Stub Mandrel

Their guild-style semi is really nice looking.

I used a 16" skin for a 10" ring, it was only a couple of quid extra. Made it easy to pull tight. Got it way tighter than the old banjo mandolin I did about 40 years ago!

I'm definitely out. I've dropped a fortune on a boutique bass. OK, actually it's a dirt cheap Kay Gremlin the owner wants to go to a loving home... it can be mates with my Kay Tulip.

Cheap but good looking basses from gear4music. Nothing new about the configuration but nice new shapes. Short scale 30". Has anyone actually seen one in the flesh. About £200 a pop, could be worth upgrading?

If it was me... Sherwood Green, but follow path your own, must you.

I assume the mistake is it slides up to E where in the rest of the song it's F?

Time is Tight. Easy enough except the riff isn't quite what I thought it was and I keep reverting.

I was struck by the plagiarism accusations... the modern slavery element became apparent later.

I would guess you want cardioid (to get the full sound including any fingerboard slapping and in case they move around a bit), not supercardioid unless they are rooted to the spot or the mic can be well back (unlikely). So the SM58 Beta would be out. Other than that, I don't know enough to help. A vanilla SM58 would do it well enough even if there are better options.

Aren't they just inversions of each other?

We dropped it because the singer felt he couldn't nail the phrasing. In my view, when it's like that, it means it's improvisational and the singer can do what he bloody well likes... it's what I do with basslines full of random noodles!

I'll try just out of curiosity. String ageing is fascinating. Anyone who has rattled inside a piano will know ancient, dust encrusted strings csn still sound harmonically rich. The strings we use are not going beyond their elastic limits and metal fatigue ought not to be an issue. Is it really the chemicals or just dirt from our skin that is changing the tone? The effects of string coatings suggest it may be.

Interesting. Does this mean slap players' strings last longer? 🙂 Curiously enough, I've put two sets of strings in the dishwasher for a few days as an experiment, I only switched it on about an hour ago. Edit: I should add that in the earlier days, I used to boil strings up with Ariel clothes washing powder in a saucepan. These days I generally have a few packs in reserve, but it pains me to see virtually immaculate strings go in the recycling, so most of my cases have a used set in 'just in case' and if they can be rejuvenated, all the better.

Yes. This seems to be more iniquitous, and the way the band operates sounds unconventional at best.

And it's rocking the folk world too: Accusations from stealing arrangements to modern slavery are hurtling around facebook.

I knew someone would post that the moment I typed it.

I shall sleep more soundly tonight, knowing that!

I was in a band with a guy who used to sight read drums and play with orchestras, even played for the BBC. He was a hard task master, would play challenging rhythms on the bass drum for me to play, and 'it's straight eights on the original' didn't wash. He left when it was obvious the (six-piece) band wasn't really bothered about gigging, and having already made up my mind that if he went, I would, I followed. I was flattered when he asked me to join another project, but I was way too busy.

If my sound is dull or flat the first thing I do is make sure my tweeter is switched on.

This freaked me out so I had to google it. I found this: https://forum.bassbuzz.com/t/rickenbacker-truss-rods-myths-and-realities-revealed/29854 It give a detailed explanation (and also hints that more modern rics may work differently). There are hints that you might strip the truss rod threads or cause the fretboard to pop off, and that you will probably end up with more relief than you want because the process is so scary: What can I say? Good luck, and video the process, so if it goes wrong at least you can get a viral video on Tiktok.

The Lowthers came up as what seem to be 'state of the art' for hifi horns when I tried to find my original source, which seems to have been lost in history :-( Absolutely, they exemplify the original meaning of PA - clear speech under difficult outdoor conditions. Apparently the chap who used them (up until his untimely death) found they carried much better and dealt with light winds a lot better than modern 'boxes'.

I've been fast and loose based on my memories of books read in my teens/twenties and written in the seventies. I think my wires got crossed between some of the different case studies. I am pretty sure I am right about a blind test with an audience where they matched a 10W output to the volume of a small orchestra. Looking around, Lowther do 5 and 8-inch drivers for enclosures that cost about the same as a luxury car that claim 35Hz... Horns can be crazy things... these PA horns were my grandfather's, then father's, and were still being hired out (with new drivers) for equestrian events a couple of years ago, because they sounded far better than modern speakers in that application. The photos would be early/mid-1950s.