Happy Jack

They still are, yes. Andrea's number is in the post (above). I'm just depping for them on keys.

I've been using Xvive U2 wireless for a few years now and the battery packs are beginning to fade; they used to be perfectly happy to play 3-set gigs on consecutive nights without charging, now they struggle to reach the end of a single 3-set gig. Given how (relatively) expensive they are, I'm not happy and I won't be replacing like with like. My Joyo JW-3 bugs cost just a third of the Xvive price (at the time I bought them - I see they're a fair bit dearer these days) and have delivered a very similar perfomance level to the Xvive U2. I like the look of that charging-case system a lot. I play two gigs most weekends, sometimes three (hell, occasionally four), so having the bugs starting to recharge the second I put them in the case at the end of the gig works for me. Amazon today have a better deal on the Lekato equivalent so I've ordered one of those.

"The Neoprene padding is guaranteed not to react with any lacquer/finish" That turned out to not be the case when I first started putting nitro-finished basses on neoprene stands/hangers. Has something changed or improved?

I've not played both so can't really compare for you, but I followed this thread with interest. I got very close to pressing the button on the Squier VI until I fell down the YouTube rabbit hole of just how dreadful the bridge is and the amount of work needed to make a brand new instrument playable. So last week I bought https://www.thomann.co.uk/harley_benton_guitarbass_vs_vintage_series.htm It arrived yesterday and the first thing I needed to do was to tune it. Then ... well, I played it. That was it. Straight out of the box it was exactly what you want from a new instrument, everything as it should be, set-up perfect, intonation perfect, no dodgy fretwork or crackly pots, very nice sunburst and very nice tort for the p/g. It feels light (actually 7.5 lbs but it feels lighter somehow), hangs well on a strap, and in the hands of a good player - not me, the guy in my soul band played it all last night - it's a very competent bass as well as an excellent baritone guitar thingy with all due allowance for the tuning options. And it cost £185

Aha! An excuse to re-post one of my all-time fave YouTubes ...

I'm always on the lookout for interesting side-projects so I check JMB / Gumtree / FB every day in case something crops up. Looking at a singe page of JMB this afternoon offered me ALL of those tags above in the space of about 30/40 listings and I realised that the whole lot was simply washing over me.

Disco in 6/8 time ... the outcome is inevitable:

I have literally no idea what most of these mean, what sort of songs they are, what sort of bass-playing they require ... indeed, whether or not they actually need any bass. I suspect that many of the people using them have wildly different definitions from each other anyway. Am I missing something? Should I invest hours/days/weeks going down the wastepipe rabbit-hole of trying to understand all these things, or is it safe to carry on ignoring them?

Bass needs more strings ...

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

And here's the long-awaited debut gig ...

Sounds a bit pointy to me. 😆

The usual lack of any helpful information about the bass. I'd only consider buying it if I could spend 15 mins with it first.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166933130243

Entirely in line with The Law Of Unintended Consequences I too bought a Trace Elf some years ago intending to keep it in my gigbag as an emergencies-only fall-back rig. This was after seeing one of the early ones being used by @Mike Brooks at The North Star in Ealing with @Silvia Bluejay. Unbelievably, it very rapidly displaced several £000s of high-end amplification and became my first choice head at every gig with both my main bands ... just as much for DB gigs as for those using a Rickenbacker 4003s5. Who knew? Modern amplification is so unbelievably powerful and useable that those 750W / 900W / 2000W heads we all lust over are simply a load of willy-waggling. Any gig big/loud enough to need that sort of amplification and you'll have full PA support and a sound engineering team to take care of it. For me, the Elf has never once skipped a beat in the last eight years (that's >400 gigs, even with Covid slap in the middle), it weighs next to nothing, and it's built like a tank. Game Over. Insert New Coin.

I run DB -> Trace Elf -> Crazy 8 cab on an old speaker stand at ear height AND Trace Elf -> DI Out to FOH The Crazy 8 is tiny (clue's in the name) and for my purposes any decent PA top would do just as well. I roll off some bass on the amp to avoid overloading the cab and I can hear myself clearly pretty much regardless of volume levels either on stage or in the venue. The combination of Gain & Volume controls on the Trace Elf give me all the control I need on stage, everything else lies with @Silvia Bluejay out front. Having the tiny cab (with effectively an HPF) four foot off the ground means that I never get feedback issues. I routinely play with four different DBs according to what's needed for the gig, and this system works equally well with all of them. Here it is in action a week ago: