alyctes

Are they planning a fretless, I hope?

He still appears on my screen occasionally. My BC time is fairly restricted though, so for all I know he's in Off Topic all day long.

Must be Mr Foxen, I guess?

That lower horn could make it unpleasant to play sitting down.

Lawrie has two feedback threads...

Lawrie sold me a book about Mr Karr. As before, a smooth and swift transaction. Happy to trade with him. Thanks Lawrie.

Glad it went well. Can I ask, how did you ensure the post went in in the correct orientation?

Nice! Did you sharpen the tines, or ... ?

HBs are very good for the price. Or for second-hand try a Peavey Milestone III. A decent one for £100 should be easy enough.

IIUC it's actually a microphone system, somehow (which is an acoustic sensor, obvs). I've not tried to work out how it actually works.

They don't quite sound like anything else, do they? I had mine second-hand from here, seller was local and I knew nothing about fretless at the time... classic GAS purchase!

I was thinking of the fretless, but I've played both.

They're lovely! I had to add weight to mine, it was too light to be stable for my cloddish hands and lack of skill, but they make a great noise.

If you need a DB tailpiece I probably have one kicking about. I'm away at the moment so it might be a couple of weeks before I can find it.

I bought patch leads from Edward. He went out of his way to get them posted promptly, the packaging was good, the communications excellent. I wouldn't hesitate to deal with him again. Thanks!

My pleasure! There's no reason you can't use two strips-and-string assemblies, but that's hard to get into the bass - you really have to get the string of the second handle on the post _after you put it in the bass. Also you have to mark the post so you can tell which way round it goes, because there's nothing to stop it rotating. Careful cutting of the end of the aluminium should fix that though. I can't really remember who Dad and I learned it from. I think it was my cello teacher, some time in about 1969, but my memory is a bit dicey nowadays - we may have taken it to someone else.

All severely not to scale. The key to it is keeping control of the post while not holding the string too tight. That means you can get the whole thing into the belly of the beast but still have control.

Aluminium, string, post:

The aluminium plus string

Okay, the aluminium:

That had the distinct advantage of making me laugh, which is much more positive feeling than any I ever got off the LZ version. (We'll skip hastily over whether they "covered" the intro...)

Not tonight I can't. I can have a go tomorrow. Okay, "channel" might be the wrong word. Take a piece of aluminium strip, long enough to reach the post position and still give you about five inches outside the F-hole. Fold each of the two long sides inward so that each side has a channel big enough for your twine to run in it, but keeping the twine from escaping sideways. Run the twine up both sides of the aluminium so there's a loop at one end. Put the sound-post in the loop. Hold the twine so that it tightens on the post. Now you've got a T-shaped assembly, held together because you're keeping the twine tight. Manoeuvre the post in through the F-hole and into the correct place. Pull or push as appropriate. When it's in the right place, let go one end of the twine. Now the post is in place and not attached to the aluminium. Pull the twine and the aluminium out, and store them somewhere for next time. If I knew where mine was I'd take a pic but it's somewhere in my personal chaos and it might take a week to find it.