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Just spent an enjoyable two hours going through this book. If Geddy Lee wasn't so damn nice, I could honestly hate the guy for snagging so many beautiful instruments. Have to say that after 200 pages of drooling content, it's just information overload. The content steers you round the ultimate question of, 'Whatever happened to that <insert manufacturer here> bass?' before drawing you in for the last few pages of the really important guitars. There's no envy here in the slightest; it's just a lengthy journal about vintage bass collecting. He's been a successful musician for donkey's years and now he's simply kicking back and reaping the rewards of that. It's a beautiful publication.

not wired yet.

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Hes so very clever. And was never just another session drummer.

Living in a very small rented flat, I can't fit wall hangers. So they're out on floor stands. - I'll pick one up on impulse just for 5 minutes, which can easily turn into 15. - I do play all of them - some more than others - but I make a point of picking up a different one every day. - They make me smile. None of those would happen if they were in cases.

I`m like that after gigs, no energy, feeling knackered, am also 53. But then I think what life would be like without gigs and the tiredness pales against a life of boredom.

Any bass of mine in a case doesn't get played. If it doesn't get played it gets sold. Therefore if I put a bass in a case it means that it is going to end up sold! Sometimes I will pick up a bass and play it for a minute and put it back because I have an idea I thought about - if there was a case in the way that would stop that. I guess it works for people in tidy or big houses, I have neither!

Wow ... Just watched the Chic/ Sister Sledge performance at the Budokan, Tokyo. April 17th, 1996. STUNNING playing and superlative tone, from the fantastic Bernard Edwards. Great concert really. Something notable of that event ... During the performance, Bernard wasn’t feeling so well, even saying ‘I’ve got a touch of the Tokyo Flu, but I’m still here’ ... It was in the early hours of the morning, after that very show, that he died in his hotel room. The cause was pneumonia. If he’d gone to see a doctor, a simple treatment would have prevented the tragedy. If you’re a fan of The Nard, this is something I’d recommend watching. It’s emotive too, given the circumstances. What a great player, and such a terrible loss. RIP Bernard

Did her and Peter Gabriel ever hook up (as in romantically)? Artistically they've always struck me as counterparts of eachother. Kate is a very rare example of a mainstream female artist I take seriously and respect...for Hounds of Love if nothing else. Give me her worst effort any day over today's autotuned airbrushed hoes gyrating their way through ghost-written "club bangers". Urgh.

Brand new, been 'playing' for 10 minutes, still baffled/in awe. 3 off us were playing 'normal' guitars, something was missing, so . . someone told me to buy a short scale, so I bought an Epi EB0 i saw a nice looking Squire VM Jazz, bought it . fell in love with a Fender Kingman, bought it. now I've got to play them !

So in an effort to sit firmly on the fence of Killing Rock N Roll (see several other threads), alongside my DI/In-ears setup, I sometimes have need of backline for the Rawk band I play in. I'd been using my Walkabout into my Barefaced Super Twin to very satisfactory results, but a while back I picked up a Compact, just to get all modular for smaller gigs and a slightly (15lbs or so) lighter load. I'm sure you can guess what happened next, on an idle afternoon while everyone else was out... Soooo, it's got the best thing about a proper stack, in that it's much, much nearer my ears, but sweet guinea pig of Winnipeg, what a noiiiiiiiise...ok, I've not gigged it yet, but I nearly dismantled the back half of the house with it. I used to have an SVT/810, and I'd put this up against one for sheer thunder. The WA will be putting out a fair bit more than 300w into the 2.67 ohm load (and it was loud enough anyway), but those cabs get every db out of every watt... And the whole thing weighs 80lb or so. 😀

Looking good johnny, for that money it’s worth a go 👍

This was the only one that wasn't 'right'. I've had three maple Jazz necks from eBay and they're all spot on. Two of them were used here: I guess for less than £30 a chuck you are taking a punt, but that's half the fun 😉

Good points there, some of the best sounding gear I`ve heard in isolation has sounded pony is a band setting. We did a cab shootout a few years back and whilst the winner was a Bergantino someone brought along some very affordable PA cabs and the difference in sound between them and the Berg wasn`t as much as what the price tags would suggest. Likewise being able to get a giggable full-stack for not much money, especially if in a country where it`s difficult to get hold of reasonably priced gear, well has to make sense.Look forward to hearing your views on these.

So in the feedback it will be: "Someone very similar to [Geoff/ Graham / Dave / Josie...delete as applicable] may have acquired something with [4, 5 or 6] strings on and I suspect would have been a great person to deal with had I done business with them. Should you also nearly do business with them in 2019, do it with confidence."

