Happy Jack

Ah now, you didn't mention that it already has an appropriate pickup. That looks like a very easy £300's worth of DB to me, and a WAY better starter bass than I had! If you're really unsure what to do with the flag on the back, try buying some low-tack sticky vinyl. Cut to shape and stick on, leaving you with the option to peel off again later if you choose. I wouldn't suggest oing this with a nitro finish but the back of this bass has of course been painted. My sister and brother-in-law are American, both NY City liberal types. As a Brit I didn't really get the whole Confederate flag thang until I had a chat with them a few years back. To me, that flag meant Good Ol' Boys and The Dukes Of Hazzard and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Turned out I was living roughly 40 years in the past. These days, that flag has a similar resonance to yer average Yank as a Nazi swastika.

The drummer spontaneously combusted?

On the drive home from a gig?

Plenty of good advice already given, but my comments (FWIW): No 6-piece jazz group should be loud enough to cause serious issues with feedback. At any sensible volume, feedback (if encountered) will be very probably down to poor cab placement rather than something fundamental. You're more likely to be plagued by a boomy rumble. If you have an isolator pad for your cab then best use it. Failing that, try putting your cab on a stand, a beer crate, or even a chair ... get some distance between your low frequencies and that stage. While you're at it, be ready to roll off the Low on your amp really quite sharply; I frequently gig with the EQ all at 12 o'clock except the Low which is down at 9 o'clock. The railway arches are your Get Out Of Jail Free card. The acoustics will be so unpredictable, and probably so unusual, that any unpleasant sounds can be casually dismised with, "Well what do you expect in a space this shape?". 😎 Enjoy the gig and don't worry too much about the sound. If you obsess about whether or not the audience likes your tone, you'll lose sight of what matters ... your playing.

Obvious questions ... Where's the gig? Are you playing a winebar or a church hall? Will you be on a raised wooden stage or a concrete floor? What style of music will you be playing? What's the band line-up?

Keep an eye out for a pre-owned Mike Lull. Weights vary but - in general - Mike Lull basses are amongst the lightest bits of boutique kit out there.

Why thank'ee kindly, Young Master. The neck feels just great, an absolute delight to play. The only thing I'm having to fiddle with is the action. As you know I usually have a much higher action on my basses, and I haven't quite got my head around having it as slick as this. 😂 It's fine at the start of each set but, as I get more & more carried away, I dig in more and start to choke the strings. They tell me, it's all in the fingers ...

I bet you're missing that fretless Mike Lull neck by now ...

My drummer always starts at the right speed and all is good until he starts doing BVs ... as soon as he starts singing (which he does well BTW) his drumming accelerates.

I honestly wouldn't have believed it possible to make a 14-minute video on how to count in a song. Now that I've watched (the first two minutes of) it, it's pretty clear that I would have been right.

I have two of these, one with a back-rest and one without. Having the back-rest makes it far more comfortable and supportive BUT it also makes it a right PITA to load in/out at gigs.

Not familiar with those, Dave. Right now I'm waiting for some of them there Jargars to arrive (£115 a set!) and filling in the time by experimenting with the original fitment Daddario Helicore Hybrids from Silvie's Eminence. She didn't get on with them at all so they've only had a few days' worth of playing-in time before she replaced them with Innovation Silver Slaps. Next gig with the Kolstein is on Friday ...

Well scratch my scrotum, @Silvia Bluejay and I were at that gig! In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if that video was a piece of her early work.

😂😂😂 No.

Trust me to be holding the parcel when the music stopped! 🙄

In truth, Kolstein only ever made a single example of this bass and it's been circulating around Basschat for the last 15 years ...

The vast majority of use for this bass will always be rock'n'roll & rockabilly, but the vast majority of my 'slapping' is in fact fake. I do lots of single-slap with exaggerated hand movements to make it look like I'm doing something special, but what the audience is hearing (for percussion) is of course the drumkit. No real bass player is ever going to be fooled by my playing for a second. Additionally, the Schaller pickup takes the sound of my Kolstein well over into Precision territory so no rockabilly purist will ever compliment me on my tone. All of which said, I play a LOT of gigs these days and I like strings that help me to get through two (or even three) 3-set gigs on a weekend. I'm after strings that are kind to my plucking/slapping hand and work with the style of music ... which is primitive, but in a good way. And I'm genuinely impressed at how cheap the Jargars are!

DAT'S da fella! First thing I looked at was the new, upgraded version of the Heritage strings but they're apparently not going to be available until late April.

Do you install & tune 'solo' strings in the same way as any others?

Outstanding, sir! Many thanks.

Looking to replce the strings on the bass I bought last year from @bassace ... they're a bit dead even for my tastes. 😂 The bass has a mag pickup on the end of the fingerboard, and I'm looking at https://www.thestringzone.co.uk/evah-pirazzi-slap-double-bass-strings-set I appreciate that the option to buy gut D & G is not available to me, but would the chrome-wound set be OK with the pickup?

I've never played through one but I'll bet you a grand that comment is utter bollocks. That amp has 4 x EL84 power valves ... I guarantee you that you'll never get the master Volume past 12 o'clock. Put that amp through a 1x8 speaker (like the Crazy Eight I use for low-volume DB gigs) and fair enough, the volume will be limited. But that's because of the speaker, not the amp. Put that amp through a 310 and just hear it take a deep breath, stretch out and fill the room.

And that is EXACTLY how I started playing bass. Seriously. 😎