u/RHZ1980

I am, I think, a rare thing - a guitarist who isn’t really much of a gear head. I’ve played regularly for 30 years and I’m still using my 1996 Epi les Paul and Zoom model 1010 fx!

Anyway, at long last I’ve decided it’s time for an addition and have decided it’s time for a strat. I’ll probably buy used (but not opposed to new at all), anything up to around £1500 max maybe for the right guitar. There seems to have been a lot of ‘renaming’ of strats in the period since around 2000, so what would be a basic ‘ladder’ of models?

For example I have no real way of knowing how the Highway series compares to say a more recent American Player. Hendrix, Frusciante etc is the kind of thing I would be playing.

Putting aside special models, the les Paul studio/standard/special is a simple range to follow!

I am running 10.4.6 on an old Mac with Big Sur 11.7.11.

I have a M-Audio Hammer Pro which has been no trouble for two years or so. All of a sudden yesterday GB keeps losing the input from it.

When I go preferences - audio midi, the 4 midi inputs are still detected but pressing a key gives nothing. If I reset midi drivers it comes back on for between 5 seconds and a minute, then cuts out again.

I have restarted everything, unplugged and replugged etc, always back to the same outcome. The keyboard has not been updated and as far as I’m aware neither has the Mac unless something has gone on in the background.

Any thoughts as to what to do?!

Here is something that has always bugged me. For retaining walls I am involved with mainly low height (1m to 3m) gravity or cantilver in-situ stem & base walls, and rarely is there any proper site investigation information. Usually 'sand' or 'clay' is as good as it gets.

I always detail the walls as built with a battered earth face behind, and the backfill is a wedge of single sized gravel for drainage reasons.

It has always bothered me what to design for in terms of lateral pressure from the retained earth - the wedge of backfill, or the actual original strata? The only reference i can find is in Smiths 'Elements of Soil Mechanics' 6th edition, top of pg 230, which suggests i am right to be designed for the pressure from the gravel wedge, and as such the ground conditions (with respect to lateral pressure) don't matter.

Would welcome any opinions on this. Obviously base bearing, sliding etc are a whole different discussion.