tauzero

I take it you don't want to just swap the necks?

On the battery life front, as an experiment I didn't recharge my Lekato WS-90 after doing the last gig (2.5 hours left switched on), and since then they've done three open mic nights (2 hours left switched on every time) and managed an hour of rehearsal before the transmitter threw up its little hands. About 9.5 hours then.

Mine was fine - I did buy it from PMT Birmingham and they did have an in-house guitar tech so it's possible it had been adjusted.

"Cut the kids" was right, it's an emo band.

Do you buy Xmas gifts for all your musical equipment?

An app (and website) that I discovered recently when tracking something from AliExpress has proved extremely useful for, well, everything. 17Track (https://www.17track.net/en) takes tracking numbers from hundreds of different courier companies, including Royal Mail, Evri, Yodel, DPD, DHL, etc and provides the tracking information for them. It does autodetection of the carrier from the tracking number format, which is almost always successful. It means you can have all your incoming items tracked in one place rather than going from app to app. As I sometimes have half a dozen things coming, it's very handy.

Tube/microphone emulation with clean tone. It's been a very long time since I used mine, must have another play with it. See https://mediadl.musictribe.com/media/PLM/data/docs/P0293/M_BE_0709-AAK_ADI21_WW.pdf

I've had a Crafter DE6 for nearly 20 years - I tried it out in PMT and it compared favourably with guitars three or four times its price.

I've definitely seen that flourish around the rear strap button before - probably AliExpress as I do go roaming there fairly often.

Do you still have the CNC machine? That would be another way of cutting out a pickguard. Despite angle grinders being my favourite tool, I don't think they'd be ideally suited to the task.

It just needs that extra P pickup, then change those three volume controls to three blends - neck P/neck J, bridge P/bridge J, then blend between the neck blend and the bridge blend. No, of course I'm not going to do it. It's a 4-string.

Can you replace the print head with a laser? Or get a tame shark with a frickin' laser beam on its head, of course.

Or go for something 10% of the price that does just as well. Or go somewhere in the middle. I haven't noticed any difference in my wirelesses (Lekato WS-50, Lekato WS-90, Line 6 G50, Smoothhound, Harley Benton AirBorne Pro 5.8GHz).

I had a 2000 Warwick Thumb reprofiled to 1987 JD Thumb dimensions, which was a vast improvement. I suppose it's going to be the question of whether to keep it (almost) original or whether to improve it as a working instrument.

The fact that it's truly unusable hasn't stopped me using it a few times. I do normally use an external router. I did get caught out moving from an XR12 to an XR18 as there's a USB socket that can be used to power the router on the XR12 which isn't there on the XR18.

Neither the Harley Benton, the Line 6 G50, nor the Smoothhound have built in tuners. Power requirements are rather less than that, mine all happily run off 100mA outlets. The Smoothhound is slightly awkward as it's reverse polarity but that's not a huge hurdle. The HB is 5.8GHz and, as previously mentioned, will charge the transmitter off the cradle on the receiver (which is on top rather than on the side). The others are 2.4GHz and the transmitters run off batteries - rechargeables can be used.

It looks like the jack socket ground isn't connected, but the black wire is going to the join between socket and control plate instead. If that's the case, I'd move the black wire from where it currently is and solder it to the jack socket terminal for the sleeve - the terminal on the left of the socket in your first photo.

No, my Lekato WS-90 is quite happy if I go walkabout with a few bags of dirty water (ie people) and a brick pillar intervening between Tx and Rx.

Oh, so you're not committed to the receiver being on the pedalboard powered by the pedalboard PSU? In that case, I can also suggest the Lekato WS-50 and WS-90. I use them both, the WS-90 is a bit bigger but has a longer battery life, a long enough reach to cope with Ibanez sockets, and you can also select which channel (of four) you want to use.

But what's the point in having a digital multiFX if you don't use the one thing that sets it aside from a pedalboard of analogue effects?

Although Brexit and the Windsor Framework have muddied these waters, so NI is both part of the UK and part of the EU. See the flag of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick for clarification.

Of the ones I have personal experience of, the Smoothhound and the Harley Benton Airborne Pro would meet your requirements (dongle transmitter, pedalboard resident receiver). The transmitter on the HB is somewhat bigger than that on the Smoothhound. The HB has an internal rechargeable battery that recharges from a cradle in the receiver (can also be recharged via USB) whereas the Smoothhound uses AAAs, and will happily use rechargeables.

"I know - we'll put the neck at that end and the body at that end!"

"Differently costed"? "Budget"?