How does one remove the knobs from a guitar body? The answer seems to be incredibly diverse. Apparently some Ibanez guitars have collet knob, while some owners report success in using thin guitar picks as wedges to prise the knob off. With a collet knob you’re supposed to unscrew the top of the knob to expose the collet assembly which you then proceed to unscrew using a tiny allen key. I’ve tried this on one of the knobs, but even using one of those rubber or silicone gadgets we ancients use to open stiff jam jar lids I can’t seem to remove the cap. Is it even a cap? Maybe the knob was just pushed on and should simply be yanked off.
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The easiest way to remove knobs that are push on rather than secured with a screw is to use a cloth or hanky. Lay it flat beside the knob and pull down until the cloth meets the shaft of the pot. Now pull the cloth together on the other side of the pot. Your cloth now covers the whole underside of the knob.
Now gather up the cloth ensuring you keep it tight under the knob and gently pull. The knob should come away in the cloth.
No metal, no leverage, no pliers.
I added a little switch to my 1st active bass to preserve battery life but since then I only put the battery in when I’m about to tune up and play.
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I’m finally learning the C scale, after all the recent weirdness. Playing at and above the 8th fret, so I don’t really need to stretch. Scott Devine is a good teacher, so the fretting hand and arm were well relaxed.
I found I had to forget everything about what I thought a guitar-playing posture looked like. I basically got a relaxed playing position for my fretting arm and then manoeuvred the guitar into place. The result is very close to the illustrations of classical guitar playing positions. In plan view, the guitar is at a 45 degree angle to the plane of my pelvis. In front elevation it’s at a similar angle, with the neck much closer to my head than I imagined. I honestly believed that guitars were played lower and with a lot more right angles, despite all those pictures of professional guitar players playing in a much more comfortable position.
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I’m actually making music (of a sort.) This is far outside my comfort zone, but it’s odd that I’ve never committed to doing this before. My bass is still in need of a setup because the neck is too straight, but I know how to do that now. My son says his 20-year-old Squier Les Paul copy has never had a setup, and he has no idea how he would do that.
I’m scared and excited because I feel like I need to practise every day.
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When under tension and with intonation set there’s nothing wrong with a straight neck. Go easy or ask a local tech for a set-up.
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It’s okay, I know what I’m doing. A tiny little tweak with an Allen key on the truss rod and I had enough neck relief. There’s a little more to be done to fix the action and the intonation, but the neck is about right for a fretted bass and it’s already much easier to play.
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I mostly have my guitar and bass in dropped-D tuning and 7-string guitar in dropped-A (AEADGBE). I don’t think I hear anymore much comments about “but it’s cheating!” as power chords are easier to play. Well, that’s nice addition, but it also allows me to play riffs that are impossible on normal tuning. Also things like root-fifth-third -chords (in tab like 336xxx), as I play mostly metal and distortion makes a mess of the sound if the intervals are too thight, that spreads the notes around just enough. Two separate D-strings are also nice, you can have pedal point riffs from two different octaves. And in a pop-rock cover band the 7-stringer was nice as I could play five string power chords easily to give a bit of mass to choruses when I was the only guitarist in a band.
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It’s not cheating at all. Some music is just written for drop tunings.
I haven’t played in standard tuning for years, probably 
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I’m a DADGAD and C standard fan myself but as I play bass and baritone as well as ukes and other oddities I tend to tune up to fit the recording. It’s never cheating, just playing.
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I actually searched and was very surprised to find how many articles online address the question of whether Drop D on a guitar or bass is cheating. Have they never seen a keyboard instrument? All the notes laid out in a row, with the C scale obligingly marked by the colour and shape of the keys. And look at modern brass instruments. To change the tuning as God intended, you’re supposed to pause and perform a minor feat of plumbing to shorten or lengthen the tube. Those valves are cheating. A baroque player would have been appalled at the kids of today with their tweaks and gadgets.
As for the obscene growling trills produced by these hooligans in their jazz ensembles and rock and roll bands, they should go back to the conservatoire and not dare to leave until they have learned to flutter tongue like a gentleman or lady should.
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Reminded of Joni Mitchell and her variable tuned guitar and dulcimer, Bowie, Jimmy Page …
I have a favourite tuning depending on the music the instruments want to play.
Use pitch to make what you want to play possible.
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There’s also the funny thing, that Drop-D on bass is almost always harder to play than tuning with “normal” intervals. Just try to play any scale starting from the bottom string, with normal tuning you don’t need to change position of your hand, but with dropped tuning you often need to.
Also, I once covered Crystal Mountain by Death. It’s originally played in D-standard, and I played it in Drop-D. Almost every riff got harder in that tuning, especially the second verse riff: Kristallivuori - Death - Crystal Mountain cover in Finnish - YouTube
(It’s also sung in Finnish for just because)
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It occurred to me the other day that possibly one reason for playing Drop D on bass during performance or rehearsal is if your guitarist uses the same tuning they can watch your fretting and it’s easier for them to get valuable feedback without having to translate between tunings. If something’s wrong with the sound but you don’t know whose playing is at issue, a visual check may be all you can rely on without interrupting the performance (which would I imagine really annoy the singer.)
In Finnish, you say? Personally I think the real cheats are those actors who insist on quoting from Macbeth in the original Klingon.
As I’m fond of saying: pretentious, watashi?
Qapla’
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I also play keyboards in a band where two guitarists and a bassist have all different tunings. Makes it often confusing to try to see how the riff actually goes and what chords I should play. One guitarist has 7-stringer in normal BEADGBE, another in ADADGBE and bassist in BF#BE.
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Ok, so I’m getting a heady mix of undiscovered country, red dwarf and Sheldon.
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Spot on with the first two. I’ve never watched Big Bang Theory or Young Sheldon but my daughter is an immense fan of Andrew Wells in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe. He’s the one who talks soothingly to an action figure that has been held hostage by Spike.
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I ordered a nice Orange bass amp.
I do hope it will be loud enough.
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It will be very loud, probably.
I used to gig smaller venues with a 35 watt 10 inch combo.
I maybe did push that one too hard though, at one point it started sounding weird and now it’s blowing fuses.
Bought a 100 watt 15 inch combo, and never cranked it more than half. 100 watts is only a fraction louder than 50 watts with the same speaker.
Note that this is for rehearsals or gigs where there’s no extra PA support.
If there’s a PA system, your amp is basically your monitor. You will probably be using a direct box or mic up the amp. Stage volume is best kept low to avoid problems
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I know exactly how it feels.
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