nige1968

I like the idea of email newsletters to keep our hordes of fans engaged, and over time we've built up a big enough mailing (700-odd) list that we're way past the Outlook mail merge stage. So I've been looking at 3rd party email solutions and wow, what fresh hell is this? It doesn't help, of course, that the bandleader has given me a budget of £0.00. Still, there are a lot of free packages out there, so I've been trying them out, generally with very poor results (0% deliverability, anyone?). It turns out that the better the free deal, the more appealing to spammers, who then get the sending IP addresses a bad rep. So to anyone who has actually had success with any of theses systems, who do you recommend? And is there anything at all to be said for self-hosting?

Somehow, in between two sets at a festival, the socket in the transmitter for my Line 6 Relay G50 got properly messed up. The whole socket housing fell off and the pins were bent at maybe 40 degrees. A mate managed somehow to reattach the mount and get the pins a bit straighter but the cable still won't attach. I'm not inclined to force it. I don't have the option of buying a replacement unit as none are currently available anywhere. The relevant spare parts are available in the USA only as far as I can tell. Line 6 repairs for the UK are currently done in Germany. Ironically I bought this because it was "roadworthy" but that silly four-pin connector was always going to be a weak spot (I heard they replaced it with a quarter-inch jack in later versions). I guess the thing to do is to bend the pins back in to position, but I'm not particularly confident I can do that without breaking one or more. Anyone offer any advice?

Think I need to work on my query refinement process ...

Found Apple to have much more of the awful noise I like to listen to, available with lossless compression. On the downside, I wish it would stop changing the album artwork I spent so long getting right.

Gosh. Is it made of glass?

A plumbus. (that or a single B string for your 35m scale bass)

A piece of rock history, though. Whatever that means, it has to be worth at least 99% of the asking price.

Me too, though I also failed at becoming a punk/rock star

I don't think it's the end of the world, but ... wasn't the IT revolution supposed to free us all from sh*t work so we could spend more time on rewarding stuff. So how comes they're trying to solve the problem of interesting work, while robot garbage collections seem as far away as ever?

I don't have much call for P basses, but everyone needs one, right? So this was my lockdown panic present, of which the body, knobs and scratchplate are original. Pickup is a Seymour Duncan housed in a cheap cream housing. Loom is Kiogon, neck and tuners are Fender 70s-style and bridge is one of them chunky Fender Mexico jobs.

(You probably have to have been forced to sit through Disney princess movies by your kids to get this)

Low F♯?! Is that so pigeons can enjoy it too?

Bit O/T, soz, but someone really needs to invent one of these with an attached platform for a separate amp head. Anyway, your thing looks lovely, for what it's worth coming from a secondary school woodwork failure such as wot I is.

I've found Ashdown helpful in the past for enquiries about speakers for TE combos.

Wow, hadn't seen that before. He looks like he's on the verge of righteous tears.

Finish seems to have a faded look compared to the greyer NOS Mexican ones they did a few years back. Hate Marmite. Love Antigua. Give us a Jazz with a dark fretboard and pale blocks/binding and I'll be, as they say, all over it. This is only my opinion, of course; but then, it is the right one.

The folk rock band who tolerate my bass services were starting to get festival bookings before Covid. Usually the headline acts kept themselves to themselves, but for bizarre reasons to do with extreme weather we found ourselves doing the whole drunken 'we are not worthy' thing backstage with Stanley Jordan, poor lad. He had nowhere to hide. My friend "persuaded" him to participate in a selfie -- as Mr Jordan was changing out of his stage clobber at the time, the crop of the photo makes it look like he's naked and sitting with a clothed man. Brighton has its share of pop illuminati. We were next to Fatboy and Zoe in a queue for a kids' ride once and I used to occasionally see the late Gary Moore in places like WHSmith. But my favourite star spot was Nick Cave, standing patiently in a queue outside the fancy dress shop one Halloween.

Cream sits better with the upside-down headstock. It screams "funk" in every sense.

Have you considered splitting the signal and running clean and dirty in parallel?

Ah right, sorry my bad. Is it feasible to split the signal and send an input to each?

If your speakers can’t handle the bass anyway, what’s the rationale for adding an amp into the chain? I can’t see an extra gain stage making things any clearer.

Not sure I belong within 100m of any kind of spray paint, but good to know

Nah I’m going for the Road worn look. Also I couldn’t work out how.