rwillett

Hopefully it was a really old one, therefore worthless, and not a nice new one...

Wise words indeed....

The Strat is a lovely guitar, it's a MIJ 87 which appears to be a 62 reissue, thee bolt neck etc. I'm not that up on these things TBH but it's lovely to play, has EMG active pickups, the vibrato is locked with a block of wood and at one time in its life was routed for a humbucker at the bridge. Im trying to write songs, so I use the Strat, my 3d printed headless bass and a macbook. It's hard work but it's very different to my day job so it's a good way to unwind.

I got singing lessons from t'other half. Could be a subtle (or not so subtle) hint. Never has a singing lesson in my life. I used to sing solos when I was younger in primary school and then I grew up or something like that<cough> and can now strip creosote off fences at 10m. Fish wives and RSMs aren't in it.

I printed off four cylinder puzzles for Xmas and put various Xmas presents in. I have managed to keep four people amused for two hours as they have had to crack their locks. I'm sure that constantly saying "Do you need any help?" was well received by one and all.

That's my Strat but I don't recall it looking that big 🙄

There is no stage at the Craven Heifer, we all play in one corner. There is a PA provided by the organiser, everybody uses that single PA including vocalist. No space for your own amps but the BassChat 8" might just fit. PA speaker on a table. The drummer has a toy drum set, that's not a joke, it really is a kids set with a bass, a tom and a cymbal. Thats all that fits so she brings that. She has a Led Zep sized drum kit as well but zero chance of it fitting. I take a headless as less chance of it hitting anyone. I may take the Ibanez Mikro next time as that's even smaller. If anybody moves, it's like The Shadows as we all have to move in sync. We have space for two mikes and possible two music stands so the bass player looks over the shoulder of the guitarist or singer.

Where we play, each artiste has three songs. They are free to come back round at the end of the list. That makes the assumption that they aren't doing Freebird, Bohemian Rhapsody and Moby Dick (live version). This is across a few open mike clubs.

@tauzero is pretty much spot on for the ones I've done.

I've just had flashbacks after watching this. Some songs and videos should have been buried and forgotten a long time ago. That dance with the blokes takes me back to the village hall in Tupton and watching older kids doing it. It looked shite then and hasn't got any better now. Oddly enough Ballroom Blitz isn't one of the songs to be buried and forgotten about (at least to me).

I wouldn't quite go that far about the advertising TBH. It's a bit annoying and it appears on my laptop but not on the mobile. If it was a case of you sorting out medical issues vs advertising, it's 100% clear what you should do. And no it's not the advertising just to be clear 🙄

I have a number of good and bad buys. I have to say (at the risk of being expelled, excommunicated and otherwise labelled as a heretic) that the purchase of an 87 MIJ Strat from here, was one of my best buys of the year for me. Its a dammed fine guitar that just begs to be played. It's no showroom queen and it's all the better for it. It's great for songwriting so I actually play the bass more as well. A songwriting course in Kendal. I learnt so much from Ann Marie I want to do it again. Worst purchases Some crappy Fender guitar cables. Buy a decent cable from @Chienmortbb and just have done with it. The MS1-Vave Bluetooth adapter. Junk. Any purchase that I thought would short circuit me having to learn how to play bass guitar properly. I'm still learning and I expect to keep learning until the day I stop and there's nothing wrong with that. Am looking for a decent acoustic for next year and a decent precision to see what all the fuss is about. I also wouldn't mind a es355 if one fell in my lap. Rob

Not the NW? I feel offended.. 😩 Would have to agree with @neepheid here. We don't have that many Bass Bashes and to have two on the same day seems very unfortunate. Rob

Or better still none at all...

I love "Down By The Jetty". I had no idea it was done in mono after all these years. Shows how much I know. Wonderful album.

I've cut the grill to size and used Gorilla tape on the outside of the frame just to keep it clean tidy. I've printed some riser blocks for the outside of the grill that fit in the corners of the cabinet. The ones in the picture are far too large, but they're to check things out and I'll print some better ones shortly. These will be glued to the front of the baffle (NoNails) and will have a M3 nut embedded in them. The hole for the nut is aligned to the holes in the grille. On top of the riser block will be some adhesive rubber, 1mm thick), to stop vibrations. More riser blocks may be needed, but the principle is set now. I have the "advantage" of not gigging at the moment, as there's only me and the drummer, so little chance or marauding fans rushing the stage sadly. It's very, very likely that I'll design some M3 handbolts to screw into the riser block. These will probably have the felt washers that are on the guitar strap buttons to further reduce vibration (or may not). I designed a lot of hand bolts for astrophotography, you can check them out here (https://starclamps.com/), these are all parameterised so I have lots of options. I also have some nice brass ones somewhere which might look nice. The red corner pieces have been redesigned so that they don't protrude as far into the baffle area as before, to give the grill some some space. The hand bolts should allow the grille to be taken off easily, Once I've painted the baffle board matt black, most of the riser elements will simply disappear, well that's the idea. Lets see how it works. but I'm off from tomorrow to London so nothing will be progressing. Have a good Xmas all Rob

