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[i can just hear the scrabbling of those bassists expressing an interest forming what they consider is an orderly queue]...

Game changer! That is all

I have @Pea Turgh‘s other kidney to sell for mine. Thanks.

Seem to be a handful I often pull off the shelf... The Cult "Dreamtime" Joy Division "Closer" All About Eve debut album Fields Of The Nephilim "The Nephilim" (specifically side 2 for those who can remember when a disc had tunes on both sides :-) )

I certainly fall into the category of "I've paid £1700 for a bass, I shouldn't have to spend more replacing pick ups" it's taken me years to come to this decision after almost selling it several times... Thing is, it's so light, plays like a dream, and every time I look at it I get all warm and fuzzy 😍

😃

Too much curry?

I think you're right Al. Even the basses i have that i had given up on and was thinking of changing pick ups and pre-amps now sound pretty good. Even better since i added the Orange OBC115 cab to it. Lovely smooth low end and clear low to mid punch but its a lot to humph about at my ripe old age. I'll need to try the VM4 thru my GK1001RBii and Berg HT322 see what a nice clean sounding amp makes of it. Might try that tomorrow as i've now made myself quite curious. The Mpulse head thru the Berg HT322 cab sounds amazing too. Nice and clean but still keeping that warm tubiness sound. The Sandbergs aren't for everyone but that's the same for any bass on the market. You just need to find the one that suits what you like and what you do. At the moment i've hit it lucky and it suits what i'm doing at the moment. Few yrs back and the VM4 just wouldn't have been for me but i'm older now I still love playing my trusty old Geddy Jazz tho 👍 Dave

I’ve not long ago bought a custom and I too get a very comfortable feeling when I pick it up and play, and I like the sound of mine, but if I didn’t I’d have no problem whatsoever doing what you’re doing, for me it’s all about being happy with my instrument, not making a profit on it 🙂

Again that pre amp and pick ups are ‘stock’ but also ‘stock’ are Sandberg own and Sandberg Black label at no extra cost, Haüssel’s are a small up charge, Darkglass Tone capsule is a recent ‘stock’ and of course you can go passive and not pay for a bass pre-amp at all. The single hang up on a bass seems to be the single most easy thing to change and actually one that never needed be a hang up at all. Of course sometimes it takes using a a piece of equipment to find out what works, but actually if you think about it - sell a bass at approx £800 loss, or after selling the pick ups and pre-amp etc and buying new ones spend in total another £1-200 - then it becomes a no brainer if everything else on the bass rocks.

Well it landed 🙂 Stone me this thing is glorious as glorious gets. My main 2 doubts with getting one lay in the volume and mid's I could get out of it( I like mid's ,and volume)....... As others have said,I need not have worried, very loud,crisp, punchy with globs of mids .can't get over how light it is for a solid state iron head.the quality of build certainly shines here. Look forward to testing it in the mix. Thanks for shedding some light on Handbox amps wateroftyne 🙂 would never have one otherwise. Very happy bunny.

I think a lot of these “ thoughts” are not particularly based on fact, more on hunches/half truths/ancient wisdom etc. If you all have a reasonably accurate tuner, the differences between tuners will be smaller than the inaccuracy of the operators themselves.

Mick repayed a favour I did (ages ago) for him whereby he collected a bass from a ‘collect only’ seller near him and shipped to me. couldn't have done a better job. Lovely man. Thank you x

Apologies @Horizontalste for pulling this over from another (Accessories) thread, but OMG I totally love what you've done to your 425!!! Wow!

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On the 'not a lot' subject, I hot-desked for a subcontractor at a very well know Chinese telecoms business and one of the Chinese girlies I used to deal with said she would expect to be paid £250 a month tops there for a job she was being paid six or seven times more for over here. The company regularly rotates staff back to China, so I asked her one time what she would do when she went back, she just said, 'Oh, I won't go back, I'll just run.' Thing is, cost of living is quite comparative to what they get paid - I'm not being at all flippant here, but certainly out 'in the country', where she was from, £250 (or the equivalent) goes an awful lot further than £1,500 would here.

