Kev

7 hours ago, jd56hawk said:

For the price they ask, it's a shame they're no longer including hardshell cases...and I'm big on gigbags!

Mono cases are a good chunk more expensive than a regular ABS case, and far more protective.  Good step foward for me, although it is odd they dropped one of the main Mono features of top loading.

10 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

 

 

I agree for large companies. But that doesn't scale to small outfits. BF only have 6 employees.

 

I run a little company. There's only 2 of us. There is no way I can avoid price increases if I want to stay open. Paper has doubled. Energy has doubled.

 

My prices have gone up but my income hasn't.

Yup, that's absolutely fair enough.  It's a shame bigger companies have the audicity to maintain or even increase profits during these times.

Energy costs alone must be crippling small businesses, several stores in my town have shut over it, including a really quite popular butchers.  

16 minutes ago, Merton said:

Absolutely agree in terms of the massive supermarkets, oil companies etc. The petrol prices beggar belief for example.

I suspect Barefaced just wouldn’t have been able to survive without these price increases though; more a labour of love than a way to a quick million.

The bigger companies are worse, for sure!  But in the Barefaced example, have they risen prices to make the same profit as pre-covid/cost of living crisis, or are they taking less profit?

Thing is, why is it never an option for a business to make a bit less profit due to cost of living, and always that the consumer should be worse off?

I naively perhaps think this about everything that's going on right now.  Supermarkets announcing record profits, exactly why is it they can just not raise the price of rice and instead make slightly less money, given the proportional difference in impact on consumers?

2 hours ago, Tripehound said:

Hi Kev - I keep looking at these. I used to have a Helix LT but sold it as I found I was tending to use just the one patch and few effects. Moved to the Atomic Bassbox (I play in a band where everyone is straight in to the mixer) but am unconvinced by the tone and especially the overdrive. Considering the new Zoom B6 but keep wondering...

 

Can I ask which amp models/captures you've tried and what you think of them vs other modellers?

Have to say, I'm useless when it comes to other modellers.  The last modeller I had before the Quad Cortex was a Zoom GT-6B!!!

I have used a ton, there are SO many on the cloud.  Only problem is finding the good ones, as Captures are only as good as the person capturing them, setting the input levels right etc.  In my current live presets I use Captures for the Darkglass X Ultra (mine), a Sadowsky preamp and some cab sim captures and they all sound great.  I have 3 or 4 dozen captures downloaded that I've played with and deemed them good enough to keep, mostly drive pedals and fuzzes.  I use compressors, reverb, delay and pitch shifting all to great effect.  I play in drop B but my backup bass live is tuned to E standard, so if I need to use it I drop the E to D and kick in a preset that pitch shifts down to Drop B and it sounds almost perfect.  I'm still discovering sounds every day.  Its weakest aspect at the moment is its effect models I think, from what i've heard from others with Fractal experience etc, but its very young and Neural are regularly updating.  The fllters aren't great to my ears, no real "synth"options at present.  The delays and verbs are fantastic though, not left wanting there at all.

For me, my mostly Darkglass and drive pedal laden board almost completely covered the QC when I sold it all, and the QC captures are PHENOMENAL.  As I say, I captured the X Ultra pedal before selling, capturing the channels separately, and it was completely indistinguishable from the real pedal.  It's worth the money alone, it really is.

A very serious piece of kit!  Fantastic unit, pedalboard now presents as rather boring as a result!

Can't help with the query though, I have only ever used the unit straight to FoH.

That's interesting!  I always assumed that matching headstocks were made by using a thicker piece of wood glued to headstock and then carved into a shape/curve etc.

55 minutes ago, eude said:

Bit late, but I did promise some recordings of my ACG Uber Finn with the DFM 5K preamp and MC Series pups.

It's the one on the left here >>

 

 

Just for the nerds here, the bass has a mahogany body, with a very hard katalox top, a super tight bolt on neck joint, with threaded inserts and bolts, 5 piece red oak/bubinga neck and a pau ferro fingerboard.

The real reason for sharing the specs is that I really think that construction and technique play as big a part here as the preamp.

 

I did a few quick and dirty snippets of some BSSM lines, I think it's getting quite close.

