Happy Jack

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44493585 It's like the plot of a bad episode of Morse or something.

Love Bill Withers, love that track (Use Me), but am I alone in being amused by the contrast between Bill's agricultural guitar strumming and the funkiness of the uber-cool band surrounding him? It's not like he couldn't play guitar:

This is indeed the case.

You never posted that 40 years ago, Mike ...

I always wanted that guy's hairstyle ...

On the subject of U-bass strings, be aware that the metal-wound Kala strings make any U-bass much more easily playable BUT they also make it sound far more like an electric bass. The fat rubber strings (of which there is quite a wide range available these days) can be a bit of a bugger to play but the U-bass will then sound surprisingly close to a full-sized DB. The solution is talc / baby powder / cocaine on your fingers, which counteracts the stickiness of the rubber strings. It also allows you to experiment with a variety of fragrances ...

Absolutely mental, very funny, and a great player.

Ah, now that's interesting. The one at the front is the (still completely unavailable despite being promised back in January to be shipping in April) Rickenbacker 4003/S5 which I reviewed for Bass Guitar Magazine. Well, maybe not THE instrument I played but certainly a close relative. It would never occur to me to buy a 5-string version of the old-school Ric basses, but that 4003/S5 was an absolute delight to play.

If it's going cheep, the tweeter is probably still there ...

I find your lack of umlauts disturbing ...

The best recording session I ever did on DB was a couple of years ago now. I was (and remain) far too inexperienced to modify my technique as between live and studio work, so I just played the bass. The professional sound engineer knew exactly what he was doing, and my playing has never sounded so good. He close-mic'd my Andreas Zeller with a microphone which cost roughly twice as much as my bass. It all seemed to turn out alright.

Yes. The previous incarnation of The Junkyard Dogs (a 4-piece pub band) was a 5-piece including keys. The first keys player was a mindgames player who thought it fun to secretly sabotage my basslines by furtively using his left hand when no one was looking. No accident, he really did that, because he thought he was oh so clever. When the band finally discovered this, he jumped just before we could push him ... but not before he had recruited his own replacement. Seriously. His replacement was a much nicer guy but nowhere near as talented, and very lazy too. He couldn't be arsed to learn new songs (Quote: "Why do we need new songs when the audience isn't yet bored with the old ones?") so he used to fake them - play the first three chords loudly, pretend to play for the rest of the song, and then play the last three chords loudly. Again, I'm not making this up. Eventually we'd had enough, invited him to leave and never bothered to recruit a replacement. We're a far better outfit as a 4-piece than we ever were with a prima donna keyboard player.

Maybe your Ric has something to do with it!

And here is the more elegant cello version, in a dedicated cello shop in St. James, one of the most expensive areas of London:

https://www.gumtree.com/p/other-musicians-wanted/bass-player-required-for-power-trio-blues-rock-psych-/1302224964

I'm guessing that each genuine dent you add increases the value?

And as always JMB is absolutely stuffed with flakes & fantasists, plus it has arguably the worst search engine in the entire history of IT. I still use it occasionally because, as you say, it has a large user base, but it ain't fun and it sure ain't pretty. No idea where you are Bassix but you may have a decent jamming / open mic scene near you.

Fixed.

They have a keyboard player?

Many more of them live next door ...

You don't adjust it! It's a 'screwhead' type adjustment on the side of the pedal, which you set in the studio, or perhaps during the soundcheck, purely to equalise the input signal from your two sources. After that, you never touch it again until you change the instruments you are working with. My DB goes into channel #1, my electric bass into channel #2. So long as I was using the Mike Lull electric bass I had the channel #2 setting in one position. When I moved to the Ovation electric bass (with a hotter pickup) I had to move the channel #2 setting to another position. I won't alter it again until I decide to use a different electric bass in combination with the DB.

Trump has, at most, another three years. The anti-Trump backlash, both in the USA and abroad, will be sufficient to see a complete reversal of all his insane policies. IMHO.

I've not seen any reportage that musical instruments have become part of the new tariffs imposed by the EU - have I missed something?