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Ok guys I'll tell you what I did. I discovered by accident that Gear4music do what is called the LA bass for about 90 quid, it comes with a rosewood neck which I hate but I bought one anyway to see how bad it was. Imagine my surprise when it arrived and it was as light as a feather! When I checked the spec' the bodies are made of Paulownia wood which is very light so I wondered if they had a maple neck that was also 61mm. They had so I bought one to try out and it fitted! very tight but some very light sanding made it fit spot on. There was a little neck dive, nothing much so I bought some wilkinson schaller stylee tuners which fixed it. I bought a loom from John (KiOgon) and a pickup of choice to finish it and it's brilliant. Issues with doing this job. The first one I did the neck wasn't exactly straight and the strings ran off a bit but it was easily fixed by using a Schaller 2000 bridge that has lateral adjustment so the strings could be lined up exactly. There are other cheaper ways to sort that though. The fret edges can be a bit sharp but that's easily filed and smoothed, also the maple necks are a bit paddle shaped, my friend Dave on here very kindly made me a headstock template so shaping it was just a jigsaw and a bit of sandpaper away. I'm very pleased with my cheap lightweight basses, my gas is now satisfied. HTH Tom. Oh the necks are only £35

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Did you grass us all up? 😂😂😂

Maybe some limited rock guitarists have that attitude but in jazz, soul, and other genres, flat keys including Eb are definitely much more common and any guitarist worth his or her salt would be expected to play them without question. It's only a matter of learning your chords and scales properly.

I know that Taunton Hobbit, but this is the most excitement I've had in ages, now move along Killjoy

In other news music retailer Gear For Music have just announced bankruptcy after an unfortunate pricing error was ruthlessly exploited by an online bass community...

These are all class D Amps with switching power supplies and although very efficient, the still produce heat. Usually the total combination is about 80% efficient so at 200 watts, total power is 200 X 100/80or 250 watts. So you still have to dissipate 50 watts of heat. If you can touch it but it is very hot it is likely around 60C, at 70C you cannot keep your finger on it. Many Amps have their over temperature settings between 60-70 degrees. Make sure the space around the amp is clear to aid airflow but in general if the Amp is not cutting out, I would not worry.

Thread resurrection. I finally took the plunge and bought the Stingray last week. Loving it so far. :-)

So I put my back out last week after hauling PA gear around all week (I got a bit lazy with my lifting technique by the end of it) and then doing a long show on my G&L L2500 - a big block of swamp ash. The next night when I got there my bass had been set up on an 'Mbrace' - this little gadget that holds your bass and just screws onto a standard mic stand. You can adjust the height and angle and I actually found it easier to play, as you can step/lean from side to side parallel with the bass so you can get your arm in the perfect position wherever you are on the neck - something you can't do with a strap! I got a light grilling from the rest of the band but hey, it was really good to play and it totally saved me a hefty back-ache!

Hi all, just thought I'd show you my bitsa P bass that weighs 6.1 lbs, no neck dive, schaller tuners and an SPB-3 pickup with a KiOgon loom. Sounds very loud plays really well: I also made a blue one except the pickup is a Dimarzio 127 and the tuners are Wilkinsons, also no neck dive and the same weight. Happy boy.

Nice one, brilliant! More power to you. It's never too late for your dreams. Seasick Steve got his big break when he was 65.

Got my first Dingwall this morning and couldn't be happier with it. Thoughts and details are in my NBD thread.

Yes. Are you going to tell us then, or what..?

The payment has been taken from my credit card account and no cancellation yet from GfM so we’ll see. It’s no big deal right now. Actually it might not be a deal at all...................

Just googled Citizens Aadvice and they say that if you've actually bought the item the shop can't ask for more. Once bought it becomes a contract. If you buy online and they send you the item invoiced at the price listed then that's apparently the contract again. If like me you go to the till and they scan it and say the pric is higher then you would need to pay the higher price. A lot of shops will sell for sake of customer relations if not much in it. Guess i was just lucky when it happened to me.

Had a rammy in Morrisons last Sunday on a 3 for £6 deal. "Sorry,tag was in wrong place." That was end of story. Moneysaver says shops don't have to honour prices. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3277262

I’ve just ordered one at £40.26 incl delivery. And that includes an amp! We’ll see.

Half of that is p &p, presumably it's below the free postage threshold.

The amp I played was at Pirate Studios Edinburgh!

