tauzero

That and the Ocean Inlet one both look interesting.

It looks well worth it, although if you found the pickups a bit lacking in clarity, you would need to budget another couple of hundred quid for a pair of Aguilars or more for the Nordstrands. The fingerboard is Richlite - @Andyjr1515 built a neck using it for @fleabag so one of them might have a comment on what it's like. From having a quick look back at this: I think any issues Andy had with it were with the fretting part and sticking it to anything.

That's the one, the one with the team of six backing singers. Self Esteem. A name redolent of narcissism if ever there was one.

Ibanez don't seem to be embracing fretlessnessesesses with any great enthusiasm - exactly the same amount of enthusiasm as they show for lefties, in fact. Five string variant only (I'm a 5-string player, but I recognise that the majority of bassists are 5-string impaired), and only the bass base model spec with very ordinary finish and the Bartolini pickups which are reasonable but a bit lacking compared to the Nordstrands in the EHB-15 series or the Aguilars which are a worthwhile upgrade for the EHB-10/EHB-12 series. I can't understand why you're bemused by this when the EHBs have been out for a couple of years and quite a few of us have them. Have they so far passed you by?

Black Sabbath at the New Street Odeon in Birmingham in '77 or '78. They were fine, but a friend who had seen them the night before told me that the support band (whose name he didn't mention) was brilliant. So I watched the support band - a band called Tanzder Youth, who were unlistenably bad. Went to the bar a couple of numbers in. I saw the friend a day or two later and commented that the support band were cr@p (stupid bloody filter thing). No, he said, a fantastic band, brilliant guitarist - Van Halen, their name was. Bah.

The one who did the dreadful cover version of, er, something pretty unforgettable?

Not my cup of tea, but they were good.

We wondered if he'd had a mild stroke or Bell's Palsy.

He's 40 years older and has ill-advisedly put eye shadow on the bags under his eyes. What I found frightening is that I remembered the lyrics to "You to me are everything" despite the fact I disliked it at the time, and time has done nothing to change that. Gabrielle sounded rather ropey - she was singing in tune but the tune wasn't what it once was. George Ezra was neither country nor Western, whatever Jools might have said. I liked Cat Burns though (and a nice F bass her bassist was playing).

What's the neck like? From the dimensions they give, it sounds like it would be rather chunky.

I'm still in...

I was resisting the temptation, especially as (until now) I've done my soldering at evenings and weekends, and the only purpose of Saturday and Sunday mornings is breakfast (which should not be eaten while soldering).

According to https://weldingmastermind.com/can-you-get-lead-poisoning-from-soldering-heres-the-truth/ there's both lead dust and lead contamination of fumes. I must admit to liking the smell of resin fumes.

I started playing rubber string basses with a Guild Ashbory. Sounded good but I hated the banjo-type tuners, and upgraded to a DeArmond Ashbory with proper tuners. I used that with a ceilidh band, switching between the 18" scale Ashbory, a 34" scale Warwick Thumb fretless, and a 42" scale NS WAV-4 EUB which was fun. I also bought an Ashbory Mk2 - one of 73 made. However, it's got a dreadful hum which I haven't diagnosed - it's part of my project pile for my retirement, which started today. Because I like 5-strings, I bought a Kala SUB 5-string - I'd rather an unfretted one but the SUBs didn't have a fretless 5-string option, and a Cali would have cost about five times as much. This one isn't mine but it looks the same, apart from the untrimmed but better spaced strings on mine. And finally, I've bought a Batmanking electroacoustic 4-string which I haven't used electrically yet but which seems a pretty good buy for under a ton. Again, the photo's not mine but apart from an extra turn or two of the A string round the tuner, there's no difference.

Do you use open strings a lot? If not, just shift your hand position up five frets and across one string. And if you do, just user a different open string.

You don't get the lead fumes from lead-free solder, which is rather the point. It's not enough to be a danger to a hobbyist but if you're soldering all day every day or doing flow soldering it is a hazard.

I always use 60/40 22swg multicore. It's still easily available on That Ebay.

You can get adaptors but you need to solder the SMD IC to them. For a typical 8-pin SMD IC, there aren't sockets available, unlike DIP ICs. I've got small soldering iron bits but I'm not very good at keeping things steady (including my hands) - I find it's the feeding of the solder that tends to go wrong.

Aramid?

Are there no DIP equivalents? I'm incompetent enough at soldering .1" spacing (I probably bridge strips 10% of the time), I'd have no chance with spacing half that.

Lyre.

Same here.

In 2015, Jeremy Hunt imposed a pay rise on them that was below what their pay review board recommended. From this arise (at least) three points: Junior doctors hate the Chancellor of the Exchequer The pay review board can be overridden Junior doctors have probably been treated the worst of any NHS staff in real terms pay cuts in the last 12 years A survey showed that 40% of them were looking to get out of the NHS. A third of them were going to try to work overseas, Australia being the favourite destination. One of my nephews is currently training to be a doctor. He intends to quit the UK - he wants to work in an English-speaking country as communicating in his first language will mean less risk of misunderstanding, so I expect he'll head off to Australia or New Zealand.

Somebody brought an HB 5-string Jazz along to a bass bash a while ago in Lie Cester (IIRC). Everyone who played it (myself included) was impressed by it. Ah, searching back 2015 Midlands Bass Bash, and @Annoying Twit who hasn't been seen here for six years. Correction, it was a PJ.

Really? I've handled carbon fibre and cf/glass fibre huggers for motorcycles (admittedly thin skins). The density of the cf/gf one was about the same as a soggy beer mat (ie if you made a beer mat out of it, it would be that weight). The CF one was about the same as a dry beer mat. Like I say, this was quite a thin skin, but the core would be a significant factor in the weight. The Basslab instruments come in at 2.9-3.2kg so they're definitely on the light side. The neck profiles seem a bit on the chunky side though.