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Your pics make my 12 string look 'normal' sized! LOL

So it's here. First impressions - smaller than I thought it'd be. Solid construction. Nice packaging and cool carry case. Not many default presets to play with. Not sure I like the Darkglass Suite software - maybe I haven't got to grips with it yet, but I haven't found a way to just visually build patches by dragging and dropping blocks. Honestly, a little underwhelmed so far. But I'll persevere.

It’s amazing isn’t it, the weight of the gear that we used to have to cart about.

1. Rich - Trace Elliot TE-1200 amp, Barefaced Super 12T cab, earplugs , Shuker custom 5, Tanglewood TRB-CE acoustic bass gtr. 2. Woody - Rickenbacker 4004-L5, maybe Sei Flamboyant, Same old basschat 12" with some amp, other stuff TBC 3. Pinball (tbc) - some interesting basses 4. Stubsy - Joyo BadASS, GRBASS AT212 slim - only 50W but that should give 120dB at one metre 😇. (or I bring my TE 1110 combo). Some fun pedals. Perhaps the AVII 1960 precision, the Sire P10 and maybe the Fender Performer and something unexpected... 5. Sean - Mesa 400+, Laney Nexus Tube 400 [oh jeez], MJW Taranis 200 (Filthbox Matamp clone with extra channel and EQ), GK MBF500, GK Fusion 550, 2 x LFSys Monaco, 2 x Japanese Market Spector Euros with LHZ-03 preamps, Valenti #005 Super P, Yamaha BB1300, my small but well-appointed pedal-board (Origin Cali 76, Origin DCX, Aguilar Chorusaurus, etc) plus a mini walk-in bass surgery if interested. Plus whatever I might be selling at the time. 6. Rosie - likely I'll bring my upright, set up for bluegrass/folk/jazz if anyone's not played upright before and fancies a go 7. Phil - BassChat cabs, maybe some sort of shootout? 8. MikeD - Laney Digbeth, Zilla 212, Dingwall Combusion, Revelation PJ, pedals, try to finish home made bass🤞🤞🤞🤞 9. neepheid - G&L CLF L-1000, Yamaha BB1200, Sire D5, Sire Z7, Greco LGB-700, Reverend Triad, Epiphone Les Paul (not so) Standard, Epiphone Thunderbird '64, Squier Jaguar H (with Ibanez CAP double humbucker from ATK200/800 etc), Gear4Music rat bass (with Lace Aluma-P), £150 giggable bass challenge, 1 or 2 amps depending upon space... 10. Jabba_the_gut - Note sure what stuff yet........10. Jabba_the_gut - Status 3000, Status 4000, Stingray 4, USA Sub 5, Markbass Tube, some pedally bits inc Valeton GP5 cheaply thing 11. Wolverinebass - Grainger Hades, HX Stomp, GK Fusion 1200s. 12. Japanaxe - Precision(s) & Dingwall(s), DIY 100W Bassman head if finished by then(!) as people seemed to like my B15 clone, At least 1 other amp (see sig) 13. JohnDaBass - Fender Imp combo, Fender Mike Kerr Jaguar, Fender Stu Hamm Urge 1, HB ThunderStang, Squier Paranormal Rascal, Mark Bass Bronco ( very yellow), Ashdown Capri ( very Pink) 14. Geek99 (tentative) - sire v7 5 string (rapidly becoming my favourite bass ever), vintage est96a (punches above its weight as judged by basschat midlands massive and Stub Mandrel), Tc electronic bh250 and A cab that was dragged out of the sea (Possibly) but only cost £10 15. chienmortbb - Fender Aerodyne AJB65, G4M pretend aerodyne, Sire Narcus M2 (possibly for sale. Ashdown Restoglide 800 and Bugera Veyron 1001M, LFSys Monza cab. Possibley a number of accessories for sale. I might have to rrim the list as I am due an op shortly and am not allowed to lift anything for 6 weeks. You will notice me as the bloke with no trousers. 16. Richard R. - Brawley 4 and 5 string basses, Ashdown ABM C300-100+15"extension, Roland V-Bass COSM system pedalboard plus HB Musicman fitted with hex pickup, headphone amp, raffle prizes. Hopefully my son and his Ibanez. Definitely trousers. V-bass system and bass possibly for sale. 17. Scrumpymike - Gillett Contour ST; Harley Benton MV-4MSB Gotoh BM; Rascal Mervyn-Lyte (Fender Rascal re-bodied a-la P Lyte by Andy Jr); Sandberg California ll SL TM 4 SHORT with recent Aguilar upgrade; Vox Starstream A2S; Ampeg SVT-7 PRO; Fender Rumble 100 combo; BF Super Compact Gen 3; LFSys Monaco. Doh!! Suddenly realised that I hadn't posted my stuff. Probably won't bring everything I've listed on the day. I'll post what I'm minded to leave at home just before the Bash and change my mind if anyone says they specifically want to see/try it.

