Ed_S

I’d probably just use a bit of soft open-cell packing foam to stop the board from moving around in the control cavity. Cable ties and blu-tack are other options, but soft foam would just fill the gap between the components and the cavity cover and stop anything from going anywhere with no risk that it’d become detached again, because it was never attached in the first place - just held in place. Hopefully you can get it all sorted out without any drama and get back to enjoying playing it.

With an issue like that, for me personally it all depends on how nice the rest of the instrument is. I've done the 'right-is-right' thing and sent instruments back to be swapped out or repaired in cases of minor defects, only to get back either an exchange that has issues of its own or just doesn't look/feel/play/sound as nice as the one I had, or a repair that I could have done better myself and has sometimes even caused additional damage. If that bass were mine, there was nothing else wrong with it and I liked it to the point of describing it as 'really special', I'd just glue the wood, secure the preamp PCB and get on with enjoying my bass. Just another opinion, of course.

Stringbusters used to be great - I'd ring them up to order over the phone on my lunch hour at work and have no problem getting through. The guy was always friendly and would usually have a chat about more than just strings, then I'd pay my pound for postage and have my strings the next day. If he didn't have enough stock, he was always honest about how long it'd take to get things and he'd ship what they had and then follow up with the rest for no additional postage. Such a shame it sounds like they've gone down the pan. On the brighter side I noticed the post about Strings Direct doing a discount on D'Addario stuff the other weekend and decided to give them a try. Ordered two twin packs and the next day got one twin pack and two matching single packs (which on paper would have worked out more expensive) my assumption being that due to demand caused by the promotion they'd run out of twin packs but decided to work around it. Sense doesn't always prevail like that so I'll certainly order from them again.

I keep trying other amp brands but always end up back with Markbass, so picked up a Nano 300 as backup for my LM800 and F1. First impressions at rehearsal were that it sounded like a Markbass and could keep up with the band; it just didn’t sound as effortless doing it as the bigger heads. Ideal backup, then... until a gig where I had to travel very light and decided to just take the Nano since there was a cab provided. It performed so well that it’s become my go-to amp for any gigs with shared or house cabs, so I’d certainly recommend it as a backup!

I suppose I think of the distinction between a pick and a plectrum as a thickness or maybe flexibility thing. A tortex orange 0.60mm that I used to use for guitar was always a plectrum, but a purple 1.14mm that I used to use for bass was definitely a pick. These days I use the same 1.26mm for both, therefore I use a pick. Plec just sounds wrong to me since round where I live, a ‘pleck’ is an old colloquialism for a mess - usually used in reference to a dirty or untidy house, like “his place is a total pleck”. I only heard ‘plec’ for the first time when I was at uni and played in a band with a guitarist from Lincolnshire.

Similar story with the one for my RM800 which I’m guessing is the same bag - the main zip started out with two tags, then after a week or so it had one, then soon after it had none and a cable-tie, then the zip came apart and broke completely. And fibres of that random synthetic woolly lining stuff are always all over the mirror front panel. Nice enough amp, don’t get me wrong, but I think I’ll be going after-market replacement for the new bag. On topic, my ABM1000 is still the most righteously ballsy non-valve amp I’ve got!

I recently had a few loyalty points to spend so picked up an Ibanez GSR-180 for the princely sum of £150 to set up with flats and leave in the corner of the living room for unplugged plonking whilst watching telly. I wasn't really fussed with testing the pickups as I wasn't planning to plug it in, but I thought I'd give it a proper try out when I'd done oiling, fettling and setting it up with a slightly worn-in set of 9050s, so I plugged into my Rumble 500 combo and got a very pleasant surprise indeed; it sounded absolutely great and what followed was an unplanned play-along with several Dire Straits CDs until my fingers were more than ready for a rest! The bass felt great, sounded great and stayed perfectly in tune (a clean score-card as far as I'm concerned) and if I had to put a price on it blind, I'd have been happy to offer £600 there and then. Maybe I fell lucky with that particular instrument being on the top of the pile in the warehouse when I ordered - who knows - but it just goes to show what's out there for comparatively little money.

Aye, I heard about that the other day, but I’d called in a few weeks back and it was all looking a bit disheveled so I was saddened but not entirely shocked. I got my first Markbass head from Dave back when the bass gear was upstairs, and it was a lot easer to get home on the train than a Peavey VB2 that did the same trip!! My arms still hurt thinking about that particular lapse in judgement.

