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After having a brain-bleed stroke at the beginning of Feb, followed by 5 weeks in hospital and 7 weeks recuperating at home, I actually managed to get out and play half a gig last Sunday. I'd stepped back from my band ('Mustang Sally') simply cos I couldn't drive nor stand up for very long. They replaced me on bass for the time being by a guy with 5 years more experience than me (he's 80!) but as the gig was actually an outdoor mini-festival in West Bay Dorset where I live they invited me to play the 30 minute sax set with them that I used to do. I have to say it was very nice to get up on a stage and belt out One Step Beyond, Geno and some rock'n'roll without falling over, running out of breath or having another Julius (Seizure!) It was also interesting to compare the new guy's bass sound (vintage Vox Phantom long scale and TC Helicon gear) with my Mustang and AG700/Darkglass set up - his sound throughout was a band-leading Jean-Jacques Burnel Stranglers clang while mine is mostly much a more nuanced thump with the occasional clang where needed... Let's hope a few 100% gigs come along before Christmas!

So the evil day of cutting the 'access' hatch came. I'd racked my brains to find a mechanised way to do it ... but there was simply no way. This was going to be protracted and painful. I made up a saw doohickey using a chopped off coping saw blade ... with a screw holding it into a little handle and waded in. I used a school compass to mark out a circle, a tiny drill to slot a starting hole and found to my surprise that the C panel was only about 1/8th of an inch thick. This meant that I could only cut on the back stroke ... ie the wrong way ... and it took a very very very very very very long time ... and absolutely crippled my wrist! Mr Blobby had clearly been about with the glue inside! And done And a new sound post will need to be made ... the original wasn't even a gentle push fit ... it took a bit of 1/4 inch scrap wood to get it to wedge into place. Something has shrunk methinks! Well it comes to us all with age I suppose. I shall make up a reenforcing flange to glue around the access hatch (probably three or four laminations of thin ply) and due to the really thin nature of the C panel I will have to make some bracing ribs for the hatch cover - as well as a decorative knob (ooer Missus) to be screwed onto it to facilitate easy removal against the pull of the ring of neodymium magnets I intend to set into the flange and hatch cover to keep it in place and stop rattles.

Here's the evidence...

Thanks for this. I've made myself a neck support using 40x20 extrusion and printed some neck specific parts to support the neck and hold it in place so its vertical and safe for a muppet (me) to use. I had the extrusion here from building and it only took 30 mins to design something to fit and support the neck. It might even work on some other necks. I'll play about with an adjustable headstock holder. but the important thing is I have a solid platform to make four x 3mm holes 18mm deep. Rob As its in black, it doesn't photograph well This is with the neck fastened down. Its very secure and is not going to move. It's also level.

Its certainly going a bit crazy when suddenly £2k for an indonesian instrument is being talked about like a bargain!

The Hulla band has its self organised festival coming up and one of the acts on the line up is a choir made up of volunteers for a local homeless charity (one of the recipients of the funds raised by the band each year). They are also singing 6 songs with the band - it's become a tradition over the last three festivals. Last night we had the first rehearsal with them this year. They are very good - their leader is a gifted singer in her own right (she usually joins the Hulla band for the festival gig). The songs they are doing with us are 'For What Its Worth', 'Knocking on Heaven's Door', 'Run', 'One Day Like This', 'Like a Prayer' and 'Burning Love'. There are some beautiful gospel vibes on 'Knocking on Heaven's Door' and 'Like a Prayer' but the song of the night was 'One Day', which had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Rig du jour was my recently acquired Ibanez GSR205 through a Vox VX50 bass amp (tiny, plastic but a great practice amp with lovely bass). We were also experimenting with how to mic up the choir for the festival so I was working with our sound man to test a few microphone combinations. Today's homework is to take the recordings we made and separate them into different mic set-ups so we can confirm what was chosen on the night. We tried a pair of small diaphragm condensers, a pair of 'cheap' dynamics and a pair of SM58s in various physical set ups and the sound man decided the SM58s at just above head height, separated by 9 feet (as suggested by the Shure website, apparently) gave the best sound. I was also trying out a Behringer boundary mic which I had recently acquired, more for my interest than a contender, and I was very happy with the results.

Thank you for the likes, it all helps me on the road back! This really is a very supportive and worthwhile community!

Have there been any sightings of these new amps in the wild yet? Asking for a friend.... Rob

I’ve used Aitken Audio (https://www.aitkenaudio.co.uk) in Sheffield three or four times when getting pedals mended and I think Neil at NRG (https://shop.nrgeffects.com) does some repair work too.

