ash

Ha ha!

I use Promenade Music - just down the road in Morecambe. Despite doing a lot of business online they always have a decent stock of good quality basses thanks to Gary who works there and happens to be a bassist himself. I can't fault the staff and service there and there's none of that elitist rubbish of many shops - they welcome beginners and established pro musos equally - as indeed it should be. Guess we are spoilt here!

Yes - virtually impossible to get these days. Bloody useless though as they are worse than P bass ashtrays for getting in the way!

It's a Satellite bass with ashtrays! £100 worth!

One thing I must say is that the Marathon in the listing does have an original ashtray cover at the bridge and that is unusual!

I think the price is a bit optimistic - best offer would be 2/3 of that at best. They are lovely instruments and scarce in unmodded condition but in today's market I'd only pay that for a Marathon 6 or 8 string. Marathon 4s go for between £260 - £490, OK the finish on many is poor but that's one of the quirks of Shergold - still contemplating a Bass Doc refinish on mine!

The body is three pieces of alder and quite dense for the size - rings like a bell! The main difference between the P and the Bullet is that the small pickups don't have quite the same mid 'grunt' as my Precision. Easily remedied with EQ however. The scale length means it's much easier to move around on and personally I don't think the shorter scale makes it any lesser a bass in the tone department. I like the core sound of the Bullet, it's currently strung with a Elite medium roundwounds and gives a nice contrasting sound to my Hofner Violin which is very old school!

Here's mine it's a short scale US model B30. The pick guard was custom made by our very own Bass Doc. The original guard is off-white. The bass is in the rarer walnut finish - most I've seen are red or cream as in the OP. I'm using this instead of my JV Squier Precision at the moment because of a neck and shoulder injury this is much lighter and manageable to play at long gigs. The neck is superb and it's surprisingly punchy sounding. I've owned the MIJ long scale version too and they are excellent basses but not available as a 30" scale version. If you find one of these in decent condition go for it. They are certainly capable instruments and relatively cheap for US made basses.