Jean-Luc Pickguard

I’m the bass player so punters aren’t allowed to speak to me even if they were inclined to do so.

I've wanted one of the EMG ones since I first saw them, but $41 for shipping is a little excessive for a $5 item This thing looks like a good alternative https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Music-Nomad-The-Octopus-8-n-1-Tech-Tool/372627233479

I really liked Thomastik JF-324s on my MIJ mustang, but when I got my JMJ, the stock fender 9050L stainless steel long scale flats on it were so good that I bought a set for the MIJ as well. They're higher tension than the TIs and are deep and punchy without sounding wooly or dull.

t'ain't natural

Handcrafted? I wonder whether this means that the cheapest and crappiest mass produced components available were screwed together by hand and the headstock was hand shaped with a butter knife.

In the words of Joe Meek, "if it sounds right, it is right"

I once had a club biscuit that didn't actually have any biscuit in it - was all solid chocolate.

I have a can of the WD40 brand contact cleaner (not to be confused with WD40 the product). I've used it to clean up scratchy pots and noisy jack sockets and it works well.

round the corners but leave it otherwise uncut - then if anyone asks, tell them its an Alleva Coppolo

If your main reason to be looking at a semi-acoustic is for unplugged practice, you will probably be disappointed as in my experience the difference in unplugged volume between a solid bodied bass and a semiacoustic is only slightly above negligable. A solid bodied bass played through a decent practice amp such as the Roland micro cube bass RX, or a blackstar amPlug2 bass headphone amp will offer a much more satisfying and inspiring sound for practice.

I can confirm that milliput does indeed work well for repairing a nut or in my case partially filling nut slots to refile. I used the white superfine milliput. It was a fairly uneventful process - I just cut off enough make a ball the size of a pea from each of the two component parts of the milliput, mixed them together well after rolling each ball into a long sausage. Once it was in the slots and tidy I left it overnight and attacked it with the files the next day. Here's the nut after filling - it doesn't look particularly neat, but that doesn't matter - it looked tidier after filing, and now the nut is back on the guitar the strings are covering my handiwork and there's not much to see. To cut the slots I used cheap files made for cleaning welding nozzles, which were perfect for this nut.

hideous

or a bumble bee

I would get a new precision body/pickguard, do the mods to them & swap over the neck/hardware from the Harris bass to that. Then as finances allowed I'd buy a neck and all the hardware piece by piece to fit to it so the original bass can be slowly rebuilt. Then you will eventually end up with two basses including a completely custom one and an all Rolf Harris original signature model.

Has anyone here used milliput to repair a nut? If so how did it go? In my eagerness to set up my recently purchased acoustic tenor guitar I filed one of the nut slots about one metric gnat's knob too deep, so when the open string is hit hard there's a bit of a buzz/rattle against the first fret. I've heard of the baking soda & superglue method to fill in the slot so it can be recut, and I was originally planning to try this, however I've also seen references to using white superfine milliput two part epoxy putty instead. I have some of this and it was ideal for filling in a couple of dents in a white bass a while ago so I'm going to give it a try. I'll report back when its done if anyone is interested.

I can confirm what Jus Lukin said. I have a couple of Epiphone Vintage Pro thunderbirds, one sunburst and one white. I fitted a set of Gotoh GB-640 res-o-lite non-reverse vintage tuners to each and apart from giving improving the look of the bass, they are noticably lighter compared them to the stock tuners. I use Comfort Strapp neoprene straps which are grippy enough to prevent any potential neck dive and the stretchyness makes the basses feel lighter somehow.

I bought this cute little Ozark tenor guitar yesterday as I get confused when playing anything with more than four strings. I've got it tuned to Chicago tuning (D-G-B-E like a regular guitar with the E & A missing)

I own quite a few assorted hercules products. I contacted them after one of my floor stands developed the sticky handle problem and disintegrated, but I didn't even get a reply back from them. I've bought a few stands from other manufacturers since including millenium stands from Thomann which are cheaper and better made.

Penn Jillette plays bass

New Tenor Guitar Day! (yesterday) I won this on ebay just as the lockdown started. It was pickup only so I've had to wait until now to pick it up whilst observing appropriate social distancing measures. Its an Ozark tenor guitar which came with a fitted hard case. It has a solid cedar top and rosewood-faced laminated sides & back. I already own an Eastwood Warren Ellis solid-bodied tenor which I use in Chicago tuning (D-G-B-E) so I've set this up the same. It needed a bit of a truss rod tweak to reduce the relief slightly but I'll probably not need to make any further adjustments to the nut & saddle as its very comfortable to play. It sounds really lively and open. I was surprise how good it sounds for such an inexpensive instrument. I have been looking at pickup options - it seems the soundhole isn't wide enough to accomodate a magnetic pickup so I'll most likely use my iRig acoustic for recording.

You don't want to put tape or anything else on your strings. Just a strip of black electricians tape on each pickup. Standard clear tape like sellotape / scotch tape might also work, or another colour if you're feeling funky, but whatever you use, try to get something decent that won't go gummy and weird once its been on for a while.