Happy Jack

DOH!!!

The "electric thing" is a variation on the TENS machine sometimes offered to women in labour as an alternative to pethedine or to gas & air. I never tried one so can't really comment, but I always suspected it was more of a placebo thing in the case of back pain. (I certainly can't comment on how effective it is in childbirth. 🙄) I've had back issues for years and they have been well documented here on Basschat BUT those issues did not arise from injury or damage, they came from poor posture and not using my body correctly. What I needed was several years of Pilates (others recommend Alexander Technique or yoga instead) at the end of which I have a far better understanding of how to avoid screwing myself up. In the case of @police squad I really don't think I have anything useful to say; dealing with an injury is NOT the same as dealing with poor posture. I just tried to page SixFeetFour (he's an osteopath) but his name no longer comes up ... has he changed it?

Blimey! When did you last buy a banger? Or are cars particularly cheap in your neck of the woods? I had to help a mate buy a pre-loved vehicle a few months back. With the whole of NW London to choose from, the best we could come up with was a 10-year-old Zafira for £3k, which needed new tyres, a new battery, and now a new clutch.

https://snap-dragon-guitars.com/products/snap-dragon-e-bass Bought for me by @Silvia Bluejay after seeing the guitar version being wielded by @MacDaddy Devilish cunning, and very playable.

Follow the link mate! 🤣

I bought something pretty much identical to this: https://www.japanesempv.co.uk/vehicle/toyota-alphard-30-v6-petrol-4wd-in-uxbridge-london-29523ba4-b30f-4455-a48e-20f63077b9e8 It's a 3-litre V6 with permanent 4WD and, as a top-of-the-range MPV in Japan, it arrives fully-loaded. I ripped out the rear pair of seats and chucked them in a skip, reversed the middle bank of three seats, and ended up with the fastest and most comfortable small van in London.

I more-or-less run the set lists for both my main bands, and I always tend to err (if it is indeed erring) on the side of crowd-pleasers. I leave the more obscure stuff for my various side-projects, especially those where nobody expects to make any ... y'know ... money an' that. Obviously it's vital to know your audience, if that's at all possible. With The Junkyard Dogs I play some large town-centre cattle-markets on a Saturday night and pretty much every bloody song needs to be recognised by the third bar, but I also play some tiny music-afficianado pubs where they welcome something a bit different, or at least unexpected. In a vaguely similar fashion, with Damo And The Dynamites I play plenty of WMCs and Socials where it's the obvious that gets the applause - Elvis, Buddy, Chuck, Eddie Cochran - but when we play the more specialist venues it's all about the Rockabilly stuff.

There have been developments.

I reckon that's a Yes. I played two truncated sets ... 11:30 - 12:00 and 12:15 - 12:45. By my standards that's a very short gig, but the key thing is that after pumping out more-or-less full power for an hour I still had two of the three blue LEDs lit on the Pocket 50. These things are rarely linear and I doubt that means it could keep up that output for three hours, but I'd be pretty confident that it could handle at least two. Besides which, assuming a 3-set gig then that's 2x15-min breaks in which to retire to the pub and plug in the recharger. And, of course, batteries respond poorly to the cold. On a warmer day - or at least a milder one - I imagine that the battery would anyway last longer. So far so good.

So ... what happened next? Well that busking gig got cancelled at short notice (the guy is much younger than me and had family duties on the half-term) so there was a 3-week delay before I could join him and a friend on congas this last weekend. I don't know where you live, but around here Sunday was barely above freezing and absolutely NOT ideal busking weather. The guitarist was playing with his teeth quite literally chattering throughout and his fingers refusing to obey his brain. Also, I forgot my 'dead cat' for the mics on the Zoom H4 and it turned out to be far windier than I'd expected, so the sound quality wasn't great. Bit what the hell? Could you hear the GR Pocket 50 in a busy-ish market, up against a guitar using a battery Orange Crush 30 and a pair of mic'd up congas going through a mini-tower batter PA?

Just watched the first two episodes. Impressive. Very bloody impressive.

Yes, I saw that one. Agreed that it's way too expensive and yet, and yet, and yet that's actually a far better price match for the quality of that bass than the piffling numbers they used to change hands for.

Isn't Friday Ten March managing Man Utd at the moment?

Active/Passive - it depends. If you're using the preamp in a very subtle, low-gain sort of way then you may find the Passive input is fine. If you're cranking the preamp up high, then deffo go Active. Trust your ears, try both, see which works. Strings which you (and a lot of us too) describe as "floppy" are probably better described as more compliant. https://www.liutaiomottola.com/myth/perception.htm The feel of different brands & types of strings can vary hugely, and what the player looks for in those strings varies even more. This is why God invented BassBashes.

How did it go?

If the right SB320 with gold hardware turned up, I could be tempted.

That's a Real Man's action ...

They're properly-built, old-school instruments, built and finished in the same way and to the same standards as they build violins and cellos.

The genuine German basses are MUCH better made and finished, but they are MUCH MUCH more expensive. 🤑

Has anyone actualy worked out the cost of the materials used in the Mona Lisa?