The bass is recorded direct into GarageBand with no effects of processing whatsoever.

The pickups are pan 50/50, both filters are wound back a little, about 25% and the resonant peaks maxed out, the treble stack is out of the equation and I've dialed the passive tone off a bit, as it's a very bright bass and I was giving it some with my right hand.

 

Hope they're of some interest, and apologies for the sloppy playing!

 

Give It Away

 

 

Suck My Kiss

 

 

Funky Monks (Outro)

 

 

Cheers,

Eude

Its certainly a hell of a lot closer than any ACG clip I've heard before.  It's still a little too clean sounding and the mid strength isn't there, but its definitely Wal esque.  Add a bit of grit to that and it'll basically be there in a mix I'm sure!

Edit:  Mid Character isn't quite there, realising mid strength didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Beautiful, wish I had the spare cash lying around!

5 minutes ago, pete.young said:

It wouldn't work. THere's nothing to stop a scammer registering a fake date of birth, and you don't need to provide a DOB to Paypal anyway so they have nothing to check it against.

It's just another layer of protection.  A scammer can fake everything, but that shouldn't mean there is no point in considering steps like this.  Anything to try and discourange buyers and sellers alike from avoiding using a Goods transaction.

1 hour ago, prowla said:

They'd then get into loads of hassle when they blocked people sending to their mates, effectively calling their customers liars, etc.

I guess they can't win either way.

The bottom line is if you use F&F to send to people you don't know, then it's your risk; you've been warned.

(Can't believe I'm defending PayPal, but I guess if I'm not against them then I must be with them.)

I dunno, DOB seems like a real easy one.  How many friends or family members do you not, or can't easily find out, the DOB of?  Whereas I imagine scammers would be rather reluctant to disclose such information.

1 hour ago, prowla said:

In fairness to PayPal, they are clear and it's up to folks to choose to think of someone they don't know as "Friends & Family".

Well yes and no.  It isn't up to folks, its in violation of Paypals terms of use.  You are in effect defrauding Paypal if you pay for goods using friends/family.  I feel like there should be more scrutiny on payments you are making to a contact for the first time, even if its just additional questions like confirming their date of birth or other details that prove your connection to them is personal.  LOADS they could try, if they wanted to.

Well of course, because Paypal Friends and Family enables his scam.

I really wish Paypal would do something to discourage these kind of payments. as there are clearly huge swathes of people out there who don't realise how naive it can be to send a stranger money this way.  You'd think they would, given they're also being scammed out of fees every time.

Interesting move, may well be beneficial.  Since Doug Castro left and turned his attention to Neural, they seem to have struggled a little to keep innovating the way that they once did.  The ADAM and Photon are cool but feel half baked.  Same with that new amp.  And if you believe the FB groups, their customer services has somewhat nosedived in recent times.  Perhaps Korg will help with this? 

Interesting OP though.  Has any brand been ruined by Korg??

5 hours ago, Bass Culture said:

 

Gee, thanks Kev - you really must invite me round to share your thoughts on home decor some day!  😉  BC (or Mark Newman to his friends - owner of new Zoot Wal-a-like...)

Haha sorry!  T'was a bit blunt.  Really love the bass, but what made you opt for the the single string bridge design, and the gold vs black hardware? 

There's obviously a market for it, but it seems to take lightweight unnecessarily far.  At this point, surely the size and awkwardness of a cab is more of a problem than weight.  I had Gen 2 Barefaced and they felt fragile, certainly wouldn't imagine a need for something even thinner and lighter.  Is it just all aesthetics?

I don't think wrapping a cab in bubble wrap every time it leaves the house is a great thing.  Surely the whole point in it being lightweight is so its moved around easier?  The marketing also seems to imply improved strength, not really seeing an emphasis on treating them with unusual care?  I take very great care of all my equipment, but yeah, Ill still knock it from time to time.  I feel like with this it would be a quick panic check every time it happened... 

1 hour ago, TrevorR said:

You know, they say that great minds think alike. This Zoot Basses custom build just popped up on the Zoot Facebook page…

 

Keen to hear that one!