Okay! That's good to know! Let me sleep on it, and you have a think as well and maybe we can discuss it. Cheers!

For a bit of balance, not everyone likes the Hartwood Satellite. I have to admit the sound is probably a bit marmite but then he seems to have only tried it with the horrible OEM strings:

Usually, I'd agree with @Leonard Smalls thoughts - but as you say with "Another Brick" it just suits the song so well. Another example of this IMHO is "Circus Games" by the Skids. Again, the kids voices suit the subject matter, and I can't imagine it without

Link to my NBD report on the Hartwood Satellite:

Fender only made them from 1990 - 1993.

Really depends. I can't imagine Another Brick in the Wall any other way.

Having never really used anything smaller than 12” tops, I’ve always been a bit reluctant to try 10s as FOH but when a pair of mk1 Italian made RCF Art 310A came available locally for a give away price I decided to jump on them. Fast forward to this morning, and we held a ‘technical’ rehearsal for our acoustic Americana three-piece to test these out alongside my recently procured Behringer Flow 8, ahead of a gig next weekend. Firstly, these things are amazingly loud (probably louder than my EV ZLX15P’s), and also much clearer. The line-up is female lead vocal, male BV, two acoustic guitars, and me fumbling away on double bass. The guitars needed no eq whatsoever, and only the lightest of fairy dust on the vox. The 310’s handled the bass admirably, and I was able to get a very natural sound. The Flow 8 (should really be called the Flow 6) continues to amaze me and took no time at all to set up. With five of the six channels in use, plus FOH, and a single monitor feed, this diminutive little mixer coped brilliantly. So I now have a complete setup that will fit in the car without losing the back seats, and will arguably sound better than my ‘big rig’ for the types of gigs we play with the acoustic band 😎

Anyone else hate it when a song has kids singing on it?

Never seen those before. Cool bass, even cooler story!

