pete.young

One way to reduce the amount of tap dancing is to put all the pedals you're going to use in a loop, such as a Boss LS-2, then you can leave them all on and just hit the loop to turn them all on at once. If you use the pedals individually as well, that's less helpful. Not sure what kind of synthy sounds you're using, but the Boss SY1 has some very useable sounds even though it's an emulator not a proper synth. Also, I've just spotted that you have a compressor in the chain. I found that the MXR Envelope Filter wasn't very happy with a compressed signal, and worked very much better with the compressor downstream of it.

Provided that you have have relatively modern (ie 20 years old or less) balanced mikes and use XLR cables you should be fine. If you have any ribbon mikes they need to be safe with phantom power. https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-phantom-power-on-dynamics

I have an Eko electric mandolin which suffered a headstock break. I rang Roberto up to ask if he would sell me a replacement neck. Instead he gave me a bollocking for breaking it and told me to get it fixed. His view was that if he sold me a neck, that was another mandolin that he wouldn't be able to make. A great character and a sad loss to the musical world. I did get the mandolin fixed by a local repair-setup guy, and it's holding up some 10 years later touch wood.

Roberto died in March 2022, so it's more than a few months. I'm pretty sure it's now permanently closed, just waiting for the auction of bits on Gardner Houlgate.

After SGC Nanyo finally stopped making basses, there were quite a few Chinese copies with this shape headstock knocked out under various brand names in the early part of the century.

I've used it but not since the last lockdown. I used to join in with sessions in Germany and Ireland. I found that instruments with built-in mikes worked better than acoustic instruments miked up, and that it was better to use headphones for playback if you were using any mikes. It's apparently improved since and is still being actively developed. At the time the advantage it had over Zoom was that the latency was pretty good, particularly if you were close to a decent server with fat pipes. I understand that Zoom has since reduced it's latency so might also be worth a look.

Since this is a single band project and you're starting completely from scratch, maybe a multi-effects unit somewhere between an HX Stomp and a Zoom MS-60B? You might get better replies in the Effects forum.

Collection in person only from Fleetwood. Road Trip!

Stick a rubber doorstop on the spike.

So sad. Condolences to his familiy and many friends, including a good part of basschat. Hope you guys are doing as well as can be expected.

I've just come across this excellent intereview of Nathan East talking about and playing some of his well-known bass lines.

The PA world calls these cables 'Inserts' .

I get my acoustic strings from Eagle Music. Fantastic service, only problem I had was with a banjo tailpiece and they put that right straight away.

I also ordered some pedalboard stuff on Monday from Thomann. It was picked up by DHL on Saturday morning and has now made it as far as the delivery depot. So I would say this is normal or close to it for post-Brexit orders from Thomann.

The guy who bought my EBS 2x12 Neo sounded fantastic when he brought his Mesa head round to try it.

£15 quid seems like good value for a functioning instrument. I don't know much about the balalaika but I think the idea is that you play the melody on the A and use the Es for accompaniment, either as drones or as a harmony below the top string. Similar in that respect to the DAD tuning used on the traditional Rebetiko Greek bouzouki. I'd quite like a contrabass but I'm not sure where I'd keep it.

Or, learn to read bass clef. And get used to practicing without an accompanying track. Thats what most orchestral players do.

All these pedals are showing as 'out of stock' for me.

I have just put a set of Labella Low Tension Flats on my short scale Epiphone Century and I'm very happy with the results. Lower tension than the standard Labellas, vintage sound, not massively expensive. (Technically I have medium scale because of the tailpiece, for a Violin bass I think you'd need the short scale set.)

Penn Elcom have a good range.

Mine is in a Tourtech hard case, but there is no model number or any other identification on it. There is quite a lot of space between the headstock and the end of the case, so it's probably a generic acoustic bass hard case. Maybe this one: https://www.pmtonline.co.uk/tourtech-ttc-ab-basic-acoustic-bass-guitar-case

https://borderband.org came up in a google search for concert bands in the area.

Carlisle?