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All non-musical, but... Nestle, Coke and McDonalds because I'm old enough to remember the 1980s. Wetherspoons because the owner treated his worlers abysmally during the pandemic. Amazon because of their shameful tax arrangments. Once I've brought that lot to their knees, I'll make a start on Pepsico and Proctor & Gamble.

NASA. That rejection letter really stung. I wouldn't go into space with them now even if they begged me.

Here's my current board for Wild Rocket and some irregular psych and kraut jams we have between a bunch of mates here. Hopefully it won't change for quite a while. The brains per se is the bottom right box. This has an active splitter with phase switch, a mute for each output plus a modded Sunn Beta preamp replica. The Beta goes to the DOD eq, Meatbox clone and Hi-band Flanger which all run into a HB Bass Block 800 and a 1x15 for my "clean" low/low mid side. The rest runs into the echo return on my Sound City 120 and a second 1x15. Some gigs I'll the top and bottom of an 8x10 in the same sorta configuration. The Nomad and Sledgehammer are in the parallel loop of the Sy-1 and I generally have one or the other on all the time. Then I have the Lantern Rowan Flanger and Ross Phaser for various parts. Then the Sundrive and Cosmic Trigger are always on for my core base tone. The Sundrive is set with gain at zero and I find it really helps to gel the dirt and synth tones together as a sort of very gentle natural compressor. I use the boost on the Sundrive the odd time playing clean to get the level up a bit but generally it's left off. Likewise with the Cosmic Trigger boost. All powered off a pair of Strymon Ojais with some daisy chaining. PS knobs may not be set where I usually have them..

My main board for the doom band, made from an IKEA Hejne shelf with two T-Rex power supplies under. I should get some better quality patch cables but it works great now. The red PSM-5 is for switching on/off the delay/reverb pedal loop.

Posted this in my introductory thread but realised I didn't leave it here. This was my attempt at covering both acoustic guitar and various effect options for bass (rotating between the octaver, chorus and filter) in a gig where I needed to play both at different times, however in the week or so since this picture things have already changed as I took the acoustic guitar pedals off for an acoustic only gig, then made a stripped down bass pedal board for this weekend...

London Weekend Television. The wife of their chief executive asked if her husband could get up and sing Eric Clapton's cocaine (small pub gig during Edinburgh Festival). I said no. She had a strop and said she'd make sure my band would never appear on LWT while her husband was in charge. .....and she was right, we didn't.

So our first rehearsal for a while last night at our usual spot. We use a village church and have done for years at reasonable rates with our fees being welcomed to the up keep of the building. After we finished our drummer had this on his car which I am temped to add to our posters and possibly a t-shirt. I also think "The Gospel of Salvation" could be a great future band name!

My mum had a longstanding embargo on buying Irish after my brother got shot in Northern Ireland. It was actually said brother who talked her round: 'It was the IRA who tried to kill me,' he said. 'Not the people working for Kerrygold.'

Kwik fit. Around 2005 my wife took our Ford Focus in for its mot. They said to her it needed £600 worth of work as the brake disc, drums on the back, pads and shocks needed changed. Took it to a local garage that was recomended by a friend and it passed its mot easily. And the garage has looked after our cars ever since. The mechanic in my local place said that KF were notorious for trying to rip folk especially women off.

Wow that's a coincidence. My band has never appeared on LWT either. What a bitch!

I have Psalm 150 "Praise the lord with strings and loud cymbals" on a t-shirt.

Whetherspoons. Not because they're supposedly full of pond life. I never found that to be the case. I used to work away from home, live in hotels all week, and at one time or another went to pretty much every Whetherspoons in Britain for a cheap and cheerful meal and a pint or two. But since the B word that shall not be mentioned I would never put another penny in Tim Martin's pocket. The man is an absolute bell end.

I have a few: Brewdog, because of the owner's attitude. Which is a bit of a shame because the beer's decent. Wetherspoons, because of Timbo's treatment of his staff during the pandemic and because of his support for the B-word. BT, for being the worst employer I've ever experienced. Not so much lions led by donkeys as experts gaslit by sociopaths. On my last day, I nuked my laptop and Blackberry for no other reason than pure spite.

hope this helps

Choices… (got one more set on order):

I found myself in the unfortunate situation of working for Kwik-Fit for a few months after they bought out a decent fast fit that I had been with for 13yrs. What we were told to do by management to rip folk off was shocking. I didn't hang around long. AVOID at all times.

What usually happens is that the buyer then claims the item never arrived and the money is whisked out of your account. I have also logged this as a dodgy buyer with Reverb and they are apparently already under investigation.

and to be fair their beer is absolutely f***in awful!

Apple. I had a lovely iPod (the one that looked like an iPhone but isn’t) and I’d loaded it with tons of music apps which were quite cool and I used them often. As it was getting old I kept the thing in flight mode to stop it from connecting and doing a weird update as it was ticking along nicely. Then one day it refused to boot up and displayed a message saying unless I did an update it wouldn’t work anymore. Did the update and it wiped ALL my apps as they now unsupported. Most of the apps don’t exist anymore and I can’t get them back. Gits!

Hey, it's that guy @lozkerr boycotts! Boooo!

I can't stand the whole "we're punk, now buy shares in the company because that's what punks would do" thing.

Whilst I'm very sorry about how it stung, I hope you appreciate that I tried to word the letter such that it was clear you nearly made it, and that you'd surely be accepted the following year - - provided you worked a little on your spitefulness. Apart from that bit, you were the perfect candidate, and we'd happily welcome you! Kind regards, BT

A quick update - Boogie gear is in the UK and will be on display for the opening of the Gibson Garage in London this Saturday. Dealers throughout Europe will have Boogie products in their stores in April, be sure to let them know what models you would like to see. Also, for anyone that’s able to visit the garage, I would love to hear your impressions as I won’t be able to visit. Please message me or comment on this thread.

