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So... some of you fine folk may remember how some 2 months ago I went on a rampage to sell my stingrays - simply too much money on gear when I had to recover from windows we replaced at home, and a bathroom renovation...! ... Resolved to sell the 'rays with pain in my heart, replaced by American Original series Fenders, P and J - how great are these basses? I was thoroughly impressed and managed to cash in a grand to ease things on the bank account. Being back in this forum (9 months hiatus to stop selling and buying!) I let my hair off and replaced my rig without much investment... Ashdown ABM 600 head and a mighty Barefaced Six10 - from an Eich T900 and a Big Baby 2. Fast forward the bathroom is done, the windows are paid and I had sold a couple watches so I had more than I needed and then I saw this Ray Special... In the Cruz Teal that only came out on the first series and that I so dearly love...! Out of what I wanted to spend, but received an offer on eBay and then I started to consider... I messaged the owner and he was happy to let it go at the last offer minus fees, pretty much the same price as you see on the regular MM Stingrays these days so I had to pull the trigger. Some crazy 6-7 hours to remind me why I hate driving to Manchester and 320 miles later I got home, set him up, waxed the neck, hydrated the board... et voila... Very, very ambivalent collection right here, Jesus even if it's only been a couple months I missed the stingray tone! Don't get me wrong, the passive Fenders are just brilliant and plan to keep using it... but there you go, a story that started sour selling my most beloved basses managed to come back even better than it started - to happy endings! Ander.

I know that my problem with multiple purchases of music gear is just that - a problem. I have always sought to fill the hole in my life with outside 'stuff', with quick fixes. Addiction and unhappiness have driven much of my existence and despite repeated attempts to find a more enriching solution, I fall back into old habits. It goes something like this. I'm miserable, triggered, angered, hungry, lonely - whatever - so I blow money I ought to be saving or using wisely on whatever is my obsession right now. Instant buzz mainly because it's a rash act. Excitement throughout the wait for the arrival of the latest superfluous purchase. Excitement when it arrives. Anticipation of its first proper use. Put it to one side and look for the next fix.

Last night's gig was a local fundraiser. Inoffensive background straight-ahead jazz required, so we prepared a set list full of ballads &c. and invited a vocalist to join us for them, thinking our clarinetist could play the heads of any instrumentals, take various solos etc. The usual pianist was unavailable so we had a dep. guitarist. He sounded like a proper jazz guitarist but was inexperienced (2nd time playing in public) so was only willing to take solos on two tunes. A mere 15 minutes before starting we got a message from the clarinetist that he hadn't felt well during the day and thought that he wasn't up to it. But, by padding things out with bass solos and the vocalist playing a baritone horn (almost left behind as she thought it wouldn't be needed) for heads/solos we managed to get away with it. The audience were pleased, so it must have been a success.

If it’s your hobby/pastime/ interest and you have the money I don’t see a problem with it, my life is based around bass and reggae music ,and I’m constantly browsing basses , if I see something I like I buy it and if it turns out to be not to my liking I sell it, good harmless fun I’d say and quite fulfilling when you get a nice one

And I also blame Basschat 😁

Psychology of collecting basses is much the same as the psychology of collecting anything, all collectors justify the need for multiple items ranging from "I need this one because it'd different to that one" to "It'll be worth a fortune one day" but ultimately it's all driven by that little circuit in our brain that drives us to seek out and accumulate resources. It was a very helpful circuit throughout millions of years of evolution, it's often quite expensive these days

My Ashdown Studio 15 gets better with every gig! Only 25 pounds! A blessing for this 72 year old!

Ahh Dopemine... she's an elusive and cruel mistress, forever moving the goalposts.

Hey everyone, I got my first Sandberg yesterday, I'd been looking for a passive jazz with a flattish finger board radius and this came up on eBay. It's a California TT passive in matt black with blocks and an off white scratch plate, actual matt black rather than the black stained natural on the configurator. After a moment of thinking the bridge pickup was broken, I turned all the controls right up, not realising that they were vol, blend, tone, I'm blown away by how good it is. It feels incredibly well put together and has the burp and clang that I wanted from a Jazz type instrument. Also it's much more comfortable than the traditional Jazz shape.

