Obrienp

@Dan Dare it fits nicely in the pocket of a gig bag, so handy as a spare amp for gigs, or just for the extra portability. I agree, if you use the gig bag it comes with, why not go for a bit more and use something like an MB LM III, GK 500, etc and get a lot more headroom. I do think the ELF sounds better out of the box than a Warwick Gnome, or TCE BAM 200 but play with the EQ of those two and you get pretty close for less money.

Hmm, I’ll have to think about it. Trailing leads bother me though. Perhaps I can persuade a bandmate to get it 😀.

OK, would any of the following be a fail? a) Cover for my guitar amp, as I have to take it out of the house these days; b) Stage box/snake as the band has grown in size and requires more DIs and mics. Also I made a rookie mistake when buying my current stage box and didn’t think about returns. We now need at least 4 returns. None of the above are bass gear…….

Friends in high places made a deal for them?

Do you not count pension funds invested in the markets as contributing to the economy? Some of us with SIPPs are investing directly. It is only the State and some public sector pensions that are funded by a giant pyramid scheme falling to the tax payer. Pension income isn’t exempt from tax: even the state pension now attracts some tax due to the freezing of personal allowances. Anything I draw down from my pension fund (after taking the lump sum) is liable to income tax at the same rate as everyone else. Personal pension funds are now liable for Inheritance Tax @40%, even if the tax relief received on the pension contributions to the fund was only 20%.

I think it is the same bridge as used standard on Maruszczyk basses. I hated it immediately on my Elwood, partly because I wanted to experiment with strings and action. I found it really difficult to move the bridge saddles accurately with the strings in place to get the intonation right. I then spent ages trying to find a direct replacement with the four hole retaining screws (why don’t they go for standard Fender style 5 hole!?). I eventually found a Gotoh bridge with reasonable mass, plus screw and spring intonation adjustment. It also has quick load for the ball ends, which is an added bonus. It wasn’t cheap though for what it is: it’s not really in the Babicz league but nearly the same money. I bought the Elwood used. If I ever spec a Maruszczyk on the configurator (unlikely), I would definitely go for a non-standard bridge. However, if you are lucky enough to get the intonation and saddle height absolutely right, then the standard model is probably more stable in the long run than the conventional screw and spring intonation adjustment.

A friend got hold of a Lionel used last year. He loves it but he changed the pickup set within a few weeks. He said it just didn’t sound like a P. He hasn’t complained about the bridge but he had it set up by our local luthier when the pick up was changed, so perhaps he hasn’t wrestled with it yet.

I must remind myself not to accede to every request from a band mate to play a freebie. Yesterday evening it was a fund raising for a community hall in a very bijoux local town with a large private school. It was billed as a Spring Spectacular and we were the last act. There were 10 acts on before us, with an opportunity for us to put our gear on the stage but not sound check during a 20 minute break. Anyway we sat through various acts singing along to backing tracks with the odd guitar player, mostly flat (excruciating) but with the exception of a couple of teenage girl soloists, who could go far with some coaching; a choir (some good moments); couple of acoustic duos (one of which involved our lead guitarist, so good) and a “comedy” act involving some of the volunteers dressing up and miming to three Shawaddywaddy tracks: the joke wore very thin after the first song. All of this to rapturous applause from the audience. At the point when we were about to go on ( one and a quarter hours after originally scheduled), one of the organisers (and perpetrator of a great deal of flat vocals) announced that it was the end of the main show and over to us! Oh thanks mate! The audience quickly reduced from around 150, to around 12 by the time we had tuned up! We got in about 6 truncated numbers before noise had to stop at 11pm. This having sat there for three and a half hours, being as encouraging as possible to the other acts (and some were a bit grim). I thought some of them could have shown a bit of solidarity, including the one we lent some gear to but obviously it was past their bed time. We were probably pretty torturous too, as our on stage sound was dreadful, due to lack of a sound check and no PA support. My bass sound was heavily and inappropriately distorted, for some reason I couldn’t work out but that can be the drawback of FRFR cabs (LFSys in my case), garbage in/garbage out to pinch an old computing adage. The vocalists couldn’t hear themselves, despite a couple of monitors. Anyway the remnants of the audience seemed to enjoy it and were dancing away. I can only assume they had over-indulged by that stage in the evening. Best forgotten now, I think! Note to self, be very wary of any further freebies!

Ah, missed that bit at the start. I was mightily impressed with your musical track record. I am sure your actual band(s) are equally impressive. Still, I think my basic point is still valid. Democracies tolerate opposing views…..

@Leonard Smalls it looks like your post got truncated. A bit worrying if reason 2 was that you had made unfavourable comments about the current US President. If the various US agencies that intrude on our privacy, are getting alarmed about posts of this nature on foreign forums, I think they need to look again at their algorithms. Surely there is a huge gap between disagreeing with policy, or even character and actively undermining the interests of the USA, or posing a physical threat. Democracies tolerate opposing views. At least you found some humanity in the system, in the form of officer Jones.

Yes. He won’t get in a fight he knows he will lose. The orange idiot gave away his cards (to use the metaphor he employed against Zelenskyy) before negotiations started. The rest of us need to get them properly tooled up, none of this half-arsed stuff we have all being doing up to now and let them use it how they want. Perhaps that will encourage Vladimir to drop his ridiculous demands.

Sorry mate! It’s a memory thing 🥴. I always used to be embarrassed about my home country’s love of Country music, especially having moved to the UK young and being brought up here. It was decidedly uncool in the early 70s, with some notable exceptions (Flying Burrito Brothers, Albert Lee, etc). As I have aged, it has grown on me and I appreciate the skill levels of many country musicians. Apparently, country is having a huge surge in popularity over here in the UK now (not sure how they gauge that). BTW, I think Martin would win a shoot out with Maton and Cole Clark.

I think there was a bit of a discussion about this several pages back. There is a guy who works for Martin on the forum (apologies age makes my memory poor, so can’t remember his handle). He says everyone there is very anti-Trump and what he is up to. Martin is still a family owned firm of course and doesn’t sound like one that should suffer a boycott. Somehow I feel Fender and Gibson are much more corporate, so likely to sit on the fence, if not actively currying favour from the orange idiot. That said, Fender in particular, could suffer from Trump putting tariffs on Mexican and Chinese produced goods. Personally, I could survive without ever buying any more of either company’s products, so would not feel any pain from boycotting them. There are plenty of FLOs and GLOs around from non-US manufacturers, some of which are a lot better than the originals (Maruszczyk for instance). Other people will have different views, of course and I wouldn’t want to punish them, if they are actively opposing Trump.

I can’t imagine that there will be many countries rushing to give money to the biggest economy in the world, or are you implying that it will have dropped down the rankings dramatically? The trouble is most of the other major economies are not in great shape as it is and if the USA fails, it will drag down most of the developed world with it. You might be looking to the BRICS nations and they don’t have a lot of love for the USA, except of course the Russian Federation but their economy isn’t is doing too well either at the moment.

That H-B 6 looks good for the money! Plus it has a distinct advantage over the Squier/Fender offerings in not having a tremolo bridge.