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I did think AI would be able to do this but why would you pay someone else to have AI do it for you, my point was if someone tells me they have no music theory knowledge, then they cant be transcribing anything, they must be using someone/something else to do it. Its like me saying I have never had a flying lesson, then showing you footage of a plane flying, i clearly cant have flown it as I dont know how to. Jonny

I feel so old.

Right, straight off I should say I love acoustic basses. I currently own two, although one - my Tanglewood 4 string is currently for sale on here, as my recently defretted Warwick Rock Bass Alien 5 string is my main acoustic squeeze and having recently moved into double bass ownership, I need the space. Acoustic basses vary greatly. At the lower end of the market you are getting basically an acoustic guitar with a longer neck so don’t be surprised if it can’t keep up with a couple of aggressively strummed acoustic guitars. The more you pay, the better they become. There will always be those happy exceptions and I remember playing and being very impressed by a parlour sized short scale Ibanez a few years ago. Most come with an adequate pickup and/or preamp. Higher end models like the German-built Warwicks and the legendary Takamine B10 are a thing of musical beauty and something I aspire to. Strings-wise, I cannot abide those phosphor bronze strings that acoustic bass manufacturers use. I have always swapped these out for flat wounds as soon as I could and I find that the La Bella low tension flats work great on acoustic bass. Don’t be put off by the neigh-sayers, acoustic bass guitars have their place. Buy one and enjoy it.

I had a similar Chinese made thing about 10 or so years back.. it collapsed in on itself while waiting to play a gig; I took it for repair with a trusted friend, who told me the construction was crap but she'd do what she could. A few weeks later it collapsed again, so I scrapped it except for the neck which is decent and is now part of my ongoing project EUB. More recently I bought an unashamed doer-upper Stentor DB with quite a few cracks and splits. My friend is now pretty much retired, and a DB would take up her whole workshop, so she taught me the basics of crack repair over the phone plus there's a ton of good stuff on YouTube. I've now played loads of gigs on is, love it, paid for itself times over! Could be worth getting the basic techniques together yourself @Happy Jack!

Buy this MAGA bass... it's MEGA.

It's a beautiful looking instrument, I hope someone puts it back together, like the six-million dollar man. Best of luck...

I’ve seen worse, I could do that but I would do an average job and probably never play it, it needs better than me 👍

I think there is a difference between the worst offenders of planned obsolescence (e.g. companies deliberately designing things to not be fixable, or to not last as long as they could for the same production cost) and companies not continuing to spend on software updates to keep up with modern operating systems years after the pedal production finished. A digital pedal from 20 years ago not working with a modern operating system is akin to not being able to get replacement parts for an analogue pedal from 20 years ago, I don't think either are long-game consumerism plots by the pedal companies.

I took the debris back to Thwaites in Bushey. When they'd finished laughing, they said their preliminary estimate for repairs would be £2000 but that might well increase depending on what they found. At which point I went off in a different direction. So here I am with all the parts I need to make a broken, unplayable Kolstein Busetto. What to do ... what to do ... I see three choices: Chuck the whole lot in a skip and walk away quickly, whistling tunelessly and looking unconcerned; Break for parts and sell them individually - there's some good stuff there for them's as wants it; Try and be at least a little imaginative. So here's my Starter For 10. Everything you see in those photos (and nothing you don't see) is free to any Basschatter who has a genuine use for some/all of the parts, perhaps for the repair of DBs, perhaps for some weird EUB project (who knows?), but above all someone who will make sensible, constructive use of all this stuff. I don't have a Jiffy bag large enough to take all this, so we're talking either collection from Harrow HA1 or a sociable beer somewhere not too, too far from here.

A lot of pub bands gig with just 2 x 12" tops and no sub and get a pretty decent sound. Are folk saying it's pretty pointless adding a 12" sub into the mix, to primarily put the kick through, for larger venues and / or outdoor gigs?

Once upon a time there was a bass, a happy bass, a bass that enjoyed being owned by Basschatters such as @bassace and @Clarky. It was a fragile wee thing and needed a reasonable amount of upkeep and maintenance, because it always looked as if it was about to collapse into (as @Owen puts it) a bunch of matchsticks. But I loved it to bits, played hundreds of gigs with it, and asked myself, "What's the worst that could happen?". And then, one day, the worst happened. Are you familiar with the expression an exploded diagram? You are? Excellent! Here are some exploded photographs ...