neepheid

I'm still on the same roll of solder I had when I was a kid, I think I'll be fine, frequency-wise

Once bitten, twice shy. I'll just keep using my cored leaded solder, I'm happy with my soldering life.

You don't have to understand it. If it's working great for you then happy days. I didn't find it easy at all, I found lead free solder useless - it just balled up and fell off my tip, couldn't even tin with it. Leaded solder all the way for me.

Any ideas, BC hive mind? (the middle, amber coloured one)

Nah, I've been looking at it sans pickguard and it looks wrong. Control plate in isolation looks so lonely and a bit bereft.

Some early adopter blues, it seems

Hee hee, 10 weeks to go...

Do they think we don't talk to each other?

Better bloody not! Tight gits only offered me £25 off to keep it!

Bought an Ibanez ATK pickup from Dave, arrived today safe and well. Top man, good comms, deal with confidence.

Some of you might recall I bought a Squier Jag H from Thomann, and it got bashed in transit, followed by a massive hoo-ha about whether or not I could keep it for a discount, discount offer was unacceptable, couldn't get a DHL "service"point to accept a parcel that size, currently waiting on a courier to come to the house to collect it. In the meantime, I managed to snag another one on eBag and here it is (next to the ill-fated charcoal one) So, I took it to a gig, and it played quite well, stock pickup is a little muddy/vague so I thought I could make it a little better. I acquired a fine replacement pickup - the Ibanez CAP dual humbucker out of an ATK810, thanks to @TheDaivisch of this very parish (arrived today, thanks mate, over and above). Today I fitted the pickup: Unfortunately, it's a chunky bugger so the pickguard doesn't quite fit over it. Gonna have to attack the pickguard with a file. Sounds good though, it's a mighty fine sounding, punchy, articulate pickup. Just wired it in series just now with the stock electronics, it will get treated to a full rewire with new pots and probably will fit a 3 way switch for series/single/parallel options, because why not. Earlier, before the pickup arrived, I did some idle scheming in the GIMP: So as you can see, I'm thinking black pickguard and some black "blocks" ie. stickers just to make it a little fancier.

Yup, you called it - they're going to send a courier to fetch it. They are going to such lengths to repatriate a damaged £180 bass... oh well, up to them I guess.

It's mostly a weight thing, which probably leads to increased confidence in their turning action. Plus they're solid, these John East knobs, not this aluminium shell pressed onto a plastic insert which is in turn pressed onto the pot shaft. Those alu stock knobs felt cheap as hell to me - if it weren't for the fact they were cold to the touch in a cold room, I would have confused them with plastic, and super cheap plastic at that. I also wasn't keen on them being black - I thought the chrome knobs on the Z3 looked way nicer so that was another factor in my decision.

I've got two spare black John East stack knobs, if that helps get you started...

Sorry about that 😇

I call it "snotburst"

Jesus, heard of Google? I've given you the product names, what more do you want? Don't be so "insta"

You might need to run a soldering iron down the middle of them to break it up if they are joined (but I can't see how that is possible by accident) - more like they're just close enough that they're touching - in that case some firm "you should be **there**" movement should be enough. Just pry them apart enough so they stay apart and you should be fine.

It's a race to the patent office!

Looks joined/touching to me, but I'm only going by your photo and you said they're not joined, so I dunno. The easiest way to explain full volume all the time is that the volume pot is being jumped out of the circuit and the hot from the pickup is going straight to the output jack somehow.

I have a Joyo Monomyth now for my get out of jail free card, but I used to carry a BDI21 with me. Also, if I had a pound for every time I saw one of these at a venue or studio...

I'm having a pickle and cheese sandwich. Yes - I put the pickle down first then put cheese on top! Innovative? It's borderline debauchery!

Something just occurred to me - this is "innovation"... for Fender. Seen in their own bubble (the "Fenderverse"?) these changes could be seen as "innovative"? I'm trying to be nice here.

Hmm, best has probably been my Lekato WS-70 wireless bugs. Should have gone wireless years ago! Honourable mention to the Hotone Harmony pitch shifter/harmonizer pedal I bought - it is tiny, cheap and does a surprisingly good job of handling singer's requests to put songs up/down 1-3 semitones as well as giving me a blendable octave up/down and a detune effect. Worst - probably the Digitech Bass Synth Wah I bought - I snagged it for a keen price from a second hand shop down south but it was broken

The saga rumbles on. Now it's the turn of DHL to be the sticking point. I have been to two DHL "service"points and had my parcel refused because it's too big. The trouble with this is that your typical DHL "service"point seems to be situated in a tiny convenience store with hardly enough room to swing a cat, never mind store a bass in a box. Also, I have zero confidence that the parcel will be safe as they just seem to leave them lying around the shop. In the second one I went to, the lady I spoke to at the second one told me they're a shower of lazy b'stards (not her words) and only show up intermittently. She pointed at a smaller parcel (about the size of a small microwave oven) she took in (ironically also a Thomann box, but I couldn't say if it was bound for Thomann or reused for something else) which was just sitting on the floor in the aisle and it had been there for 3 days I'm not going traipsing around the city trying all six because it's going to be the same story. I've fed this back to Thomann and asked them what I'm supposed to do now.