Rosie C

Likewise, on re-starting studies at the Open University I received a Playmobile lookalike folk musician (right hand side, playing 'recorder'). Henceforth any item I advertise without my mini-me in the photo will be FAKE!

I was thinking the same about ibuprofen...

I have a guitar strap which has slots cut in the leather end to hold three spare picks. I found picks the same colour, so you can't even see my emergency pick stash from a few feel away

A friend asked me to make a pedal board for effects pedals for his *lyre*, and it's proving a useful project in taking a fresh look at my own pedalboard. I'm using a aluminium case with removable lid, and planning to power it with a PD power bank, through an adapter that 'talks' to the power bank and requests 9v. First, the woodwork though...

I recently removed these Wilkinson pickups from my 6-string "Vintage" SG copy, maybe useful to someone in a build project? Collect for free from Chepstow, or if you cover postage I can post to UK addresses.

I too had a bad night's sleep - and woke up early all wired and stressy. But all swept away with today's service. We had a full church for a baptism, and the hymns were chosen to appeal to younger members of the congregation: All Things Bright & Beautiful, Onward Christian Soldiers Pilgrims, and "Thanks for the Fellowship", to the tune of the Skye Boat Song. I learned all the bass parts, but with only two of us in the band today, and such nice tunes I played octave-mandolin instead, along with the piano.

After my local bass guy retired, he recommended "Martyn Bailey Luthier Ltd" (https://mjbl.co.uk) who can add adjusters to an existing bridge by mail order. It was about £120 from memory and the results were good.

... and the yellow Dunlop pick that's been recommended can be purchased in a rainbow set of red (thinnest, .5mm?), through to the thickest purple. I found it useful to have the whole range when I started using a pick. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B016L291A0/ or possibly direct from the seller, but I couldn't find the exact item - https://www.dirtyriffs.co.uk/

I did have a pair just like this from a local gun shop. I was struggling to balance the volume of the drummer and horns in our swing band with hearing the conductor in between numbers. I found the sound quality through the mics was poor, and they suffered from mobile phone interference. They had a feature to reduce the volume when a gun went off, which triggered if the drummer in our swing band really went for it, and it shut off the sound at a certain point. Probably perfect for a gun discharging but for music a more graduated control is needed. On the plus side they were bright pink which prompted conversations and gave me many opportunities to talk to young people about protecting their hearing.

I took vocal lessons and found them really useful - they took me from "can I sing?" to performing gigs in about six months. One of the best things was increasing my range - I'd increased my top note 6 semitones after a year's lessons. I find it much easier to sing to octave mandolin which has similar pitch range to my voice. Lately I've been playing mandolin and that's much harder as I have to find my own pitch based an octave down. However, I think it's good practice as otherwise I rely on the octave mando too much. I also found it a great help to have a professional advising as I ended up with laryngitis twice, and a chest infection, and generally since I've been singing I've had to take much more care over my voice & lungs. Not like bass where I can just chuck it in a bag after a gig. Edit: I can't sing and play bass though, I don't seem to be able to carry two rhythms in my head at once. Singing to guitar/mandolin is fine though.

Not just the line selector, but a whole bunch of pedals. I have an Orange amp simulator now nestling in my basket!

Ah, that brings back some memories. It must be 20 years since I was last at "Stormin' the Castle".

I don't think anyone has mentioned the Orange Crush 25B yet - I use it as my practice amp, and it's also loud enough to use as my amp performing in church. Church of England, nothing too raucous! 😉 I had one, and it did sound lovely. But it only lasted about a year before the pre-amp circuit blew.

Using a fork-lift?

I heard Free's "Wishing Well" on the radio this morning and was taken with a sudden urge to learn it and multi-track it

Enjoy! As we discussed on another topic, I have a similar bass and like it very much.

Having had my first lesson last week, my mandolin teacher has me learning a 2-octave G major scale and the arpeggios for G, Am, Bm, C, D, Em and F#dim. Compared to bass lessons I've had it's brutal, but I am learning quite quickly.

This is what I do - ambient IEMs run through a personal headphone amp from a signal split out from my pedal board. My first pedal is a TU-3 tuner which has two outputs.

Post photos!

I'm lucky that I look a fair bit younger than my mid-50's. But coming late to music after a decent career as an engineer (where only my skills mattered) it was a bit of a shock to see, on social media, mediocre music by pretty young women getting lots of love, and good music by older, grey-haired women being ignored. Also, I see very competent young female musicians posting mostly photos with thigh and cleavage and (as someone who grew up immersed in 1980s women's lib) that's quite depressing that they feel that's a way to get on. In contrast it does seem that in many genres people feel a weather-worn older man, guitar in hand, knows something of life and has songs & stories worth listening to. So (to get back to the point of the topic) yes, I can see in due course I might well 'get some work done'.

I measured it at: E - 11mm, A - 11mm, D - 10mm, G - 7.5mm That is fingerboard to underside of the strings. That's not how it arrived, I spent some time sanding the edge down until I found it comfortable. I have the beginnings of arthritis in my hands, so it has a relatively low action and synthetic 'rockabilly' strings. The adjusters were added to the bridge to fit the pickup.

I'll dig out a measuring device and check tomorrow!

This is new today! A mandolin from Thomann for £50. I did a bit of research before buying and the consensus seemed to be that if you could: fit decent strings sand the bridge to fit the arch top properly set the action set the intonation then it was a pretty good instrument for the money - and so it has turned out! It has an adjustable bridge so setting the action is straighforward. The reviews were right - the bridge isn't bad quality but on arrival doesn't fit the profile of the arch-top:

I have a bad recommendation - I recently bought an Omnitronic 6 channel box, but while it passes a cable test, some of the channels don't work properly with 48v phantom power mics.

So true. I've had phone videos of me singing and I think I sound awful, yet on the same video the crowd are applauding and having a good time. So I can't be as bad as I think I sound. (I keep telling myself this!)