Mods - I should say I have already posted this in the 'Share Your Music' sub-sub board of the Recording sub-board, where unfortunately no-one much goes or seems interested - so if this post qualifies as spam, please delete the earlier one! This represents my first go at a 'proper' music vid - I've done lyric videos and slideshow-y montages before, but this is the first time I've used green screen, recorded performance & outdoor footage/still images & tried to make something coherent out of it. Disclaimer - the drone footage isn't mine (free-to use stock from the excellent pexels.com site) so any occasional illusion of professionalism would be that of the talented videographers whose work it is, not me! Video was recorded using my little Canon SX720 compact on its HD setting, all the bits & pieces were bunged together with Shotcut, which (as someone whose previous video editing experience was limited to Windows Movie Maker) was easy to get started with & pretty intuitive to work with, and let me do pretty much anything my limited imagination came up with. Anyway - I think I'm pleased with the result, given the obstacles of poor equipment, dubious aesthetic sensibilities and general ineptitude I have tried to overcome. It was fun & stressful in equal measure and I'm not even too horrified at my own ugly mug gurning away while I pretend to play bass! A bit about the song. This is a bit of a musical departure for us, and despite playing/programming the instruments on the song I consider myself a distant second-fiddle as far as writing it is concerned. Basically my partner-in-crimes against music sang it to me, & said "can you make the guitars sound like Stuart Adamson?" Doing so was an absolute pleasure as Stuart was a huge influence when I was learning guitar & starting to write songs back in the early 80s. For that reason the Yamaha SG and the Strat in the video are what I used in the song - however the bass you hear is an Ibanez RS924 Roadster, not the silly thing I'm waving around on screen! I also used a Riverhead Unicorn headless (with flats) for the chordal intro. Song was recorded using Reaper & mainly Reaper plugins, guitar sounds courtesy of ToneLib GFX, bass through a Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro, & drums are the MT Power Drumkit plugin. Hope you like it!

Ok, finally got my act together and re-shot video, after the first version I did had technical issues. Then re-edited, and uploaded, etc. This one focuses on the Lusithand preamp. I like it a lot. Kudos to Nuno for sending it to me to try it. It's staying in for now unless someone else can convince me they get the 'grit' it provides. I'll get to adding video timestamps tomorrow.

Hello and welcome! Have a badge

There's been a bit of 70s funk/soul revival going on in the pop charts for a few years. Bruno Mars and Lizzo among others have been mining the decade for inspiration. I tend to think it's mainly a positive thing, at least it's bringing the spotlight back onto things that sound like real instruments even if it's all actually done on a synth and a laptop.

The more I play basses (with some kind of aim), the less I buy them. The instruments become less important than the music (and importantly, the company in which they are played). Funny that. And reassuring.

To be fair, the majority of new music doesn't half sound like music that's been done 1000 times before,albeit with an extra doo wah diddy or slightly different instrumentation or (God forbid!), a different key. Anything that is seriously new and completely different tends to scare most folks so much that they turn into a sort of pitchfork- and torch-wielding mob, advancing on the evil monster and shouting "this isn't music!" and "the kids nowadays don't know nothing about a proper choon!".

^This is my take on it, too. I'm fortunate in that I love a rummage around on ebay or at auction houses and have quite a collection of many weird and wonderful musical instruments now. I guess it is compulsive behaviour but that's in every enthusiastic hobbyists nature. The only 'problems' are finding time to get around to playing them all and storage space.

Yup same. Years of revolving door with basses. Trying to make myself happy as a bassist by changing gear basically. Years of keeping the same 6 string guitars, which I play at least one of them every day. Only picked up basses when I had an upcoming gig. So I’ve stopped gigging bass and flogged them all bar a GoldTone micro bass for my own recording. Never been happier. But nothing wrong with having kit you don’t play if it’s not causing you difficulties in other parts of your life.

The Wheels On The (Replacement) Bus Go Round And Round - nursery rhyme

Boom. Hit the nail on the head with this one. This is exactly the same as me. As soon as I regain some mental equilibrium and feel more positive about life I shed all the superfluous crap. What’s funny is that the gigging instruments always remain the same - I just accumulate then dispose of other things. It’s all pretty harmless and I’ve never lost money, but viewed from the outside it’s entirely pointless. US Fender Jazz for the good gigs, Squier P/J for the rough ones and 66 jazz for recordings. Been the same for years.

I use this.

I didn't know Cleartone Conversions were selling B stock? That bridge! 🤪

I set "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran as my 7:00 alarm. Now I wake up at 6:00 so that I don't have to hear it.

I’ve just picked up this morning a super light Ashdown Studio 210 combo. I already have a lovely Ampeg B200r combo but it weighs about 70lbs/32kg and we just started rehearsing in a place that has stairs. No thanks. Saw this the next morning on eBay. Usually sell new for about £550 but managed to snag this s/h for £180!!!