What an absolute disgrace, an abomination even…lined paper, yet written in landscape?

Hi all The acoustic bass I’ve just finished is such a success that I’m going straight into building another, albeit this next one is a bit more complicated - the top will be carved from solid wood to create the arch,rather than being a thin piece of wood pushed into an arch by the braces, as the last one was. I’m already a couple of days into building, but just in case anyone is interested, I’ll show the process from the beginning. First up, a pile of wood: (apologies for the washed-out pics, my phone takes terrible pictures, I must get a proper camera) For the top, Italian spruce. Back & Sides - Italian walnut Neck - multi laminate, flame maple and walnut Everything else we’ll work out as we go. But fretboard will probably be crelicam ebony….

Hello. I finally finished up this board last week. Got gigs being announced soon too. Looks like we had an 18 month gap which is madness.. Hope you're good!

I think your English teacher deserves an honourable mention too.

Time for the vomit-inducing rig to have two nights out:

What you also tend to find is they always offer to buy your ‘item’ not your ‘Dingwall ng3’ or whatever it is you’re selling. I’ve had scores of such messages over the years and it’s clearly a copy & paste job. That’s the trouble with kids today. Too lazy to put some proper effort into scamming you😊

Any firm that advertises on TV during rugby matches.

Yes, I agree with that. And I would venture to go further. My personal measure when I'm setting up a bass or a guitar is 'when you tap down on the fret, my ideal is "just perceptible" movement'. But there's a 'but' when it comes to trussrods. And that's mainly about who is doing the adjusting. Because many great bass players are not practical, confident, don't have the right tools or, frankly, don't have any interest in the mechanics of their instrument - and there's nothing wrong with that! So my general advice, for what it's worth, to anyone reading who regards themselves in that category is: - Don't use the truss rod to adjust action height. Its only job is to keep the neck straight under string tension - If your bass plays nicely without buzzes at an action you are happy with, then 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. - If your bass plays nicely without buzzes at an action you are happy with but you are curious, then by all means, have a look at how much relief (bow-and-arrow curve) you have using the methods described above and: if the relief (measuring the amount of curve) is no more than the thickness of a credit card, then either leave it alone, or learn how to/find someone who already knows how to reduce the relief somewhere between @Baloney Balderdash's business card and my 'perceptible gap'...the bass may well play better at a lower action height. if it is more than the thickness of a credit card, then learn how to/find someone who already knows to reduce the relief. As @Baloney Balderdash rightly says, less than this amount of relief would be better, but above this level then the bass's playability will certainly be being compromised. if there is no relief at all at the centre point and the string is hard against the 8th fret, then it indicates that the neck may have a back bow (a hump in the middle) and, if so, the truss rod will need adjusting. It needs loosening or the strings will tend to buzz, particularly around the lower and middle fret positions. Learning how to/finding someone who already knows how to adjust it will make the bass play better and, usually, allow you to lower the saddles and action. - But if your bass is buzzing in places, or action is too high, then learn how to/find someone who already knows how to check the relief. On a bass, in terms of set up everything affects everything and the set up should always starts with setting the neck relief. Once that is done, you can assess everything else. Hope the above makes sense. By the way, I answered a basschatter's PM query recently about setting the trussrod and how it works/what it does. In it I used some googled diagrams/pictures to illustrate and clarify what some of the terms we use mean. If anyone is interested, more than happy to copy and paste that here.

Sorry but it wasn't a Superfly (though I did have one which was problem free). Ashdown repaired a Giant for me, FOC. I still rate them as one of the best companies in the UK

ASHDOWN. Bought a new Superfly amp which after about 9 months developed the well-known high pitched whine fault, followed shortly by a reluctance to power on (about 1 in 10 attempts resulted in a successful boot up). When I contact Ashdown I was told it was essentially unfixable but for what I considered an unreasonable amount of money they would have a look at it for me. When I questioned this saying that it was a well known fault and essentially a design problem, I was ignored. I eventually sold the amp for "spares or repair" on eBay for a pittance. I would have chalked it down to experience and let it go, but... A few years later @TheGreek reported that he had bought a second hand Superfly with exactly the same problem and Ashdown had fixed it for free. When I bought this up with the Ashdown rep who used to post here, they were rude and sarcastic. That's not one customer service failure but two. I'm unlikely to be in the market for a bass amp from any manufacturer, but if I was Ashdown would be at the bottom of the list. I've also started taking a large black cloth to gigs to cover up any Ashdown products that might be located on stage behind me, so that they don't appear on any photos of me preforming. I haven't had to use it yet...

Take a trip to places like Seattle, Nashville, Portland or Brooklyn. You might revise your opinion.

I'm assuming it's all in hand, but there is a Pension Ombudsman. Might be worth contacting them in case you haven't already. https://www.pensions-ombudsman.org.uk/making-complaint

Other than a shared language I don't think Brits or American's have much in common at all.

Woolworths. i mean where is boy - who isnt supposed to eat sugar - supposed to get his pick n mix? They let me down badly there, and my grandson willnever have the pleasure of a bon bon or peanut shaped sweet, or those pineapple cubes that made your mouth hurt. Shame. on a serious note, EDF Energy = avoid. Mucho love for Octopus though….. can we include the Conservative party? May as well be a company……..

Fender. Well, someone had to say it.

I might be OK - I'm speaking to another organisation who seem to prize spitefulness...random behaviour...that kind of thing. Who ? Why, SpaceX of course.