pete.young

Piece of cake with a VB99, though the second hand price hasn't quite dropped that far.

And you should be able to pick up a nice used Yamaha BBNE2 .

The Celinder J Vintage 5 that's in the For Sale forum at the moment.

Probably Kiwi's Pentabuzz. Everything about it is perfect.

Journey tribute, anyone?

I think the pitch shifter is better than the octaver. Give that a try?

According to the manual, it has 2 speaker outputs: one Speakon/Jack combination, and one Jack socket, located directly underneath the Speakon ouput. You can run a second cab off the Jack but make sure that the total load is 4 Ohm or greater: ie use 2 x 8 Ohm cabs, not one 8 and one 4 .

Same answer from me. In general pickups are passive, pre-amps are active. The only exception I'm aware of is EMG.

Data sheet is here: http://www.delano.de/jmvc_5_fe_m2/jmvc_5_fe_m2_details.html It's the 'FE' you want, the 'AS' type is the longer Fender sizing. Probably worth an email to Delano to clarify. The data sheet shows 2 different lengths (93mm neck and 95mm bridge). Both mine are exactly the same length, 94.4 mm by digital vernier . I'd guess they're the longer 95 mm shell, but worth confiming. The 93mm ones would certainly fit. Data sheet says if you order a set you can have both pickups in either the longer or shorter shells. I don't recall any distinguishing marks on the ones I have, and nothing in the instructions to tell you whether one was intended for neck and one for bridge. I'm now wondering if I've got them the wrong way round!

94.2 mm long, 18.3 wide, 40mm between the fixing screw centres. No routing, cutting machining or anything was required.

Um, that's an extract from Ain't Nobody by Chaka Khan, the original version of which is a keyboard synth in Eb Minor. It may be ridiculous, but many singers would find it a challenge to move it up a semitone just because the bass player is struggling to adapt.

Opened the tailgate of my car when I arrived at a gig, and the mandolin case slid straight out and hit the ground. Opened up the case to find a classic headstock break and a load of slack strings :-(

If it's good enough for Colin Hodgkinson, it's good enough for me!

Pedals much reduced since my function band folded. Current project is a blues- classic rock power trio so I'm trying just to sound like a crappy old overdriven valve amp, without the back strain. So Tuner -> Micro Thumpinator -> MXR Bass Compressor -> Boss Bass Chorus -> DHA VT1 Pro -> Amp. I'd like to add a decent octaver but that's about it for now. The DHA is amazing and does all kinds of smart things. The idea is not to be dependent on any amp and just use something relatively clean - I have a Tecamp Puma, LMII/EBS Neo 2x12 for more volume and some old Euphonic Audio kit which gets used occasionally, or whatever junk is available in the rehearsal rooms we use.