BigRedX

You need to look at all the photos in the link provided in the OP for this system to make complete sense. I was struggling to see how this worked for both tuning and intonation adjustment, and why the "return" on the string didn't interfere with it until looking at the other photographs I realised that these are just the tail-pieces and there is a completely separate bridge that goes with the system.

To get back OT... When I first started considering making a guitar in the late 70s the only source of information for the enthusiastic amateur like myself was Stephen Delft's series in International Musician magazine. Back then truss rods were not readily available and as a result several articles in the series were dedicated to making your own from scratch. One thing I do remember was that it was suggested that the adjustment nut was made of brass, so if there was a problem the threads on the nut were more likely to fail than the truss rod itself, and the nut could easily be replaced. On the surface this seemed like excellent advice. Is there any reason why it has not been adopted by any truss rod manufacturers? Has technology moved on since 1978 to render this obsolete?

Looks like a combination of poor MIDI implementation on the part of the DMC.micro combined with a the HX Stomp being much better at processing the direct input of the expression pedal. Converting an "analogue" signal to MIDI will always involve some degree of latency, but it shouldn't be as much as you are experiencing in the video. Do you NEED to run the expression pedal through the DMC.micro? It would be useful if you could give a complete (non-video) run down of how all your devices are interconnected and why, so it might be possible to suggest an alternative setup that will work better. I would also suggest getting in touch with Disaster Area Designs to see what they say. It could be that your device is faulty? If you have the facilities record the pedal movements against a click track into a DAW so you have a visual record of the latency to show them.

Same here. Browsing is fine, put posting is very slow and appears to have got slower as the day progresses. Has Basschat run out of server space? Maybe time to prune some of those unnecessary Off-Topic threads?

Just an update on my Belgium parcel situation. It's still stuck in Belgium customs and apparently the current processing time is between 20 and 24 days, so maybe it will be with it's recipient by the end of next week. However, my client has more labels that need printing and delivery to Belgium. I've just spent a very frustrating 30 minutes on a web chat with an InterParcel rep, the outcome of which is while some of the other services they offer such as TNT Express and the more expensive FedEx options are supposedly experiencing shorter delays, none of them will commit to guaranteed delivery date. They sat that TNT delays are generally 48-72 hours extra, but when I ask if a parcel sent on Monday will arrive on Friday of the same week at the latest, they become all evasive. And the site is still offering 4 different timed levels of next day EU delivery from TNT when not one of them can be guaranteed! The upshot of all of this is that my client has found a printer in Belgium to produce their labels. It doesn't affect me too much because I only make a small amount on print jobs and I still get the full amount for my design and artwork services. However it does mean that at very good UK printing company has just lost several £k's worth of work to an unknown quantity in Belgium simply because of the delays currently being caused by the additional customs paperwork. That's it rant over. For the moment...

Generally all the things that make an acoustic instrument have a desirable sound are nightmares when it comes to amplifying the instrument.

Or has been shown already, descend into fish-related puns.

Yet another hangover from thinking that solid electric instruments have tonal properties in common with acoustic instruments. They don't. As other have said for a solid electric instrument it's all about construction. There's nothing wrong with using plywood so long as it has the required strength for the job. Here are two contemporary plywood instruments: That's by Jens Ritter. I doubt anyone would disagree that he knows more than a thing or two about making a decent sounding and playing instrument. And this one is by Bas Extravaganza. Apparently made from of-the-shelf plywood from his local DIY superstore for the purposes of showing that plywood is just as acceptable a material for making solid electric basses as any other "tone wood".

Sounds like a U2 B-side. Bono would have sung it better too.

Serious question. Does anyone know of a courier service that is currently able to ship to Europe within the standard 3-5 working days including customs clearance? I've tried asking the companies themselves but no-one will commit to a definite schedule which makes a mockery of the various services they are offering. I'm happy to pay more for a guaranteed service.

Definitely not. I have a largish parcel going to a client in Brussels. It spent a week in UK customs and is now in it's 3 week in Belgium customs (who are currently quoting a 20-24 day processing time). My GF's business isn't doing any better having parcels going to The Netherlands taking 4+ weeks to arrive.

Currently Interparcel items sent to Europe are experiencing 4 week customs delays even with all the correct paperwork. I don't know if anyone else is doing any better at the moment in this regard.

IME the amp is the virtually the only area where weight saving can be achieved. Even the difference between a traditional plywood/aluminium and a modern moulded plastic flight case isn't that big and all the serious professional multi-effects are still built like tanks and weigh almost as much. Obviously if you are going from an Amp SVT to something like a TecAmp Puma you'll notice the difference, but I went from a solid-state 2x300W power amp to a 1kW valve/class D hybrid and the overall rack weight difference was a slight reduction in the difficulty of the rack case for a one person lift, a slight overall better balance of the case (the solid state power amp made the rack case very noticeably front-end heavy).

My point was that as soon as you start racking up your gear, IME the weight of everything combined with the rack case adds up very quickly. Also while amps have got progressively smaller and lighter, very little else has (rack mounted multi-effects, external PSUs mains distributors, cables etc.), so all the other contents of the rack are still pretty heavy, and the overall weigh savings get more negligible the more you have in your rack. It ends being a compromise between speed of setting up and weight.

