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Fear of a White Egg. Great name for an album...

A doublebass is a beautiful piece of furniture in the corner of a room, a conversation starter, social status elevator, somewhere to hang decorations at this festive time of year, you can even play it if you're that way inclined. The reasons to own one far away outweigh the reasons not to. 😉

I irrationally fear White Eggs. If I open a box of eggs I need to see nice brown eggs, white eggs prolly come from alien chickens.

I placed an order for mandolin strings with Strings Direct on Saturday evening. They arrived this morning which I think is pretty good service over the holiday break - so a 👍 for them from me!

The first lot of five strings like this and the BB5000 seemed to have really skinny string spacing!

There is also the Roland V-Combo VR-09-B and some Crumar models may fit in your budget, but most of them are without internal speakers and only 61 keys... The Roland is priced new around £600, so certainly in your price tag second hand.

This ☝️ I think a lot of people have bought it because they get all gassed up by the YouTube videos, but then realise they don’t have any particular need for it in a live setting. Tracking wise I found that it wasn’t as good as I thought Ian Allison made it look and said it was but I don’t blame him for that - he was pretty transparent, his technique for it is just flawless. The tracking is still good, but you do have to play a certain way. For simplicity and having the main sounds a gigging cover/wedding/function band bassist is likely to need at your fingertips the MXR absolutely kills it, that was a very astute piece of design/marketing. People don’t necessarily understand filters and square waves etc and so find the C4 and FI overwhelming, I don’t think it’s necessarily that the MXR is better than either of them (I’ve never had an FI to comment - the FI sounds top drawer in the examples @Quatschmacher posted up earlier in the thread) but the C4’s editor certainly baffled me and I ended up getting rid fairly quickly as I just needed a couple of tones for certain tunes and had neither the time nor the inclination to bother to work it all out. The MXR is set & forget if you want it to be, and that suits the majority I think

No, but I've been agonising between this and the FI VIP, which are very similarly priced. The VIP can do a whole lot more, but is incomparably difficult to program by comparison. If the MXR tracks well and sound quality isn't far off, it'll be worth it for simplicity alone. If its just hype and its not better than other mainstream synth efforts that have been frankly rubbish, boo. I just read that MXR sold the first 3000 of these units in 28 hours, which is absolutely insane. Its also insane that there are so few on the used market, given how many are selling and how much of a hype FOMO pedal it is, which I take as a good sign.

And have replied 😊

Another vote for DR. I went on a similar quest a few years ago, trying a different brand of round wounds every month. The brightest, zingiest strings I found were DR Hi Beams. The most disapointing were Dunlop Super Brights, they were medium bright at best . By the way, it pays to shop around for DRs there can be a £20+ difference in price between different outlets for the same strings.

Just because something is all hype doesn't mean it won't actually be useful to you!

Unless you have vast amounts of money to spend on studio reference speakers and serious acoustic treatment for your control room, the best thing to do is to pick a set of speakers and headphone and spend a couple of months listening to your favourite music on them so that you know how they sound. Then you'll be able to use them to make proper evaluations of your own recordings.

Could look at a secondhand Kawaii MP6? The keybed is good and the sounds were decent for their time. No internal speakers though

Bit the bullet - ordered one, should be with me tomorrow. I still have this niggling thought that its all hype but hoping I'm wrong!

I bought the Ibanez Talman for my kids to learn to play, but after they cast it aside have found it to be a nice round the house bass, also because being quite cheap I don't worry about keeping it in a case to avoid knocks and scrapes (unlike my other instruments). It is very playable but I think the cheap electronics do not do it any favours (as multiple failed jack sockets over a relatively short time have proved). Indeed I now most often play it just acoustically. I suspect one of the main problems with short scale basses is the fact that the majority are fairly low end to cater for children/beginners, and hence they have a reputation for being low end.

@ash is selling a module which replicates the organ sound, here. You can connect it via MIDI-din, and use the Line In on your Yamaha PF-85 to amplify the sound. As for your next piano, I would suggest that you try before you buy. With your real acoustic piano, and your old but worthy Yamaha PF-85, your standards and requirements will be high. Certainly, I would suggest that you go for something better than what you have now, rather than a sideways move.

Bass Bags / String Centre in Ripley, Derbyshire are very good - highly recommended and owned by a friend of mine.