Rosie C

We use generic foam windshields with our Sennheisers - helps with wind noise when we play outdoors, possibly helps a bit with pop filtering. Also, they're colour-coded with matching cables and coloured tape on the amp. That makes it really easy for competent people who aren't familiar with our kit to help set up - red mic, red cable, red mixer channel.

Our local Wassail & Mari Lwyd is next weekend and our Morris band will be playing throughout much of the festivities, including leading (with the choir) a public sing-along in the early evening - Farmer's Boy, Gluouscetershire Wassail, Cwm Rhondda, Calon Lan, Sweet Caroline, Delilah, Sosban Fach, etc. We had our first practice with the choir last night - about 40 of them! With pouring rain and an upstairs rehearsal room, I kept things portable with my bass ukulele and Roland Street Cube EX. It went very well - the choir were well-practiced and it didn't take long to synch together. One more practice then the wassail. There's talk of there being a couple of thousand people there, though the band will mostly be on smaller amps. I'm torn between the practicality of bass uke + TE Elf, versus making the effort [of] taking my double bass and my Trace AH300. The photos and video will still be there after the back pain has subsided!

A splendid plan! On 24th January I'm playing at a Wassail and we're going to lug half of it along. I just need to choose which half!

That is a thing of beauty!

I do like that idea. If I had such a friend prepared to do the machining I would be staining the side panels in a contrast colour before assembly, to make a real feature of the finger joints.

Well, in between here and being in Ireland we're staying in a 1-room studio flat so my stuff is staying with a friend who's learning saxophone. My partner drums, so we're going to set up the AH300 and my double bass and her drum kit to do some jamming when we visit. After that, I'm hoping to get into a band in Ireland on double bass. But I have my TE Elf combo for that.

There will be no future owner, well, not until I've popped my clogs. We're emigrating to the Republic of Ireland. So not as crazy as Australia or Canada, and I have the longer wheel base VW Caddy so I can get all my amps, basses, etc. in the van and take them over myself. As to which cab I prefer, I've not had a chance to really play with it yet - I'd only just got over Christmas when we had an offer on our house so everything has been pretty crazy since then.

Well, we are planning a farewell party at our local boozer and naturally I will be booking my own band as headliner 😉 so maybe, just maybe... Edit: Maybe one of those man-and-van services with a tail lift Luton!

Sadly, yes it is. I would like to gig it just once, but I'm not sure I ever will.

Yes, I didn't like to show off, but I guess it was obvious from the size of the stack that something was up

Not any more! The postage from the USA for the new badge was brutal, but this rig is all about the look of it, so it had to be done! In other news, our emigration plans have moved up a gear. I don't have time to fix the foot switch and I'll not really need it - so it's available here for postage:

This foot controller came with my Trace Elliot amp. It's faulty - it's suspected that the switches need a clean and some use, as it's been stored for 10 years. No charge, just cover the postage - or collect from Chepstow.

A trip to my friendly local motor factors later... I stuck the badge on with number plate sticky foam. For completeness, I hacksawed the fixing bolts the badge came with and glued them in the bolt holes with black gasket silicone - and ran a thin bead around the edge of the white sticky foam so you can't see the white.

It has occurred to me that there are famous musicians who are associated with drinking, drug use, etc. who still manage to be healthy enough to be touring musicians in their 80s and I can't quite tally the 'rock and roll lifestyle' with reaching old age in good health. I am suspicious that there's not as much riotous behaviour as we'd be led to think. We went to a small rock festival of cover bands back around 2011 and quite a few of the musicians on stage were drinking straight from 70cl bottles of Jack Daniels in between songs. Call me dubious, but I strongly suspected they were full of Irn Bru, or similar as they were all playing extremely well, not at all inebriated.

Sad news. I only managed to make the one last year, but it was fantastic. Thank you to all of you for the work you've done organising over the years.