tauzero

I'm not fond of the locking jacks - I find it awkward to unlock them, especially when using a wireless dongle. I remove the locking mechanism and leave the rest intact. Fully agreed about the 1/4" jack on a plate, that's what my Sei headlesses have.

They've just left, should be with you soon. I know what you mean about the money, fortunately there's a Nigerian prince who's going to sub me.

Sad Company Moth the Hoople Ian Munter

When replacing the barrel jack, extend the leads if necessary (heatshrink on the joints, of course) so that you can pull them through the jack socket hole and solder outside the control cavity rather than fiddling around inside it. Note: don't forget to thread the leads through the nut inside the control cavity before passing them out. Barrel jacks are a consumable item.

An entirely deliberate one, in contrast to motorcycle troubleshooting - if it seems like a fuel problem it's electrical, and if it seems electrical then it's a fuel problem.

I use a Tecamp Puma 900 with my GR Bass AT212.

I have a Nux Mighty Plug Amateur and a gen 1 Boss Katana:Go. I think the Boss has better sound quality, and it has a built-in tuner which is useful. The Nux isn't bad though. Both are good for practice as long as you don't mind having headphone leads tangling round you - it's a definite step up in cost to go wireless with the Positive Grid Spark NEO and a massive step up in cost to the Boss Waza Air.

Some reviews said that the Spark Neo headphones were too tight - I find they're comfortable but they do have a noticeably firm grip on my head compared to the Audio Technicas that are my general headphones and the Sennheisers that I've got knocking around upstairs. Haven't worn them for more than about half an hour at a time but I can't see any problem wearing them for longer than that.

You could go for a veneer finish. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/205362966920 - flame maple.

I keep saying that. People will keep on wanting them though.

I'd like to know what the picture is on the scratchplate that's been so severely pixellated...

The Dam The Curt Yen The Stragglers

Doing a dep gig with a band run by the chap who runs an open mic night or two that I go to, and they got me in for a rehearsal. Went reasonably, most of the songs are twelve-bars of some description with a couple of oddities - Sweet Child O' Mine, Light My Fire, Gangsters (medleyed with Roxette).

Another halfwit here. I don't think anything destined for me has gone missing when Evri have handled it, and indeed since the Evri rebrand from Herpes parcels haven't been chucked over the gate. My heart does sink when I see that a parcel has disappeared into Evri's maw as it takes several days to re-emerge with our driver and get delivered.

Crackles could be the pots or the jack socket, or the lead for that matter.

I don't think I need a 5-string for our set but that's what I've learnt the songs on, and it would be a bit of a struggle to play on a 4-string. I do take a 4-string out to an open mic night every now and again but that's generally doing songs I'll only do once rather than songs I'm really familiar with.

A few of the comments on the video refer to musicians being unpaid or underpaid for their work with Old Time Sailors.

Or if you want a bit of a challenge, when 15 strings isn't enough:

I did suggest they do a headless bass, but that fell on deaf ears.

While practising with Positive Grid Spark NEO wireless headphones, I noticed a twittering (for want of a better term) from my Sei Flamboyant when it was in active mode. It stopped when in passive mode. None of my other active basses did the same, and when I used a wireless dongle plugged into the headphones and the Sei, it went away. The preamp is a Delano Sonar 3 - I have a Delano Sonar 2 in the Sei fretless which didn't do the same thing. Battery was showing 8.75V when the bass was switched on - not 9V but should be enough, and anyway I haven't got a spare battery (got some on the way now though). I wondered it there might be some strange issue with the jack socket, which fortunately isn't a barrel type, so I extracted it and the battery negative wire immediately fell off the ring terminal. Looks as if it was either fatigued or had been stripped rather too carelessly and only held on with a couple of cores. Stripping and resoldering the wire solved the problem. My conclusion about what had happened is that the dodgy wire was presenting a certain amount of resistance to the 0V line and therefore reducing the effective battery voltage. Why it only showed up on the Spark NEO dongle is another question - possibly it's a low impedance and consequently a higher current draw for the preamp, but that's just a wild guess. Obviously a low battery is the most likely cause of low battery issues, but this does show another possible (albeit unlikely) cause.

"Stuart Zender remembered". Personally, I think that just having someone's name with no other information is just as bad - I'm on an email list and in a newsgroup where a name with no other detail as a thread title means the named person has died.

Tuesday night at the Cavern, finished up playing with three others - female vox, female guitar, and male drummer. Sum total of their ages was 23 years younger than me. It was great fun. They are all really good - from a bassist's POV, the drummer and I have clicked from the start and like each other's playing. There were a couple of bands on - one was a duo, guitar/vox and drums, deafeningly loud (I carry earplugs and they went straight in), the other a three-piece who are regulars there with a drummer who only knows BANG BANG BANG - earplugs back in. There were four or five guitar/vox artistes, and in the absence of Mrs Zero, I was one of them. Rather a contrast to Wednesday night, which was quite a low turnout - normally it's a full list with everyone getting two songs, tonight it was three songs apiece. Managed to get Mrs Zero out so the audience weren't subjected to my voice.

As far as Chinese sellers go, I would mention that AliExpress have a returns policy that seems to work and return items are sent to a UK address.

I am 1619. Who is 8647? He/she has a lot to answer for.

You have to make sure that it's trying to load http:// and not https:// - Chrome has an unfortunate tendency to change everything to https://, Firefox is more subservient in that respect.