pete.young

17 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

 

Tell me about it. Those donation boxes in Tesco and others, where you are asked to deposit food you've paid for to be given to charity, always annoy me.

 

So Tesco et al get paid full price, including their mark-up, for stuff, which they then pass on to local charities. Do they offer you stuff at cost if you put it in the charity box? Do they say "Thank you to our generous customers" (or even name-check them) when passing on stuff they've sold at full price/a profit? Er, no. So they get extra sales, plus a pat on the back and publicity for their "generosity". Makes you sick.

I'm a volunteer delivery driver for FareShare. FareShare is a registered charity which coordinates the collection of food and other items from supermarkets, wholesalers, logistics companies, and distribution to food banks, churches, schools and other charities.

One of the things we do is collect the items donated into the Tesco donation boxes. Besides the items donated by generous customers, the store uses the boxes as an efficient way of getting items to FareShare which are nearing their 'use by' or 'best before' dates. We weigh all collections and notify the stores, and they are able to display a thank-you message with this information on the boxes usually stating how many meals have been donated at a particular location in the last month. 

What annoys me is not  the boxes but the thankfully few members of the public who use the boxes as a dumping ground for out-of-date produce when they clear out their cupboards. Last week at one store there was an item donated with 'use by' date of 2021. This just wastes everybody's time. Why they don't just put stuff like that into the normal recycling/waste collection service I have no idea.

The donations add up, and some of the bigger stores in wealthy areas contribute a lot of stuff, by far the biggest source of donations is direct from the supermarkets themselves to the FareShare depots. I would estimate we get 60-70 percent of our donations directly from the supermarkets we work closely with, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsburys and Marks and Spencer. The public doesn't see this side of it.

As others have said, none of this should be necessary in an ideal world, but the food distribution model in the UK is fundamentally broken. Efforts by organisations like FareShare are a sticking plaster over the cracks, but from what I see of our end customers, the need is real and growing.

Proper mojo that.

On 07/01/2026 at 17:40, BassAdder60 said:

Looking for recommendations for a good 212 4ohm cab that’s not Barefaced kind of price 

 

Ideally not heavy and it would be used as a single gigged cab 

 

In the past I’ve owned Ampeg SVT212AV which ok but so heavy 

Vanderkley 212 was lovely ( should of kept it ) 

 

Any suggestions ?? 

I had an EBS Neo 2x12 for many years which would fit the bill. Available used for about £450. Brilliant cab.

57 minutes ago, stevie said:

 

This was the result of some experiments I carried out on stacking cabs. To cut a long story short,  it's important when stacking to keep the bass drivers as close as possible. With cabs that have a tweeter on top, that means placing the bottom one on its side, with the top one in its normal orientation.  

Is there an argument for turning the tweeter in the bottom cab through 90 degrees in this configuration?

33 minutes ago, agedhorse said:

For as long as I have been designing with class D modules, over 50% of the claims of a bad module have proven to be incorrect diagnostics… sometimes running as high as 80% incorrect diagnostics. 

In this case, I'm entirely responsible. I've learnt my lesson - no more guesswork, take it to someone who knows. 

There's a happy ending to the story. The amp is now fixed and there was nothing wrong with the power module. I'm going to describe it briefly, in case someone else has the same problem and finds this thread.

The Amp Genius who fixed it initially took off the top cover, unscrewed the aluminium front panel, cleaned everything and it started working again. Until he put the top cover back on , when it stopped working again.

There were two problems: firstly the front panel wasn't earthed, instead relying on the securing screws fixing it to the chassis for an earth connection. Secondly , the pots are mounted on the front panel and connected to the PCB by thin metal strips with a 90 degree bend and a shoulder that goes through the back of the PCB. The shoulder of some of these pot connectors was making contact with the tracks on the PCB, and causing a short. The fix was to file back the shoulders of the offending pot connectors, and properly earth the front panel to the chassis. I've included an amp guts picture I took at the time which illustrates the panel and pot connections.

