Stub Mandrel

Effectively identical to a Teisco EB-100 'Tulip', but a circular pale patch on the headstock means it's a Kay. It oozes Kay quality... or teh lack of it, maybe 🤣 At least it's possible to turn the tuners by hand.

Went to the Earl Haig Jam last night. An excuse to play possibly the most unexpected bass in my armoury. It actually sounded HUGE!

Wooden tug bar!

Not everyone wants a bass that can stand in for a lolly stick 😉

Two gigs this weekend. Saturday was the Exchange, a pub that loves its blues rock, and we had a great night with much uproarishness. The vocalist of a very good local classic rock band was in, and he congratulated us at the end. You can see I was prepared for a boisterous evening. On the subject of bass stands, I have a 'new' car and forgot to put, my stands in it., After encores I rested it on the bach of a wall seat, and it slid over. I thought it had knocked the G. We got hauled back for a final song, so we did Sultans of Sing as we've never played it live, I checked the G, and it needed a tiny tweak and we dived in. Of course, my A string was almost half a semitone flat. I gave up trying to tune it on the fly, muted myself and used a tuner, got back in time to finish the first verse! This afternoon was a small benefit for Alzheimer's in Llanelli. We all underestimated the travel time, and the drummer was quite late. The acts and landlady were very helpful and swapped round, so we could go one about an hour late. It wasn't packed, but was slowly filling up over the day until we left about half six. We were very different from the other bands/performers - swing jazz to the jazzy end of blues, so I was worried how we would go down, but it was great and the landlady said we were bloody amazing and should insure our guitarist's fingers. My partner and I stayed around, so we saw about five other acts. Not a paying gig, but we have been invited back to do a full gig for them.

Strange. My MIJ 80s fretless has a maple board and no shortage of mwah.

Scott's Brief Lessons. The 30-minute videos with the 25 minutes of waffle taken out. Or more likely... Scott's Biographical Lessons. As above, but with an extra five minutes waffle and no bass content.

I may be wrongbin the details, but those are probably 2 and 4 pole versions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakon_connector

Some of them have different contacts so you can connect speakers with opposite phase using the same plug. Not sure how it works/how it's better than just having swapped wires.

Fairport Convention, no one been there for the whole tide, although Simon Nichol only took a break. But due to gradual replacement and integrity to the band's character they still feel like the same band. Can't see them continuing beyond Peggy and Simon though.

The Stones will be touring with no actual members, they will just all be hired hands like Darryl Jones, and the profits will go to the owners of each member's estate.

Search was quick for me, just over a second to find all used fenders.

I've seen this a few times - a shorter warm-up to encourage early birds. Worth coming a day early for Reef, they weren't on my radar until rceently, but I've seen them three times now.

Not quite in my budget zone I'm afraid.

Not yet... a basschatterwho needs to be involved has been away. There has been some parallel discussion on Farcebook.

OOps! It does do 3.5 jacks, but Speakon would be handy.

I'm not convinced. The majority of pedal effects run happily on 9V. I'm not sure why you should need super low output impedance (unless you want to run old 40R headphones dirct from your bass). Even the venerable 741 is 75 ohms, nothing compared to any amp input. Mic level is usually 2k and line 10k.

Being cynical, it's to provide sufficient headroom for the excessive gain of some active basses. I'd love to know what benefits are gained by the higher output level of active basses beyond generating the requirement for lower gain input stages on amps to compensate. I hardly think it's justified as improving signal to noise ratio or microphones would be boosted to similar levels.

We have earthquakes in Wales. Just small, civilised ones.

Impressions: Ampeg is much darker, even muted sounding.

It's been OK but not perfect, one of the straps fell off... I thinned my rig quite a lot, but I'm sorting a PA, so it will be useful for carting around 4 or 5 mike stands, plus some accessories. Latest purchase was a big wheeled box from a local bargain store, 'Buyology'. Big, with good handles moulded into the box (so they can't fail) and a sturdy lid. Pretty much all my leads, mikes and accessories will fit in it.

I bought one of these as I am sorting out a PA and many of my existing leads are elderly. It has a great, simple display that shows a cross for a good XLR lead/balance jack lead and a line for a good unbalanced Jack lead. It also has three LEDs taht light if you cause an intermittent fault by 'jiggling' the connector or wires. It also has a sturdy, if rather retro, plain steel case. You can see some other functions such as various level test tones etc. Unfotunately it doesn't contain a 'test cap' for installed cables, but these can be made simply by commoning all the pins in a suitable socket/plug. I think it's paid for itself already! I tested several existing leads, made up some new ones and modified others. Not only did it help me find a few intermittent faults caused by solder blobs shorting to earth or over-long shield connections and helped me thin the herd of old jack-jack leads by spotting the dodgy ones, it's revealed my own incapacity for soldering XLR leads by instinct rather than checking the pin numbers... So i say if you make your own cables or have lots and sometimes have issue, get one of these for the price of a couple of high quality leads.

The irony is not lost on me...

Two gigs in early August:

So much good advice! I will reread it all tomorrow. I like the idea that I make sure everything I get will be a step towards my 'final' PA. Nice thing about the folio is it has a sub 100hz filter on most channels. I hear the rest, and clearly monitors are a priority. If I want the monitors to function as a vocal + kick PA for small gigs (and then use my 10" monitor for vocals) I will need a bit more performance than for pure monitors. Also may need to EQ them for monitor use. Tempted to pair a powered 12" with a matching passive speaker to keep things simple. As Bill notes the ultimate step will be a sub or subs (a sound engineer I know is in the Bill camp and insists you only need one dub even for a tidy sized club), and a pair of powered subs that can stand alone. A club I regularly go to has a sub with built in crossover so everything goes to it, and it sends the mid up to two active speakers. I hope to be playing mid-sized venues not just pubs & small clubs, as the other band I'm in does (the BL's dad has a 4kW pa all singing and dancing with digital control - having seen how often the tablet connection fails worries me a bit although it 'fails safe' so things keep working). I'll re-read all your thoughts tomorrow. Thanks folks!