Sorry to hear about your partner. That's a real pain just before Xmas. Pass on our best wishes for a speedy recovery I have no idea what this thread all about, but it's really interesting. Rob

Has anybody ever managed to get the M-Vave Chocolate footswitch to connect to a Mod Dwarf using the MS1 wireless/Bluetooth USB adapter please? One of my Xmas projects was to get this working. I can get the foot switch to work if I use a USB cable, but I brought the MS1 adaptor as this thread suggested it would work https://forum.mod.audio/t/midi-chocolate-controller-with-the-mod-dwarf-an-introduction/7003 It turns out that in 225 posts in the above thread, not a single one talks with any detail about how they connected using the MS1. Also searching the internet gives zero information. Connect to a PC or Mac, yes, but not to the Dwarf. Any help or advice welcome Rob

I'm probably going to try to put a small 3d printed block under each corner with quite a strong magnet hidden away. Thats the lime green bit below. The magnet is 0.5mm under the surface of the plastic and so can't be seen. It will have a plug in the back of it and it *may* have some self adhesive foam under that to avoid rattling, I didn't think of the foam so thanks for that. I will also add some foam on the top of the mount between the plastic block and the grille as you suggested. Good ideas those. The block will be welded to the corner piece (thats the purple bit). Its welded, not glued as the "glue" melts the plastic together and forms a stronger bond than the plastic itself. Might be superglue, might be Floplast. if this doesn;t work, then the recesses battern is plan B Thanks Rob

I found a broken paving slab in the back garden and used that. Lo and behold, 15 mins later, it looks a lot better. Lesson here is don't use a softwood base (cut bad puns) to hammer against. Masked the area off and cut it with a Dremel and new cutting discs and the cutting is almost done. I forgot to take into account the rubber edges which hide the raw metal so it's possibly one row of holes too large in each direction. The blue tape is just to hold things together as the rubber edge really wants to curl off I'm still thinking about how to fix it to the speaker cab OR to the red corner pieces. Magnets might be the answer here. I have a lot of the strong ones and a simple addition to the red corner pieces might work well. A little bit of velcro through a few holes would allow it to be pulled off easily. With a black baffle board, it might look quite good for me. Rob

That's exactly what I am doing. I'm working 2-3cm from outside edge, carefully going round, trying to keep the rubber mallet full face onto the metal. Every so often, I turn the grille over so it's being bashed from both sides. I've done over an hour on it and it is slightly better, but if I look at it edge on, I can see where the bends were put in 2-3cm from the edge, its not as bad as it started with. I'm bashing against softwood and I wonder if that's the problem. I'm going to try and find something different to hit against, possible a paving slab or something, cover the slab with material. I can't use plywood and drive the car over it, as I've cut it up for speakers Rob

@Phil Starr How many days did you spend doing this please? I'm using a rubber hammer (tent posts) and it's very, very slow. Actually it's even slower than that, I think that tectonic plate movement is quicker, I actually noticed species evolving around me as I was doing this. I'm trying to keep the hammer face flat, it is on a wooden surface as I don't have a metal surface close to hand (or even to hand at all). Do I need a different "soft faced hammer". There seems to be loads of Amazon, but not sure what I'm actually looking for. Do I need a different work surface? I've also tried compressed the grille between two pieces of wood and that didn't make a lot of difference. The general concaveness has mostly gone, but it doesn't look very flat to me at all. As it's now raining, I'm focussing on wrapping Xmas pressies. All advice welcomed Thanks Rob

I hadn't noticed the Lego theme. The dimples on the top are for the second Basschat speaker. So I could run them together for a little more volume. I suspect that I wouldn't actually put them on top of each other but the option is there just in case. Now that I've seen that I might try and make the lego theme a little stronger 😊not sure how but I'll ponder on it.

No, they are spring loaded and lay flat quite well.

Finally put all the bits together (minus the top coat) and plugged it all in. By some miracle, the dammed thing works, not only does it work, but it sounds really good and it's really loud, at least in my dining room The corners are held on with double sided tape as they are supposed to come off later The rest of it is screwed together properly. The Warwick is held on by my "patent pending" mounting system. As can be seen, my "roadie", the CFO, has demonstrated that the Warwick is indeed securely held. I actually tried it in all orientations and it's rock solid. It can also be mounted on the back, but those rails aren't on the cabinet yet. No fears whatsoever it's going to fall off at all. I plugged a Strat in first and it sounds fine, I'm sure a purist might argue it's not a full range speaker (and it's not), but it sounded fine to me. Next up was my headless bass and that sounded fine as well. I did wind the volume up a little bit then and it's bloody loud. No way could I play this at any volume in a small room. I'd certainly gig with both bass and guitar with this. At small volumes it's also fine. The Warwick needs to be setup for guitar or bass with the tone controls. but I have to say the speaker sounds really good. Far better than the Ampeg Rocket 108 to be honest, though it's got significantly more invested into it than the practise amp has. The little rack to the side is a home made one with a Behringher Centaur overdrive, a Mooer compressor and a EHX tuner. The overdrive is not for the bass though. I sill need to get the Armacab on it but not this side of Xmas now Now to build the second one for a little more volume. Rob