Happy Jack

After six years? I suspect not ...

Those 12V strips are nice and bright, ands that design is waterproof, but be aware that they run pretty hot. Attaching that strip to the inside of a metal grille with (maybe?) glue or something could be a fail waiting to happen.

Deffo this. The freebies we played were targeted at pubs that had given us gigs in the past, and that are (or have been) a pillar of the local music scene. We didn't offer them to just anybody!

More accurately, the market comprises many elements, including "musicians accepting unpaid gigs". Nobody has a God-given right to paid gigs, still less a God-given right to complain about musicians who play simply because they enjoy it.

I think it's too easy to see this pay/no pay situation as a binary, black -v- white thing. In my experience, it's anything but. Right now I'm involved with four bands. 1. Junkyard Dogs - a fully commercial pubrock band, playing together for many years. Under normal circumstances we would not accept no-pay gigs. During Covid we volunteered to play two freebies to help certain venues stay in business. Immediately post-Covid we volunteered to play one more freeby simply because we were so rusty after eight months that we'd have been embarrassed to ask for money. Apart from that, all the gigs in our 2021 diary are paid, and more-or-less properly. 2. Damo & The Dynamites - a fully commercial rock'n'roll band, playing together for three years. Under normal circumstances we would not accept no-pay gigs. During Covid we volunteered to play two freebies to help certain venues stay in business. Immediately post-Covid we volunteered to play one more freeby to help a venue with no music budget (yet) but where we expect to get many further paid gigs. Apart from that, all the gigs in our 2021 diary are paid, and more-or-less properly. 3. Soul Seniors - a Lockdown project which has more-or-less survived, but we're a long way from being tight and I'm the only member with any recent gig experience. We've played no gigs at all yet, and we'd jump at the chance of playing a few freebies. Don't much care why they're not paying or what excuse they're giving ... we need some low-stress no-pressure gigs to gel properly, and we'd be playing for nowt because that happens to suit us just now. 4. Fat Walters Band - a band that died a few years ago but suddenly revived last month. The format of the band has changed radically, again I'm the only member with recent gig experience, the repertoire is about 50% different from before, and the choice of material is - frankly - not commercial. Very few venues would be prepared to pay us, and we're far more likely to be offered mid-week gigs for beer money. If the mini-fest in the OP were reachable from here, I'd have no problem in offering the latter two bands. Stealing bread from the mouths of starving musicians? Bollocks. If the organisers have no budget for music and have come right out and said so, then what's the issue? No band is getting paid, and the mini-fest will have to put up with whatever music is available free. In my case, that would be my two weaker bands, neither of whom are actually good enough (right now) to charge a fee anyway. 😂

Tuner ... tuner ... where's my damn tuner ...

Take firelighters.

And you even joined Basschat solely in order to do it ...

+1

Shame he's turned the finger cutouts into ... erm ... knuckle cutouts.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333749530501?hash=item4db505af85:g:eeUAAOSwmflfgY5Z Apparently this person knows how to build a bass, but doesn't know how to do a setup. Buy with confidence ...

If you can get that for £900, or even for the £1250+ I ended up spending, do please send me links!

Look up Jamieson 'Junior' Brown, check out his geetar stand thang.

Agreed, but Andy's services are very much in demand and by a lot of musicians better and more famous than me! I think he had just decided that this was one prject he should walk away from. 😂

On an 8-year-old bass, I'd say that "nice cracking to the finish" was actually bloody near catastrophic!

Easy for you to say ...

You've got me wanting one of these now (🙄) even though @Silvia Bluejay and I have been using an XR18 for two years without any situation arising where we'd have needed it! I can easily see it as a belt & braces thing mind, especially since Silvie's attention has to be split between the PA and her video cameras.

I get the upper register extension thing, Tony, and the Spuler you've posted has vestigial frets to make that extension usable. The bass in the OP has no such frets and would be pretty much unusable in that way ... certainly it would sound bloody odd if you tried! I'm still quite sure that the OP bass has a neck intended for use on a lefty (with integral thumb rest), but which has for some reason been fitted to a righty.

A distressed Squier affininty is just what you need to play Paddy McGinty's Goat ...

The way the edge of the neck continues beyond the fretted zone looks to provide an excellent thumb-rest ... but it's on the wrong side. If it's intentionally continued below the strings like that, then I am baffled as to what purpose it serves.

Judging by the shape of the neck up where your thumb might go, I'd guess that started life as a leftie and then the design got reversed for some reason. Either way, it doesn't do it for me.

I take the bass away from Andy and call up @gary mac. Foolishly he accepts the commission. Do you feel like taking up the story from here Gary?

Two weeks later Andy calls me again. He's found what the problem is. The rout for the jack socket has been drilled fractionally too small. The wiring was working fine when not in the bass, but as soon he tightened the screws to lock everything in place, one or more components were distorting slightly and causing a short. I tell him to replace everything. Every electronic component, every piece of wiring, take the bloody thing down to bare wood and start over. Andy says, the preamp has blown again. Aaaargh! I buy another GraphTech preamp. We are way past the point where any of this makes any economic sense, I should have sent the bass straight back to Cristian and demanded a refund ... oh heck, whatever. Andy's heart is no longer in this. The Grosmann has been hanging around his workbench like a bad smell for far too long, he wants shot of it and is giving it only the most cursory attention. He fits the new preamp, the bass works intermittently for an hour or so and then it doesn't. Game over.

After two weeks of this nonsense I lose all patience, take the bass to my regular guy in Denmark Street (Andy Gibson - he's worked on nearly a hundred basses for me over the years) and tell him, I don't care what you have to do, just get it working. He looks at the bass like he just trod in it and starts pointing out what's wrong with it. The bridge is an utterly dreadful thing, the wrong size, dysfunctional, and fitted at an angle. The knobs aren't fitted properly, the strap buttons are wrong, you name it. In particular, he points out that all the components used to build this bass (apart from the wood) are the cheapest, shoddiest things on the market ... things like the pots and the jack socket are only fit for the bin. On a £900 bass. Then he opens the cavity and starts laughing. He tells me the wiring seems to have been done by a 9-year-old, the GraphTech preamp is a good make and should be fine but there are bits of clipped wire hanging from it. The thing's a mess. Two weeks later Andy calls me. The wiring is way past salvage which makes the preamp unusable. I contact Cristian who immediately sends me a brand new replacement unit. Fair play to him. Andy fits the new unit. While everything is spread out on the bench it all works. He calls me and says, come and see, it's fine. By the time I get there he has re-assembled the bass and ... it doesn't work any more. Cue more wiggling and jiggling and fiddling plus extra head-scratching. I go away. Do please remember that this account is the SHORT version.