Stub Mandrel

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> 👿

Thank you for teaching me a new word. Now know what my dumpty-dumpty-dums are really called.

No. It's bloody fantastic that you can share these feelings. My advice is, don't get to hung up on what you have to achieve, just treat music as an end in itself. If there's someone you get a chance to play with, but they are a bit over-confident or like different music, don't worry about it. Don't treat it as a chore, playing what they like is an opportunity for you to make THEIR life better.

Don't force things, but don'y get too hung up on what you play. I signed up for a 'weekend warrior' sort of thing where I've been thrown together with a random bunch of guys of varying experience from 'I used to sing but I've taken up guitar eighteen months ago' to 'I'm in two bands'), two about my age (mid-late 50s) two a bit older. We have had seven practice sessions (OK we booked the rehearsal room for an extra last night). the gig, with four other similar bands, is on Sunday. I was nervous we would end up playing either old rock'n'roll numbers or lowest common denominator stuff. In the end we are playing songs we all really like and having a storming time. One thing is we are all putting in the effort and the amazing thing is when we listen back to recordings we are surprisingly good! The point is, I used to be in bands up until 23(!) years ago and have been really miserable about my music going nowhere, so my brothers (who both play) really told me to get some targets like learning some new stuff right through rather than just noodling riffs. This thing has given me a combination of the comradeship of being thrown together with four other random but surprisingly like-minded guys and the reason to get my act together. I was impressed by how fast and how many songs I learnt (we changed the list a fair bit in the first week or two) and how my playing has come on. I found some of the songs really hard to learn and technically challenging - now I can't see what the problem was! The only downside is wondering what life will be like when it ends - except the one guitar player and me both love the same sort of music and could end up starting a band. So my suggestion is consider something similar. The best thing is that once other people are relying on you, motivation isn't an issue but teh payback is just how rewarding it is.

We did some 'A B testing' last night and decided playing staccato eights sounds better defined. To finish the set I need a really f'd up sound already got HM2, Flange and Chorus so going to use the tremelo on that as well for maximum noise death.

I took my fretless to a rehearsal and managed to play everything on it. Once or twice I got cocky and tried to do a big position shift without looking... Decided not to use it for Sunday, although back when I was gigging regularly I used to use it on a few songs each night.

When I lived in a maisonette the son of the couple who lived above visited and played the Chilli Peppers rather loud. As soon as the track finished, I played it back to him considerably louder. That worked 🙂

I really doubt it...

I've installed guitar pro but it's a bit tricky and I don't have the time to get to know it at the moment.