tauzero

Some time in the 80s, I was offered one for £75. I had a play on it, hated it, and passed on it. That could have been my pension.

Christmas open mic at the British Legion in Shirley last night. Because there's generally a full list but it's quite a big list, the number of songs here is almost always limited to two. A few Christmas songs, of course, with Mrs Zero and I doing Spaceman came travelling and Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby. The elderly sax player and his daughter were there - normally another female guitarist/singer and me accompany him but last night it was just me, on My Boy Lollipop and Blanket on the Ground, which TBH didn't sound great. Got to accompany another couple of people including the aforementioned female guitarist/singer on Merry Xmas Everyone and Last Christmas. Everybody brought food and so we got to eat plenty of mince pies, Heroes, and Celebrations.

No changes through the year with my main band - had a reasonable number of gigs, no conflicts in the band, bringing new numbers in a little slowly as our singer also performs in shows so we can be a bit limited for rehearsals during show runs and show rehearsals. We were chatting after a recent rehearsal and the singer and the drummer both said they were happier than with any previous band (and had stayed for longer). It's the guitarist's first band, but he's happy, and I'm as happy as I've been with any previous band. I went to a new (to me) open mic and when there got invited to be house bassist at another open mic, an opportunity that I jumped at. That then led to the open mic organiser asking me to dep for his band as their bassist couldn't make a gig, which then extended to the next gig, and a couple of further gigs, and then being asked to join the band on a permanent bassist, which I accepted. I joined an originals trio - however, the drummer dropped out after he became she (not anything to do with we other two, she just had a lot going on and don't think she could cope with the extra stress). Then the BL went on holiday with his boyfriend (that he was living with), and when he came back he let me know he'd split up with the boyfriend and was moving to Leamington from Coventry. He still wants to carry on with the trio when we can recruit another drummer, but at the moment communication is a bit erratic. So current status is permanent bassist with two covers bands, indeterminate status with an originals band, house bassist for two open mic nights (well, three, but last Wednesday was probably the last one for one venue). I've been asked to play with a couple of other people on an ad hoc basis, stemming from the open mic nights, which is nice.

As it happens, that's exactly it. James Bartholomew of Jayler who are supporting Deep Purple for their late 2026 tour.

On the subject of "words of one song to the tune of another", last night at the Cavern in Tamworth had the house band (really excellent drummer and guitarist, and me on bass bringing the quality down) backing various singers - one did "Billie Jean" to the tune of "Smells like teen spirit".

Surely it qualifies under distance selling regulations?

Indeed, and my suggestion elsewhere of a multimeter between the battery and the clip wouldn't show up battery drain if it only happens when the preamp is in situ. I think you could detect that with a multimeter and a stereo jack plug by checking the resistance between ring and sleeve, which should be open circuit (have been trying to work out if you could have a situation where the preamp powers up with ground and battery negative not connected to each other, and I don't think you can but ICBW).

McMillen Batt-O-Meter. Tells you what the battery voltage is under load. https://www.thomann.co.uk/keith_mcmillen_batt_o_meter.htm

If you have a multimeter, you could check to see if there's still a current drain when the jack plug is disconnected. Just unclip one side of the battery and connect the multimeter, on a low current range, between battery and clip.

That's a very bijou settee.

I would say the chrome. The walnut is attractive in isolation but seems to conflict with the bass body when they're put together. I can't explain why though.

I had a Vester Clipper that had been defretted - the Warwick copy (not exactly a faithful reproduction).

The bit in the earlier video when the nauseating couple were banging on about moving to LA and being in the Tesla and waving some toxic energy drink around was truly horrendous. Sadly, this is the dreadful world that social media has brought us to, and these parasites will grow undeservedly rich from it.

Here's the grille I've got - perforated aluminium sheet, 10mm holes, with the speaker on top to give a good idea of scale.

