JoeEvans

I really like my TE Elf 1x10 combo. Great on its own for rehearsal or small gig, run DI from the back into PA for bigger gig to maintain a familiar tone. I might get a 1x10 cab to make a mini stack at some point but might not bother, bigger gigs always have good PAs these days...

I've been doing that with bikes for decades - I've had one bike that's been my favourite since 1993, except only the rear derailleur is left from the original bike, and I bought that in about 1997 to replace the original... But it's definitely still the same bike in its inner essence.

I would always upgrade the instrument first - you get so much more pleasure and satisfaction from playing a good instrument. Buy secondhand, perhaps on here, and you should be able to sell it on for pretty much what you paid sometime down the line. £300 should get you something good enough to gig with. You could then sell both old bass and amp, and buy a slightly better secondhand amp.

I've got the Elf 10" combo which I love. I'm currently planning a louder band and looking forward to adding a TE 1x10 speaker to make a cute TE mini stack. I was a huge Trace Elliot fan back in the 90s and it's nice to see the brand doing well. It's also mildly ironically amusing to see the brand doing well with tiny, lightweight amps and cabs...

How about adding an Elf 1x10 combo? Then you can do small gigs with just the combo, medium gigs with the head and cab, bigger gigs with both, and huge gigs using just the Elf amp as a preamp into the PA?

I think that will all work fine, along with the excellent advice above. You might also benefit from a couple of little monitors in your set-up, to allow band members to get a slightly different mix in different parts of the room, and to help manage mic feedback. The Thomann 'The Box' ones are great value.

On my Tokai, the neck is superb, the hardware is functional and the original electronics were crap - the Bartolinis were a huge improvement, but the passive tone control doesn't do much. So you might also need to contemplate doing something about that.

I have an 80s Tokai jazz which I put Bartolinis in many years ago and it sounds great. But it's fretless with flats on so a slightly different thing...

Turmeric is a well-proven anti-inflammatory which is also cheap and free of side-effects. A teaspoon a day in a smoothie would be worth a try although obviously might turn out not to help in any one particular case...

Some older albums in their original form still sound better to me in terms of production than almost anything since. I'm not a huge metal fan but AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' sounds better than any guitar rock album I can think of, for example. But there are plenty of other much-loved albums that sound horrible to me and I can't imagine how anyone approved the final mixes.

Yes - as I say, it's a totally OTT solution...

I still like the idea of a bass with a rechargeable battery and a USB C socket on the back to charge it. Or just an XLR out and phantom power. Both totally OTT as solutions but for some reason I'm drawn to an easy external power source.

Bass players: I'd never take my favourite bass out to a gig, it might get a tiny scratch on it and that would be really upsetting. Also bass players: just taking this one out the back to go at it with a rusty bike chain and an angle grinder for a lovely authentic-looking relic finish.

Although you wouldn't want a little bit of graphite to snap off the tip of the pencil and find a home somewhere in the plug socket, perhaps making a little bridge between two shiny copper components...

I really like small-bodied headless basses. I had an Ibanez Axstar for a while which sounded superb but in the end I couldn't get on with the narrow string spacing. Then I bought an ACG Border Reiver which has more by way of body, although it's still small compared to a normal bass, and that's just amazing, as you would expect. But I still quite fancy a true cricket bat, and the Hohners do look good... Part of the pleasure of the ACG is that it feels heavy for its size, but because it's small bodied, medium scale and headless, it's actually very light. So you get a bass that feels satisfying solid, but also light on the shoulder, at the same time.

I think for me the 'best' instrument - the one I value the most - is always going to be the one I most enjoy playing out with, so by definition I always gig with my best instrument!

Yes, but you might want to offer something over and above your basic statutory responsibilities.

I would write a short, clear returns policy, and when you sell a bass, give a printed copy to the buyer and briefly talk them through it. That way everyone knows where they stand.

I took the train from Manchester to Lancaster with a 4x12 cab once.

I did try Harry Potter - everyone used to love the sound of the amp like that, but then it started making these weird tweets, which really irritated some people.

I prop mine up on a 1950's edition of Proust's 'Au Recherche du Temps Perdu' in the original French. Great for that wistfully elegiac P bass tone that so many of us strive for.

Re electric bikes - yes, what isn't always immediately obvious is that they let you choose how much effort to put in, and you can still put in just as much effort as on a non-electric bike, only you go farther and faster. My observation is that people tend to use them for a wide range of different reasons - to shift a heavier load than you could without (especially a load of kids and their bags etc); to do a longer commute than you'd fancy on a non-electric; to keep on cycling when age, injury or progressive disease might otherwise have stopped you; etc. I think they're really helpful for people to get a bit more exercise and have a bit more fun in daily life. (Total thread derailment but I read the recent reports about the political desire to clamp down on illegal electric bikes for safety reasons, and the desire to make companies like Deliveroo to employ their delivery riders instead of forcing them to work self-employed. It would be great if regulation could instead force delivery companies to provide riders with decent electric scooters rather than leaving them to source their own ramshackle bodge-jobs.) I recently got another bike (non-electric) to use as a round-town cargo-carrier, with front and rear racks, hub gears and so on. I'm now getting a useful amount of extra exercise just in the course of a normal week, because I'll jump on the bike to nip down to Lidl or wherever and grab some shopping rather than driving.