Threads about owing multiple basses and similar pop up like undesirable rodents invading our gardens. So here is another one. Although I don't own too many bass guitars but in my opinion there are more I use. In past couple of years I played mostly guitars and drums as they provide a better satisfaction. Bass is only used nowadays,IF, I record a song. So why do I have the need for multiple basses? One , I rarely use, the other I only bought as a " must have it" at the time going through crisis. Another, was a bargain and with further pick up upgrade it sounds and plays like a top of the range bass. Another , I totally modified, painted, it's the most comfortable to play with. So, taking a step back looking at them, I could probably sell three and make a decent amount and buy one I'm after. But I know deep inside that I would regret selling them, but they don't get used! Anyone in a similar position? 🤔

240v? Reminds me of a story a pal told me. A father came into the music shop he worked at looking for an electric guitar for his son. They sold him a starter Strat type instrument. A couple of days later, he was back, with a face like thunder, shouting that the shop staff had tried to "kill my boy". They asked what he was on about and he told them "I took that silly plug off the lead it came with and put a proper one on. When I plugged it in, it exploded". You've guessed it. He'd put a 13A three pin on the lead and plugged it into the mains. When they took it out of the box, the pickups were melted. They explained that it needed to be used with an amplifier and our hero insisted they were just trying to sell him more stuff, threatened to report them to Trading Standards, Health & Safety, Watchdog, etc. "It's an electric guitar, innit?" To avoid wasting time and money on arguments (it could have cost them, although they would have won), they gave him back his £99.99 and told not to come back.

They are nice and I enjoy playing them which encourages me to play more which is good for me in many ways. Fundamentally they bring me pleasure.

When they were called "Lightwave" I owned a Sabre FL4-string semi-hollow body with both fretted and fretless necks. I like the Lightwave idea a lot. However one of it's main selling points that you can use lots of different strings was a bit of a non-starter when I discovered just how much set up adjust meant would be required every time I made a major change to the string type, so once I found a set I likes (the first ones I tried after the set that were on mine when I bought it) I stuck with those. Setting up was both a mechanical and electrical procedure - firstly you had to align the pickups with the strings and then tweak the output of each individual string via trim pots inside the control cavity. However once you'd get this right the tonal response from one string to another was very even, so well worth the effort. I didn't much like the action and intonation adjustments thought as they both requires slackening off the string to perform. By the time I'd got my bass set up how I liked it, the stings had been tightened and loosened so much they might as well have been secondhand! However I believe that the bridge/pickup mechanism has gone through at least one more iteration since mine (I had on the Mk2 version) and may be a lot more user friendly now. The version I had also had piezo pickups (called ice-tone IIRC) which added an extra dimension to the tone but also on the hollow body a lot of handling noise, so when I did use this I kept the level low. The final thing to consider its powering it. Again this may have changed with the new models, but mine required an external PSU to charge the battery inside the bass which connected via a non-standard socket. Also because I imported mine directly from the US it came with a 110V charger that required a step-down transformer to make it work. However you could play the instrument whilst charging it so even if you forgot to charge regularly so long as you had the PSU you were OK. Having said all that if I found myself in another band that need fretless bass and I could find a 5-string that looked as nice as my 4-string did, I would definitely get it. If you have any specific questions post here and I'll do my best to answer, bearing in mind that a lot of the quibbles I had with my bass may well have been addressed by now.

Hmmm........makes sense.......but I already have a few amps....which means the wife probably wouldn’t notice another one! What do they say....the best place to hide a tree is in a forest!!! 😁

Likewise. My Mustang is enjoying a resurgence in my affections in the last couple of days. I note that shorties are getting a good bit of TV time nowadays, the JMJ Mustang especially (one of the sisters in First Aid Kit uses one and the bass player in Wet Leg used one up until recently too, for instance. Both very much current ‘flavours of the month’).

True. The less I play, the more the bass acquisition madness kicks in.

I wasn't commenting on whether I liked it or not. Just explaining what new means.

I will never, ever, onsume.

Yes, but then I have never found an onboard compressor that works well since my 1973 HH VS.

The last thing I want is to be trapped in a loop of Ed Sheeran's very ordinary pop music. On the bright side, at least Chris Martin isn't involved.

I think its down to English words which have been adopted to describe various stages of gain: saturation grit overdrive distortion fuzz etc etc. One might perceive that saturation is a milder form of generic distortion; and that in the scale of things, the word "distortion" could also be used to specifically describe stronger, err, distortion. Its not just the amount of gain, its down to tone (the frequencies it affects more than others) too. And a lot more, I'm sure.

But the violin has evolved..!