Stub Mandrel

Always avoided CNC as I love manual machining, but I recently acquired a KX-1 mill - just looking for the time to set it up and get it working.

It will attack shellac/french polish type finishes and some water based ones. OTOH white spirit can bleach out tiled finishes. 'Test on an inconspicuous part of the garment'

Respect! I thought my 1x18 was impressive!

Started with crap nylon acoustic which I put steel strings one and more or less pulled itself apart. Then a Kay KT-2 'SG' I still have, cheap as chips but curiously nice to play and hear. I sued to use with with an amp made out of an old valve record player, overdriven by diasy chaining a fuzz box that was a tube amp built into a case. I was well ahead of the tube preamp curve back in about 1980! About 1984 a mate lent me his red sunburst Fender Precision; I also got to play with a Mustang for a day. Not too long after I got myself a Hohner Jazz bass and a very useless 50W Sound City SC50B combo which I used for (I think) just one gig before chopping it up to be a monitor wedge and separate amp. Upgraded to a Laney Pro-Bass amp and a single 18"(!) in a cab about the size of a washing machine (I had a Cortina estate by then) and added a Hohner B2 and Maya fretless to my collection.

He made Slade cut off their hair...

Not sure if this has some slap in it or just aggressive picking - but it's brilliant? Listen from 1:55.

Has anyone else noticed taht when he is soloing Mark King starts to look like Gruber from Allo Allo?

I played my slap version of Living After Midnight at Friday's rehearsal. The guys didn't prefer it and the guitarist was almost rude... 😪

The problem is all the aluminium necks or bodies I've seen are polished alloy which tends to feel horrible. Anodised aluminium feels lovely, but doesn't have the same look.

Whoever invented self-adhesive plectrum dispensers deserves a long, slow and painful termination. My brother bought his wife a lovely Ibanez Talman semi-acoutsic with a gorgeous figured top (basically everything a Fender American Acoustasonic Telecaster should be except it looks fantastic, not sh1te like the Fenders). First thing she did was fit a crappy pick dispenser on the front 😱 Meths and white spirit are what I use, stickness that responds to one of these rarely comes off with the other.

Why not turn up wearing fake JH moustaches and see if he sues...

Have you considered a dog or cat?

The guitarist brought in his laptop a focusrite box a a couple of mics. I've got similar. If you have a laptop already you can get a recording setup with a pair of small condensor mikes for very modest outlay. Mike placement is key - as far away from teh sound spources as possible (assuming you are in a small practice room with sound deadening walls).

Its a shame that I've spotted clones of both your hollow basses and David's Vantage/RV4 designs on there. Either the original factories simply keep building them or the designs get passed around:  I don't know much about the bass market but I do know a lot about the background to importing tools and machine tools. In China (not sure about India) they are very efficient at resource use. Any QC fails are often sold at the back door or passed on to a 'family member'. If you are lucky they then get repaired (I've had speed controllers which had failed reflow soldering and been manually resoldered by someone in boxing gloves with plumbers solder, but they worked) or just tidied up a bit. They then get sold to Ali Baba, Aliexpress, eBay etc. and people see they look to all intents identical to the 'real thing'. Down the road, the buyers complain of poor quality Chinese products and lack of spares/seller support... My advice is always buy imports off a seller who has the size to hold spares, undertake quality control and give you customer service if anything is wrong. This does cost more but you are actually paying for something worth having.

We also shared started record the sessions and shared the best version of each song afterwards to practice against at home. Helps nail endings!

+1 for making sure everyone is learning the same version - we shared you-tube links to solve this.

I got a ridiculously cheap but well made TC Electronic 'forcefield'. It's effect seems to be that of the legendary 'better knob' for many songs. There are songs where no compression is better. Wish I'd never sold my Arion compressor back in the 90s.

I've got a Squier VM SS Jaguar bass and it is superb to play and look at (candy apple red!) but I had to mod the J pickup with extra neodymium magnets to get a decent sound from them. OTOH I have a 1980s Fender Performer and the range and quality of sounds from it is outstanding.

Having rediscovered short scale basses, they are far too good to waste on beginners. Google 'tune bass harmonics'

Expect to be sued by Toys 'R' Us... In a global economy what's the difference between guys in a factory in China/India making it for you and guys in a factory in Englandmaking it for you (except price)?

Get stuffed 😉

Rare set of unused flatwound strings. Genuine new old stock from before the time everyone realised flatties sound ... <no signal> 👿