Rosie C

Not quite a gig, but last night I performed two songs at our local folk club - the first time I've sung publicly since 'ambulance day' in December after I had trouble breathing, needed an ambulance, and lost my voice for a month. I think I sang well and it felt so good to be 'back' !

Likewise, sciatica stops me standing for a full set, so I have a K&M double bass stool, but sit on it for playing bass, mandocello and vocals. But having seen this... that looks so perfectly natural, I'll have to have a think about a speaker-cab-seat !

My WL-20 has dropped out a couple of times - once when I pressed the Bluetooth button on our PA to pair with my phone and WL20 stopped working. That's sown doubt in my mind, so I've not used it at a gig.

I had this strap made for my Lego bass. Annoyingly the maker isn't on Amazon anymore, otherwise there's another couple of designs I'd have them make up 😡

Just an Orange Crush 25B on a stand.

We could have done. I thought to leave it in place, connected as an experiment to see how a 6-string pickup under 7 strings worked. I also thought of putting a jazz bass pickup there. But there's going to be a new fingerboard to accommodate the new neck pickup so I thought we may as well remove it.

They do vary a lot. I've attached photos of my current two, and @Owen has likely seen my build thread for one built from an Gibson SG style guitar.

Mmm, that looks a sweet instrument. My first one will be much more of an economy model, but if it plays well I might look at getting another made to a higher spec.

Allianz & yes, some sort of blanket might meet their guidelines!

I have a "musician's" policy - it's about £6 a month, and covers my more expensive instruments, the PA, plus 3rd party cover in case someone's injured by my kit. It cover unattended in the car as long as things aren't visible - which in practice means not covered unless I had a van.

Our main hymn book has guitar chords underneath the piano score, but then a sneaky tick/cross symbol to show whether the chords match the piano - mostly it seem they don't, so as you say you have to busk it. We used to meet on Friday evenings for a proper rehearsal then a pint & a meal, but that sort of stopped, so now it's a quick 30 minutes before the service. Anyway, thanks to everyone who helped with "How Deep the Father's Love For Us" - depsite my worrying over it, all went well! I was going to take double bass but I don't play it as much as I'd like and there were a few too many G# and C# notes to catch me out. So I took my jazz bass guitar which worked well - particularly when our first song was "He Has Risen" with its 1980s style 8-note bass line.

Happy Easter! Yes, I worked on it yesterday and it is easier to forget about counting and just focus on the chord changes. Either way, too late now - rehearsal at 10am and service at 11am.

We're just back from seeing "Texas Fever Tick" - a mix of various Americana music. They made a great sound - both were singing, the guitarist was doing Carter family picking to give something approximating bass, while the banjo player was also playing kick drum.

Thanks! I think "playing on the chord changes" is going to be the key. The music I have to work with tends to be either piano/organ music where I work from the bottom line, or 4-part choral music where I play the bass part. It usually works fine, but not for this one!

I think I just had a bad arrangement - I've a better one now!

Thanks! That's really useful - enough for me to do something, along with Richard's video

Thanks Richard! That makes a lot more sense.

I'm playing at Easter Sunday morning service and looking forward to it. Looking through the hymns, we're doing "How Deep the Father's Love For Us". A little bit scary with its alternating 6/4 and 4/4 bars. Does anyone have experience of playing it?

Excellent on so many levels! How would one order a CD?

Number one for me has to be The Birdie Song. Something I thought was consigned to the 1980s, but since taking up piano accordion, it seems to be a go-to song for accordion players, and does nothing to enhance an instrument with a poor reputation already

Good point! The original plan was to drill more holes into the sort of "bent plate" bridge you get on Fender basses, which would have taken up space. But now we're looking at a solid aluminium bar to fit onto the existing bridge 'bolts' - so there'll be much the same space as now.

I dropped off the donor guitar today. We made some decisions too, including to not bother with a bridge pickup - make a nice big pick guard to cover the hole, and concentrate funds on a good neck pickup. As I usually play acoustic mandocellos, even the relatively mild neck pickup is a big change to my sound - so I'm not going to miss a bridge pickup. We looked at a Seymour Duncan 'rail' pickup, but there's a couple of cheaper options too. I was thinking of some sort of decal on the pick guard to divert the eye from the large gap that might otherwise look just like it's covering a missing pickup.

I tried several times to play 6-string guitar and just can't. I tried playing this SG today... still can't. But I bought a mandocello in December 2022 and went from zero to playing a gig in about 4 weeks... they just suit me somehow. I will definitely post a video when it's finished.

It's not quite day 1 of the project as I've spent a while doing research. I play mandocello in a renaissance-folk-rock band. I have two mandocellos - both acoustic with pickups, both really quite loud. I started off thinking an all-electric would be good for quiet practice, but the more I looked at donor electric guitars the more I thought I wanted to work on a more 'rock' sound. So today I bought this 6-string donor. In red, devil horns shaped body, in the Angus Young / Epiphone SG style. Rather than a full 8-string mandocello, I'm going with a single C string on the bottom, so the tuning will be C-GG-DD-AA. The plan: remove three tuners on the lower side of the head. Dowel the holes, make good & re-drill for four tuners - making 3 on the top, 4 on the bottom. make a new 7 groove nut New bridge & saddle - probably modified bass parts New larger pickguard to surround the new pickups TBD: Pickups. Hofner bass pickups and Telecaster neck bar pickups are on my list Edit to add: I fall in the "expectant customer" category. I'm doing as much of the work as I can, but the skilled work will be done by my local guitar technician.

That's what I did - I kept my favourite bass and a little practice amp. It gets played much more than I expected, even though I was having a break from bass!