Happy Jack

If in doubt, it's in E.

OK, here is an upside down image (no, me neither) of quite possibly the worst tablet I've ever owned. Despite being a Samsung, it is easily the slowest device I've ever tried to use and I only have it because it was a freebie with a contract upgrade five years ago. This comes to every gig with me, so it's loaded with Gmail & Google Maps, iReal Pro & YouTube, even a way huge digital clock for use on NYE. It came pre-loaded with something called Polaris Office 5, where the spreadsheet is compatible with Excel so that I can dump my original straight onto the tablet without issues. At the gig I attach a phone holder to my mic stand, clip the tablet into it in landscape format, and enlarge the bit I need to see.

Excel. Seriously. Excel. Make your set list up as a spreadsheet, save it as a PDF onto your tablet or phone, then use the touch screen to enlarge the next few songs & scroll down as necessary. No need to buy anything, install anything, or learn new commands.

Yep. Who knows where a mic has been.

When we first wanted to call ourselves The Junkyard Dogs - oooh, 10 years ago now - we found that there was (i) a well-established covers band by that name oop North, and (ii) a sort-of scrumpy & western outfit in the West Country called Hobo Jones & The Junkyard Dogs. On balance, we decided to leave the name alone and went out for a while as The Brentford Nylons ("we do loose covers"). Then we discovered that the Northern band was folding and calling it a day. We waited a few months, and then re-named ourselves The Junkyard Dogs. Inevitably, the following year they re-formed! Too late ... the deed was done. In the last eight years we've never once been confused with Hobo Jones, and we've only ever had a single booking enquiry intended for the Northern band. The real issue is whether or not your marketing could possibly overlap with theirs. We use exclusively Facebook and Lemonrock. The latter doesn't seem to exist North of Milton Keynes so no problem there, and though it it is widely used in Hobo Jones country we're saved by the filing issue; we're a J and they're an H. That just leaves FB, and so far that's never been an issue.

And I have one downstairs right now.

Or even your NADs.

Every time I see a Topic entitled NAD, I always (and I mean always) think of

In two months time, Britain will be full of people who travelled on a crowded plane (with recirculatory air supply) to Spain, spent two weeks partying in pubs & clubs (mainly with other Brits), travelled back to the UK on another crowded plane (with recirculatory air supply), there to be greeted by reminders that it is awfully awfully unsafe to go and see a band play at their local. The sooner we abandon this hypocritical sham, the better. Will there be a second peak? Yup. And a third and a fourth. Get used to it. It's now part of your life, my life, and everybody else's life.

But imagine the look on the faces of the punters at the Dog & Duck when you bring this thing along ...

Engaging in a valiant piece of Topic Cross-Fertilisation, this thread persuaded me to try out the Synth setting on I can get an astonishingly good Human League sound on DYWMB, and it turns out that it sounds better on Glass Of Champagne (Sailor) than a normal bass ... I may have to keep the Variax in case I get invited to join @stewblack's 80s band.

In fact, I normally string my basses in alphabetical order.

The big problem was the hoodies.

Or even decreasingly few options. The NJ range are passive ...

If only it had fanned frets ...

Well that's just lazy!

Deffo +1 for the Mockingbird. If you can't stretch to a US-made example, check out the NJ range made in Japan (NOT in New Jersey ... NJ stands for Nagoya, Japan). Also be aware that the older Japanese examples have the 'reversed' humbucker, like my old one: The recent/current version has the more normal Precision layout for the pickup.

@Silvia Bluejay has just pointed out (elsewhere) that the low B in a set of D'Addario strings is purple. And I thought, "why?". Given how many colours start with the letter B, why would you make your B-string ball-ends in a colour that doesn't start with B? And then I thought about it some more. The G-string is no problem at all, and the A-string is manageable, but trying to find colours that work with the E-string and D-string has turned out to be more problematic than I'd expected. Despite what Crayola says, I'm not sure that Electric Green is actually a colour, and don't get me started on finding colours that beging with D. Do I win a prize for Most First World Problem Of 2020?