Happy Jack

Then it's an SB310. There's only 24 pages of this topic ... surely you've read them all? 🤨

FX Loop?

SB310? Or SB301?

Have to agree on this. I've tried (repeatedly) to get various Sansamp units to produce a genuine all-valve sound/tone without the baggage that comes with real tubes and I've never got anywhere close. Makes very little difference whether you use the pedal or the rackmount - what you get is the Sansamp sound and that's not the same as an all-tube amp.

In all fairness, there is a photo of the back. The rather un-Fender burst is suspiciously unmarked by any playing wear, but there's evidence of cosmetic modifications in places. Looks to me like someone tried to turn something into a Fender and didn't make an awfully good job of it. Mind you, there have been periods when that description would have fitted Fender themselves ...

See the umlaut? That's Heavy Metal Maria, that is ...

So ... tell me about adjusting the intonation:

I identify as 6'5" regardless of my real height. 🤨

But would you really want to play keyboards in a cheap band?

When I were but a lad, a cheap bass was just that - a cheap bass and pretty much a piece of unplayable tat. There was a reason for saving up for something with Fender (or similar) on the headstock. These days, most of the cheap basses I've tried recently play and sound as good as (or better than) big name instruments from 30/40/50 years ago. It seems to me that in just the last five years or so the same thing has happened with FX pedals. I've had all the ludicrously expensive pedals you can imagine (with Earthquaker Devices at the top of the list) and they've all worked very well, done exactly what it said on the tin, done exactly what I paid for. But the pedals that have blown me away recently have been things like pretty much all of the Mooer and Hotone ranges ... superb kit at stupidly low prices. Example? Two pedals that I have used extensively since Covid are the Digitech Drop and the Digitech Luxe. That's about £350 worth of kit (if you can find them) and very nice they are too. I broke my Drop at the last gig - trod on the p/s at the pedal socket, doh! - and I simply have to have a whole-tone pitch-shift for one particular song so I went looking for cheap alternatives. I found the Mooer Pitchbox MPS1 for £59. It's about a third the size of the Drop, it does exactly the same job only with rather better tracking, and if you flick the switch from setting #2 (pitch-shift) to #3 (de-tune) it also does exactly what the Luxe does. Cheap and nasty plastic? No longer - these things are now built like tanks, just as they should be. 1980s Behringer-stylee pedals are pretty much a thing of the past. I realise that it's only a matter of time before someone tried to tell me that they're cheap because they're produced by starving Vietnamese orphans or something, but you know what? I don't think so. £60 for an FX pedal seems about right to me, given that the components cost about a fiver and (since no one has invented a genuinely new effect since The Beatles) there's no R&D cost to be recovered. I think we've all just got used to being robbed blind by the big-name pedal manufacturers and their marketing budgets plus - of course - our own insatiable desire to have the latest trickbox.

Depends. 50 watts of solid state (digital) power is a practice amp. A 50 watt all-valve amp or combo is a serious gigging rig ... the old Selmer Treble'n'Bass heads spring to mind. @nbaptista you really need to tell us why you are buying an amp. Is this going to be used to gig with? If so, what sort of gigs (jazz, rock, heavy metal) and what size of gigs (wine bar, club, arena)?

I'd pay good money to see someone play cajon and bass. Is some sort of complex mechanism involved?

Or pebble-dash it and call it Bung-Glo. 🙈

Cuts both ways, dunnit? I once turned up at a jam with an Alleva Coppolo KBP5 and someone asked if I couldn't afford a real Fender ...

After my recent less-than-satisfactory encounter with a swarm of bees (see Off Topic for details), combined with on-going back and joint issues, I have decided to adopt a new approach to dual-purpose stagewear.

In truth, Andy, I was actually thinking of swopping back the original Lull fretted neck so that the new body would carry the fretless neck you built for me. My thinking was to end up with the very first prototype lightweight Rogers Fretless P5, guaranteed to be worth a mint in 30 years when people have long forgotten Wal and Alembic ...

The whole iPad thing is interesting because people seem to focus on what it is, rather than why it's there ("I have an iPad - what's yer problem?"). To me it's a red flag until I know the muso concerned has learned their part. Someone reading the words/chords from a cribsheet is a complete PITA, whereas someone referring to a setlist between songs is another matter entirely.

Enjoy!

Erm ... what? Seriously Paul, these are two completely different instruments and the last thing you should be doing is trying to play the same lines in the same way on both - not gonna happen. I'm a thoroughly average electric bass player (no ... stop it ... really ... oh you are kind ...) with no great technique and no party tricks. I'm good enough to make decent pocket money from playing in covers bands in pubs and that's about it. [That information supplied for context.] On DB I either play fewer than half the number of notes that I'd play on electric bass, or when I'm playing in my rock'n'roll band I play fast walking basslines. Plucking straight eights will get you about as far as playing with a pick when you're talking DB and give you dreadful cramp eventually, while stuff like hammer-ons just doesn't work a lot of the time. Twiddly bits are not only harder to pull off but also don't sound anything like the same on DB. When I was starting out on DB, my mantra was play fewer notes, but make them more important and perhaps more imaginative.

One of those strings is really badly bent ... you'd think he could afford to buy a new set?

I'd worry that I'd left my bass ajar ...

I'm just delighted to find that @Flanker is still with us. I still remember buying your Alleva Coppolo LPB5 in a lovely complicated part-swap deal involving the Powersoft Digam that I'd bought from @Dood. That AC then got swopped back and forth with @Clarky for a while before being sold to a Basschatter on the Isle of Wight. I also remember how shocked I was when I heard about your stroke. Great to hear from you again.

I was so sure that I had spinal issues that I paid to have an MRI scan done. The results that came back said that there was nothing at all wrong with my spine, my back, or any other part of my anatomy. The specialist told me, "You have a lovely back, you're just not using it properly". I started doing Pilates to improve my posture and to strengthen my core, and as I gained in Pilates knowledge and experience my supposed back troubles just faded away.