tauzero

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. There's nothing wrong with wearing hats. Though our dulcimer player later decided to go for a bowler hat instead. And then Mrs Zero (not in picture) suggested that we make sashes for dancers who were being the gender that they weren't originally made, without the benefit of chemical treatments or surgery, and her and the melodeon player decided that orange would be a good colour. The English can be remarkably ignorant of cultural matters. Happily, we were never booked to play at any Irish club.

Correct. It's an Americanism, because they're a bit thick and forget the first bits of words. Hence "neighbourhood" becomes "hood" (after becoming "neighborhood" because they can't spell either), "parent" becomes "rent", "suburbs" becomes "burbs", and "magazine" becomes "zine". American independence was actually a way of increasing the average IQ of the British Empire.

Line 6 G50 and a Smoothhound for me. G50 got damaged when it fell on the floor and the battery door came off. Got a replacement door but couldn't get it to fit right, which was why I got the Smoothhound. Then I splashed out on a replacement transmitter (and another battery door in case I can make a better job of it). No problem with either system, though I did find that the G50 was liable to drop out when I was more than 5m or so away when I had it on the power saving setting.

Yes, I've forgotten to thank Luke for his work on the badges - looking good.

I use a Vitoos ISO8 with my B3n and assorted other items. Means I only have one wall wart. It has 6 9V/300mA outlets plus two others which will do 9/12/18V at 500mA.

I thought a nice paisley... 😁

It's not a daft analogy. I think you'll find a lot of non-primitive basses are active these days. Fender even tried making a couple of primitive basses active. I don't know how they compare - it was 25 years ago that I owned a fretless 4, and with my memory, I can't even remember whether it was active or passive. I do remember it had a very nice neck and was incredibly light - so light that I found it disturbingly so, and eventually sold it and got a Vester bass (the Thumb-ish one) that had been defretted.

Eh? Just because Ps and Js aren't active doesn't mean active is out of favour. Just because Model T Fords don't have ABS doesn't mean that ABS is out of favour.

I think I didn't quite think it out enough. Of course it could be done with DC. I was thinking from the wrong end. But anyroadup, I'm a bit surprised that pluck detect is taking a while - I'd have thought rudimentary detection would be quite simple. If you fret a note and don't pluck it, does that mean it plays regardless?

Different lipsticks on the pig then.

I think you suggest a U-shaped piece for the first part (bottom?) - do you think that doing this as three bits would be safer for a clumsy git like me? Or should I stop being pathetic and just wait till I get the stuff and decide then? "Just man up" is an acceptable answer.

I should say, I don't see anything wrong with Fender making Ps and Js. They will always be their bread and butter. But, although they do come up with occasional different models, they generally seem pretty half-hearted - either only minor variations or, when they do something radical, pig-ugly or extremely derivative. I suppose there's just not going to be a commercial reason for them to do anything but bring out the same dreary pigs with different lipstick.

What's different or exciting about those?

It's like Ford just making Fords. Model Ts.

The UK has been metric since 1973.

Gibson killed off the Epiphone Del Rey because it was too good.

That doesn't answer my question at all though. Is it a trademark infringement if it looks quite a lot like it, or if it's millimetre-perfect, or is there a certain tolerance that it infringes if within but not if it's without?

Grant the extension but be wary - make a note of when the extension is until, because IIRC you need to claim with Aliexpress before then if it hasn't arrived.

How close do copies have to be to be done for infringement? The Satellites and Columbuseses of my youth all looked like the Gibsons (and Fenders) that they copied, at least until you turned the Gibson copies upside down and saw the neck plates. Did Gibson leave them free to flourish as they would whet the appetite for the Real Thing Authentic? I can't see that millimetre-perfect copies are the only ones that infringe trademark, as R*ck*nb*ck*r go after everything that resembles one of their models.

I'm on a bike email list where there's the occasional request to transport something the length and/or breadth of the country (not just bike bits - someone picked up a Hohner B2AV for me so I could go and collect it from him). The other side of that coin is that if one of us is heading off on a longish journey in a car or van with lots of room, we'll often ask if there's anything that needs to go anywhere. It is a bit different from BC though, in that there's probably less than 100 of us on the list and we've known each other for 25+ years.

I can't see any harm in messaging them and offering a straight swap. If they say yes, you're both happy. If not, you haven't lost anything.

That is one incredibly generous man.

I see the Roya Concept is through-neck and semi-headless. I am almost overwhelmed with desire. Time to lock up the credit cards.

I wonder how it copes with double-stopping on different frets. I can't see a way of differentiating using DC sensing and unsegmented frets, wonder if they send different signals of some sort through each of the bridge saddles and differentiate by detecting what signal has arrived at what fret.

59 years and they've managed to come up with a different colour scheme. That really is my dream job.