pete.young

Think the headstock tuner argument is bogus, since they work from vibrations. I've used them before with no issues. Inline tuners work fine provided you have an amplified banjo. If it's purely acoustic you can't mute the natural sound. If it uses tuning pegs and gut strings, I'm surprised that it's too loud, that sort of banjo idoesn't normally make as much volume as something modern with steel strings and a tone ring. If it is too loud, a DIY mute in the form of a scarf or item of clothing wedged between the rod and the vellum will quieten it down a bit. Bonus style points may be awarded for using a soft toy instead, I have a Gabumon from Digimon living in one of my banjos for exactly this purpose. Tuning issues are sadly quite common with friction pegs. I eventually gave in and replaced the pegs on my Windsor Premier with some geared banjo tuners, and it now holds it's tuning very much better. Even the more budget models with geared guitar-type machines are better in this respect. There's not much you can do about someone who insists on tuning up over song introductions. Usually this is less the fault of the banjo, and more the banjo player being an inconsiderate derrière. If he's deaf you might need to point out how much it is affecting the audience.

If you're in north Essex, Steve at Guitar Lodge in Felixstowe is not a long way away. He's great for repairs, setups, headstock breaks, etc. guitarlodge.co.uk

Well done. It's not too scary is it? - I had to do a similar job on the Tenor that I got from banjo guru @binky_bassbefore the first lockdown and that improved it no end. One of my 5's was set up by Andybanjo, Glenn there really knows his stuff, and the other one hasn't needed any attention since I got it, so it shouldn't need any more attention.

Anyhoo, back to the original question. Using a lolly stick as a shim under the bridge is a pretty nasty bodge. The correct way to do this is to set the neck angle, either by adjusting the co-ordinator rod(s) or by adjusting the wedges if you have an older banjo. To make the action higher, you need to extend the bottom or single rod. There are some good videos about how to do this on the Deering site.

Into a toilet, without hitting the seat.

Excellent Bob, welcome. My recollection is that these would be good-quality student basses imported by Boosey and Hawkes probably from somewhere in eastern Europe, and sold mostly to school orchestras and aspiring bass students. This is a great bass to have as a starter bass and well beyond that. Theres a thread here which you might find interesting, particularly the excellent posting by @PaulKing at the end of the thread which has a lot of detail on the brand.

What is an SG3000 ? https://www.guitar-auctions.co.uk/sale/145/85/2004-Yamaha-Custom-Shop-SG3000-Professional-electric-guitar-made-in-Japan-ser-no-QxxxxxI

Very sad news. Condolences to his family and friends. RIP Martin.

I've had good results with Eneloop and also with Seven Day Shop's own brand high-capacity .

605 is supposedly 18mm, same as the 1025. If you want a Yamaha 5 with full 19mm spacing you're probably talking about a TRB 5P Mk 1, which seem to have soared in value recently 😞

Korg G5. There are a couple for sale in the market place. Why go to a modern emulation when you can go to the actual pedal that was used on a lot of these tracks?

A long scale string is going to be 2" longer than a medium scale string, so you're going to need several spacers on each one.

I know I'm neither, but it wouldn't stop me!

Yes, these are great little amps and definitely kick sand in the face of Rumble 40s.

Hahaha the Beavertown one is hilarious. Almost Roy Lichtenstein-like.

The Guardian article have now re-published the article under the same link, but with a different title, essentially about musicians saying "WTF?"

200 Euros up. I've bought quite reasonable basses for less than that. I hope for that kind of money you can hear a difference.

Fabulous Greco short-scale Les Paul bass in white. Lovely, unfortunately it's in Australia, we live in an imperfect world. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224517033629?hash=item3446420e9d:g:higAAOSwLqJg3VOz

Oi! Behave!

I had one for a while, but didn't really bond with it. There was no noticeable neck dive with a Comfort Strapp and it played OK, but the pickups were a bit meh and I didn't really like the sound. In the early days of Basschat there was a guy called Paul_C or something like that who had a collection of about 20 of the things.

Every 5 years, whether they need it or not!

Thanks for that. Every day is a school day on Basschat.

Hi Mick, Not really I'm afraid. When I originally fitted the Nordstrand I didn't record any clips with it, and I've since replaced the pickups with Delano so any clips I recorded now wouldn't demonstrate the improvement in the preamp. It does have a push-pull active/passive option on the volume control and a passive tone control, although I haven't made a lot of use of that. I had to change it because the blend pot had stopped working altogether. I think there is a bit more boost and cut on the bass and treble controls. I also have an SB320 with the original pre-amp and an SB310 which has had a new blend pot, and both these pre-amps still sound fine. I wouldn't replace them for the sake of it. Despite some of the soldering looking a bit iffy!

The pre-amps are a notorious weak point on these, and replacing them, or re-wiring the bass as passive, are both common options. I have a Nordstrand 4-pot in one of mine which is a vast improvement over the standard, I've also fitted Artec cheapies as a short-term. The pickups are perfectly OK to run passive. This looks like a later model with the preamp all on one PCB, earlier ones had individual PCBs on the pots which were much easier to just replace a pot. It should still be possible to replace a single pot without a complete rewire but the question is really whether it's worth the effort. Not sure a right-angled jack plug is going to make a lot of difference. Because of the recess around the socket, it would only be able to point downwards, you'd have an even bigger loop of cable going down out and back to the strap. I've not seen similar issues with contacts on any of the ones I've owned.