tauzero

The first three were Meriden Bonnies, the last three were Hinckleys (plus a Scrambler 900 which is part of the Bonnie family). I improved the electrics on the old ones by putting silicon bridge rectifiers in to replace the dodgy originals, and once I seated the pushrod tube seal properly there were no leaks.

Just me, the BL has downsized to a Speed 400 from a T120, the guitarist is a former biker but I think it was mainly two-strokes. In the other band, Dirty Roses, two of us have Triumphs - it was three but the guitarist sold his T595. Still, I've got two Bonnies and have had four previous ones so the average Bonnie ownership across the two bands is 0.75.

Had a look at the 5-strings. Js and Ps around the same price, £160-170. One peculiarity - normal price of B-stock is £75 less than mint, however the B-stock discount is only £5 for the sale instruments. I'd be very tempted at < £100 even though I'd have to remove the paint, but sadly (or perhaps happily, seeing as I'm trying to reduce the herd) they're £172.

Just tried this with my gen 1 Go on an Android phone (Pixel 10 Pro XL, so definitely up to date). Bass records fine on the standard camera app, the streamed sound doesn't. Doing a little dig around, it seems it should be possible (for anyone with a bit of knowledge of these things, preferably more than me, there's a MediaMuxer class you can use with the MediaRecorder API which allows multiple input streams, audio and video, to be recorded). Now I just have to find an app which uses that. And after some experimentation, I can't. Edit: don't have to use a different camera app at all! Go into the Katana BTS app, and into SYSTEM, then USB SETTING, and set LOOPBACK to ON. Leave both USB INPUT and USB OUTPUT as 100%. Then the common or garden Google camera will record video with both your bass and the output sound - which I think is sent over USB when the USB is connected.

Boxing Day gig for The Bonnevilles at the Anker Inn in Weddington, on the borders of Nuneaton. Rather empty when we started - and it was an early start, at 6pm. We had a guest singer to do the inter-set break - she's become a regular fixture at our gigs, through doing open mics that our BL runs. She used backing tracks off her phone until the last song, when we accompanied her for "Creep". The second set had rather more of an audience, with a few of them dancing. Our guest singer came back on towards the end of our set to do "Sweet Child O' Mine". It was during that that I noticed that my wireless was showing battery low, so while she was getting back off the stage (it might only be 15cm high but it's a real stage) I switched wirelesses. Then we had a couple more songs, and into the final one, "Tulane". We were about 3/4 of the way through when the guitar cut out. The drummer and I carried on playing, singer carried on singing, guitarist was going over his pedalboard and amp trying to find the problem, singer did the band introduction for all of us, and then, just after he'd introduced the guitarist, the guitar suddenly burst back into life (guitarist told me afterwards he had no idea what had happened, it just started working again) and we finished off. Antoniotsai dragon 5-string -> Lekato and M-Vave wirelesses -> Zoom MS-60B+ -> Tecamp Puma 900 -> GR Bass AT212. The usual Caravelle memory foam trainers.

Although it's a 4/4 and the 3/4 variant is nearly £500.

Jethro Full

And this is why basses should be natural finish with no scratchplate.

Mrs Zero says I always sound like me. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

That's what I do - two sets of identical wirelesses, one branded Lekato and the other M-Vave. £25 or so from AliExpress.

Harley-Davidson - heavy, underpowered, unreliable, incredibly uncomfortable, vastly overpriced. If that's your idea of "wonderful" then yes, they are.

That's either "5 go mad with the heated glue gun" or there was a bukkake party while they were building the amp.

ISTR it's "her".

Either stop playing "Total eclipse of the heart" or stop treating the lyrics as stage directions. It's not "Time warp".

Normal crappy Jazz scratchplate but more decorative control plate.

I was trying to find the original diagram that I worked from and didn't, and I didn't download it either which is annoying. However, I did find another reference page which shows clearly what I did, as I do have text notes to tell me what connections to make. I should have checked those wiring diagrams properly against what I used. https://www.stewmac.com/video-and-ideas/online-resources/learn-about-guitar-pickups-and-electronics-and-wiring/blend-pot-wiring/ My notes definitely say to connect the crossovered non-hot ends to ground. If you compare that to a V/V/T setup, the pickups are loaded exactly the same - at one end of travel the pickup hot goes to ground, from the halfway point to the opposite end the pickup hot is straight to volume hot, and in between fully off and the centre point there is a varying amount of resistance. https://www.stewmac.com/video-and-ideas/online-resources/learn-about-guitar-pickups-and-electronics-and-wiring/learn-about-wiring-stewmac-pickups/stewmac-bass-pickup-wiring-diagrams/ - second diagram

When the Cort Space 5 came out, they were £50 cheaper than anywhere else.

Edited: see later post for correction to this and much clearer diagram. The non-hot end of the blend tracks should be connected to ground. As regards V/B/T, I thought I should post a version of the wiring diagram that I worked from: This may be clearer: In this, the opposite ends of both tracks are cross-connected, rather than leaving one end floating as in the diagram in the OP.

Mrs Zero had her hip replaced, and I was given a date for my hip replacement, so that's quite good, although we had to postpone our summer holiday by 12 months as a result.

T-shirts - two bass T-shirts from Mrs Zero, and an Ankh-Morpork City Watch one from her sister (which will probably be skin-tight on me as it's only XL).

Tuning stability shouldn't be affected once everything has properly bedded in - the tuning system is still an inclined helical ramp so the inclination (sorry) to slide remains the same, it's just the turning of the screw that is affected.

Undo the control plate screws. Lift out the control plate. Unsolder the pickup wires. Get another control plate and put a V/Blend/T or proper V/B/active tones in instead. And if you're wondering why I'm posting this at 4am on Christmas Day, so am I.

I use them to play all over the neck to look as flash as possible while still playing the same notes. It really works, people think I'm a genius! Slightly, but not a lot more, seriously, I tend to anchor my playing at the 5th fret. That's not to say I don't go below it on any string, but it's very handy when you're playing 4-string lines and it means you can damp with the left hand on everything including that troublesome bottom E, and play walking bass lines from bottom E upwards using the same pattern (bottom C# if you want to be pedantic).

I commented when this was first posted here that towards the end, they get to play the basses and compare the playability, and that's when the differences show up. I wouldn't say there's an absolute correlation between price and playability, because things like neck profile are really significant and not price related, but certainly fit and finish tend to be - though there's a comparison between assorted Les Paul guitar clones and a genuine Les Paul that's worth watching, and shows that really good fit and finish can be found on budget guitars (as the owner of a couple of Harley Bentons, I can attest to that).