rwillett

Brought a small Laney amp from Kim. Absolute pleasure to work with. Less than zero issues as he went well beyond what I would have hoped and expected from him. A true gent and the next time I'm New Cross way I'll happily buy him a coffee.

Mmmm....

Is there a raffle or is it swap shop or something else? Happy to bring something down to be raffled off. I suppose a stroppy nineteen year old is off-limits? Two smelly and feral cats? A dodgy Scotsman? All suggestions welcomed. Thanks Rob

I'll get there. The aim is to make a bass or guitar that looks and plays like a decent guitar. As you say, 3d printing is great for some things, it does allow designs like this, that you can't easily do with wood. They also sound pretty good. I'm sure a Fender aficionado would complain its not as good as their 62 or 72 or 82 Jazz but they have other advantages. left handed is easy, changes to accommodate different sizes is fairly easy. The metal work is not too bad now, it's about 90 mins depending on how much I have to cut through. The end build is strong, I was a little surprised that joining bits together works so well, so that's an issue resolved. The next one is the finish, and thats where its been a bit hard. Given some of the chemicals I've brought, I'm fully expecting a visit from the boys in blue asking whats going on I've yet to buy 2.5 tonnes of ammonium nitrate though so that might work in my favour. Thanks Rob

This is my normal modus operandi. Perhaps I'm ill and have been for some time (like 40+ years).

And it's all gone wrong. 😩 The primary aim of this build was to get a better finish on the body. As its 3d printed you get little layer lines and large join lines. The layer lines are caused by building the body up in layers between 0.1mm and 0.2mm high. The thinner the line, the longer it takes. Currently all the bits take around 36 hours to print. As nobody makes a large enough decent printer to do a bass body in a single pass, it has to be made in sections and joined. If anybody thinks RatRig does one, they don't. Had a number of discussions with them and they were not hopeful. So the intention of this build was to focus on finishing quality. I've been experimenting with various finishes and one that I thought might work hasn't really and so the body I made looks bad so back to the drawing board. I'll use the opportunity to try out a different build method so that if things do go wrong, I won't lose the whole body next time. One step forward, half a step back. Rob

I'd buy that... Wonder how much it costs to run. Glow plugs are a bit small so should be cheap

I wouldn't feel right if anybody else took the financial risk of buying them, so I'm happy to lead and buy the first 50 or so. Once we've lowered the price, by all means lean in. Rob

One solution to this would be to sell your older Fenders at a very, very low price to drive the prices down to counteract the cartel pushing them up. As a service to this community, I'm very happy to buy them at this low price. Feel free to contact me. Rob

Thats fine.

David Apologies I didn't send this. Wrote it but didn't press the button That's very kind of you. We'll make it fit one way or a other. Rob

I now have five days to complete the bass, I've had to go to London twice in the last seven days so progress was limited. Today's activity is to file the aluminium backbone and floor to fit. I've cut it approximately down to around 2-3mm too big and now ill use the finger grinder and a file to make it better. The red parts below are all sacrificial and to make sure it all fits. All the drilling (bar four countersunk holes for the neck bolts on the bottom) and tapping is done. The top aluminium still has it's protective cover on. Once shaped, I'll polish it to an inch (or 25.4mm) of its life. Body sides are more or less done but need some filling, sanding and then priming, sanding, priming, sanding, painting, more painting, yet more painting and then quick drying lacquer. That might be tight Rob

Brought a couple of cables. No issues, look great, looking forward to now sounding and playing like Jaco.... Rob

The Pirate Midi Polar Max is based on this open source project https://github.com/Builty/TonexOneController/tree/main I thought I'd seen something similar to this. 10% of sales go to the person who manages the code, which is good. If you wanted to save money, you could (if you were so inclined): Buy this https://github.com/Builty/TonexOneController/blob/main/HardwarePlatform_Waveshare4.3B.md Buy 2-16 pedal switches plus this board https://www.sparkfun.com/sparkfun-16-output-i-o-expander-breakout-sx1509.html Buy this for Midi https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Reciprocal-Hardware-Automatic-Converter/dp/B082Y19KV9 Build yourself a case Download the firmware and test it works though I'm not sure how much money you'd save TBH as all of this takes time and I would value my time at more than it costs to build this, but it's neat and you can still plug in extra pedal switches such as the Chocolate. I did have one question for any Chocolate owners, I didn't think that the Chocolate supported switching through pressing C & D together. I will have to look again and perhaps there is a firmware upgrade. Rob

I have no issues with companies doing business, but when they try to extract every last penny from you, it starts to grate. A bit like Ryan Air when they floated the idea of charging £1 to use the toilets, or BMW (was it BMW?) now building cars with heated seats in to all their cars but you pay for them on a monthly subscription. BMW's view is that you can always choose if you want heated seats and not pay for them if not, but the cost of making the car is already incurred, they are now trying to to extract out a monthly or annual charge for a heated seat. So I could have brought the car outright, but still paying five years later to have a warm bum. Thankfully, most car companies have little idea of real security and somebody will hack into the system and charge you a £100 for a lifetime of warm buttocks. Sometimes it's a fine line between what is acceptable to me and not, other people will have their own views. Rob

Thats the business model for IK Media. Always find a way to get consumers to pay more and more.

It's a tough crowd here.

Thank you. Hangs head in embarrassment and quietly shuffles off to the corner.

What's a CAR please?

Yep, I went through the same rigmarole on my Mac for a free UA plugin (minus the j: drive) and thought, nah!, Sod it Don;t care if its free, this is too much hassle

I've not really seen them around so they never really register with me. I did look in the second hand section here and the last 5-6 seemed to have sold. Lots of people seem to like them so I'll now keep an eye out and see if they work for me. Thanks Rob

All this talk of G&L has made me want to go and look out to buy one. I once tried a bass but the neck was too thick so I didn't get on with it. Any suggestions for a wider neck and slightly thinner neck? I'm going to look around for a bass and possibly a guitar as well and see if they are any good. The headstock looks fairly normal to me. Can't see anything wrong with it, no better, no worse than others. Hate to see any guitar/bass company go out of business though. Rob

Yep, I've driven loads of Land Rovers as I used to work in a scrap yard and used to move stuff round in them and deliver stuff. Normal steering action was the steering wheel would move around 45 degrees from the vertical and you;d still be driving in a straight line. They were slow and used to break half shafts all the time, to such an extent, we used to carry them in the back. Now of course they are terribly desirable and go silly money, especially Series 1's (the headlights are inside the wheel arches). We'd have to set off now to get to Taunton by Oct 12th by my reckoning. Rob

It doesn;t feel balanced, I need 48 hours per day to do what I'd like to do

So started drilling this evening and broke my one and only 6mm metal drill, I had three holes to do and then I could do the M3 hole tapping. Somewhat annoying but two 6mm's on order for tomorrow delivery. That's half a day lost. My issue now is time, I'm in London Tues and Weds, jam session Thursday and I may have family things at the weekend. I'll probably have to put the guitar on hold but I'm worried that any paint finish will not be dry, so suspect I may have to just prime it and bring as-is. Ahhhh! This is annoying, work is definitely getting in the way of play now. Rob