Interesting design, terrible choice of bridge/bridge colour for me, otherwise quite like they've not attempted to copy the Wal shape. 

How do these differ from the current models, quality wise?

12 hours ago, Kev said:

 

 

That body wing in a completely different wood grain looks awful, unless its a trick of the camera.

Looking at these other photos in different finishes, it appears it is a trick of the camera!  Just a straight edged body contour making it look darker.

2 minutes ago, drTStingray said:

Yep agreed - that’s really nice and especially the neck. I think I know who owns (or used to own that). There’s quite a following for Big Als so I would imagine it would sell quite quickly. As for the one at Bass Direct, I’m surprised it was so cheap - was it an SSS though (seem to be the most sought after version). 
 

One thing which never ceases to amaze me is the number of people who are willing to take the trouble to log in on forums and post negative views on a thread (fugly etc etc). To the extent we get more fugly comments than anything else - I’m not sure how helpful those comments are - seems a bit like pi**ing in the wind to me as the people who like the instrument will just think they’re rather silly!! 
 

I often feel people’s love for certain 50s/60s designed and rather average instruments is odd (I’m thinking, from memory any electrical device from 1960 came with built in hum and other negatives but no-one would dream of using them instead of properly engineered modern stuff using a range of elements invented in the last 50+ years nowadays, certainly in a day to day basis) but mediocre instruments containing the same - well some musicians seem to absolutely love em  - such instruments are also fugly in some cases (IMHO) - however I’m really not inclined to log in and tell everyone - like most people, I just walk past what I’m not interested in!! 

I mean to be fair, this isn't the Ernie Ball forum.  If someone posts a thread saying how amazing something is, naturally it almost invites people to say otherwise, nature of the interwebs and discussion forums I'm afraid!  We can all dream of a world with positive vibes only, sadly never going to happen.

Nope, never ever going to get excited by tobacco sunburst.  Neck is lovely though, and its not original!

That body wing in a completely different wood grain looks awful, unless its a trick of the camera.

6 hours ago, mrn1989 said:

I ordered one of the AT 210's, didn't even get a chance to try it before it went back. Didn't survive the courier trip 

 

Ended up going for a Barefaced BB2 G2 and absolutely love it.

 

Oh dear.  How on earth will that hold up on the road?!!  Looks a poor design for sure, however pretty it is.

9 minutes ago, Belka said:

I doubt there's any such thread, they gave a general outline of their pricing policy and I feel this is enough. One thing to also bear in mind for things like the Presentation II is research and development costs. I know they made prototypes of this bass. You could argue that any manufacturer builds prototypes and why should that influence the price of a new one, but I doubt they sell more than 2 Presentation II basses per year, so the price might somewhat reflect the hours put into the design/ prototype builds. This is probably also be the case for the bass in question here. 

 

I think I and others have said that materials do influence cost

They influence cost, but no more than any other luthier, unless fancy woods need to pay extra rent in NY as well?

I'm not necessarily saying there is such a thread, I'm just interested as I just don't understand how they cost $30k to build, yet it was mentioned how many hours it took to build one or something, which is quite a thing to calculate, so I guessed it must have been discussed somewhere, my mistake.  But in their 10% profit on each one you think they are including unspecified "research and developments" costs of prototypes built years before, they can apply any value they want to that, so its making more sense now...

I'll bow out as its just going round in circles.  I guess I just won't buy one and stick with Alpher 😅

10 hours ago, funkypenguin said:

 

Some of the materials they use are very expensive (such as CITES certified Brazilian rosewood), others are very time consuming to work with (such as Buckeye), but it's a combination of factors that make Fodera so expensive, as Jason explained in that talkbass thread. Some people seem to think that Fodera are raking in money but met them and talked to them at some length, they're really not. 

Is there a conversation on Talkbass somewhere where he specifically references how the Presentation II costs Fodera over $30k to build??  Or even this mini bass at almost $17k, still taking their 10% profit pledge as true?  I haven't seen Fodera use a wood that a much cheaper luthier does not use at least as good a grade as, so wouldn't have thought this would have any bearing on price.  It seems to be all about the shops location, and how many hours it takes them to build each bass.  Still, I can't fathom the figures at 10% profit.