Matt P

I haven't tried the J+D but i did compare a few of the cheaper options side by side when buying my Kala, they both had the pale/white strings but not exactly the same ones, i've seem some cheaper ones that have white strings that aren't Aquila (which are more of a cream colour) another thing i noticed was the little hatch on the back for string changes, the 2 cheapies i looked at, one had no hatch at all ( i'd imaging that string changes would be a nightmare) the other had the hatch held on with 4 screws that weren't flush to the wood so would have risked damage to your shirt (possibly). i really wanted to like the cheaper ones but after about 90 minutes i'd come to the conclusion that i couldn't have lived with them and went for the Kala. if i was buying again on a budget i think i'd be saving up a bit more and finding a secondhand Kala. (there is a spruce topped one in the classifieds at 210 quid at the moment.) Matt

How much?!!! Expected retail is 170 dollars! I can see that it appears to be made of ebony which isn't a cheap timber, but I'm pretty sure I could build something similar out of a better structural timber for far less money. Luckily I can't see any reason why anyone would want this so I can spend my Sunday afternoon on more exciting pursuits. M Edit: on further reading it seems that he's actually using a variety of timbers from trees on his property so the price is even more unbelievable, there will be some time involved in the construction of each one but some simple jigs and power tools shouldn't make them too time consuming to create.

i fitted these to the BEX http://www.daddario.com/DADProductDetail.Page?ActiveID=3769&productid=186&productname=ETB92_Tapewound_Bass__Medium__50_105__Long_Scale the labella nylon tapes would be a good option too, i went daddario as i got a fantastic deal on them (the distribution centre is very local and my friend at the guitar shop sold them to me for only just above the trade price.) i'm going to assume that the strings that came on it are round wound, phosphor bronze strings will also be round wound, for me i'd go for either flatwound or tapewound depending on personal preference. chromes might be a good option too as they are on the brighter side of flats. Matt

i've just had this situation with a Les Paul G****r, i don't like the 2 volume 2 tone setup so i fitted a coil tap switch into one hole and a spent .38 cal cartridge into the other, it fitted pretty snugly and a bit of tape on the inside holds it in place nicely, i've got a pic somewhere if you want. matt

i had a Yamaha BEX4 a while ago and the previous owner had been using D'addario nickel xl's, i didn't like them at all, i ended up fitting D'addario nylon tapewounds which sounded great. what type of strings are currently on the eastwood? Matt

another option would be to have Andyjr1515 (or another talented builder) build you one, i'm pretty sure he could build a semi acoustic body to suit a fender neck and incorporate whatever pickups and controls you would want, compared to the complicated beauties he usually builds a semi acoustic precision would be a breeze! Matt

i'd agree on the Yamaha BEX4, i had one for a while and they're great basses, quite p-bass in tone. another option (if you can find one) is the Fender A/E. I played one in a shop a while ago and it was really very nice, unfortunately i was skint so couldn't afford to buy it. they're Japan-built and have a precision pickup as well as a piezo, and they're that lovely familiar precision shape and feel to play. they do pop up occasionally on here but they're pretty rare beasts. this one sold a while back [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/298117-sold-fender-ae-9091-fretless-fretted-neck-precision-bass-japan/"]http://basschat.co.u...ion-bass-japan/[/url] Matt

i'm another north east basschatter with barefaced cabs (a pair of gen 2 midgets) you'll find that we're a friendly bunch up here, Jack very kindly let me have a thrash through his midget/compact setup while i was trying to decide what to order, and there are a couple of other barefaced owners up here that would be happy to let you test out the cabs. another manufacturer to consider is TKS, WaterofTyne is a huge fan and only lives just down the coast from you. it's a shame that there isn't a bass bash lined up as that would give you a good opportunity to try a wide range of cabs. i tried a th500 with my cabs at the last bash and was mighty impressed, unfortunately i was too skint to be able to buy one (and probably won't have the cash in the near future either) barefaced have a map on their website with links to owners around the country, i'd be surprised if they weren't mostly basschatters! Matt

i voted 2+2 mainly as i like the shorter headstock, my real preference is 2+3 as it allows the b-tuner to be slightly further from the nut which i've found prevents issues with the b-string running out of silk length, i've had a couple of 5 strings where the thickest part of the b-string ended up on the tuner. i actually have a few of these variations in my collection, and i'm not sure a precision (or a jazz for that matter) would look right with anything other than 4 a side (or 4+1 for my P5) i haven't got anything 3+1 yet but a stingray is on my bucket list. Matt

