Sean

That's quite the endorsement. Do you use the floating trem? From what I've seen/heard this is one of the features of the instrument that makes it what it is and something that's completely lacking in some of the quality competitors' instruments like the Schecter Hellcat VI.

I just voted Vintera. I love it when there's a loophole and you can vote for the outcome that's already been decided. Makes me feel like a winner. Enjoy the Vintera. I've always fancied a Bass VI but have no idea what I'd use it for other than noodling at home.

Question: What about joint purchases for bands made out of band funds? Upgrading lights, new monitors, a new backdrop. My contribution is 20% and it's deducted from the band slush fund.

@Mike Brooks was joined by Matt Gleason of Monty's at the South East Bass Bash last month and we had a demo of Monty's bass pickups. The P Retrowind was a stand out and one of the nicest P pickups many of us have heard. They are just gorgeous, UK made and although they're not cheap, as soon as we heard it you knew it was special. https://www.montysguitars.com/collections/bass-pickups/products/retro-wind-p-bass-pickup I know @cetera @NancyJohnson and too many others to mention were there but I came away decided that the next P pickup I was going to buy would be one of those. And that is coming from someone who is a dyed-in-the-wool Toltec pickups fanboy. Toltec would be an excellent alternative. Either ay you're getting a UK handcrafted product with excellent support from a small friendly business run and owned by their GenX founders.

Hypothetically, where would I place this Synth pedal in my signal chain?

Going back a while, over a year ago, I was looking to do some work on mine and googled the price of valves etc. While searching, 3 NoS ones came up being sold by Laney through eBay for £599 collected only. They sold all on the same day, I was stunned. All 3 then resurfaced on eBay from a seller in W-s-M at £749. This was 50% of what the last retail price was IIRC. Now, this was when sellers paid a fee on that listing, (nothing has changed in reality, it's just easier to remember prices from before the change) so if we do the maths, someone was prepared to "invest" £1797 up front, drive the 200 mile round trip from W-s-M to a Halesowen, put them into storage while waiting for them to sell for £2247 minus eBay fees, collection cost, etc. Really!? It's a lot of outlay, effort and messing about to pocket £200-300 if you're lucky. But it shows that there are people out there...

Standard. I was very pleased this week that a similar thread ended up with the OP making a decision and taking action by acquiring something recommended in the thread. I reckon it happens about once a year. 😆

That rendition of The Sideboard Song never fails to impress me. They were amazing. I saw them twice, once years ago with Mick and then in the last 20 years or so at Chelt Town Hall. I remember being absolutely transfixed by Rabbit. They both had a very impressive pedigrees as session musicians and, although I've never seen the evidence, Dave Peacock swore that Chas Hodges was a much better bass player than him.

I can't unsee that now. It's odd.

L-R Fret wire radius tool. Used to put a radius on fret wire before installing the new fret. D’Addario String Cutter Fret saw with gauge. It’s for cutting fret slots and the gauge stops you going too deep and ending up with firewood.

Brilliant! I love it when a plan comes together! I look forward to seeing how you get on with a 5. The only HB I've ever played was the little purple one at the SW Bash raffle this year. Impressive build and I said on the day, that if I was still globe-trotting for a living, I'd have ditched my B2A for one of those.

Good point. I've only ever been sent notation and slash chord charts. And those have been rare.

One day, I will venture North and see a Cheat Trick show. From what I've seen on YT, it's fantastic.

Posh tools.

These are from a little thing I did with friends recently just to gig the Hamer 12 and do some Cheap Trick songs. First time for years on lead vocals for me, no rehearsal with the drummer, it's a little thrown together but it was a lot of fun. A friend's wife took the video.

Mike Brooks told me about Bobby Vega turning the pick so he uses a non-pointy corner to strike the string. I tried it and it's OK, it's different. I haven't stuck with it but I've focusing on other aspects of technique recently.

Going back on topic... Anything by REM

@Woody1957 any progress?

To add to this and illustrate just one of the points above, you don't necessarily need to "tribute" a specific artist, there are two (that I know of) acts out there in direct competition that tribute the genre that is the punk and new wave scene (1976-83), there's Punk Off! and rePunK'd. In some cases they play the same venues but well spaced on the calendar. Both have well-produced showreels and they are very savvy with social media. Ticket prices get up to 35 quid for theatres and the amount of graft that goes into the production, planning and stagecraft exceeds that of a function/covers band by an order of magnitude. There's up front investment as a business proposition long before any profits of ticket sales come in and at that level someone needs to be "on it" pretty much full time.

I think this could be a good shout. If you go down this route my advice would be to make sure you have your key ingredients in place early. I spent 4-6 months (with a friend) rehearsing, planning and putting together an Aerosmith tribute and we were so keen and over the moon with the guitarist chemistry, drummer, band name and sound that we were ploughing ahead without the crucial ingredient, Tribute Steven Tyler. We auditioned a lot of singers (male and female) and we always thought that it would just be matter of time, we never got there and didn't have a Plan B. We could have taken one of the auditioned singers and easily done something else very good but all of us were fixated on Aerosmith. We found out the hard way why there aren't many Aerosmith tributes around. I would drop everything to be in a good Aerosmith tribute (sorry, current bandmates). I'd also love to do a Pearl Jam tribute, I'd get to wear Vans and play my Hamer every gig. Having an idea of what tribute you'd like to be in and knowing all the obvious bangers off pat gets you off the blocks.

Me. I love them. You can see mine in use by some Basschatters on the SW Bash thread. It’s been gigged a couple of times this year. The thing is absolutely awesome. It’s out of date in the way that a Porsche 959 is out of date but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a huge amount of fun and should be overlooked. It’s scary, it’s like a living thing when it’s warmed up and running. The Monaco cabs have made it a viable proposition for gigging and it pairs really well with them. I gig Class D, Class A/B, Class H, no-rig and use and enjoy my whole fleet, I embrace all the differences between them and it gives me an enormous sense of well-being. There’s something very liberating and “two-fingers up to the modern world” cranking one of these monsters.