My opinion of your opinion... The Ric is as modern as any piece of wood with 4 strings on it. I do have a couple of Status basses whose composition might make them more modern. I find the Ric comfortable to play and the neck is a delight, all the way up the fingerboard. The pickups are as powerful as is required; some actives may have higher output (eg. my John East), but that's what volume controls are for. The idea that Rics don't have a range of tones is amusing; it's just that their most well known one is better than anything anybody else does. The Ric's body is small compared to many instruments (eg. I have a Music Man and P- & J- basses.) and is thinner than pretty much all of them. The Rics have great hardware, finished to a high standard. The gripe about being easy to adjust is a red-herring - how many times do you adjust a bass once it's set up? The effort of taking it to a tech is more than that required to do the job itself. Rics are no heavier than a lot of other instruments, but I suppose if you contrast them with a violin bass (I wonder if that's where the myth came from?) then any solid bodied instrument would be. The Ric does its signature sound well, but the built-in mute, push/pull pot, stereo outputs, tone controls, option of playing fingers or plectrum give a wide range of options. The fact that a lot of people play Rics could be because a lot of people like playing Rics; they certainly helped bring the bass to the fore in music. So, whilst you are entitled to your opinion and what its its associated logic leads you to conclude, it differs from mine. I can't say that my logic would ever lead me to consider a Spector as an instrument of choice; it's not even in the contest, not something I would consider. (The only thing I would say a Ric is not so good for is slap'n'pop bass, but many folks don't like that anyway.)

Beat me to it! Shame to hide it away! Completely understand though.

Great stuff!!

My Arpege got a sweet little brother.

Ive not had one myself, but i have had the ashdown superfly which used to get really hot and ive just bought a little giant 1000 which some reports of getting warm. Ive fitted 'taller' rubber feet to the base and the heat disperses so much better. The little giant has vents on top and non on the bottom, so youd think the heat would disipate upwards, but the bottom got hot. Adding the taller rubber feet allowed the heat to escape a lot better and now it doesnt even get warm.

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Ok, here are two more pictures. You can see that I had to swap the original Schaller Da Vinci’s, for much better Hipshot ultralites, and tying in with the black trim theme a bit more. Currently strung with La Bella Gold tape wounds, but would love to try some of the new GHS pressure wound phosphorus bronze, as I do miss the sound of PBS a little, but can’t stand the noise of my (very short) nails scraping on them, and when moving up and down the strings. One thing to note Trevor is that the Otter bass was always based on the Tamar shape. My Lowman uses a body size more akin to their giant Okement shape. I think it works much more as an acoustic as a result.

Sounds like a fair and reasonable price to me.

Just 5 for me. 3 with the Dale Fontaine and the TCC Band and 2 deps. Who knows what next year will bring.

It's being delivered today! I've a fun morning of sitting by the window waiting for the delivery man.

The (yes - Mooer) pedal toppers fit just fine on everything I've tried so far. The expression pedal behaviour of the PS6 is super annoying and I can't believe that Boss intend it to work like that. I've renamed it the 'Glitch Shifter' but it does have its uses and I'd need two other pedals to cover its functionality. I'm waiting to see what the TC Quintessence does to a bass before I decide to move it on though.

Yep, I'd stick to the phaser. Compressor then phaser

Great mixers the MG Series and I find very easy to use, but I have one so am biased. Probably Aux bus weirdness as Cheddatom says. Pete's rough guide to MX series mixers:. This doesn't include the digital effects, if you have any. Start with: All channels switched off. All channel faders down. Group bus faders ( dark grey) down. Stereo (Master) fader (helpfully coloured Red) down. All EQ's to 12 O clock. Pan r/l to 12 O clock. Compression to zero. All 'pfl' buttons up. All 1-2 and 3-4' buttons up (if you have these). All 'ST' buttons up. All the aux channel sends to zero (the ones with blue tops). All Aux master volumes to zero. Connect everything up. Power on mixer, amps, powered monitors in that order. For each channel: Turn on the channel and press down the pfl button for that channel. Get someone to speak or play and adjust the 'gain' control until the output in the VU metres is occasionally reaching 0, in green. Put the pfl button back in the 'up' position and turn the channel off. Lather, rinse, repeat, for all the channels you're using. Set the monitor/phones switch to 'Stereo' (up) and turn on 'On' and 'ST' for the channels you're using. Bring up the faders on individual channels and get a rough balance on the headphones. When you're ready, bring up the Stereo fader gently until you get FOH. Optionally, increase compression but don't overdo it. If you want to adjust EQ, try and cut rather than boost. (ie cut mid and bass to boost treble) If you're using separate monitors, connect them to one of the 'Aux' inputs on the back of the desk (not the 'Monitor' sockets on the top of the desk next to the headphone jack). Usually you want Aux1. If there is a pre/post switch set it to pre. Turn up the Aux Send master for the Aux you're using to somewhere between 12.00 and 3.00 and then turn up the individual channels Aux Send to get a monitor mix. Hope this helps, good luck and have a great gig. If all else fails, read this! https://partydj.be/PDF-files/Handleidingen/Sound/Yamaha/yamaha-mg166cx-manual.pdf

