tauzero

The pole pieces issue has me puzzled. That's why I suggested swapping the pickup wires round. Try checking resistance between the pole pieces and each of the pickup wires, and if one is no resistance and the other is a few k, the one with no resistance should be the ground.

Beer festival held at the Shirley British Legion, which is where the open mic I attend is held. Every year the organisers get the open miccers to provide the entertainment. This year I was providing bass accompaniment for three others (one of them is a blind 13 year old guitarist, very good, who plays plenty of assorted blues), as well as playing guitar for Mrs Zero to sing to. We like to stretch ourselves a bit, so we did Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad as one of our numbers. The final act of the night, though, was Space Monkey. We haven't played together for three years and didn't have any rehearsal, our glorious leader just sent out a song list which was vaguely adhered to. I'd got my notes, then right at the end for the last encore he called for Gold. Slight moment of panic then I remembered I'd got my full cribsheet in Dropbox, quickly pulled it up and got in just in time. There was a really enthusiastic reception - we built up quite a fanbase in the year or two we were together, and quite a few people said they were looking forwards to us. We had almost everyone up and dancing, which was pretty good.

Folsom Prison Blues - it's country, root-5, following a typical 12-bar chord progression, I IV I V IV I. Not like the guitarist-with-a-bass at my regular OM plays it, a walking bass line (probably because it's got "blues" in the name). Sanctuary - straightforward D-C-G. For the vocal bits, other than "and the world...", there's a passing B at the end of the C. The middle bit is just a D, preferably a low D. Still haven't found is again a typical 12-bar chord progression. I IV I V IV I again. Just root notes, constant eighths. Dakota - there's just three chord sequences, E C# A (in and verse), A E ('makes me feel like the one'), E B A ('I don't know where we are going now'). Root notes, constant eighths.

However, if you remove something early in the signal chain, you can't get it back later on. The order matters, the location doesn't. I find that I do the tone shaping with an effects pedal, with the only use of amp controls being to reduce bass if necessary, and the controls on the bass left flat.

What's wrong with acrylic?

I've never owned a Klos, and the only time I've played one was a 4-string at @dub_junkie's house when I went to try a Bogart. It impressed me so much that I put myself on the list to be notified when they brought out a 5-string, and now they have. https://klosguitars.com/products/carbon-fiber-5-string-bass Shame they didn't go with my suggestion of a headless...

Don't forget to include confusing convincing diagrams on your BassGenius website.

The ultimate that I've encountered is Machina Dynamica - gradually degrading though, the broken links to images used to show covers of sci-fi novels from the 50s and 60s. I commend the Brilliant Pebbles to the house. I am genuinely unsure if it's satire or genuine (partly because I've seen reviews of digital interconnects on the What Hifi website which go on about better stereo imaging and openness, when a digital interconnect either transmits the data or it doesn't and certainly wouldn't know how to affect the contents).

I suppose it depends on your definition of "big name". MTD, Steinberger, Hohner, the aforementioned Cort and Eko.

Bidirectional audio cable is a load of old bollocks. Consider - an audio signal is AC, centred around 0V, so electrons travel in both directions. A pretty fundamental demolition of the whole idea. However, zero nuts aren't a load of old bollocks. It means that the strings will be raised to a consistent height at the nut end rather than relying on the nut being accurately cut. My Eko 6 acoustic that I've had for at least 40 years has a zero fret and no issues (despite being in regular use). Of the 15 basses and five guitars in my sight, the Sei Flamboyant headless has one, the Cort Space has one, and the aforementioned Eko has one. There's no need on the Warwicks or the two Antoniotsais that I've retrofitted with Just-A-Nuts as they have adjustable nuts. If I remember, in the next couple of days I'll sort out pictures of me and various basses to show neck divingness and hanging position. The comparison of a headed and headless Sei Flamboyant may be useful (might be worth appealing to anyone who owns both headed and headless Statii to do similar).

Have you tried swapping the connections to the jack socket?

Driver arrived a few days ago. Took the old driver out (I'd reinstalled it loosely so as not to lose the screws and so I wasn't creating more clutter than necessary), put the replacement in, using my veterinary training to slide my hand in to connect the spade terminals. The speaker leads are gathered together with a zip tie, hence not having much slack in the cable. Having put a few cylinder heads on in my time, I tightened the screws evenly, and as they go into T-nuts (and after a previous traumatic experience), I avoided pushing down while I was tightening the screws. All that done, I did a test which showed it was all working fine again. I shall be very careful of dirty in my patches and nasty resonances in future.

No, he did it for a while then pretty much stopped after two wins, saw this one and entered again and won. Mrs Zero has asked if we could borrow his luck for the postcode lottery.

I bought a GR Bass AT800 Cube combo. The driver on it blew a few weeks ago, possibly due to me putting too much dirt into it (when I used the same patch with a Tecamp Puma 900 and BC 112 Mk3, it made some rather unpleasant noises). I've now replaced the speaker and will be using it again. I went for a combo because it meant that not only did I have a lightweight cab, I didn't have to carry an amp (albeit a very light one) as well. On reflection, maybe I should have gone for a GR Bass cab and used it with the Tecamp instead. I've had Barefaced (Big Baby II and One10) and have a BC 112 Mk3, the forerunner of the LFSys range. I'd say GR Bass, Barefaced, and LFSys would all do a good job.

Guitarist has just won a Fender Meteora. I think it's his third, the first being the Les Paul I mentioned upthread.

FTFY

I go to a regular open mic every Wednesday - I think I'm reasonably good at self-assessment and I'm a crap singer (I prefer to take Mrs Zero along because she's got a good voice but for one reason or another it's just been me for a few weeks). I'm also not the worst singer there. It is noticeable how some people improve as their confidence increases. It's also worth taking your bass along and volunteering bass duties if people are performing songs that you could play, and if there's no resident house bassist.

"Live forever" was suggested as a second Oasis song for us to do (we've got "Don't look back in Ongar" already). Fortunately the suggestion appears to have gone away, as I really didn't want to listen to that awful whiny Mancunian voice in order to learn the song.

It's the one that nicks the chord sequence from the end of the chorus lines in "All the young dudes".

Useful if you're not going to be changing instruments, but not so good doing changes as you either have to take the strap off and put it on the other bass or take the bug out of one pouch and put it in the other. Another alternative would be a short extension lead and stick the bug in your pocket.

BTW, mine demonstrates exactly how to make a round grille look like an afterthought.

I can see your logic. After all, Jeff Bezos is one of the richest men on Earth so Amazon staff get paid a fortune.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't charge for their services. What I'm saying is that they are in a monopoly position and ratcheting up ticket prices to vast multiples of face value is an abuse of that position.

Because even people who are totally devoid of taste don't always deserve to be ripped off.