While there's a lot to be said for the setting up convenience of a rack-mounted rig - in the days when I had mine it took less than 5 minutes to have everything plugged in and ready to play, the proliferation of light-weight gear tends to negate the advantages. What's the point of having a 500W amp that you can lift with your little finger if the case it's going to be put in weighs almost twice as much? I have been a rack user for my various bass and guitar rigs since the mid 80s and until recently I used to have 2 racks systems - A big one with 6U of space that was ideally a two-person carry and lift onto the stack, and a little one with 3U of space which was more manageable but I still wouldn't want to carry it any great distance. The actual gear itself that went into the little rack didn't weigh much, but the metalwork to hold it in place, the PSUs, and all the cabling to wire it up very quickly made the complete rack pretty heavy for its size. When I decided to ditch my conventional rigs and go for an FRFR system I thought long and hard about what I was going to do about the non-amp contents of my racks, and eventually settled on a Helix Floor, rather than rack unit. Even if I was in a band with a road crew I couldn't see myself going back to a rack-based system.

Actually the "reboot" of Hawaii Five-0 only ended it's 10 year run last year...

In theory it's a smart idea, but then you can't replace them with locking strap buttons because the button with the strap attached to it will be taller/longer than the other, and your instrument is no longer stable when resting on them.

I've finally made up my mind how to vote on this. I put two. 1. Keyboards (although it's really just synthesiser - don't expect me to be able to provide full song accompaniment on the piano) and 2. Any plucked stringed fretted instrument. The mental attitude to what I need to play will vary depending on the instrument in question, but the playing techniques remain basically the same - one hand for fretting the other for plucking.

But the bass is all but useless without the rest of the band.

Like @AndyTravis if it has frets and strings I will be able to get something musical out of it. As well as bass guitars, I've also owned guitars, Balalaikas (including a solid electric one I built my self as a try out to see if my woodworking skills were good enough to make an electric guitar) and a Mandolin I also play keyboards well enough to have been a synth player in a band for 6 years in the 80s.

One of the most successful bands I was in (other than The Terrortones) was very much subject to the sorts of logistics problems that @EBS_freak has outlined. We didn't have any problems on the musical and playing side and TBH I don't think I would have time for any band member who didn't put in the required practice outside of band rehearsals should it be needed. However for every other aspect of the band - organising rehearsals, gigs, recording, promotion etc. it came down to the fact that if I didn't do it, then nothing would get done. After a couple of years of this combined with having a quite stressful day job that had a tendency to take up all my waking hours to the extent where the only way I could guarantee to be available for a gig would be to take the whole day off as holiday, it was unsurprising that I suffering from band burn out. As an experiment, I stopped organising anything to do with the other band members, and had a quite relaxing six weeks off doing almost nothing from a band PoV (up to that point we had be rehearsing twice a week and gigging at least once a month) until one of them phoned up asking when the next rehearsal was going to be...

Unless it is classed as a warranty repair (i.e. free), you will almost definitely have to pay VAT and possibly import duty on the cost of the the repair and the return postage when it gets sent back to you. If you can get the relevant paper-work for an export for repair, then sending the item to The Netherlands should be free of VAT and duty. I haven't tried exporting anything too outside the EU, but AFAICS the new rules apply to all exports, not just to the EU, so there won't be any less paperwork for sending it to the US. And from the sorts of delays I've currently been experiencing allow 4 weeks for export and possibly the same for it's return journey, plus however long it takes to fix the item. I have a sneaking suspicion that you are right in thinking that option 4 is going to be the best.

Two entirely different DAWs with completely different features designed to appeal to users with different needs. However, you can think of Logic as being GarageBand Pro, so if you like the way that GarageBand works then Logic is definitely worth investigating, plus as others have said it will import your old GarageBand projects. Also while £199.99 might seem like a lot of money, you get a lot of extras in terms of plug-ins, instruments and loops, and unless there is something very specific that you need it terms of effects or instruments, you don't need to spend anything additional to have a fully-featured DAW. Reason is completely different. If there is a trial version available then download it and have a go and see if it suits you.

Yes it's a complete nightmare, with a load of additional paperwork and extensive customs delays both in the UK and the receiving country. If I was in you situation, I would first phone up HMRC for advice, and also get them to email it to you so if anything goes wrong you have all the information you were given in writing. Because it's being exported for repair only and will be sent back when fixed, you will need different forms then it it was an item you were exporting as a sale. Then check with all the various courier companies to see which ones are getting their parcels through customs the quickest (Most have massive delays and some aren't even dealing with items for Europe at the moment). Currently from my experience The Netherlands Postal Service has a huge backlog of items coming from the UK which are taking approximately 3 weeks to process even if all the accompanying paperwork is present and correct. Edit: My dealings this year with Europe have all been "sales", however I did look at sending something back to the US for servicing previously and in the end decided that all the additional paperwork was too many hoops to jump through considering the cost of the item. Since January 1st the amount of paperwork required for items both coming into the UK and leaving it (from anywhere - not just EU) has only increased. This combined with delays and restrictions due to Covid does not make it a good time to be trying to send anything out of the country.

None of the strings that came with any of my Bass VIs (I own three - Squier, Burns and Eastwood) and none of the strings I have bought for them subsequently - LaBella and Newtone) have come with any unwound strings. Also neither sets of strings that I got when I briefly dabbled with 5-string tuned E-C came with an unwound top C. Where are you finding unwound bass stings?