zbd1960

Hi, welcome. I'd recommend finding a teacher to get you started to help avoid acquiring bad habits.... 🙂 (I play cello and you can cause yourself some longterm issues if you're not careful).

Zombie thread I know... The sax equivalent of here is Cafesaxophone.com

I agree. I bought a weekend ticket, obviously not going today. I ended up on a very crowded train from Crewe to Liverpool (it was a London train with a lot of people on it for football). I wore a mask and very few others did. I will be very cross if I've picked up you-know-what as a result as I'm going away tomorrow.

... we just need your bank account details....

There's another thread appeared... But I'll comment here as well. My guess is that exhibitors, especially smaller ones like makers, are going to be very wary of splashing too much cash on high fees to rent a space on a speculative couple of days. The organisers have some questions to answer since it looks likely that they have over-priced it to exhibitors who are recovering from two years of very difficult trading circumstances. The general level of communication, including social media updates, has been very poor. They're going to have to give this a big re-think if they want to succeed.

A lot of people, including me, have reported in the original 2020 thread. I went - I had a weekend ticket. When I arrived and had to queue to get in, I thought it would be busy. Turned out that the drum show WAS busy... Bass show was in a separate building, but the number of exhibitors was very disappointing. I've not been to one before, so I have nothing to compare it to other than our own bass bashes... But speaking to an exhibitor he said it was very small. I was expecting makers to be there and more bits and pieces / accessories types, but very little. I suspect if they are unsure about turnout they're going to be reluctant to pay the hire costs for a stall, which are probably £££. I'd booked for Jeff Berlin as well - I didn't even get the tee shirt offer... which I would have refused anyway. Shame as a good venue. Don't know what went wrong, but something did. I suspect they overpriced it to vendors who've been through very difficult times.

OK got home about an hour ago. Nice view out of the windows in the Arena... Just not a lot going on from a bass perspective. I don't have a previous show to compare it to, but exhibitors indicated it was much smaller than usual.

First time I’ve been to Liverpool Arena. It’s a nice venue with plenty of space and nice location by the river. Five minute walk from Liverpool One.

Very small . One trader I spoke to says it’s half the size it should be. The good news is drums are a long way away

I was a barman in late 70s early 80s. At the start of that, bitter was 23p a pint, lager and Guinness were 25p. Your baby/split drinks (Britvics, tonics etc) were 13p...

The only thing I can comment on is my experience with choirs/orchestras using school halls / civic centres and local authorities tend to insist that you carry PLI

Hmm I've just noticed that Jeff Berlin isn't there and I have a ticket for that... I booked the tickets last October.

I booked it about 6 months ago and although it's not a big drive for me, an overnight stop would give me a rare chance for a night out and be able to have a drink. Unfortunately, hotel prices for the weekend are quite high (possibly due to an LFC home game meaning a lot of Irish supporters about).

I will be going at the weekend - it's an hour's drive, or a PITA train journey via Crewe. Large venue event hire costs etc will be horrendous... I suspect they're worried about gettign enough support to be viable with it likely that many people will be reluctant to attend busy places. I went to a non-bass event a couple of weeks ago, which was crowded and it has to be said, I felt very uncomfortable about it. I'm goign away for a few days soon and the last thing I want is you-know-what... Unfortunately, I think these issues will impact on all sorts of events for a while yet.

Yes, 32" scale, 24 fret, 20" radius

Took a lot of digging... I think this is one of the pieces for the top... I seem to have thoroughly buried the e-mail with the images, so I've had to dig through the photos app on the Mac....

OK This is the Wenge for the fretboard... I seem to have buried the walnut pics, so bear with whilst I try to find them....

Time for a confession.... a few months after I commissioned the ACG Krell... I commissioned Robin at Manton Customs to build a six string... (yeah, I'm nuts). There are various aspects of it which appeal. I'm an early music aficionado (Renaissance and Medieval) and I play the viola da gamba(tenor and bass). The "Titan" model has attributes of the viol about it. I have gone for mostly English woods this time. The top will be walnut and the accent layer will be yew, and the body English sycamore. The fretboard will be Wenge... I need to dig through e-mails and pull out more details on it... but it should be ready in a few months.

I'm very pleased with the ACG Krell. I don't have particularly long arms. I've always found the Fender Jazz a bit of a handful - it's a bit of a stretch and uncomfortable for me near the nut. The Krell is 32" scale rather than 34" and I think with the way the bridge is positioned as well, it just makes everything much more comfortable. I no longer feel like I'm stretching to reach the low end. As soon as I've got some time, I will post up some better photos.

- I wouldn't recommend that. Whilst bass rosin may be a little different from cello rosin, they're not that different. New blocks of rosin are a pain as you need to get rid of the shine so that it grips the bow hair. The rosin I use for cello is relatively soft - Melos.

All my instruments are insured with Allianz, who bought out a UK specialist insurer some years ago (whose name I now can't remember). I've got a lot of kit insured with them (2 cellos, 2 viols, 4 saxes, 4 basses plus the amps and cabs). Cover includes instruments in locked cars. I had to make one claim about 4 years ago when my main cello fell on its face and the fingerboard came off, belly opened up, bridge snapped, plus made a mess of the finish. Took it to a luthier and they settled directly with him.

Yes. There are various letters which have dropped out of use in English - yogh and thorn being two of them. Thorn (aka Icelandic thorn) is an old runic character and it's pronounced 'th'. In old written text, you'll often see 'the' written as torn with what looks like a superscript 'e'. When printing came along, most printers didn't bother to have a thorn character and substituted 'y' for it... as it looked similar... People knew that 'ye' meant 'the'. So it's 'the olde shoppe' not 'you olde shoppe' which is nonsense. And I live in Shropshire.... You get both pronunciations for Shrewsbury used. The name seems to have an Anglo-Saxon origin with a person named something like 'Schroeb', which would tend to point to 'shrow' rather than 'shrew'... but both occur. And I regularly drive past Chomondeley. Most cases where pronunciation and spelling diverge is because the spelling was fixed when printing came along and the pronunciation has has since changed. E.g. the 'k' in words like knife and knight used to be pronounced.

Watched a video recently of a guy using 5,000 year old bog oak for a fretboard - it was almost jet black. I like the look of this though.

I haven't personally done it yet, but basic answer will be engineering. More expensive ones should be better made, meaning that they should fit and operate better. Precisely why (apart from aesthetics) you buy a£2k bass over a £500 one.

Sounds like the string isn't getting to vibrate properly. A new bow will need a lot of rosin on it. One way to check is to look along the length of the hair and then run a finger under teh hair across the width of the hank. You should see a little puff of rosin. Also, a new cake of rosin is resistant to cooperating. If it's still shiny it won't be giving you much rosin. Once the bow is rosined, you don't need to give it that much - just a touch up each time you play. I'm a cellist, not a EUB play, but principles are the same.