This is a slightly delayed new bass day report on the Hartwood Satellite bass. Hartwood is a new house brand of Gear 4 Music. Here is a link to their website for the colour I have gone for: https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Hartwood-Satellite-Bass-Guitar-Metallic-Blue/6TIG. However, some of the specs are incorrect, so I will correct them below. This is a medium scale (32”) budget bass. It comes in at just under £200, so I guess the nearest competition is the Squier Affinity Jaguar HB, which comes in at about £40 more. They have quite a lot in common in that they are both single pickup basses with jazz style necks and offset bodies. On the whole I feel the Hartwood is slightly better made (based on my memory of owning the Jag). The best feature of the Satellite is the neck: claimed to be roasted maple. It might be but it has clearly been stained to emphasise the toffee colour, so the jury is out on that. It was carved from a single billet, rather than having a scarf joint at the headstock. Time will tell if this is susceptible to cracking if bashed but it seems pretty strong at the moment. The frets on my example are really well finished but quite shallow. There are no sprouting, or high frets and they are cut a little back from the edge of the fretboard, so it was easy to roll the edges by running a sanding block along them. That is not to say that it was sharp or rough to start off but I prefer the feel of rolled edges. The fretboard wood is laurel which seems a bit softer than rosewood and it was quite dry but was easily revived with some lemon oil. The nut, which is 38mm (not 40mm as claimed in the specs) was a bit too high and not that well cut. Easily remedied as well. Really nice touches are the fretboard markers that roll round to the edge of the board, so can be seen easily from above and the wheel truss rod adjustment at the heel. An adjustment bar comes with the bass and the correct size Allen key for the saddles. Sticking with the neck, the headstock is reminiscent of the the Sire shape but smaller and not as fuggly. It looks pretty good IMO. The machine heads look like standard pattern vintage Fenderish items in the photo on the website but in reality are tiny (see photo below). The shafts are just under 10mm and the baseplates only 35mm long, even smaller than the smallest Gotoh Resolites. It may be difficult to find replacements that drop in but that said, they seem pretty robust, operate smoothly and seem to hold their tuning. They can’t be heavy either, which must contribute to the reasonably good balance on a strap. The body is an interesting shape. A bit like an extended, offset Tele. It has the weirdest shaped scratchplate but it grows on you and does fit the vibe of the bass, which is a bit 60s throwback. It is quite a big body, which also contributes to the balance. I haven’t weighed it but the website claims the average weight is 3.75kg, which seems about right. It’s not as light as say a Nordstrand Acinonyx but not a boat anchor. I don’t think it would cause much discomfort on a long gig and unlike a lot of shorter scale basses, it has decent body contours for both belly and forearm. On the back the neck is retained by 4 individual screws (a bit more upmarket than the standard 4 screw plate) and the lower edge is cut away a bit to give better access to the upper frets. The Precision bass style pickup is set quite close to the neck (more about the sound anon) and has simple P style controls of vol and tone. The jack socket is mounted on an oval plate on the side of the lower bout, like a Tele, or 51 Precision bass. The bridge is BBOT style but is more substantial than some I have seen on cheap offerings. It has rudimentary grooves in the baseplate to keep the saddles pointing in the right direction. Spacing is 20mm. I took the Satellite to a blues jam the evening it arrived (but after fixing the nut, neck relief and intonation). It seemed to sound pretty precision like through the house rig (Ashdown ABM 600 EVO head and a custom made 2 x 10 cab). At home I played it through my FRFR rig of Markbass LMIII and LFSys Monza, which really gives you a pretty uncoloured reproduction of the sound of the bass. I found it a little disappointing with EQ set at equality. A bit too clanky and low mid focused and a little lacking in outright lows on the E string. This seemed counterintuitive given the placement of the pickup up but at least it wasn’t muddy and indistinct. This was probably largely due to the OEM strings which are pretty horrible. Very rough feeling and incidentally 45-100, not 40-95 as claimed in the spec. It was also very noisy with hands off the strings. I always expect to change the strings on cheap basses and normally change the pickup and electrics as well. I also prefer the look of higher mass bridges (even if the jury is out on how it changes tone). Consequently I set about putting a Tone Rider Duke in it with CTS pots and a Pure Tone jack socket. It was harder to find a cheap drop in replacement bridge because of the two front, two back retaining screw pattern. I eventually found something for about £14 which is a bit beefier and had the 4 retaining screw pattern. It would have been much easier if Hartwood had used the ubiquitous 5 hole Fender pattern. On opening the thing up I discovered why it was so noisy: no shielding at all, apart from a bit of tin foil under the pots (see photo). This is pretty much what I have found with the Squier Jaguar, Ibanez Talman etc. Graphite paint would obviously break the budget! Anyway easily cured with copper tape. It’s now as quiet as a church mouse. The control cavity is massive, so no problem fitting in full sized CTS pots (unlike the Squier Jag that barely takes mini-pots). In fact you could easily fit an active pre-amp and battery in, should you want to. Pot spacing seems to be pretty standard Precision bass pattern, so you could use a pre-wired harness, if you don’t want to solder yourself but you will need to have a long wire run to the jack and be prepared to solder that yourself (because of the placement). An indication of the speed of assembly came when I changed the bridge. The original retaining screws had been forced in at an angle. Obviously not pre-drilled because the finish was chipped off around the holes. I had to fill the holes and drill them straight to get the replacement bridge to align properly. These things are made to a price and I guess a lot of the budget had gone into the quality of the neck and body. Now that I have done these mods the bass sounds really good. It’s like a Precision with a bit more bottom and top. It has plenty of punch and definition. TBH I reckon I could have got a lot of this just from changing the strings to something decent. I have put D’Addario nickel rounds 45-100 on it but I think it would work really well with some chrome flats as well. I don’t regret changing the pickups, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary. The OEMs look pretty cheap: bar magnets fixed along the bottom, instead of magnetised pole pieces. Tone Rider Dukes (or SP1 Classic) are only £35 and punch well above their price point, so almost a no-brainier upgrade for cheap Precision style basses. Conclusion after all this waffle: a very nice playable and good value addition to the medium scale market. The neck could be off a much more expensive instrument and the body shape is interesting. It balances pretty well and it’s not too heavy. Change the strings for something decent and it sounds pretty good OEM. Spend £35 on a Tone Rider pickup and it sounds excellent. Incidentally, G4M do a Hartwood full size gig bag for £30, which the Satellite fits into pretty well. The body is quite long, so there isn’t a huge amount of bag flopping around above the headstock and it has a neck retainer pad and strap, plus pretty thick padding. Finished article with replacement chunkier bridge.

I'll see what I can do.

Well the same to you. The translucent red is a great colour for the Ray, although as you'll know I'm biased 😁. I still think you should keep it but I certainly wouldn't mind looking after that for you. 😍

I love that….. great story, great bass. I Absolutely do not want my first bass back, a Columbus Jazz…. it was rubbish.

So, the measurements of the pickup is the following. Length: 70 mm Width: 38 mm Length to the ends of mounting tabs: 84 mm Width of the mounting tabs: ~13 mm Distance (center to center) of mounting holes ~78.5 mm Does that match up with the dimensions of the thingiverse parts? Incidentally, from playing around with a magnet I think these are reverse-precision bass pickups cast in epoxy soapbars.