Beer of the Bass

Why are we calling it "The Ukraine"? As far as I understand it, the practice of calling it "Ukraine" without the definite article was established when the country formally became independent in 1991. "The Ukraine" was how it was referred to as a region of the former Soviet Union. So our choice of language may reveal bias one way or another.

There's definitely some old ex-punks in the UK leaning populist right. And knowing a lot of hippy sorts myself, the conspiracy world has led a lot of those towards ideas that definitely aren't left, especially since 2020. It's not uncommon that people who made a bob or two in the 80s might go a bit Thatcherite, too.

Though if you're an acoustic trio without drum kit or backline amps on stage, that's probably as close to an ideal scenario as you'll find for making a mic work. If you don't want to spring for expensive dedicated bass mics, various dynamic mics can work well - the venerable SM57, or a side address dynamic like the Sennheiser e609 or Superlux PRA628 wrapped in foam under the bridge or tailpiece. A few bassists on Talkbass are mounting the Sennheiser e604 on the string afterlengths too.

I'm not sure piezo pickups are the place to look for "air", but that said, the J-Tone Big pickups do have quite a thick, midrangey tone that can come across as a little electric - it's perfectly usable, but you may find you like others better. And a lot of players find they prefer a single element pickup to one with two sides - I would try the J-Tone with one element hanging loose first just to determine if that's a good direction to head in. I'm getting results I'm quite happy with using the KNA DB-1. As pickup sound goes, it's fine, and the high end is more open sounding than I got with a single element J-Tone on the same bass. But both the fit and the way a pickup responds on your specific bass can be extremely variable, so don't take that as a firm recommendation!

Not much different than Musk's alleged gaming record, then. It amazes me that these people are so insecure as to need the ego boost of an obviously bogus win.

I bought a (pre-owned) Gibson acoustic guitar last year, I'm hoping that doesn't get interpreted by anyone as flying the flag for the current regime. The lower end of their acoustic line gets enough shade thrown at it online as it is! I didn't really have any romantic ideas about American guitars being the real deal or whatever, this was just one I liked within my budget.

Hmm, it's nice to see that Bowspeed stock as many German bows as they do, I'm used to just never seeing them. I remember reading an older British tutor book (might have been Eugene Crufts) that simply said "in Britain we play the French bow", but my first couple of lessons were on German and it stuck with me. I'm still playing a very basic student bow that's probably not economically worth another rehair, so something even slightly nicer is on the wish list.

I mention Newtone because the Martin strings I like are monel wound, and there are only a few companies offering monel strings, Newtone being one of them.

I can make bass strings last a long time, so the strings I buy and change most often are my acoustic guitar strings. Currently I like Martin Retros, made in Mexico for a US company, and it seems like buying those in the UK might be quite badly hit by the tariff arrangements. I might start looking at Newtone again...

Trump didn't display a lot of respect for the democratic process after losing in 2020 - l suspect the only reason there wasn't a successful coup at that point was that their plan was simply to win the election and they hadn't prepared for the possibility of a loss. They will have learned from that, I'm sure, and the lesson will not be to allow an election loss and transfer power peacefully.

North Korea has elections (after a fashion), as do Rwanda and Putin's Russia. There are a number of ways democracy can be compromised while keeping some semblance of an election for the optics. Those aren't much better than no elections, but I wonder if they might want to keep the claim to legitimacy that "winning" a compromised election would offer.

I can't see Vance winning in a free and fair election, at least. I can't see what charisma, personality, appeal etc that Trump is meant to have, but it's clear that many people do see that in him. Vance, not so much! Though how the integrity of the next presidential election will look, I would not like to say.

Interesting mix of quite quirky and more conventional styles there. I'm enjoying the looks of the one in the first post with the Austrian/Hungarian style scroll and the unconventional wood choices, very individual looking.

17 basses? With the size of the market in the UK, that would be slow to move however well advertised they are, unless a dealer takes them at a job lot price to resell over a few years themselves.

There must be some shops in your area who would take at least some of them on consignment - it can be slower but the returns are usually slightly better than auctioning with limited info and it gets you a professional opinion on them. If it's a large number of basses, they're likely to only want to take the better ones, but it's worth enquiring.