Aidan63

Not all UPS drivers work directly for UPS and drive the brown vans, many are working for sub-contracters and are driving unmarked white vans, as per the general race to the bottom model that prevails in the parcel business. UPS closed the UK customer support team and calls are now handled in the first instance abroad, my guess is in the Phillipines. They now play by the usual customer support play book, sympathise, apologise but do not take ownership and do not do anything proactive to help; even if you get through to UK customer support (or what looks like UK customer support) by email they do diddly squat to help until you lodge a claim then it goes into the investigation stream, which can take ages and rarely results in a positive outcome. Just been through this with a package to Holland that was held up for 2 weeks unnecessarily. They have instead invested in mechanical handling and AI solutions to replace humans as they all are doing, rather than retaining staff and paying well and charging accordingly, increased margins, little cost implication to end user and a lot less satisfaction for the 0.1% of instances where it doesn't work as designed. Efficiency : )

Surely there are ways of making 'Gold-Foil' style pickups that are robust whilst looking nice, just using some gold foil on paper seems, well, a bit cheap, after all they will get sprayed with skin and sweat and pick flakes in the course of their life. Leo added the plastic covers to the P pickup ver. 2.0 to help them from premature degradation so maybe gold 'chromed' plastic would be a more suitable capping for such a pickup ? A case of style over substance me thinks

Have you tried your less than satisfactory pickups at different heights or with different strings, these things can make a difference too Manufacturers of instruments do R&D playing around with all the variables to arrive at a suitable compromise, the more high end companies hopefully don't factor cost into the mix too much but as we know there are plenty of budget instruments that sound just fine so there are ways of adjusting the variables (wire, magnet types, winding, pole pieces etc...) to arrive at reasonable sound and output when used with any particular mix of wood, build method, bridge, nut and strings mix Aftermarket pickups are always advertised as better, louder, clearer, vintage, modern etc...but don't take into account the actual instrument they will be used with and how that will be set up, so are a bit of a lottery and why perhaps so many of them get sold on after being in fact no 'better' than the manufacturuers' fitted ones despite being so much (and so much £) 'better'er

There were a few acoustic guitars that had bolt on necks in the past, I'm sure Ted Woodford showed one in his weekly youtube videos in the last year Fender did some in the 60s list

in what way less than ideal, in your opinion ?

Isn't the melody a rip off/sample of something from the 80s in the first place

Are you using strings designed for tuning down ? I think they exist for bass, I know they do for guitars

definitely depends on the roller and how many and how thick the coats are, with a smooth foam roller slightly thinned and not overworked you could get a finish a bit like the US MM Subs

NorthWest guitars sell Hosco files, but they aren't cheap, but they are good, like everything though about 20-30% more expensive now than a couple of years ago; they do sell on amazon and ebay too but often the stuff you want is only on their website and they don't price match themselves on other platforms; prebrexit the Spanish and Portuguese sites were a useful alternative to StewMac too There are several independent luthiers tool suppliers who used to trade on Ebay and on their own sites, I bought some stuff from ChrisAlsop, nice files and the like

I prefer the black, it appears to makes the purple stand out more in the pic, but that may just be a variation in the exposure if the metering was centred mostly on the pickguard hence the fabric and body of bass are slightly more exposed in the pic with the black guard and underexposed with the white one

Irish customs seem to have chilled out a lot in the last 12 months, doubt they are bothered about collecting a bit of vat on individual used goods, they probably realised being heavy handed was slowing traffic clearing the ports and airports, wasting staff time and reducing visitors, better to have visitors paying however many euros a pint of the black stuff is now than not. Mind they are on the ball for VAT scamming men in vans and throw the book at them and heaven help you if you run foul of the revenue in any meaningful way, they are way more powerful than the police over there. Charging vat on used goods is wrong, and costs so much work and grief, and quite probably doesn't pay for itself, I would love to see the figures, but the collection fees being charged by the shipping companies will be making for a nice bonus for the top management I bet. It would be really interesting to go over the books of the parcel companies and work out the full impact on revenue and costs, and work out the cost of the delays, and the difference it's making to the balance of payments and gdp, a nice bit of forensic accounting for someone at the Treasury's Phd no doubt.

DHL won't talk to you seriously as you didn't order their services, it is up to the parcel sender to deal with DHL, if they booked delivery through a 3rd party like parcel2go then they have to raise the issue with them and they deal with DHL. But it is a nightmare getting any sort of service from any courier company now, customer service is just script based, the parcel was delivered, noone takes any responsibilty and lying to the customer is acceptable practice for all of them now it seems. You could just threaten the parts vendor with a small claim and see if that stirs them at all

Crimson guitars might be interested ? Especially if they can get some YT hits out of it, might be worth contacting Ben direct

shame that Ashdown don't look on here and pick up the feedback or engage in some market research with some of the market

Recent video on SBL showed a lot of tones from the famous Wal he's just laid out for, that is some tone circuit variety in the Wal, if you can get anywhere close that's amazing, but it wasn't clear to me what was the bass and what was the amazing tone stack

In had the same problem with some UK made aftermarket pickups I bought, rather than mod the pickguard I pried the covers off the pickups and bought some standard sized replacements, they were well attached with hot melt glue - these big ear pickup covers appear every so often from China and I guess the pickup winders don't notice

NHS has been heading that way for along time, there are queues of american style insurers want a piece of this market; staff deserting the nhs in droves and locum costs through agencies further impacting ability to deliver so further exacerbating the cycle down to destruction point next step will be fees for GP appointments as only way to retain GPs, on a pay first and means tested claim back after basis

CV mustang can be quite heavy as dense nato used for body, at least in my case Shame the HB isn't 41mm nut width I don't find the CV slab body at all problematic, but I always use a strap and am personally well rounded, ymmv nice colours from HB I wish the mustang control plate was easier to obtain and available in other finishes, but I guess it shows there isn't much demand for self builds of this type of instrument, easier for most people to use one of the tele guitar or bass control plates for a self build and rout accordingly

what brand and model tank is it ? Been watching psionicaudio a bit on YT and many tanks in amps that come in to him are similarly failed, polarity does matter as can cause a hum issue especially in some valve amps; most of current tanks are pretty poorly built iho; he tends to fit new but even the better new tanks aren't that good; there are specialists (at least in the states) who repair them and that's where he sends vintage tanks that sound good

What if everyone goes on strike ? okay it's not actually answering the question but....