3below

This why I like some older kit, chosen wisely it can be easily self repaired in the event of problems unlike my QSC power amp that totalled itself (switched on at the time but not doing any amplifying!).

@agedhorse mentioned the sloppy wiring / connections earlier Looking at the picture of the board there appear to be quite a few solder joints (of those that are visible) that want investigation / re flowing (in addition to the transformer connections needing heat shrink etc.). An interesting design decision that the bridge rectifier diodes do not have separate pads for the diode terminals and the incoming connections. If you (or someone) replaces the smoothing capacitors this would be the ideal time to tidy things up. It will be good when it is fully sorted:)

Tony Revell guitar headstock https://www.soundaffects.com/acoustic-guitars-c96/tony-revell-1997-blues-legend-in-natural-pre-owned-p18237 A similar bass appeared on here a while ago Tony was a close family friend, did work on some of my basses and our kids were school mates. As far as I know he is still in the Shropshire / Welsh border.

I have visions of the above chaps enacting some SB song titles, this would certainly encourage a full and frank discussion: A MATTER OF TIME ONLY WHEN YOU LEAVE CROSS THE LINE MOTIVATION TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT HOW MANY LIES MUSCLEBOUND FIGHT FOR OURSELVES NATURE OF THE BEAST

So many great songs from them. A northern friend of mine turned down playing with PS in the very early days. To this day he regrets his choice of accountancy over music. Every time I hear the line "Some things hurt more, much more than Cars and Girls", I am faced with my burning life question, what are these things that hurt much more than Cars and Girls?

Nearly half way now. I have donated earlier in the day.

The four I have built with flat fretboards have been 8mm thick. I have slotted two of them with the board glued on the neck blank. The other two are fretless. The downside of this is you are left with not much trussrod depth if you want a ~ 21/21mm depth. If (like me) you are ok with 'baseball bat' necks (think some Warwick basses) then all is good. I personally really like flat fretboards.

@WonkyOne, have you considered using a debt recovery company rather than the direct approach?

Yes to the latter and I still have great fondness for TP, to the point I still do quite a bit of stuff in Free Pascal (or Lazarus for graphical work). The Borland compiler is was quite something even on a 286, on modern hardware goes like SOAS It was all much simpler back the day . Topic drift but following @Smanth's foray making me use the grey matter again, I have started dabbling with various AI sources to create code. A serious game changer. The code it has created for me is very good other than one instance of trying to assign a boolean variable into a float variable, static type checking saves the day. Conversely I fed it some detailed questions on a materials science topic (I did three years postgraduate research in this field). By giving it a false (simple) initial statement it produced very convincing descriptions that are the opposite of the actual reality. The best AI 'flaw' I have read so far (elsewhere) is generated article references that are simply bogus, look real but are fictional.

Like you @FinnDave I have been playing for about 50 years, mostly on 34" basses. At 64 I am luckily not yet suffering arthritis, but age is taking its gradual toll on the hands. Over the last few years increasingly using short scales has made sustained playing easier. As per @Jonesy my SG bass is a good tool, really light. At the moment I am getting vast playing times on my Indian version Chowny SWB-1s (fretted and fretless). Build quality is excellent and they seem real bargains s/h. The Sandberg Lionel looks like a really safe bet.

I have had no problems with the BBOT bridges. The set of Hipshot lookalikes I have fitted were OK. As far as machines go I am very partial to Hipshots, they just seem so nice.

Getting into a serious prog jazz rock band playing originals with really top notch musicians has improved my playing in the last 6 months or so. Am undoubtedly much better than I was for most of my previous 50 years playing. Practice with high demand and expectation helps, as does band members with patience and a willingness to explain. Somewhat poorer memory does not!

Now corrected in my post, just can't get the staff these days....

^ This at 64 in my case.

Not wishing to derail the thread, the pico (and others e.g.ESP32) simulator http:// https://wokwi.com/projects/new/pi-pico that @rwillett pointed out is pretty damn amazing. I have only played with the online version with virtual hardware. Highly impressed so far. It apparently interfaces with VS CODE as well.

Dave kindly sold me the bass I had been looking for 6+ months. Total pleasure to deal with, excellent communications and the usual faultless two blokes meet in a car park and exchange the merchandise. Highly recommended, deal with confidence etc. Many thanks.

The level of support,apps,libraries, compilers etc. that have emerged from OSS never ceases to amaze me even though I have been an OSS advocate from the days of FreeBSD 2.2.5.

Bought a set of TIs from Paul. Excellent communication, arrived ASAP (despite the coronation thingy) and spot on. As always a credit to BC. Many thanks.

I remember them as the low rent alterative to HH if you wanted solid state in the mid 70s. Not great things from memory.

Those of us who have more years will immediately recognise what this is despite someone's attempt to hide it, and the improbable price. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275785620137?hash=item40361a9aa9:g:YaAAAOSwrX5kHDmN&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA0JhRDe6ek66vV4wbavXLtlEIW9rNh5wG47oSqRgNa0uN2vj2LLUJk%2FjEsmnNtZl%2BWaDHbDXzny5isN0aZnnzS37MBWJOcP3jPswg0Ra5WFS5o70hEw%2BpeEyGoU3T1raAPA27ypKNZ1nXFW%2FIqf1K7gg4fj9jcwSqsB%2BqIW2LP0ifeVmda1Pf7PVwVaG4b2QPIpP2a0MMG9klK37A8AIua3KoICxW8XdlxAzkBUVst3Uvlv2mbCsq83CajCJo5NSYeNOOQlDzWaK7BzW6uZQnUWA%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR8btvar_YQ

Great stuff, did you use the Kenneth A. Kuhn debounce method?

I was working on the 20ms 'bounce/settling' time, sample the button and keep sampling until a change of state (or not) is certain. However, from your question I now realise we could sample through B1 -> B4 store results and then every 20ms or so do a state check. Slowly getting brain into gear will get electronics kit out, think and play tomorrow.

✴️ Multithreading ✴️ I have been working in 'old world' single thread linear microcontroller program mode. Carry on, ignore me lol, and yes we have dragons in Wales.

Thinking some more about this, consider four buttons (B1 -> B4) being serially polled. On each each poll a detection event must happen for say 20ms. This means that an event on B4 could be missed while B1 -> B3 are being polled serially and detected (say 60ms total). Using a dedicated hardware debounce with 4 channels continuously detecting and reading the buttons as a port byte every 20ms would reduce the worst case detection latency to 40ms. The advantage of hardware debounce is not in the single case, it is when you have parallel concurrent switch operation. On the plus side I suspect in real operation foot switch timing changes are not this critical with only 4 switches.