For an added bonus, the thermal sensor on the heat sink had failed, so AG replaced it with a 50 deg C sensor and the fan now comes on and off when needed. 

I have a stand which looks very similar. It has "Gig Stands UK" written on it, but no part number, website address or anything else that identifies it. It came with a bass I bought off Ebay.

Companies House says 'Dissolved 2017"

LM-2 seems to do what you want - plug the 2 channels into A and B returns and use the A+B setting.

Before my hands toughened up , I used to put surgical spirit on the blisters. I have Presto Lights on now, which seem to be a lot kinder than the Lycon I started off with.

Couldn't find the original but here's a cover by Geoff Palmer: 

13 hours ago, Rosie C said:

The oldest carol I know - we performed it last Saturday and we'll be doing it again on Friday! Anyway, here is Steeleye Span performing it:

 

 

Very popular with Dr Spooner, or so I'm told.

What a lovely thing. I had no idea that these existed. 

Used to have an Ohm PA amp which was a decent bit of cheap kit. This would have been 1977 - 79 ish.

The LFSys cabs are probably better compared with the Barefaced Big Baby 3. The Super Compact is a single-driver cab, unless you opt for the optional tweeter. LFSys cabs have a crossover and high-mid range driver which the Super Compact lacks, but the Big Baby 3 has.

I have a Monza and it goes very loud. Unless you need a large amount of volume, you should probably be looking at an LFSys Goodwood too. 

On 30/11/2025 at 18:12, Jack said:

 I think that all of his guitars have built in preamps and tuners, 

From the original post. So there is no need to consider impedance mismatching, or a foot-pedal tuner to switch off the sound because these are already built-in to the on-board preamp.

I've just done live sound for an event which involved several bedroom acoustic players. The biggest issue I had was people leaving their tuners switched on , and not realising that it mutes the signal from the guitar. A talkback mike might be worth considering for the PA guy.

54 minutes ago, la bam said:

 

This one has emg pickups, did they come as standard? 

No. Originally it would have had Yamaha alnico pickups.

A basic DI box  into the PA will get you going. The ADI 21 is a good way to try some tone shaping, but worth buying just as a DI box even if you don't turn it on.  If you have reasonable stage monitors, that's all you need. 

Depending on how loud you are, and if you don't have any on-stage monitoring from the PA, a small acoustic guitar combo might be worth considering. I have a Roland AC60 which is now discontinued but can be found second-hand. There's also a 30W version, the AC30. It has an anti-feedback filter and other effects such as reverb and chorus, and best of all it can be stuck on a speaker pole so it is at ear height and he'll be able to hear himself. 

I've used Brave. Like Chrome, it's  based on the Chromium browser engine, but unlike Chrome it doesn't collect data about you and has many privacy and security features that Chrome lacks. I think it's a really good browser but I've remained on Firefox because I've been using it since it was first released and it does everything I need it to do.

Tor is the browser that goes with the Tor network. I'm not sure you would want to just use the browser if you weren't using the Tor network. Mullvad's main product is a VPN. The Mullvad browser was developed by the Tor project team, the difference being that Mullvad browser is intended to be used with a VPN product (probably Mullvad) instead of the Tor network.

Not seen this particular tool before, but EFF has a long and positive history so I'm inclined to trust them.

My firefox browser gets a pretty good report. I guess it might be useful if you get a bad report and change your browser security model because of it. If this really bothers you, you should probably be looking at Privacy Badger, another of their tools.

I have a Hbada butterfly, 3 years in and going strong. More expensive models are available. https://www.hbada.uk/collections/all

Finally, something worth visiting Maidstone for!

I think it's 'Walk On' by Corinne Bailey Rae

Thats how I got started, aged about 11. My father came home with a cello strung in 4ths and I took to it quite well. After about a year, it was replaced with a chamber bass, which I believe is half size? 

Ray Cooper from Oysterband played a cello tuned in 5ths and put down some great basslines with the help of an octave pedal and various other electronic trickery.

Brave Heart, never mind Open Heart!

I salute you for having a go. Best wishes for a great outcome.