A long overdue update. Now repaired. Collected last Friday. Really glad to have this months long saga concluded. Repaired fractured Pre-Amp PCB and damaged pots. This was all a result of a seemingly innocuous knock of the amp to the floor but I can only assume I was very unlucky in how it landed in terms of damaging internals. The bank balance has taken a corresponding knock as result!🤣! Anyone want to buy a slightly use D800+ head? Seriously, hindsight is wonderful but I will be giving due consideration to how I can best keep this safe and secure when in use, stored and transported. Protect your heads, friends. Whether on bike, construction site or stage! Sincere thanks to @Beedster @Steve Browning and @agedhorse for your support. Sincere thanks too to Stan and Jack at Surrey Amps.

It's a scarf joint, very commonly used in tilt-back headstock designs. The headstock likely came under some forward pressure which overstressed the joint.

I've recently used a firm called Sickamps to repair a EHX Mole pedal and they were very good. Not especially cheap (min charge is £100) but did the work quickly and properly. They are based just north of London (in Harlow, Essex) so not too near Grimsby unfortunately, but always worth asking if they will accept stuff by post.

MODS! BAN THIS SICK FILTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It looks like the joint where the headstock section is scarfed to the main part of the neck. I'm very surprised to see that joint fail. Great basses, btw.

On the other hand, there's always an antidote:

My God I hate all this so much.

The port size was increased from 4" to 5" some time ago, while the lower crossover point is a recent development, made possible by the adoption of a more powerful compression driver. These are small, incremental improvements, which the average user is unlikely to notice. The sound of the cabs hasn't changed and the larger port will only make itself felt at extreme volumes. The changes from Silverstone to Silverstone II were enough to warrant renaming the cab. That's not the case with the Monza - or the Monaco for that matter, which has also benefited from incremental improvements over time.

I played flats exclusively for several years, chiefly Chromes or Cobalts. Went back to rounds (Elixirs) a couple of years ago and now I just can’t do flats any more - I’ll put a set on a bass, try it for a bit, then go ‘nah’ and put the rounds back on. Strange.

Got my 2021 Chowney swb1 couple of weeks ago. Real pleased till I found tge neck had crack that the previous owner did not tell me about🙁 Anyway managed to glue it up, looks great now with a set of Labelka tapes on. looking forward to learning to play it now.

Just checking you all know this is a Sansamp clone right? Not that that matters, just think it’s useful information if you’re ever shopping around for something similar.

I've recently put rounds back on my Jazz bass. I had a set of Chromes on it for about 7 years. They worked fine in a blues based band I was in back when I put them on. The Chromes made for a nice woody tone, but for my current band I need a bit more bite.

Finally got these pickups routed out, I paid a local luthier to do this as I couldn't trust myself. I've fitted an old vintage modified p bass squier neck for now, nut will source a decent maple neck soon. Just need to wire it up all at the weekend and try it out

Wouldn't hurt to just re-solder the connections first, then you'd know whether it's a bad socket or not.

I believe that the early ones had a smaller port and crossed over at about 2KHz. @stevieis using a different compression driver now that allows the crossover frequency to be lower. Mine is an early one.

Two cabs move more air and IMO always sound better than one.

Outdoor Gig Saturday. My glacially slow progress to find a bass tone that I'm happy with both on stage and front of house continues ......... Spent several hours prior to gig playing bass outside via my PA plus Bass rig, just to get the FOH tone sorted. Took a fair amount of time!!! And it didn't rain! Took the set up to the Gig, and was happy enough. Quiet on Stage, Loud enough out front, NO boominess (possibly because it was outside??) . Had a few sorties into the audience whilst playing and was surprised!! The combined Kick Drum /Bass via the PA was really good .... punchy as I've ever heard it. And the balance was great! We'll see how we get on in a indoor venue next weekend!!! The other major difference was that the stage volume was much lower ......... so I'm going to persist with gradually reducing on stage-bass levels and putting it via monitors for the members of the band who notice and would like more bass. Next steps are; 1) Custom-fit IEM's 2) Deploy my new Mixer (CQ 18T) live, so that I have a dedicated monitor mix, 3) Buy a Helix/Zoom B6, and if all works well, 4) Downsize my bass cab (to, in all probability, a LfSys Monaco.) And all this will probably change after next weekend's Gig 🙄 PS I've followed with interest the debate about having 1 or 2 subs, and was in the 1 Sub supporters club. However, The tonal balance, with one sub under one PA top, is noticeably different on the sub side of the stage, from the audience point of view. MUCH "better", fuller/full spectrum/less bright and just "nicer". (RCF 932's over a single RCF 705 mk II). Will try Sub centrally when I get the opportunity .... but the 2 sub solution is tempting ........