Selling gear is cleansing. Buying stuff gives me a bit of a kick, but I sometimes get to a point where I wonder why I got that particular thing. Just shifting an electro acoustic (no idea why I got that at all), a small guitar amp (same) and a random bass I don't use or need. Out with the old, less is more, quality up, volume down... and all that. Let's see how long this lasts then

That montage is hardly 'merciless slaying'. You say 'it sounds like Rickenbackers are pretty good instruments...'. I take it from that statement you haven't owned or played one? John Hall's doing a 'pretty good job of running his company'? That's debatable and belongs in a whole other thread. JH does get a hard time from Rick users and non-users alike. In my experience, it is wholly deserved. Let me offer you a few reasons why. Back in the early 2000's I bought an old, stripped '74 4001, my first since the two I'd had in the '80s. Both of those basses were 'dogs', as it is sometimes said, but with my interest in the model re-ignited I decided to give them another bash. The '74 had some issues (NOS hairpin rods needed) but I was happy with it. Then came a '73 in Fireglo with cheq. That was a really good bass. Then came a 4001LF and a 4003 BlueBoy. And with that latter purchase, things got interesting. I also got to encounter the real John Hall. I had been a member of the official Rick forum back then and noticed that a few guys who'd bought the BB were having colour issues, such as the blue fading to a mint green. Mine did this within a matter of months and whilst I quite liked it I was alarmed that a finish should be changing so soon in an instrument's life. Then, I began to see nicotine-like streaks/splotches appear in the finish, as did others. We questioned this on the forum and then JH waded in. As soon as there was any form of criticism - even warranted - of his company, his business practice, his instruments, he would go for you. And he went for me. I was hectored at length about how the finish could not have possibly changed in such a short time; that I must be leaving the bass in a smoke-filled environment; that I was exposing it to UV light; that chemicals in my skin were causing the changes. So, he went on the attack right away. Throughout the years I have witnessed him come out on the attack time and time again: it is your fault, not mine! Now, doesn't that make him sound like a little bully? And when you get personally attacked by JH via e-mail you know that you are dealing with an unreasonable man. He would wade into conversations with such burgeoning rudeness that I often wondered if the man had a mental health condition for he seemed unable to address anyone who had a grievance, or difference of opinion, civilly. You really had to sit back and think 'Is this guy the head of RIC? Wow!!' You could search RIC Forum (and the cabal of acolytes, RRF) over the past 15-20 years for the stuff he's waded in on. And I'm not even going to start on the pursuing of 'fakers made 40+ years ago. There's a wealth of information out there about the man; it's up to you if you want to look for it and learn a little bit what he's like.

Public Image Ltd - Metal Box Crass - Feeding The 5,000 / Stations of the Crass Simple Minds - Empires and Dance Human League - Reproduction / Travelogue John Foxx - Metamatic Killing Joke - what’s THIS for? / Revelations Siouxsie and the Banshees - Juju Japan - Gentlemen Take Polaroids / Tin Drum Þeyr - As Above... Kraftwerk - The Man Machine

@Manton Customs had a bright red tiny bass at the Midlands Bass Bash on Saturday. If I remember correctly it was more of a demonstration piece than a new product line, but you could contact them and ask if they would make to order. There is a photo of me playing it rather badly on the forum for that event. The guitar sound is lovely, but I personally struggled with the small size 😞

Are the Zoom B1/X-4 & Zoom B3N multi-fx 'good enough' for live use? (Or should I stick with / step up to a Helix Stomp?) "The Zoom workflow and simplicity is just what the doctor ordered...preference to play my instrument more and menu-dive less." "the more sophisticated modelling multi-fx are capable of certain routing configurations and real-time (and/or automated) control of individual/multiple parameters...boxes like the HX Stomp and HX Effects are truly marvellous at their price point" I got asked by a mate earlier why I was moving my Helix Stomp on? My sense is this little B1X-4 is going to be sufficiently on point for live use that I can use it in place of my Helix Stomp. I love the fact that it's so user friendly. The Stomp is undoubtedly the 'better' / more sophisticated piece of kit, but I really think this will be plenty good enough in the mix with my bands and I'll be surprised if anyone in the audience will notice any significant difference on most of the usual classic effects - and that's the litmus test for me. @jimfist who has far more experience of multis than me was coincidentally arriving at the very same decision to move his Stomp on and his reasons are very much what I was feeling, but just a lot better articulated! This is what he had to say (over on TB): “Essentially the same modelling set, but I've come to the same conclusion with my B3n, and I'm prepping my HX Stomp to go off for sale to someone who'll use it more effectively than I will. I've dedicated hundreds upon hundreds of hours programming multi-fx modellers over the years and have grown fatigued of the process. The Zoom workflow and simplicity is just what the doctor ordered. It's not a knock on the more sophisticated pieces of gear (of which I've owned many), but more a knock on the work flow and preference to play my instrument more and menu-dive less (let alone having to be tied to a computer for more robust editing). That the Zoom box(es) get the job done is all that matters, even though the "big boy" modellers are so much more capable. The audience I cater to now would sooner notice 10% better musicianship than they ever would care about a 20% subjective improvement in tone, especially when that "great tone" can be totally screwed a dozen different ways in a live performance situation (a great equalizer). I geeked out on the Fractal AxeFx for years. Then on a whim I got the old B3 and used it for a couple of gigs. Nobody noticed or cared. That's when I started re-thinking my priorities...taboo on a gear forum!! The big caveat here is that the more sophisticated modelling multi-fx are capable of certain routing configurations and real-time (and/or automated) control of individual/multiple parameters, which the current Zoom boxes aren't able to do. If your needs are simple, then no worries. Otherwise, the more specific and sophisticated your needs, the more likely you'll find the "big boy" modellers more attractive and necessary. In that respect, boxes like the HX Stomp and HX Effects are truly marvellous at their price point. Still, there's no denying the value you get from the inexpensive Zoom boxes, limited though they may be.” Perfectly put. Thank you Jim.