I picked one up that I saw second hand for cheap a couple of months back and gave it a bit of chrome replacement therapy to balance out the tuners. Didn’t bother with the scratch plate screws, jack socket nut.. or even the bridge screws; just did the bridge, knobs and straplock buttons because they’re what I had in the bits box. It’s a chunky ol’ neck for sure, but I like that there’s a certain ‘physicality’ to playing it!

For me personally the potential con is down to where the particular instrument hangs or sits in playing position and, as a result, whether I end up clicking my pick (or bashing my finger-ends) against the cover of the bridge pickup while I'm playing because it's ended up encroaching into an area where, due to normally playing a single pickup P, I expect to find no obstructions. Of course it's all down to playing style and what you do or don't find irritating, but I'd say if you have the option of two otherwise identical instruments it's worth just checking that the more-is-more version doesn't shove a chunk of plastic directly under your hand that's going to annoy you.

The two most common formats we play as a metal originals band are either '4x 30min slots with 15min changeovers' if it's just local bands, or '2x 25min local supports, 1x 45min main / possibly touring support, 1x 1h15min touring headline' if it's a bigger show with a name you'd recognise at the top of the bill. Sorting out gear share with the local bands is expected and usually easy enough; just a case of sending them a message on whatever social media they use and getting a conversation going wherein we end up with everybody contributing something and no surprises on the night. Of course, it's still polite to introduce yourself and say thanks in person, but any questions about what you can and can't do with said gear are usually already asked and answered, and I've never given or received beer etc. as a token of appreciation because it's always been part of a bigger package deal where their bandmates are benefitting in some way, too. You really have to rely on the promoter for the bigger shows, though, and they have a nasty habit of promising things without asking. More than a couple of times I've had to get my phone out and show a guy the messages where his gear has been offered for use without his knowledge, and although we've always managed to work something out, one time it was by pure chance that the other local support band knew a guy who lived nearby, had a bass cab and owed them a favour; the touring band wasn't having any of it and the promoter who'd promised use of their gear was nowhere to be found! When amp heads, power cables and extensions start to be shared, my nagging and overly pessimistic worry is less about the damage a user could inflict on my gear and more the reverse. Specifically that despite all my gear down to the last flex being well looked after and regularly visually inspected in line with PAT regulations (I'm trained to be "competent" through work but don't have the qualification myself or own a calibrated tester), if something I owned developed such a catastrophic fault during use that it electrocuted a complete stranger who happened to be playing through it, on a purely practical level, setting aside profound feelings of guilt etc. I simply don't have the insurance to cover that. To that end, I'll lend a cabinet but anything else gets an unequivocal 'no' these days.

I guess I must inadvertently quite like that about 9050s. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way invested in flats and they’d sound completely wrong for playing with my band, but I play a 40-100 set of the Fenders at home every now and then for a bit of a change. I usually play 45-105 rounds and find the 40-100 flats seem to feel about the same.

Interesting question! The best I can do is probably Rainbow - I could happily listen to their entire studio output without skipping anything, so that's 8 albums. The closest second I can think of would be Amorphis - anything from Eclipse onwards with Tomi Joutsen singing is fine by me, so that's 6 albums. Can't beat 24...

I had the CV 70s P for a while - bought as a less expensive bass for gigs where I thought the chances of things being nicked or damaged were higher. It was nice enough for the money and very comfortable to play but I found that the frets seemed to be a bit soft when faced with plain steels and showed a lot of wear very quickly. The pickup was pretty uninspiring (although perfectly serviceable) so got swapped out. I guess you can’t go too far wrong if you just bear in mind that as good as they are, they’re built to a price (just like anything) and you rarely get much for free.

I’m generally happy with basic Rotosound and D’Addario for either nickel plated or plain steels. I push the boat out and put Elixir coated plain steels on a bitsa that lives in storage at the studios because despite the less than ideal conditions, with no more care than clean hands to begin with and a quick wipe down before it goes back in the flightcase, I get a year of weekly rehearsals out of a set. My girlfriend settled on Fender 9050 flats after playing them on one of my precisions, but ultimately decided she wanted them on an Ibanez SR650. Turned out to be quite a good combination!

