tauzero

Boxing Day gig for The Bonnevilles at the Anker Inn in Weddington, on the borders of Nuneaton. Rather empty when we started - and it was an early start, at 6pm. We had a guest singer to do the inter-set break - she's become a regular fixture at our gigs, through doing open mics that our BL runs. She used backing tracks off her phone until the last song, when we accompanied her for "Creep". The second set had rather more of an audience, with a few of them dancing. Our guest singer came back on towards the end of our set to do "Sweet Child O' Mine". It was during that that I noticed that my wireless was showing battery low, so while she was getting back off the stage (it might only be 15cm high but it's a real stage) I switched wirelesses. Then we had a couple more songs, and into the final one, "Tulane". We were about 3/4 of the way through when the guitar cut out. The drummer and I carried on playing, singer carried on singing, guitarist was going over his pedalboard and amp trying to find the problem, singer did the band introduction for all of us, and then, just after he'd introduced the guitarist, the guitar suddenly burst back into life (guitarist told me afterwards he had no idea what had happened, it just started working again) and we finished off. Antoniotsai dragon 5-string -> Lekato and M-Vave wirelesses -> Zoom MS-60B+ -> Tecamp Puma 900 -> GR Bass AT212. The usual Caravelle memory foam trainers.

Although it's a 4/4 and the 3/4 variant is nearly £500.

Jethro Full

And this is why basses should be natural finish with no scratchplate.

Mrs Zero says I always sound like me. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

That's what I do - two sets of identical wirelesses, one branded Lekato and the other M-Vave. £25 or so from AliExpress.

Harley-Davidson - heavy, underpowered, unreliable, incredibly uncomfortable, vastly overpriced. If that's your idea of "wonderful" then yes, they are.

That's either "5 go mad with the heated glue gun" or there was a bukkake party while they were building the amp.

ISTR it's "her".

Either stop playing "Total eclipse of the heart" or stop treating the lyrics as stage directions. It's not "Time warp".

Normal crappy Jazz scratchplate but more decorative control plate.

I was trying to find the original diagram that I worked from and didn't, and I didn't download it either which is annoying. However, I did find another reference page which shows clearly what I did, as I do have text notes to tell me what connections to make. I should have checked those wiring diagrams properly against what I used. https://www.stewmac.com/video-and-ideas/online-resources/learn-about-guitar-pickups-and-electronics-and-wiring/blend-pot-wiring/ My notes definitely say to connect the crossovered non-hot ends to ground. If you compare that to a V/V/T setup, the pickups are loaded exactly the same - at one end of travel the pickup hot goes to ground, from the halfway point to the opposite end the pickup hot is straight to volume hot, and in between fully off and the centre point there is a varying amount of resistance. https://www.stewmac.com/video-and-ideas/online-resources/learn-about-guitar-pickups-and-electronics-and-wiring/learn-about-wiring-stewmac-pickups/stewmac-bass-pickup-wiring-diagrams/ - second diagram

When the Cort Space 5 came out, they were £50 cheaper than anywhere else.

Edited: see later post for correction to this and much clearer diagram. The non-hot end of the blend tracks should be connected to ground. As regards V/B/T, I thought I should post a version of the wiring diagram that I worked from: This may be clearer: In this, the opposite ends of both tracks are cross-connected, rather than leaving one end floating as in the diagram in the OP.

Mrs Zero had her hip replaced, and I was given a date for my hip replacement, so that's quite good, although we had to postpone our summer holiday by 12 months as a result.

T-shirts - two bass T-shirts from Mrs Zero, and an Ankh-Morpork City Watch one from her sister (which will probably be skin-tight on me as it's only XL).

Tuning stability shouldn't be affected once everything has properly bedded in - the tuning system is still an inclined helical ramp so the inclination (sorry) to slide remains the same, it's just the turning of the screw that is affected.

Undo the control plate screws. Lift out the control plate. Unsolder the pickup wires. Get another control plate and put a V/Blend/T or proper V/B/active tones in instead. And if you're wondering why I'm posting this at 4am on Christmas Day, so am I.

I use them to play all over the neck to look as flash as possible while still playing the same notes. It really works, people think I'm a genius! Slightly, but not a lot more, seriously, I tend to anchor my playing at the 5th fret. That's not to say I don't go below it on any string, but it's very handy when you're playing 4-string lines and it means you can damp with the left hand on everything including that troublesome bottom E, and play walking bass lines from bottom E upwards using the same pattern (bottom C# if you want to be pedantic).

I commented when this was first posted here that towards the end, they get to play the basses and compare the playability, and that's when the differences show up. I wouldn't say there's an absolute correlation between price and playability, because things like neck profile are really significant and not price related, but certainly fit and finish tend to be - though there's a comparison between assorted Les Paul guitar clones and a genuine Les Paul that's worth watching, and shows that really good fit and finish can be found on budget guitars (as the owner of a couple of Harley Bentons, I can attest to that).

Keep them to three songs or have time slots. Monitor the buggers because you can be guaranteed that if there's no adult supervision, 50% of them will play a fourth song. The one open mic I go to that I'm not house bassist for[1] squeezes as many acts in as possible, and does this by keeping it to two songs apiece in ten minute slots. Others go for 15 minute slots. Changeovers need to be pretty rapid, which is bound to include moving furniture like stools and chairs onto and off the stage[2]. How big is this place that you're talking of subs? I take my 10" Deltalite cab and Tecamp Puma along to the ones I'm house bassist for, and there's a vocal PA. Acoustic guitarists go through the house PA (straight to desk, no mucking around with DI boxes) and electric guitarists will invariably bring their own amps for "their own sound". [1] Anyone that wants a proper bassist asks me, otherwise Tom is liable to perpetrate something bass-related on them. Just imagine someone who has generally got lost by the second verse of "Stand by me" and who plays "Folsom Prison Blues" with a walking bass line (which also gets lost around the second verse). [2] The term "stage" applies simply to the zone within which an act will perform, with no implications as to height, isolation, etc

Also applies to the Cort Space and Ibanez EHB.

I have a related Squier, a MVM Jazz 5 which has been defretted, and I do rather like it. I had a play on a Harley Benton 5-string Jazz at a bass bash in Derby a few years ago (can't remember who brought it) and was also impressed by that, though it was a tad heavy. So I'm not being in the slightest bit helpful. Still, everyone will tell you you need a Precision, and a PJ means you can have one without the horrible Precision neck, and with the possibility of making a bit of difference to the P sound, so the HB might be the one to go for. Unless, of course, it's got the horrible Precision neck.

Now that Sub Zero has finally moved out, it's taken weeks of airing and spraying to remove the smell of teenage-then-20s youth from his former bedroom. And yes, he was a Lynx abuser.