It is a good shout - i picked a copy up of Time's Up a while back and its stood the test of time very well.

Halfway 135 by VTypeV4, on Flickr Fender cab part way through a partial restoration - JBL D/K installed today. Tested and sound lovely!

I am 59, took up bass a couple of years ago. Play in a 70s classic rock / blues covers band, playing the stuff I grew up listening to. Always wanted to be a rock musician and know what being in a band was like. We play pubs and beer festivals. Now I do. Best thing I ever did. Almost 60 and finally I feel cool.

A good few of the bands I gig with, many of whom are pro bands, have band members in their 60s. Charlie harper, the lead singer of the UK Subs is 73 or 74, his view is while he is able to do it, he will. And so should we all!

Doug is a superb bass player and maybe watching video clips of him doing say, clinics or demos on the stands at music shows, then it's not surprising that he's going to be 'doing musical theatrics'. The average trade show audience won't be interested in him playing root 8th notes to a I V vi IV. Take a look at Doug's discography. He's a very busy, in demand session bassist. Recordings that vastly out number his video clips. But hey, when the time comes, well, more is more . Challenge and be challenged.

The very moment the bass was sold the old owner doesn't get a say in what happens to it anymore. That could be if it was repainted, split for parts, used as a baseball bat or sold on for more money. It doesn't matter if that was the buyers intention or whether on the morning he got the bass he lost his job and needs some cash fast. To complain about what the new legitimate owner wants to do with his property is pathetic and infantile. A few years ago I sold a pair of Markbass cabs on here to a guy somewhere in europe. Might have been France. Can't remember. Anyway - after about 6 months he decided they weren't for him and put them up for sale. I didn't notice until a prospective buyer sent me a PM to demand to know what price I had sold them for (and it was really a "demand" and whether the current owner was ripping me off. Turned out that the prospective buyer didn't even think about shipping costs to another country (seller was doing an inclusive price) or market changes (the cabs had been discontinued and there was a bit more interest in them) or any other factor - like changing in shipping fees or even the use of a different speed of shipping service. He also seemed amazed that I genuinely did not give a flying flip at a rolling donut about the new price for the cabs, and he got quite upset that I wouldn't tell him the final sales price or the shipping cost to get them abroad in the first place. Apparently not divulging the content of private discussions is "against the community spirit" or some other bollocks. Absolute tool.

Ideally you should be using Speakon connectors for all your amp to cab wiring. It's a more robust connector capable of carrying the sorts of currents that modern high-wattage amps put out, plus it is a locking connector so you won't get any problems with cables pulling out of their sockets and potentially shorting out. If you need good quality speaker cables making up OBBM here on Basschat is the man to contact.

On the active passive front - we are strongly considering for 2018 to do away with the "Active" and "Passive" split and just have one option. And that'll be "Active" but with a Push-Pull Volume pot that switches between active and passive.

Players of double basses and fretless electrics play a lot of open strings, as it keeps your intonation correct when you're playing an unfretted neck.

I tend to play open strings as often as I can depending on the song and the position of my left hand on the neck. But I have nerve damage in my left arm so the fewer fretted notes I can play the less fatigued my left hand becomes. Needs must and all that.

I never really saw this as an either/or thing ...

Tough choice. I nearly bought a Sandberg JM4 (pre name change to TM4 and change of the body shapes to be less 'Fendery') in 2009, but ended up going for a Sadowsky Metro. The Stingray is an utterly iconic bass though. In terms of build quality of both I think you would actually be okay to buy them without having played one if have made your mind up on what you are wanting. My view is that if you have been wanting a Stingray for years then you should buy a Stingray. The Sandberg will be a great bass but my guess is that no matter how good the instrument is, your brain will still be sending you 'I want a Stingray' message for months and years to come. Try the bass that is in Guitar Guitar and if you like it, buy it.