They're 200, 300 and 400 watts at 8 ohms respectively. And not going to be super light for that money but i don't think they'll be bought on the weight or frequency response basis. Plenty of people out there on a limited budget, fancy a punt as an experiment or just need a cheap cab for home use.

The only way you can really know whether something's good or not is to buy it and see. Even trying something in a music shop doesn't give you much of an idea of what it will be like in a real life scenario. Tone is subjective. Durability can only be tested over time. Build quality is probably the only real immediate deciding factor. Even then. Some cheaper stuff is really well built, some expensive stuff is not so well built. The thing most people don't seem to be taking into account is budget. If you only have a couple of hundred quid to spend then how can you go wrong? Granted you could get something second hand, but most people won't post cabs so for some of us that's not an option. Even if they do then shipping abroad is cost prohibitive. I'm willing to, and have, taken a punt. At that price I could easily sell them on over here for what I paid for them including delivery. I'll be happy to report back once I've given them a good going over.

Ditto I guess without realising it, my weight appears to be on my right leg when gigging. No shape throwing for me, or foot trouble ( just an aching leg ) Mrs bag couldn't give a McToss

That really is pornographic!! Properly jealous..

In West, you play bass guitar. In Soviet Russia, bass plays you !

Don't believe a word of it. I now gig regularly with a Harley Benton bass and a load of cheapo pedals and it all works and sounds just fine and dandy.

I’m over the moon about everything I’ve bought this year. Nothing was bad: mexican ‘player’ precision - can’t belive how well built Mexican fenders are nowadays ampeg svt-cl and svt-810e. Both USA made ones. Yup, pretty happy with this 2009 music man stingray. 3 band. Love it ashdown abm evo iv 600 + klystron 410 & klystron 115. Can’t find fault with this

Only bass related purchases were amp stuff... I got a Crown 1502 power amp with 6u rack and rack power distribution to replace my 28 year old Marshall. It weighs about 1/2 of the Marshall, puts out 1500W against the Marshall's 300W. And the difference is that I get much more bass weight, even when using sub octaves - the whole thing is clean right down to 20Hz rather than the slightly indistinct bass-amp tone I used to get. Now I dial tones/effects in via pedalboard and rack BBE pre and know that I'm getting exactly the same sound from my Precision Devices/Markbass speakers as I'm sending to the desk. Anyone want to buy a Marshall Jubilee?

I suspect you are right Rich. There will be a mention of tractors and a 5 year plan.

Yeah my hard cases are in the garage but the triple case I have is really narrow, much less than three cases and considerably less so than one of those ‘racks’ you can get. Works quite well. But yeah if you’ve got no floor space then the walls are next. When the walls are full you’ve got the ceiling!

You’ll fit right in here then!!

Have a look for Eich or Tecamp Bassboard or Porter and Davies. They both do these. I took the DIY approach and bought the parts from Ebay/Amazon/Homebase for the platform and secondhand Markbass Nano to drive it. I also have a small mixer so I can mix my bass with a microphone in the kickdrum.

I've been thinking that for a couple of years and in that time I've checked out at least half a dozen Sadowsky Jazz basses, including a chambered NYC, a Modern, PJ, a Satin and some other Metros. They all sound good, but so far, I'm just preferring the sound of my Metro RV5 Jazz. Now I'm not sure that I need an NYC at all.

@probonopublico you are one sick puppy

A very Merry Christmas to you Marvin, lovely to see that neck put to good use Merry Christmas to everyone else too

