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This works if you have one. When you have three they’re often a source of discussion and disagreement, particularly when someone comes to stay.

Same for me with my guitar strings, although for bass strings I use bass direct because Markbass make my favourite strings. FWIW though I don’t like bright strings and prefer an old school tone.

Fifty years ago, I went to the Royal Veterinary College in That London, and was in International Hall. Back then I played guitar, rather better in my head than in the real world. In the first week or two there I encountered several other musicians - a drummer, a guitarist, and one of these wretched multitalented people who played guitar and keyboards, and could sing too. So we started a band, and as we had an overabundance of guitarists, no bassist, and I (as I did have sufficient self-awareness to realise) was a worse guitarist than Sam, I decided to take on bass duties. Needing a bass, I went to the Fender Soundhouse, where they had recently had a fire and coincidentally Hayman had just gone out of business, so they were flogging off Hayman parts. I did initially get the parts for a doubleneck 4/6 but something didn't fit, so I took them back and got the parts for a 40/40, which remained my main bass for several years. We played a practice gig and then a proper gig, both at the hall of residence, for which we got paid £100 (this was in 1975, so a well-paid gig by today's standards). I dropped out of university soon after that gig, and went back to playing guitar in the bedroom for a few years until I bought a house in Tamworth and thought I'd see about joining a band. I advertised myself as a guitarist/bassist and got recruited by a local band, and have been bassing ever since, with the odd hiatus.

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