a) good luck with that. b) there is a rapidly increasing queue!

Bit the bullet on my Sandberg and have local pick up makers Ghost pick ups making me a PJ pick up set to replace the Delano's. Hes also going to remove the glock and add a new passive only circuit. Exciting times indeed!

Hi, attached a few pictures of the work in progress on the final design of my EVO-FX5 bass

That's exactly it! The better the DSP / chipset (= 'engine') the more authentic the sims. And tbf the Helix Stomp is the next level up in terms of a better engine. But you'd hope so when you're paying over six times as much, wouldn't you? And as I posted at length last night, I'm really sensing that the B1/X-4 is going to be 'good enough' which, when combined with the easier Zoom 'work-flow' that Jimfist explained better than me earlier, makes this pedal a potential winner. You do realise needing to do a reset is like landing on the 'go to jail' spot? You'll now need to spend three turns sorting your stuff out or shake a double (whiskey?) or pay a £50 fine to upload my presets 😂

I'm quite happy with mine the way it is. Sandberg pick ups and Glock pre-amp thru Mesa Mpulse 600 and Mesa PH212. Glorious low mid punch just what the doctor ordered. Definitely interesting to hear others opinions tho. Dave

I use a pair of TS312's as FOH and occasionally monitors, dependent on the situation. They work pretty well for the money and if you can stretch to a sub as well, it's better. A DJ friend of mine has a pair of TS315's and he loves those, so if you can get the chance, try a side-by-side of them to see what's better for. For all-round, it may be that the 15" gives you the ideal solution. Having said that though, what is it you don't like about the Barefaced kit? I'd have thought it might be better to stick with what you already have, rather than taking the hit on them.

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Love her backside too! Btw - some of us actually like that 'awful' pick up selector switch! 😁

On this subject - my band has finally got round to replacing our keyboard player, so on Saturday night we're going to be playing a bunch of songs that we haven't been able to do for a while. A couple of which I'm going to play fretless on (It's My Life by Talk Talk and Boys Of Summer by Don Henley). At my request, these have been placed adjacent to each other, to minimise instrument changes. They are #2 and #3 in our second set. I'm now considering also playing fretless on #1, which is In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins, so that I start the set on the fretless and only need to change instrument once. I think I'll get away with it - what do you reckon? S.P.

I had a Fender 4x10 with castors that we’re easily removable. The vast majority of the time I left them on but on the odd occasion that I took them off I couldn’t tell the difference.

Most people think that's a French horn on "Overture" but we know otherwise...

Seeing Glenn in Edinbugga next week

Vox - Luciano Pavarotti Keys - Mrs Mills Drums - Doesn't matter Guitar - Steve Hillage Bass - Sid Vicious

Connectivity is largely driven by the environment. If you are in a high RF environment, some units will fare better than others - this is mostly due to aerial types (and placement) and transmission power. You'd have to do real world tests to accurately compare these sort of aerial/short wave aerial systems.

Home 'creative' pedal board Live pedal board(!) (Ok so it doesn't arrive for a couple of days, but I'm already looking forward to it!)

I've have spent many hours and GBP's trying to make my amplified double bass sound like that upright sound in my head !!