Dan Dare

I have to disagree. Led by thieves would be more accurate.

If you pull the frets, you'll need to fill the slots tightly with strips of hard veneer or plastic (a light colour is handy as you can check your intonation visually). Some years ago, I made the mistake of pulling the frets on an old bass and filling the slots with ordinary filler. The neck promptly bowed when I took the strings up to tension, as the filled slots were less resistant to bending. It was bad enough that I couldn't correct it with the truss rod.

I wouldn't recommend using a guitar preamp. The frequencies the eq is tuned to will likely not be ideal for a violin/viola. I think you'll find ukulele tuners will be too long to fit in the pegbox of a violin/viola. The pickup looks like the one on my Yamaha silent violin, which uses a conventional violin bridge that sits on a vibration sensing base. Violin bridges are traditionally made from maple. Changing the wood for something more dense, hard and heavy, such as ebony, will affect the ability of the bridge to transmit vibration from the strings. Whether that will be for better or worse can only be found by experimentation. However, given that violin bridges have been made for hundreds of years, it's likely that it has been found that maple does the job best. Bridges are not drop-in replacements. They have to be fitted properly - cut/trimmed to height, thickness, etc. The come as blanks which are a little too large. Doing it right is a skilled job. If you want the bridge black, why not stain it?

It makes perfect sense. There is a big difference between education and training. Education develops the whole person. Training enhances a person's ability to perform in a certain role. The fact that someone may have an interest in and a talent for a particular subject at the age of 18-25 doesn't mean that will be the case for the rest of their lives. As people develop and learn/see more of the world, their interests and desires can change, often markedly. There may very well be few opportunities to work in the field one has studied. Studying a subject to degree level and beyond does not mean you will only be proficient in that subject. The methods and techniques you learn and the abilities you acquire whilst learning will transfer across a wide range of related and unrelated topics. Absolutely. When we boomers bought our "cheap" houses, they weren't cheap by the standards of the day. We were in a similar position to the one you describe. Yes, we owned a house (or rather, the building society did. They graciously allowed us to live there in return for a hefty monthly payment), but it was furnished with hand-me-downs from relatives and junk shop finds. We had no car for several years (sold them to put towards the deposit). We took camping holidays and life was strictly no frills for quite a while. I'm not bleating about it. We made our choices and knew it would come good in the end. However, it boils my p*ss when I'm told we "had it easy", etc.

This is key. It's understandable to think "My amp's only turned up a quarter of the way. Therefore I'm only using 25% of its power", but it ain't so, because of the taper of the pots. They don't increase volume in a linear fashion. You usually see a large increase during the early stage of the pot travel, with the amount of increase lessening as you turn it up further.

Beyer DT770 is noted for its bass response. I'm still happy with mine after many years of use. Around a third of your budget, which is nice.

You really need to try things rather than buy on spec' and hope. What rig do you use? Is it capable of giving the desired result? Even if it is, so much is in the player's hands.

A BF 4x10 is capable of being pretty loud. Are you playing stadiums? I'd be looking at driving it harder (BF cabs will take some serious power), rather than adding a 2x10.

I went to an old-fashioned grammar school, where it was assumed everyone would go to uni'. By the age of 18, I had had enough of being a broke student and wanted to go out and earn some money. Didn't have any desire to do x or y and had already started doing the occasional gig for beer money, so told the careers advisor (aka the maths teacher) that I fancied playing music. Once he accepted that I didn't want to go to uni' (I think I was one of only 5 from that year's sixth form who didn't), he was actually quite reasonable - told me how precarious it was, etc and suggested I have a backup plan in case it didn't work out. Gave me all the usual suggestions - the City, Civil Service, Forces and so on. All clean hands stuff - the school was one of those where you learned Latin and ancient Greek (very useful in the 20th/21st century...) and doing anything hands on, save for things like medicine, was regarded as being a bit infra dig. A common and very short sighted attitude back then (early 1970s), especially as the economy is always crying out for engineers, technicians and skilled people. I did actually apply to the Civil Service and found it to be full of interesting and often talented misfits - people who had no burning ambition to be any particular thing, but who wanted to do something socially worthwhile in convivial company. I felt quite at home. One of my first bosses was a sax player. He was blind and did all his work on a braille typewriter. He would sometimes bring his sax to work and practice during his lunch hour and we would occasionally play together. I left several times over the next forty odd years and had spells of playing music for a living (as well as doing various, sometimes grim, odd jobs when the phone wasn't ringing), before going back to working for the government. Had some good times, ended up with a reasonable pension and can't complain how life has turned out. It's only now that I appreciate how fortunate I've been, considering how little I planned and how I drifted into whatever seemed a good idea at the time.

Iggy Poop, The Donors, The Beagles

Let's unpack this a little. Sound equipment is not designed or built to perform badly. Assuming it's of decent enough quality and adequate for the job, how else can it sound bad other than through operator error?

I did not say that "often bad sound is user error". The word "often" was in your post, not mine (save as a quote). Obviously, missing, damaged or malfunctioning/faulty equipment or corrupted mains power is outside the control of musicians (assuming it isn't their equipment that is missing, damaged or malfunctioning/faulty). I always carry a power conditioner. It's smart to do so, not just because it will treat mains-borne noise, but because valve gear especially does not like poor quality power, especially over voltages. The mains voltage can often fluctuate and spikes/surges are not rare. I've heard/seen plenty of bands that sounded terrible because they didn't know how to use their kit properly. Leaving aside the instances to which you refer, poor sound rarely "just happens".

Come again? It may not be one individual's fault (several people may be conspiring to make it bad), but it doesn't just happen. Not learning how eq, gain, etc works is definitely the fault of those who don't/won't do so. One of the biggest obstacles to a good band sound is each player insisting on using "their tone". The sound(s) they like might be pleasing in isolation, but combine them at any volume, especially if you fail to take account of room acoustics and the result can be a mess. It's part of the job of being a musician to understand these things and know how to compensate for them. At a dep' gig, the singer/guitar player was struggling with the mixer at soundcheck and it sounded appalling. I looked over his shoulder and the gains were all over the place. I suggested he set them properly and he said "What do you mean?". I set them correctly, adjusted the eq and all was fine. To his credit, he said "Oh. You do know what you're talking about" and asked me what I'd done, so I showed him.

I use several of those aluminium (they're actually ply with an alu' skin) camera cases you can buy from Argos, Amazon and similar for mic's, cables, etc. Cheap and sturdy.

True dat.

Pickup swapping seems to be the musician's equivalent of the hi-fi buff's cable swapping. I've never been able to hear much difference between quality p/us. Granted, you'll notice a difference if you replace a POS with something decent, but apart from that...

You sure about that? Blockhead + one extra letter (a single "o") = (drum roll) Bolockhead. See the "Read before posting" thread 😊

Ian Dury and the Bolockheads (I know, mis-spelling, before the grammar nazis attack).

There are plenty about, but you wouldn't want to play with most of them. I assume you've tried the usual places - Join my Band, etc? It's a bit of a chore, I know. You usually have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince.

So many pubs, so few names.

Exactly. Those types of people buy most of the "special edition/limited production run" instruments.

I think Jack may have realised that. His post might not have been entirely serious.

Agreed. A shame they went out of business. I have a B1000 head and it's excellent. Very good and extensive eq and plenty of power. It's a little more transparent sounding than my AG700. I also use it to drive the monitors in my PA. I like it a lot.

It has a certain... charm. I have an idea his method consists of throwing a lot of instrument parts in a pile and screwing them together however they land.

Hilarious. I expect there's a used car lot out front of the studio called Keef's Wheels.