Happy Jack

Relaxed & easy-going Stax/soul band based near Wallingford needs a keys player. We play a handful of gigs a year, mainly as an excuse to keep playing such great songs. We will never be a high-intensity functions outfit playing big parties and weddings for megabucks, this is strictly low-pressure stuff ... could suit a relative newbie to keys who wants a 'soft' environment in which to improve. Everyone in the band is over 50 and we rehearse DAYTIME (11:00 - 2:00) on occasional Mondays outside Chalgrove, so retired or self-employed status would work best. Mind you, in these post-Covid times you could probably get away with bringing your laptop to the rehearsal - hey! I'm just saying ...

Then you should probably place a listing under Bassists Available, rather than Bassists Wanted, neh? 😉

Ah but who do you post them to ... @AndyTravis or @Machines?

91 = 1991

Then it's an SB310. There's only 24 pages of this topic ... surely you've read them all? 🤨

FX Loop?

SB310? Or SB301?

Have to agree on this. I've tried (repeatedly) to get various Sansamp units to produce a genuine all-valve sound/tone without the baggage that comes with real tubes and I've never got anywhere close. Makes very little difference whether you use the pedal or the rackmount - what you get is the Sansamp sound and that's not the same as an all-tube amp.

In all fairness, there is a photo of the back. The rather un-Fender burst is suspiciously unmarked by any playing wear, but there's evidence of cosmetic modifications in places. Looks to me like someone tried to turn something into a Fender and didn't make an awfully good job of it. Mind you, there have been periods when that description would have fitted Fender themselves ...

See the umlaut? That's Heavy Metal Maria, that is ...

So ... tell me about adjusting the intonation:

I identify as 6'5" regardless of my real height. 🤨

But would you really want to play keyboards in a cheap band?

When I were but a lad, a cheap bass was just that - a cheap bass and pretty much a piece of unplayable tat. There was a reason for saving up for something with Fender (or similar) on the headstock. These days, most of the cheap basses I've tried recently play and sound as good as (or better than) big name instruments from 30/40/50 years ago. It seems to me that in just the last five years or so the same thing has happened with FX pedals. I've had all the ludicrously expensive pedals you can imagine (with Earthquaker Devices at the top of the list) and they've all worked very well, done exactly what it said on the tin, done exactly what I paid for. But the pedals that have blown me away recently have been things like pretty much all of the Mooer and Hotone ranges ... superb kit at stupidly low prices. Example? Two pedals that I have used extensively since Covid are the Digitech Drop and the Digitech Luxe. That's about £350 worth of kit (if you can find them) and very nice they are too. I broke my Drop at the last gig - trod on the p/s at the pedal socket, doh! - and I simply have to have a whole-tone pitch-shift for one particular song so I went looking for cheap alternatives. I found the Mooer Pitchbox MPS1 for £59. It's about a third the size of the Drop, it does exactly the same job only with rather better tracking, and if you flick the switch from setting #2 (pitch-shift) to #3 (de-tune) it also does exactly what the Luxe does. Cheap and nasty plastic? No longer - these things are now built like tanks, just as they should be. 1980s Behringer-stylee pedals are pretty much a thing of the past. I realise that it's only a matter of time before someone tried to tell me that they're cheap because they're produced by starving Vietnamese orphans or something, but you know what? I don't think so. £60 for an FX pedal seems about right to me, given that the components cost about a fiver and (since no one has invented a genuinely new effect since The Beatles) there's no R&D cost to be recovered. I think we've all just got used to being robbed blind by the big-name pedal manufacturers and their marketing budgets plus - of course - our own insatiable desire to have the latest trickbox.

Depends. 50 watts of solid state (digital) power is a practice amp. A 50 watt all-valve amp or combo is a serious gigging rig ... the old Selmer Treble'n'Bass heads spring to mind. @nbaptista you really need to tell us why you are buying an amp. Is this going to be used to gig with? If so, what sort of gigs (jazz, rock, heavy metal) and what size of gigs (wine bar, club, arena)?

I'd pay good money to see someone play cajon and bass. Is some sort of complex mechanism involved?

Or pebble-dash it and call it Bung-Glo. 🙈

Cuts both ways, dunnit? I once turned up at a jam with an Alleva Coppolo KBP5 and someone asked if I couldn't afford a real Fender ...

After my recent less-than-satisfactory encounter with a swarm of bees (see Off Topic for details), combined with on-going back and joint issues, I have decided to adopt a new approach to dual-purpose stagewear.

In truth, Andy, I was actually thinking of swopping back the original Lull fretted neck so that the new body would carry the fretless neck you built for me. My thinking was to end up with the very first prototype lightweight Rogers Fretless P5, guaranteed to be worth a mint in 30 years when people have long forgotten Wal and Alembic ...

The whole iPad thing is interesting because people seem to focus on what it is, rather than why it's there ("I have an iPad - what's yer problem?"). To me it's a red flag until I know the muso concerned has learned their part. Someone reading the words/chords from a cribsheet is a complete PITA, whereas someone referring to a setlist between songs is another matter entirely.

Enjoy!