No worries, I thought it was probably gone but shy bairns get nowt! Matt

[quote name='Geddys nose' timestamp='1508947594' post='3395558'] I've never plugged it in but your mate can have it if he wants to fix it.The bag is Ok and it has both arms. [/quote] Have you found a home for this or is it still up for grabs? I might be interested as a project, any chance of some pictures of the damage? Matt

if you're only ever going to be using headphones then you might do better with a mini-mixer or a zoom fx unit (b3n or similar maybe?) these often have inputs for an aux and decent headphone outputs, Phil Jones make some headphone amps as well which are very well reviewed. i use a small (5 input) Behringer mixing desk which works really well and is hooked up to my pc as well as a cable to my phone/tablet/iPod depending what i'm playing along to. matt

glad to be helpful, good luck on your flats quest, i got lucky with the chromes, they were my first trial set and just felt and sounded right, saved me a fortune in strings as i fitted them 4 years ago and haven't changed the set at all. matt

i can't compare them to the brands you mention but from memory they were fairly high tension, higher than the chromes that i use now. i don't have them any more as i sold the bass that they were fitted to. as far as i remember these are made by Picato and had similar tension and feel to the Picato branded flats, i bought the Overwater branded ones as i couldn't find 5 string sets of the Picatos. Matt

I never tried to get mine sorted, I was under the impression that it was a problem that was due to the board design and that all the boards were the same so all you were doing was gaining another few months of operation before it all started again. I bought mine brand new in the full knowledge that it would most likely fail. They were being sold quite cheap at the time as the little giant amps had been released to replace them, I only needed it to last about a year, I think I got 2 years of use before giving it to someone to use as a preamp (the preamp was excellent in these IMHO) Matt

one post i was suggested late 80's, and fender have the pricelists archived on their website [url="https://support.fender.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000746086-Archived-Fender-Price-Lists-1968-2010-"]https://support.fend...ists-1968-2010-[/url] the 1989 lists have wedge cabs listed under the guitar section for pairing with the dual showman heads, available in 4x12 with either Celestion or un-named speakers and a 4x10 with eminence speakers (but with an open back) not to question the OP but did you put a tape measure across the speakers, are they definitely 10" or did you just go on what you were told? whatever the outcome i think that what you have is a guitar cab as i can't find a wedge bass cab listed on the fender price lists i looked at (although i didn't trawl through them all so cannot say 100% ) and if i'd just seen the pictures and not been told anything else i'd have thought it was the 4x12 with the un-named drivers. Matt

ahh i think i might have a breakthrough, it looks like it might be a fender "the wedge" cabinet, there are a few hits on google that look the same but some confusion as to whether they're guitar or bass cabs and some of them are open backed and some sealed. post 35 on here http://www.tdpri.com/threads/fender-super-60-112-210-owners.200003/page-2 http://www.serious-amps.online/product/fender-the-wedge-4-x-12-400-watt-guitar-speaker-cabinet/ http://www.guitarcenter.com/Used/Fender/410-Wedge-Black-Bass-Cabinet.gc the plot thickens! Matt

i can't help much but i'd expect that being a 4x10 it's more likely to be a bass cab as 4x10 guitar cabs aren't that common. the v-front design is quite distinctive but i can't find anything looking like it on google so i'm stumped! matt

he must have been going at some speed to manage that, google street view shows a fairly wide bend with a decent grass verge and a hedge, and judging from the pictures it looks like the van is about 18" off the ground! https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.0292206,-0.4614434,3a,71.4y,115.59h,70.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_K_Nsq7pvlqusVZ88PduAA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 matt

i would make a gauge, get a bit of stiff cardboard and a pair of compasses, draw in the 10mm radius on the card and cut it out with a sharp craft knife, then compare it to the radius on the cab, you want the same radius or smaller for the new corners or you'll need to sand the edges to suit the new corners. this is what set of radius gauges looks like, not difficult to make a few in cardboard to see what you've got. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radius_gauge#/media/File:RadiusGauges2.jpg Matt

i had one and the power amp section failed on me, first one output started whistling/whine/hum, then the other one followed suit 3 months later, a real shame as the preamp section was excellent! i seem to recall something about a bad batch of boards but i don't know how many batches of boards they had made, top marks to Ashdown for sorting it though! mine had the casing removed as soon as i found out it was possible, really helped with the cooling. If Ashdown were to re-release this amp with a more standard 500w power section i'd be very tempted to get one, if it was slightly smaller and lighter that would be a bonus too. do we have an Ashdown rep as a member on here? Matt

