Rosie C

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!

Three times I tried to learn 6-string guitar, and after getting RSI on the final attempt I had to admit it just wasn't meant to be. Then someone suggested mandocello and it just suited me from day one. I have a traditional one, and a "guitar-bodied" one. But hoping to commission a fully electric one this summer in a Hagstrom H / Epiphone SG style.

No bass in church today, but there were donkeys! Our church did a combined Palm Sunday procession with the local Methodist church, singing accompanied by drum and mandocello. The songs were "Make Way", "Hosanna" and "You Are the King of Glory".

Yup. We played Atomic in a pub gig in London. Years later I told a new bass tutor I could play it. Then I saw the actual bass line and realised I must have played something incredibly simplified as it was way above my level.

After a 9v PP3 failed while on stage, I rebuilt my pedal board with a lithium battery from a power drill. A full charge lasts maybe 100 hours. It took a bit of time to match batteries with power distribution and connections but has proved very reliable.

Thank you! I expect it will become a summer project, and yes I think you're right it's the "low mids" rather than the bass I need to look at. I'm not sure what frequency range the "sub out" jack on the PA pushes out, I'll try to find out.

I just checked our other case, the catches are on the lid, but they're on the case on the larger models. Strange.

Just a perception really that the PA is a bit lacking at lower frequencies and that there's a fuller sound when I plug in a bass amp. I might need to make some with and without recordings to make sure!

I did think the plywood could be a tight fit to the inside of the case, then I could use expanding builder's foam between fibreglass and plywood. But rattling of catches and handles is a good point and not something I'd thought of! You're right, it may be too small. I can get a larger case and while that would give me other problems stacking, they do come with wheels!

I'm thinking how I could use a cabinet like this 6U one to make a bass speaker cabinet. It would suit the rest of our band's gear, and we lug an empty box around anyway to stand the PA on. Not for playing bass guitar, just to boost the low end of the PA for guitar/vocals. I'm thinking of 2 x 8" drivers, and wondering what the best approach is. Making a conventional box out of plywood and just fitting it in seems safest, but I'm wondering if I can do something that just uses the plastic shell? Edit: though it occurs to me that buying a second hand combo amp that fits the space would be cheaper and quicker - if a bit heavier.

I have a Platinum Stage for sale in the Marketplace section of the forum 😎

Renaissance-folk-rock, a niche genre mostly represented by Blackmore's Night. But there are others. Not the top three, just a selection of three: Elflore: The Geyers: Blackmore's Night:

I used to be in a band that was about 45 minutes drive for rehearsals. That got a bit of a drag after 6 months. It was also problematic that the band took on gigs in about a 1 hour radius, and almost never in my direction, so most gigs were 60-90 minutes drive. Now I'm more flexible on genre if I can play locally - my current bands are 15 minutes away.

I bought this from Thomann, but it is incompatible with the t.bone headset I bought. They've refunded and said not to bother returning it. So free to collect from Chepstow, or I can post to UK addresses if you cover the postage.

We accidentally did a gig in London - supposedly for a friend's party, we weren't expecting the venue to be anything more than a backroom of a pub. But we turned up to find proper stage, sound & light guy, light show, PA speaker stacks that were taller than me., monitor speakers, the drum set got mic'd up and 300+ people turned up. We finished with Duran Duran's "Ordinary World" and out in the crowd was a sea of lighters. Although we didn't formally split up, we never rehearsed or performed again... deep down we knew we'd peaked.

The first problem we had was all the headset mics we looked at need phantom power... and our PA doesn't have it. If going wired they all need a little pre-amp adapter, which adds more to the price, more to go wrong, etc. I looked at wireless, but that was another minefield.

We're just starting with headset mics, I have a Sennheiser ME3 the BV singer is using a Thomann own brand one.

My go-to track for PA testing is "Am I Wrong?" by 1990s goth band Rosetta Stone, gives the sub a nice workout 😈

I've used the P2 for the last couple of years and found it pretty good.

Same when I'm playing at our church - usually the band is piano, bass, cornet and violin. I mostly play root notes, throwing in a fifth if a chords aren't changing. Maybe a third in the run up to the chorus.

She is indeed. I have about the same vocal range, but I can only aspire to her talent! I saw them in the USA last November - a bit of a wild move, but they've not toured in Europe since before covid and Ritchie's not getting any younger.

I suppose, technically, I still play bass in an 80s cover band. We never broke up, we've just not rehearsed or played any gigs since 2009.