My wonderful Sirius by Franz bass guitars ❤️

FINALLY! I got to try one of these today. Here’s my take: this is a really cool pedal! It does a ridiculous amount of stuff. I had a solid 2.5 hours with it (with 15 minutes on my Future Impact for comparison). The basic waveforms sound fantastic and fat. Dialling in a bit of the modulation knob, (which introduces a second oscillator with increasing amount of detune) gives a very analogue-sounding gentle phasing, especially on the sawtooth. I was using a Mexican P with rounds and tracking was great. There were two notes (low F# and F) which caused multiple triggering but that may have been the bass itself. With the synth voices, the lowpass filters sound gorgeous, especially with resonance. This is the best sounding digital filter I’ve heard. The cutoff goes way low (probably 40Hz or less). It is very easy to dial in good sounds quickly, and great ones once you’ve got the shift functions down, which doesn’t take too long. (The main thing which tripped me up was the fact that some knobs do completely different things (in shift and normal mode) depending on whether the pedal is in dry (not bypassed), mono, poly or arp mode. I can see how it can be easy to quickly lose track of which knobs are set to where. For instance, I was wondering why the dry envelope filtered sound sounded a bit naff. It turns out I’d inadvertently switched compression on which killed all the dynamics. I think this happened because the shift knob on this unit was switching out at the slightest release of pressure (I was operating it one-handed, thumb on button, fingers on dials); I was trying to adjust a different parameter. The triggered envelope control has some pretty cool possibilities and is capable of a reasonable range of sounds, though it is still frustrating that there isn’t separate control over the attack and decay. Due to the fact there’s no (filter) sustain control, the fast envelopes cut off the sound quite abrubtly at the end. This might also be partly to do with the fact that there’s no separate envelope depth control. The envelope follower was quite disappointing and didn’t seem to have much of a range. (Perhaps there’s a setting to adjust input gain somewhere but I was only using the quick-start manual as opposed to the full one.) That was a shame as the filter on the dry bass sounded pretty good. Not as fat as my analogue pedals but actually pretty decent. I’m pretty sure the disappointment is due to the lack of envelope sensitivity though as it sounded really rather good when sweeping the filter knob manually. There’s portamento! This is cool. Sadly the scaling on the knob means there’s much more travel devoted to the longer times than to the shorter (and more useable-to-me times). I only played with the arp and poly modes briefly. Arp produced some pretty cool sounds. Ring mod sounds cool too. I’m not sure if there’s a way to decouple it from the envelope whilst still having the envelope controlling the filter, I’ll have to investigate further. Pitch shifter sounds cool, though I didn’t play it much. I put the synth into the highest register for lead sounds and I thought it played much more tightly than the FI. (I’m interested to hear if the new FI update will change that as there is to be a new and improved tracking algorithm.) I’m partly regretting not having bought this last week when the eBay 15% discount was offered. I didn’t buy it today but I may in future next time a similar discount comes around. Yes, it has its limitations but it the sounds it does make are pretty awesome. I still hope that the Meris people consider a future firmware update to add more envelope control and refine the envelope follower. Quatschmacher out. 

Bit more info on the PMT site - says that the 210 is 23.2 Kg and the 115...... 12 Kg(!?). Doesn't sound right though does it?

Yep, the whole immediacy of having an instrument there. For years I had a lot of keyboards around, but never played them because of the effort to set stuff up. Now I go into my room, press 1 on the power button and all my keyboards / mixer / amp comes to life. I press a key on something, it makes sound. With the bass, theres some upstairs, theres some downstairs. Some advert comes on the telly, I will grab a bass and play along to the advert, just because, well, it is what I do. There is a guitar there too, just in case. And a flute. And a AKAI wind instrument. All just ready for inspiration.

As long as you have a volume knob they'll be fine! Might find a 2x10 suits better at lower volumes because the sound is usually a bit tighter than a 15

that's practically what I thought when I saw these- i've not much experience with different amps, and I only have 2 because I play / live in two locations. They are both 15w combos with a 1x8 speaker. out of interest- would a 300w head and a 1x15 or 2x10 actually be able to be used at very low bedroom volumes? I have a 12w (valve) 2x10 guitar amp, and even that struggles to be quiet enough- but i suppose that could be different with solid state / bass applications?

Cheap can and often does mean poor quality. That's a fact that has nothing to do with "gear snobbery". Not all good gear is expensive but you need more than just the price to know if anything is good or not.

Remembering the late Joe Osborn with some lovely melodic playing: Simon & Garfunkel - 'The Only Living Boy in New York' bass transcription PDF

Well the regular One Spot has a total current output of 1.7A (1700mA) and the Stomp will draw the lion’s share of that - at least 1.2A (1200mA). The problem is that Morningstar don’t seem to publish the current draw of the MC6, but since it’s just a controller with a fairly simple LED screen I’d be surprised if it drew more than 250mA. So based on fairly educated guesstimation a regular One Spot should power both no problem. Whether the MC6 will introduce noise into the signal chain I’m not sure, but I’d want to isolate the MC6 with something like a GigRig Timelord to be safe. And you’ll still need the correct barrel adaptors to go from “pedal standard” 2.1mm to the 2.5mm power input on the Stomp.

Yep, just you. One of my favourite artists. +1.

Fix them to a strip of wood and glue / screw that to the wall I use Hercules grabs

A whole generation of kids including mine wanted to visit Australia based on Home & Away and Neighbours. These people are now running the media/music biz... Have you noticed how young policemen are?😧

Just you i think,from her warbly period if its December will be magic. Not my favourite era but of its time Mad eccentric musical genius .

He will - I'm making some for him at the moment - they will hopefully be available in a few days