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1507184323' post='3383719'] I'm gonna chuck Lowden in there. When my dad in law was looking for a new electro acoustic, we went round tonnes of shops & played hundreds of guitars. He took me as he wanted to hear how it sounded from an audience viewpoint & have someone who'll play the same parts every time. We went through a lot of guitars from the big players such as Taylor, Martin & Gibson, many of them are very beautiful instruments. But we kept coming back to Lowden, an O35. The thing with guitars, like any instrument, You have to go & play it. I really liked the Martin D28, but my dad in law didn't get on with it like he did with the Taylor guitars. We both loved the sound, feel & playability of the Lowden. It's down to personal preference. [/quote] i agree with this, i tried loads of very lovely and expensive guitars on my quest to find my perfect acoustic, i ended up with a McIlroy which is very similar to a Lowden (Dermot McIlroy learnt his craft at Lowden and was the production manager for a while) i was very close to buying a Martin OM21 for a long while but the McIlroy AS25 won hands down, it took about 20 seconds of playing to know it was the one. i've played loads of Taylor's from the baby range up to the 800 series and none of them seemed to live up to the price tag. it's a similar story with Takemine, i've played a wide range of them and there was only one that was hard to put back on the stand in the shop (an all mahogany small body, if i hadn't have been skint i'd have taken it home with me) if you do end up having to fit an aftermarket pickup then i must recommend the AER AK15 that i have in my McIlroy, a really natural sounding pickup, i've recorded with it a few times and always got surprised reactions from the engineer on how close the pickup sounded to the acoustic tone. i think that as the budget goes up it actually gets harder to buy an off the shelf electro acoustic as the top builders tend to lean more to making great acoustic guitars (rarely with cutaways as standard) and then let the buyer decide what pickup (if any) they want. if you were looking for a 500 quid electro acoustic ten i could easily suggest a short list of great makers to look at! you seem to have a liking for Gibson so this would probably be a good place to start, they do make some very nice electro's that will fit easily into budget. (i've got a hankering for one of the blues kings but unless my numbers come up in the lottery it's going to stay a dream.) i think that the best advice would be to try every guitar you can and then let your ears decide.

[quote name='NancyJohnson' timestamp='1505510533' post='3372569'] I bought a Badtz Maru off here. The machines wete awful, while trying to enlarge the holes for new ones, the top of the headstock sheared off. So first up, new neck. It didn't sound so great, so I put in a hotrails style humbucker. It wouldn't intonate. The bridge was awful, so I put a Mustang bridge on it. Oh, and Straploks. [/quote] so that's what you did with it! i'm pretty sure you bought this from me, what scratchplate did you go with in the end? matt

I have a case for pretty much every instrument i own, the vast majority of them are Hiscox Liteflite, the few that don't have hard cases it's usually because a decent hard case isn't available or the instrument is so cheap that the case would be more than the instrument cost. I've got a double height rack/shelving unit in my study that holds everything neatly, and there is usually a couple of instruments on stands for easy access. i'm in the middle of a re-build of the study at the moment, when it's finished i might post a pic. Matt

i kind of do own one, a gp11 ah250, with the blacklight tube across the front, it's currently residing at my church and the understanding is that when they finally get the PA upgraded enough to handle the bass then the head is mine, it was donated to the church many years ago and as i am the man who has kept it running (2 trips to an amp tech in about 10 years, only one of them actually needed) and i've paid all the service bills it is mine to claim as soon as the church no longer needs it. If Trace elliot were to actually make the amp that many here seem to be asking for (one of the classic preamps like an smx or maybe the gp11) with a lighter power section, then i think i'd probably be in the queue for one. Matt