It's certainly in COBOL - COMPUTE statement. IIRC it's also in FORTRAN although it's 55 years since I used that. BASIC used ^.

Also can be notated as x**2 (which has strangely moved the asterisks so they aren't level with each other).

Mrs Zero and I do the Eva Cassidy version of Time After Time.

Got there after a 90 minute drive. Walked in with bass and speaker stands, and the landlord said "who are you?". "Dirty Roses". "Oh, really sorry, I've double booked you. I'll pay you all the same". So home we all went (not so far for the guitarist and singer, a bit further for the drummer). At least I didn't have to carry all the gear in and out with a gouty foot. But Mrs Zero and Sub Zero had gone out for the evening to celebrate their birthdays (one day apart, 65 and 30 respectively) and I could have joined them, or we could have taken up a panicky last-minute request for a band from a place two miles from my house. Oh well.

Jamerson yes, Carol Kaye no.

Last night was a curate's egg of a gig for Dirty Roses. The venue was the Old Court, King's Heath, Birmingham. It's on a busy road, with a residential street of tightly packed terraced houses by the side of it, so parking was a nightmare. I managed to squeeze in by the pub, making use of Mrs Zero's blue badge (Mrs Zero was with me, I wouldn't use it illegally). Went in and was "greeted" by the most miserable looking and unwelcoming barmaid I've seen in my life, who led me to the doors through which I was to load in. I've just had a flare up of gout in my right foot, so it was rather painful bringing everything in - this is the band I do the PA for so there were numerous trips to the car. While I was doing that, Mrs Zero asked about moving the furniture out of the way, to which the miserable harridan replied that it was busy (there were five people in the pub plus us) and there were only two of them on, so we'd have to move the furniture. The singer arrived and he and Mrs Zero moved the furniture while I was loading in, then the guitarist arrived. We'd got pretty much set up by the time the drummer arrived - I was still rigging the PA so the others helped bringing in the kit. Anyroadup, we had a fair bit of space, and a whole one mains socket each side of the appointed area. There was a bit of response from one somewhat enthusiastic woman and what I presume was her equally enthusiastic daughter, but as the evening went on we got more and more of them moving and singing along. At one point in the second set we have a choice of two songs depending on reading the room, and we went for Time Warp - a good choice. The WAGs did their duty and led the calls for more. Oh, and the big TV behind us? They left the bastard thing on all night. There was another (younger and friendlier) barmaid who told us afterwards that we'd gone down really well, and then asked us to put the furniture back. We loaded up and then buggered off - we shouldn't have had to move the furniture in the first place, and we CBA to move it back too. So it's somewhere we never want to go back to, though the gig itself was good.

We have been a purportedly metric country since 1963. There really isn't any excuse for hanging on to imperial measurements (the very last vestige of British empire), only officially used by three pretty much third world countries - Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States.

I used perforated aluminium sheet with 3mm holes on the Plenty cab. While it pumps out a respectable volume of sound, I suspect that the resistance to fluid movement caused the fixing screws to ease off slightly so it sounded as if the speaker was on the way out on a recent open mic night. I took the grill off to check and it was fine, so I put it back on and tightened the screws firmly and it's still fine. However, for the 8" cab, I'm using 10mm diameter hole perforated sheet, and I may well retrofit the Plenty cab with it too.

Aionfx's description of the PCB says "Unlike Lovetone’s later offerings, the Meatball was not a fully original circuit, but rather a heavily tweaked version of the very first commercial envelope filter pedal, the Mu-tron III. While the core circuit is the very similar, the Meatball adds several new features including a clean blend, attack/decay controls, two extra range modes in between Hi and Lo, two expression controls, and an effects loop."

When you say the original maker, do you mean of the Mu-Tron III that Lovetone based the Meatball on?

Bartolini BH2s. Low End Lobster recommended Aguilar DCBs to replace them - I have an EHB1265MS with the Aguilars in, but the pickup swap was before I bought it so I never got to do a comparison.