Norris

A damp cloth, maybe with a little bit of detergent will clean most muck. A clean-ish old toothbrush might help, especially around the bridge to shift the dust bunnies. A rosewood fretboard might like a tiny wipe of lemon oil after cleaning.

Do your back a favour. Have a serious look at a Fender Rumble v3 500. Great tone, plenty loud enough for pubs or even outdoors, light as a feather, looks great, won't blow the bank

I don't know of anything that will automatically tidy up your drawings. Back in the day I'd have used CorelTrace, part of the CorelDraw suite, to vectorise a scan of the picture. It might take as long to tidy up the nodes after the trace as it would to re-draw though. It might be worth having a look at Inkscape - it's a free vector drawing app (a bit like CorelDraw). It's a very capable application and handily supports layers, which can be locked and switched on/off. Also Draw.IO is a bit like Visio, but free, and you can download a desktop version (it's primarily web based). I'd probably scan the drawing onto the computer, then add it to Inkscape as a background layer and use it as a guide to re-draw it. The nice thing about vector drawing is that you can tweak & adjust things as many times as you like. Once you get the hang of editing nodes there's not much you can't knock up pretty quickly

A K&M 210/2 stand arrived today. For a shade over £40 delivered from Amazon, it's a good, sturdy stand. The boom clamps in place and it feels like it's not going to dive. The stand is weighty enough to take a few knocks without being excessively heavy to carry around. Well worth the money for the quality, albeit on first impressions Thanks for the recommendations

If you want it to look like the original powder coating, POR-15 paint is the next best thing. Not that cheap, but great finish. It's more often used for painting car parts

That looks fantastic. Well done

I used clear gloss nitrocellulose rattle cans from Manchester Guitar Tech with good results. As others have said, watch the fumes!

Bought a bass pickup from Adam. Great communication throughout and it arrived well packaged and exactly as described. Deal with confidence Thanks @Dolando

Here's my Squier P-bass Special in gun metal grey with black plate, if it gives you any inspiration. Metallic may not be the easiest finish to apply though

If it's any consolation (he says with tongue firmly in cheek) I picked up my package in perfect condition

I'm just off to farce-central because apparently no-one was in at home yesterday. Want to enquire about your parcel while I'm there? 😉😂

Simple: take a dump or get off the pot You can't have the rest of the band hanging around wondering if he'll turn up or not. It's wasting your time and money. If he's too busy, say so. If he's not into the band, say so. If you're waiting around for him you risk losing the rest of the band. Time for cards on the table (Sorry to put it so bluntly, but if you want to gig you can't have people that are not committed)

Steady on old chap. The thread has been quite civilised so far

He's only a good drummer if he turns up Find another A crap drummer that turns up is better than a good one that doesn't

Absolutely. He turned a pleasant enough song into something rather special

I'm looking for a controller pad, primarily for drums, but it would be useful if it could do the transport controls too. On a budget, I'm looking to spend less than £100 Current setup is a PC with Reaper. I have a USB midi interface hooked up to my ancient Yamaha PF85 keyboard and a USB Behringer Xenix X1622 mixing desk. I also have a cheapo Ion electronic drum kit, but think I'm better tapping out a rhythm with my fingers than with drum sticks. I'm looking at the AKAI MPD218, but am put off a bit by reviews that say triggering can be a bit hit & miss. I'm also looking at the Novation Launchpad Mini MkII, but that seems very geared towards Ableton. The Presonus Atom looks interesting, although topping my budget by a bit. Any other suggestions/recommendations?

What he also seems to be doing is playing an upstroke with his index finger occasionally. Unusual, but can give an extra bit of twang. It looks like he is playing quite lightly and the deflection on the B string is more of an affectation where he is resting his finger after plucking the E

Rather a lot of Macca support so far ...and @Bluewine hasn't even joined in yet!

To gain some perspective you need to look what preceeded him. He was truly an innovator in bringing the bass to the fore rather than standing at the back playing root & fifths. Forty odd years later it's not always easy to realise the influence he has made on bass playing. Most of his bass lines are sublime and are just what the songs needed. To do that as well as singing is truly a feat. I can't say I listen to the Beatles or Wings very often, but to say he is overrated is to do him a disservice

Having just been given a nice Amazon voucher I'm now eyeing up the K&M stands

If you stick a P pickup in the place it normally goes, it will sound like a P Whether it's worth the hassle, only you can say

It would also depend where the pickup goes. A lot of the sound is due to the position of the pickup in relation to the bridge and nut.

Ditto for the Rumble. It's darned loud without an extension cab, and plenty for on-stage sound. If you need to go louder you'd be looking at going through the PA

Two. Both are long Comfort Strapps fitted with Schaller strap locks. The difference is that one has the neck strap lock fitted in reverse for use with my Thunderbird, which has the button on the back of the neck. When you have the perfect strap, why do you need another?