Just to bolster your confidence... I did the drill out and plug with dowel version of the fix, admittedly on a very cheap neck, and made a horrid job of it. For someone who likes woodworking I was ashamed of myself. However, it's been fitted to my office beater-bass for several years and has been completely solid. No problems with movement or strange sounds coming through the pickups or when played unplugged. Have a practice run on a bit of scrap and go for it!

Funny: a mate has a Monaco; he was round at my place collecting some speaker stands and saw I had a second Monza. His reaction somewhat incredulously: Why do you need two? I think that sums up the capabilities of these cabs. It probably sums up my character as well: one pint is nice but two is even better!

Ironic that business is pushing AI and for users to learn it when one day, it will replace them and their jobs.

So I tried the speaker at home, couldn't get it to go wrong. I took it apart, and checked the switch and the socket, they were fine, very solid. I disconnected, tested and reconnected the power terminals, and they are also solid, so I put it all back together. Had a gig on saturday, also open air, but also one we put the whole drum kit through so just in case of issues, I brought my BC speaker and an amp to drive it instead of the bam, in case there is a drop out. And it was rock solid all day, so who knows what that was about, the sound was great.

I use a Puma 900 with a Bareface Super Twin or a Schroeder 12PL, I did have some trouble at one point but I think that was down to a bad speakon cable/pub electrics not 100% sure. Love it, super clean and no hope of running out of volume!

I'm another one who still has the Puma 900 - I moved to a combo for a while but kept the Puma in case I needed it again, then moved back to separates so it is now paired with a GR Bass AT212.

Yeah clamped and left for about 3 days. Then a very slight rub down feels great now.

Might not be creamy but got to try out @Goliath_FX's Hornberg fuzz/drive/clean thing at the weekend and it's very good.

Glad you're on the mend and getting back to routine. Take care and don't overdo it. All the best. Dave

A stunning performance from Dave Holland on his composition 'The Empty Chair (For Clare)', a dedication to his wife who had recently passed away. Some deep guitar work from Kevin Eubanks who is such an idiosyncratic player. The tune is from Holland's 2013 'Prism' album. https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/the-empty-chair-for-clare-dave-holland/

Well I've been putting off drilling the tuning machine holes .... it's basically a horrible job ... I used a 14mm twist drill bit in a variable speed power drill ... going as slow as I could, and eyeballing the correct 90 degree angle of drilling. Easy to go wrong, so slow but sure was the way. Well after a grimly intense 20 minutes I had the holes drilled and the tuners trial fitted ... only to discover a problem ... the rollers were WAY too long for the width of the pegbox. Not only would the holes for the steel rollers have had to go all the way through both sides of the box, but even then the tips would have fouled the brass plate on the other side! This is galling as the neck and tuners were supplied as a unit and clearly supposed to be fitted together. See image below ... the plate furthest away was stood off about 1/4 of an inch with the 'bearing hole' drilled as deep as I dare. I did however still have the set of tuners I replaced on my Stentor bass stashed away ... which, while individual on the Stentor as opposed to set and 'all on a plate' with this set ... the rollers were also 14mm diameter and fitted a pegbox the same width as the one on this Chinese neck. As luck would have it the tuners were identical except for the Stentor ones rollers being brass and actually fitting properly. RESULT!!! So I swapped the rollers over between sets and everything fitted perfectly! I could of course have used my bench grinder to shorten the steel rollers ... but who wants to work that hard? I think keeping the brass theme is nice too. I trial fitted the nut as well and was toying with the idea of gluing it in place as an 'end stop' to make the positioning the fingerboard for gluing a bit easier and faster. Still not decided on that one. The end of the fingerboard has been cut slightly out of the 90 degrees so I'll have to address that first - whichever order I fit nut and fingerboard and nut. busy busy busy 😁

I finally picked up my first BB!! A matte black 734A. It was a bit of a train wreck when I got it, but after a seriously lengthy fretboard cleaning and a much needed setup, it’s absolutely fantastic. It’s really quite the player!!

Interesting litytle article from the current Private Eye about Meta & scams. The last paragraph says it all really.