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That's the route I took. Got a Thomann Rockabilly, black with white pinstripe, from a lad on here for £190 🙂 When first bought he'd took it to some DB place to check the setup but fella there looked it over then asked, in a puzzled tone, "Just what do you think is wrong with it ?". Relieved that the big T folk knew their stuff, Thomann don't ship their uprights without doing a set up first, it was happily gigged for several years. The thumpy thump served me well before I caved to pressure and sold it to another lad about 4 years back. It's still going strong 😎

Some people use email purely because it is the best way for them to communicate. They might have a hearing problem, anxiety about using the phone, anxiety with holding an impromptu conversation with someone, they might have poor phone service, or they simply don't have time to stop and have a ten minute conversation. I for one much prefer email over phone and have done so for each of those reasons in the past. Although I would not expressly abandon a business because they don't reply to emails, it would certainly cause me to think twice about going somewhere else. YMMV.

Just to add to the discussion - Last week i bought a bucket list bass for me, the most expensive bass purchase thus far in my bass playing career, in a 1998 Rickenbacker 4003 from bass Bros. Answered my queries regarding neck dimensions quickly, delivered quickly and expertly packed. Ive bought a few things over the years from them both in person (Ashdown fliptop valve amp) and online (p basses mainly) and never had an issue.

My big beef with my band. Waiting for the guitarist to tune up, find his plectrum etc, waiting while the drummer drinks his pint or searches for his sticks on the floor (get a stick bag fer cryin out loud). I'm a big fan of 3 songs back to back, pause for 'hello and we are' type chat then straight in with the next 3 songs. My bandmates don't get it, so I've given up. I once went to see Gladys Knight and the Pips and THAT was a proper performance with everything to time and script and no gaps between songs unless they were planned and even then there was some background music being played. I suppose some might say that it's too slick, but I loved it. There's a pretty good local folk singer I know who rambles on about the back story of each song for a good five minutes before playing it, but I guess that's part of the folk genre

Cort and Ibanez both manage to protect their tuners - Cort by having a complete cutaway (also see Hohner and Sei), Ibanez by having a scoop out of the front of the bass. Neither of them put the 12th fret much further away than having the tuners dangling off the end. The pickups seem strangely orientated - they don't match up with the increasing angles of the frets so if it was a parallel fret design, they'd be leaning over rather than across the strings. I know Warwick and Ritter both do leaning pickups (Thumb bridge, Ritter neck) but they lean the opposite way. Their Veil bass at least has pickups that lean the right way, although the body shape should appeal to even fewer people as it's singlecut.

Just thought I'd comment/praise that I like the ease with which you can send a signal to different outputs/sends/headphones and set up the means to control one or both outputs with the onboard volume. Very useful as I'm about to do an acoustic 'style' gig (with a Bass Uke) and I want a signal to send to my personal monitor (volume controlled from the Stomp) and a separate line to the FOH, which isn't affected by my Stomp onboard volume adjustments. Oh and in my other band I need to to send path A (dry) to an output and path B (effected) to effects send, in order that I can run a stereo / bi-amp (signal split at my frequency choice onboard the Stomp) dual rig; very useful for adding a bit of grit/drive to the top end of my 12 string bass and retaining the bottom end unaffected. Yep, pleased with how this Stomp is working out.

Went down to the hall this morning. Looks good! The sockets are in odd places, but there are enough and we have extension leads. Stage if we need it, kitchen for tea and the like, plenty of parking, and a ramp for wheelchair/Trace Elliot ingress. I propose Saturday 20th June 2026 as the date. I'll have to put down the deposit in the next couple of days, but unless anyone objects that's the date and venue set.

Shiny Happy People - REM

Is the case that comes with the Anagram not very good?

You cant opt out of it if you're sending something of a certain size and weight, as of a week or two ago DHL is a compulsory shipping method, it cant be removed. Had a long call with eBay yesterday who eventually confirmed this.

Greedy Offal People — The Stooges

Poor service thread on tFb as well https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/287054/

OK, I'll bite. So, I get up at 7AM and start my work for the day. It's gonna be a busy day, and, trying to cater for the customers' perceived (or preferably real) needs, I hardly have time for a coffee or lunch break, so my wife shoves food down my throat with a goose stick - at every opportunity. Customers even come from the extreme North of Norway to the extreme South where I live, specifically to talk with me and to try my boats. I sell hundreds of boats and do not have the capacity to sell even more, as that would detract from the level of quality that my customers wish for and that I think they need. After 7 or 8PM, the shop now closed, I'm having a few hours of administration. At 11PM, I start answering emails, and am not done before 2AM, after which I'll get five hours of sleep. Then, just as I'm to shut down the computer, an email arrives from someone who knows better, the email telling me for example that my website isn't good enough, to which I reply: "If my website had been any better, I could have sold even more kayaks, and that would mean less time spent with each individual customer. I don't wanna do that." That same email could also have been about my lacking email response. IOW: please do not curtly say that "ignoring your clientele is not a sensible way to do business". It's not certain that you're a better judge on this than the shop is. As I said: IME and IMHO, email is the least sensible way of communicating. It's detrimental to the customers' interests, whatever those customers might believe (of course depending on the nature of the emails).