SubsonicSimpleton

Exactly. I also used to weave a long thick bootlace through the afterlengths to prevent any sympathetic ringing (normally you can't hear it, but as they are close to the mic pickup position they can get more noticable. If you have time, the between the bridge feet method will probably sound better - but it is always good to have a quick option available.

When I used to do a double bass + vocal duo, my favourite quick and dirty solution for open mic type situations (where typically PA is tops only) was to wrap whatever vocal mic they had in a bit of towel and tuck it down the back of the tailpiece - I'd seen other people advocate for wrapping a 57 in foam and tucking it between the legs of the bridge, but that approach takes a little more care getting the fit right.

Learning to play a musical instrument is a marathon, not a sprint - if you are putting in the work it is often difficult to see the improvement because it happens gradually, so as your skill increases also so does your awareness of your mistakes. Be kind to yourself, and keep turning up to put the work in and you will get there.

I'd get hold of a couple of diagnostic utilities (one to check cpu temperatures, one to check ssd status) and see whether there is an obvious hardware issue like overheating or imminent drive failure. Have you ever had the case open for a good clean?

Removable neck conversion worth considering?

you could use a loop of gut, dyneema or steel rope through each of the holes in the tailpiece to allow the ball ends to be nearer the bridge. If the strings in question were spiros I'd be tempted to just have at it, but if this the set of eudoxa you have advertised for sale, I wouldn't be quite so confident that the windings/core won't separate or damage each other (you'd need to look very carefully at exactly where the windings end under the silks to figure out whether you will be winding any of the outer winding onto the pegs or simply tensioning the core using the peg while the winding gets hungup by friction on the nut).

Maybe whoever created the backing tracks has published them in such a way that the AI is detecting an exact match between the original backing track and your video but not taking into account the specific licensing conditions of the backing track, and treating it as if it was an original recording with normal copyright considerations. I remember youtubers being hit with copyright strikes for using their own original music a while back - the algorithm was matching the youtube videos with audio files that they were selling through digital platforms and failing recognise that they owned the copyright.

A while back I went to collect a gumtree purchase, and the seller had hooked up a mac mini to a mahoosive flat screen tv in the front room along with a set of big KRKs and audio I/F - he seemed pretty happy with the setup. I would expect that the crunch point is likely to be tasks that require using the keyboard/mouse with any intensity - can you do a dry run first tucking your imac behind those nesting tables, and running a hdmi cable out to the tv to give you a flavour of what the ergonomics are likely to be in the long term?

If the keys player is a good trombonist, how bout suggesting the band play some tunes with actual horn parts like this maybe

If the OP is happy using linux/Ardour, why not just buy a new SSD for the laptop(quick google shows £10-£15 for a new 120GB SSD drive) which will likely have better sustained write speed than what's in there already, and make a fresh install of whatever distro he is comfortable using. According to Sound Devices calculation tool, 15 tracks @24bit 48Khz requires less than 8Gb per hour https://www.sounddevices.com/audio-recording-calculator/ Recording audio really isn't particularly CPU intensive if you are simply streaming it to disk - simply set buffer sizes to maximum and turn off monitoring in the DAW. When everything is recorded, no faffing necessary, just copy it across to the big PC - just make one custom template in Ardour with all your tracks named, and audio routing assigned and then use it for every recording. Before going this route I would hook up the XR18 to the main PC and make sure you can see all the outputs (Behringer don't publish a mac driver so this should also work fine on any linux distro that plays nice with usb class compliant audio interfaces).

Shouldn't you be plugging bass->moog->zoom B3, assuming you are recording using the B3 as usb audio interface. If you connect as your post bass->zoom B3->moog, the moog is no longer in the recording chain.

Is it worth reaching out to local amateur orchestras and string teachers and putting the word out directly for the mid range bows and less fancy cello?

Musical chairs might be worth a look, their demographic is serious face classical peeps including pro orchestral jobs worldwide.

Nice countryside up that way, and some lovely scenic B road detours - I'll sort out something with you by PM.

Modern Squiers have a fairly shallow C profile and they are readily available. Whereabouts in the Dales are you? I might be able to swing a day out and bring some guitars for you to try.