always wanted an example of an MS2000 when they were current although as a 17 year old student, I never had the funds - any spare pennies went on bass strings!

In terms of sounds, it's got some pointless and silly noises patched in but it also has some distinctly 'classic' sounds including Roland Juno / Jupiter, Mini-Moog, Sequential Prophet and Korg MS series. Despite it's apparently complex panel with a sea of knobs, buttons, legends and diagrams, the Korg is reasonably straight forward to use but above all else, it sounds great. It has all the usual toys with a 16-step four-layer sequencer, arpeggiator, dual envelopes, dual LFOs plus Fat (Phat?) oscillators, variable spec filters and a simple but useful effects unit seem to make it a classic 'one box' hardware solution. 

I'll report back after I've used it a little more..  

I know to connect the midi but not sure if there’s other things to do 

I already had an Eastman parlor guitar and am very impressed with the value for money of their instruments, even in the more affordable segment. The mandolin (at 460 euros, incl. nice gigbag) is extremely well made, sounds beautiful (to my untrained ears) and plays wonderfully (again, admittedly, given my lack of experience). Off to practice now ...

It's only a cheap one - a Martinez SM-80 that I picked from Ebay. It's a few years old but I don't think it's really been out of the packaging. I've had it a week or two and have just this evening fitted a new set of strings (D'Addario Pro-Arté EJ-45).

I rarely pick up a guitar at home normally but I've not been able to put this one down.