tauzero

What is the bass? Which way are you turning the truss rod?

Apparently less abrasive to the fingerboard too.

Must keep away from the Gardiner Houlgate auctions, they're a dangerous place for me, or at least for the integrity of my anatomy if I keep buying basses and can't manage to sell any. Went down to near Bath to pick up this lovely Shuker Uberhorn today. Body: African blackwood topped mahogany body Neck: seven piece wenge/mahogany with CF strengthening rods, 35" scale Fretboard: phenolic resin Electrics: concealed EMG pickup system and Graphtech piezo saddles All in an original branded Hiscox hard case. There's also a card from WM Guitars whose hands it has obviously passed through giving the specs (and the price they sold it for). The strings are described as D'Addario tapewounds in the WM Guitars description, and that's still what's on it, looking a bit worn, especially the long thumb rest string. It will be getting some nickel rounds. The action is ridiculously high, mainly (I think) due to the relief being absolutely huge. The battery is in quite reasonable nick, should get a bit of use out of it. There's a couple of little dings around the edge but nothing major. For some reason, it hasn't got straplocks on it, which I see as a significant omission to be rectified very soon. Pictures are from the Shuker website and the auction website. When I summon up a bit of energy, I'll take some more.

I use rounds. That's just me though.

You can often find the shop that's selling the bass from the seller information and then go direct to them.

"Growler" was the official name for the bonnet emblem up until the JJ rebrand in 2024. Let's hope Elon Musk doesn't buy Jaguar, he'd bring back the "Swallow Sidecars" name and the "SS" emblem.

Zoom B3 or B3n - the B3n has the advantage of being easier to switch patches. You can also edit patches on a PC which is quite simple to do.

Very misleading, as the dropdown says it's quantity.

If a guitarist is playing with a capo at fret 3, a C turns into an Eb and an Em into a Gm. When I'm reading the chords over someone's shoulder because I not only don't know the song, I've never ever heard it in my life before, transposing on the fly for someone with my level of musical knowledge is rather difficult - not impossible when it's a few bars of one chord and a few bars of another, but when there's a rapid sequence of chords it all goes to pot. Not so hard when (to take two examples from yesterday) I'm thoroughly familiar with the song and just need to move my hand position, or when it's capo 1 or 2.

I use a Zoom MS-60B+, the successor to my MS-60B. I do intend to get the HX Stomp sorted but that needs an external PSU, I power the Zoom with rechargeable batteries that last four or five hours.

You must be relieved that Rishi Sunak is no longer on television.

That's Quishquosh drivers. Totally oblivious to their surroundings. Juke drivers aren't quite as bad.

Charity beer festival at the Shirley British Legion this weekend, Friday and Saturday, and quite busy for me. Friday evening I did Hey Joe with the first Chris, then it was the band to which I've been recently recruited with one and a half rehearsals for an hour. Quite a lot of jamming occurred, the audience liked it. Definitely needs a lot of tightening up. Then another hour with Graham and Tony - Graham had sent me the song sheets but I hadn't looked at them properly and missed the "capo 4" on Eight Days a Week. Sat that out as I couldn't transpose it on the fly, coped OK with Come up and see me (capo 2) and something else with capo 1. Saturday I was there for the latter part of the setting up and ran through some songs with Paul, then did the first half hour with Rick and nine short 60s songs, half an hour of rest, then half an hour with Annette where I sat out a Smiths song due to confusion over chords and capo but did the rest. Another hour and a half of rest, then back with Annette and Chris the sax for half an hour, and then I played guitar with Mrs Zero singing for another half hour, then straight on to an hour of blues with Tom and Tony. Shouldn't blues be restricted by the Geneva Convention to a maximum of half an hour at a time? Half an hour of rest, then one that had been sprung on me, playing bass for Paul and his two lady friends on ukes and guitars. Then half an hour accompanying Blind Young George. My old band played next for an hour but didn't include me, although I sneaked in for their encore. I think I played about 70 songs over the two days. Gear was Sei headless fretless 5 -> Lekato/M-Vave wireless -> Zoom MS-60B+ -> HH bass combo, footwear was the usual Caravelles. Blind Young George really is blind, and 14. Very talented. And I do have a music stand because I can't learn 70 songs that quickly (only needed it for one of George's songs though).

I'm a child of the space age - Sputnik was launched a month and a half before I was born. Even more limited with YOB basses - first split-coil Precision but who on earth wants some crappy passive 4-string?

The dots are where they are on a standard Megatar, with dots on the second, 5th, and 7th frets. There should be some form of damping between the fret closest to the nut (which would be a zero fret) and the next one. And it's definitely real otherwise it wouldn't have been in the Gardiner and Houlgate auction. Strangely, looking for an example of a Megatar that shows the damping, there's at least one other fan fret one in the wild, definitely a different one to the one in the auction: https://reverb.com/item/57475214-mobius-megatar-megatar-1997-black-brown which shows the damping.

I used a capo on a 5-string for Whole Lotta Rosie as we were doing it a semitone down and it's a nightmare to play if you don't use the open A. Then the singer decided he could cope with standard tuning so I never did a gig with the capo, but I would quite happily have done so.

Probably - the thickest string is on the left rather than in the middle. But the hand on the bass side (assuming it isn't played with both hands on the treble side) has to cope with frets that are fanned in the wrong direction for the anatomy of the hand.

He popped back in in June. It would be nice to know whether anything has happened.

A Mobius Megatar 12-string with fan frets: https://auctions.gardinerhoulgate.co.uk/catalogue/lot/e53d7924c06085ff4c734b0b1af356dc/63b778f7668dabe928d3800924a99077/the-guitar-auction-four-day-sale-lot-42/ As it happens, I own (but can't play) a Megatar with the more rational parallel frets. How on earth are you supposed to play one with fan frets? And how would you string it as AFAIK all Megatar/Chapman Stick tunings have the bottom string in the middle of the fretboard? An idea whose time will never come. Unsurprisingly, it got left on the shelf at the auction.

I forgot to mention - I sit down to play, and the studio has bucket-type seats with bent wire legs. I leant back a bit to pick something up (all four legs still on the floor) and the chair collapsed. I'm a bit on the heavy side but at 100kg I'm not that enormous. There was a second identical chair in the room and that bore my weight for the rest of the evening.

π, although I'm comfortable with the square root of 2. π is just such an awkward number.

The one after that: "Why You Shouldn't Buy a Boutique Bass!"

Here are ten reasons why it's the end for boutique basses. Number six will shock you.

Rehearsal last night with the latest band that I've been recruited to. We're doing a one hour set at a beer festival tonight and we have a fairly sketchy grasp of the songs, so that should be fun. It's a very odd set list, which sadly includes All Right Now but there's a lot of unusual and unknown (at least by me) songs that should ensure that no follow-on bookings ever happen.

I'm another potential, no inconvenient gigs at the moment.