Had an Ashdown speaker (15” blue one) just stop working and start smelling, an Orange Terror 500 blow a capacitor on the power board, a fairly cheap power conditioner go bad and take out a rack of outboard, and a cheap-ish Warrior PA amp that was running monitors just release one last howl and pack in. All new and well looked-after kit that was working fine when checked... and then suddenly wasn’t! Had spares and/or managed to patch round the problem and keep going, but I now expect issues and leave pleasantly surprised if they don’t transpire. My bandmates have had various all-valve rack power amp issues along the way, too, so along with the usual bass spares, I pack a little 250w Bose PA power amp module which might one day get me or either guitarist out of trouble and even power a monitor, top or sub if it had to.

My Ashdown experience started out with a brand new and unmolested ABM500 evo3 which I bought to replace my SWR Workingmans head since I was already playing through an ABM410 and fancied a matching setup. It was everything that people complain about; wooly and underpowered. I stood the loss, moved it on and went Markbass with no regrets. Purely by chance, after a period of actively avoiding anything Ashdown, I was offered an absolute steal of a deal on an ABM1000 which I took home on the grounds that I'd very likely make a little money selling it on should I dislike it. It was (and still is) an absolutely astounding amp that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the 500. Between the 500 and the 1000, probably the best and worst amps I've owned. Since then I had a MiBass 550 which I thought sounded nice enough but I wasn't keen on aesthetically so swapped for an RM800 which is great for rehearsals. I also had a CTM30 which was alright, but the EQ did very little and the project it was bought for fell through so I sold it and bought an ABM600 that I'm very happy with for general gigging purposes; it's not the 1000 but it's still a very capable amp. So yeah, I wouldn't avoid them these days but I certainly would have at one point based on a negative experience with an amp that hadn't been beaten by any teenagers.

Mine's 44mm without the feet - basically 1U.

Cheers for that! I'm far from unhappy or disappointed with the original RM800 (especially given what I paid for it when they were clearing them out to make shelf space for the Evos) and it's thus far proven reliable, so I guess I'll stick with it as I don't think a difference in tonal aggression is what's leading me to just slightly prefer the ABM600.

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1505670793' post='3373469'] The evo is much more aggressive, which suits my style of playing and the bands I play with. In fact, I will be selling the non evo root master to replace it with another evo when I can afford to. [/quote] Would you be able to say whether either one is closer than the other to the ABM600? I've had a non-evo RM800 for a while now but recently picked up an ABM600 which I'm really enjoying for its extra 'authority' (for want of a better description) of delivery. I'd be really interested to know whether the RM evos get you any closer to that character in a smaller package, as I won't always be able to transport the ABM. Cheers!

I played mine with my Markbass 104HR for the first time at rehearsal last night and it sounded absolutely great. Normally use an RM800, but thought I'd take the full-fat version for a bit of fun. I used to have an Ashdown ABM410h before the Markbass and, whilst it was a decent enough cab, I've never regretted swapping it out.

The point where a BBOT doesn't work for me is when the height adjustment grub screws stand proud of the saddles, as no matter how careful I try to be, I inevitably end up cutting my wrist on them whilst playing. Sadly, because the saddles on my MIJ Fenders have all been quite small barrels, the grub screws have been pretty much guaranteed to stand proud, thereby rendering the bridge unfit for my purposes, if not actually 'unfit for purpose'. The Wilkinson BBOT is an inexpensive upgrade; looks nice, feels generally smooth all over and has big brass barrel saddles with suitably short screws, however, the intonation adjustment screws were also short on the D and G of my Aerodyne J, so I ended up taking some from a late 90s Fender MIM BBOT that happened to be long enough to create a mash-up that was actually right for the instrument! It was all ok in the end, but why put something sharp on any instrument in the first place, and then why offer something for sale as an after-market upgrade that doesn't adjust over the full length of its baseplate, given that it could end up on such a wide range of instruments?

Personally I'd like them to make the power section 2ohm stable, build in the circuit from their Compressore pedal (stick the XLR-in round the back to make more room for the extra controls on the front panel) and add a parallel / serial switch for the effects loop. Oh, and provide the rack ears in the box as standard!

Power output aside, the Nano and the F1 are quite different sounding amps - to my ears at least. The Nano is closer to the sound of a newer model LM3 (or Combo Head 2) where the F1 is like a particularly snappy LM800. I've never played a Black Line 250 myself, but I've gigged alongside somebody using one and it sounded closer to the LM3 than the LM800 or F1 as far as I could tell.

I've got a TU-3W. My girlfriend asked me what I wanted for my birthday and specified "something stupid that you want but can't justify buying yourself" so that's what I ended up with! I like that the W means it's painted black and has blue lights, but I really can't tell any functional difference between it and my normal TU-3.