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Does anyone have recent experience with these basses? Are they gig ready? Cheers.

My Yamaha CK-61 sold last night so I now have £ burning a hole in my pocket! ....well, not much as a Kawai ES-60 is on the way from Thomann, I think it'll do well for home use (which includes taking abuse from young kids so I didn't want anything I'd be too precious about). It leaves me the start of a stage piano fund, I've had some offers for my Akai Key 37 so that'll increase the fund once it sells. So now I'm seriously hyped about what stage piano to get! It'll need to be 73... and even that is pushing it as I need to take it to weekly rehearsals and fortnightly gigs along with all my Bass gear (there's a bit of swopping around of band members duties depending on songs) in a small car (VW Polo, which often also has a guitarist and all their stuff) and stage space us usually tight. Depending on how much I can convince myself is worth spending, the main contenders are now: £2k: Nord Electro 73 semi weighted would be the Nord for me due to size, toughness, sounds, drawbars, price (vs the Stage), resale value (£2k is stretching the budget, but the resale after 10 years is decent so I'm counting it almost like a car PCP plan!). The v7 seems overdue so I'd wait for that though - either to get new or for the older second-hand versions to get cheaper. £1.5k: Viscount Legend One 73 is a decent size and weight, sounds good, good keybed (a knowledgeable online reviewer guesses it has Fatar TP-8), Organ drawbars (and lots of them!). All reviews seem to rate it highly - some a bit less so for the non-organ sounds but what I've heard all sound good to me. Main negatives are it's a bit niche and new so unlikely to be many second hand for a while and no shops to test it, not proven to last for years like the Nords, and resale value might not be great. £850. Numa X 73, good keybed for the price, good interface, the sounds haven't blown me away (just from online reviews) the main thing that puts me off are the Organ sounds don't seem great and lack of drawbars. I kind of think this will feel 'okay - it'll do' but will feel a compromise and won't be something I'm really pleased to keep for many years, it probably isn't much of an upgrade to the Yamaha CK-61 I've just sold other than the extra octave and better keybed. I've tried the Roland and Yamaha options in their showrooms and none in my price range really did it for me. The Yamaha YC 73 has slightly narrower octave width which I thought was noticeable on the CK I owned and not ideal, the sounds didn't particularly impress me. The Roland VR-730 didn't feel a bit improvement over the CK-61, and the V Stage 76 is out of my price range, and both seemed massive - almost deliberately made to take up as much space as possible!

@velvetkevorkian it’s a rapid slide down a tone or semitone and back up to the original note done twice in quick succession.

i like standard d ...it just means you have lower open strings ...you can still play in standard tuning easily enough ..throw a capo on the second fret if you like ...instant shortscale.

lockdown meant my bass collection expanded significantly ...

I just don't have time to set up the bass amp at gigs. I have to sort out everything from helping drummer unload and get started on his kit to sorting out the PA speakers and most of the cabling for mains sockets, PA and lights. After i've done all that i try and get time to tune the bass and make sure the amp is all ok. At that point everyone else is set up and they just want to sound check and i've had a few words on occasion that i also need time to set up my own gear but i have to remind them all every now and again. Historically guitar and bass didn't go thru the PA so it had to be a decent sound. These days most of our gigs we use a PA Hire and i thought that would give me more time but i'm finding that i'm now stage arranger sorting out where PA companies kit goes on stage. Anyways i do enjoy it all but it means i struggle to get time for my own gear so my amp is left exact same settings every gig except for the master volume. I do tweak it if i decide to use a different bass. I just wouldn't get time to try out a provided backline to my satisfaction. However as time goes on i can see me falling into same thoughts as you guys. 🤩 Dave

Filmed my piece for this about ten months ago, but disappointingly was cut from the final edit.

There are standard Dave Murray strats, Janick Gers strats (who was playing a Sandberg) and there's an Adrian Smith Jackson. There is a picture of them all on Adrian Smiths Instagram. I've tried to upload a screenshot but keep getting an error code.

Here are two examples of the questions I've seen lately. Could there be one "database"?

Fawn - Tom Waits

I had two Ashdown ABM 210 cabs stacked so effectively your 4x10 cab. They never had clarity and were not the greatest cabs due to their low budget drivers used. As soon as I changed cabs the difference was noticeable and I found better more efficient cabs that made it easier to hear and got louder LFYS Monaco was one of those cabs and a single 12” Fane speaker equipped was very loud and clear. Today I use two MarkBass MB58R 102 cabs stacked vertically and they are a joy to use and carry and sound very good

I can't remember if the editor is or was a separate app to the one you download tone prints from, it's been a few years since I had a Spectracomp but I remember editing it hooked up to my PC so it might be you can't (or never used to be able?) to do it from a mobile. As for the single knob (fnarr) you can program it in the editor to simultaneously control up to three of the fifty or more parameters, and you can control the range of those parameters too. Most of the tone prints seem to use it to affect ratio, threshold and/or volume but they can be configured to control any editable parameter so if you wanted to lower one of the crossover frequencies while upping the threshold of the mids and reducing the attack speed on the low end you can. I also had a Hypergravity at one point, effectively a four knob spectracomp, with that I'd dialled it in to work as an adjustable pseudo high pass filter on the lows, a wide frequency single band over everything from the upper bass to the high mids, and a tapered high end roll off, each on individual controls and I think the other was a master volume. It wasn't perfect but it shows what you can do with it given the time and inclination.