Kiwi

Some REALLY clever directing there, they're all socially distanced in a TV studio but, thanks to depth of field, and tasteful location of accessorised shelving, the shots are framed in such a way that you never get the impression they're so spread out.

Not so far away from my own situation, Alex although my kids are 8 and 3. Then slap a significant business loan AND mortgage payments on top of that, too. We're desperate for the borders to open so my wife's business and my export start up can pick up again. It's been a horrendous year financially. The one good thing I can say is that one of the other businesses is still managing to grow albeit slowly but it's a real balancing act to stay out of the red at time. I hope you see the light at the end of the tunnel soon.

I agree and it's even more crowded for instruments which have greater reliance on precision for quality any way. The margins on pedals are better than amps once the R&D is done, the cost of parts is peanuts when purchased in bulk and the upfront capital investment in tooling etc. is lower. Anyone can start a pedal business if they have the knowledge. For example Land Devices started with one pedal in 2017, a tribute to an obscure fuzz pedal called the Interfax Harmonic Perculator which sparked the interest of people behind Premier Guitar and Reverb. They featured it and pretty soon the $500 investment in parts for the initial run of 20-40 pedals snowballed into a fully fledged production line. For someone who is tone hunting, pedals are way more accessible than amps, players are more inclined to buy in greater volume so there's less risk to some degree. If I was Alex, I'd be thinking about what customers would most likely use with the cabs. Amps seem like a natural choice but they'd have to be game changing in the same way as the cabs were game changing. Some amp companies offer voicing options, some offer features you'll probably never need, others go down the vintage tribute route, yet more target price points. I'm not sure there's much to do there unless there's a shift in technology or construction. But hell, I wouldn't mind a reasonably priced valve amp with tuner, parallel and serial effect loops, 400w/50w power scaling, easy to replace parts and self biasing to reduce reliance on an amp technician for maintenance. That's been missed in the bass market so far but guitarists have many of those features already.

It was a Chinese company, they used to ghost build valve amps for Peavey amongst others and are trying to move into instruments as well. But the 'engineer' who worked on mine had absolutely no clue...luckily I didn't pay a lot for it but it's still money that could have better spent elsewhere. The bass is with me so there would be shipping involved to the UK, I doubt it would be feasible to sell.

Prolly a bit late now but EBS Session combos are outstanding value for money. Stunning quality sound from such a portable package.

I don't have a best bass purchase because I can't afford the basses on my GAS list. But I did purchase a guitar amp - a collector's grade Fender Princeton II to replace the player's grade Concert II. Worst bass purchase was a custom instrument that in all seriousness a total joke and built by someone who had no understanding about musical instruments. A complete and utter waste of money that makes some of the junk on Youtube seem masterbuilt in comparison. I still feel guilt about the trees that were used in it's construction. If I strip all the finish off, remove the body wings and run the neck up against a belt sander for a bit, relaminate a new top on the lower wing and reglue it all, I MIGHT...might end up with something vaguely playable. But the company did send me a hand wired 5F2 Princeton Tweed amp as compensation and it's quite good. But I didn't really need another guitar amp. I have four already. Lessons learned: Do it myself. Get the parts made and shipped unfinished, check dimensions and tolerances then sand as appropriate. Assemble myself and finish.

I haven't tried many Class D amps, just the old Peavey Databass combo and Peavey DPU1400 rack power amp. But I bought one of the first GB Shuttle 6 heads to come into the UK and gigged with it solidly for two years before adding a second and leaving the UK. Given I don't have access to an amp tech, the thing I likemost after the sound is the fact that the power amp module is by B&O and available on EBay for about 100 quid if I need a replacement... which I did for the second amp.

You could probably get a custom auto shop to do it so long as they knew how to flat it with wet and dry between coats and what the cure times were. Or a furniture company. Sei Basses used to get Bow Finishing to do theirs before going to Sims. Bow's core trade is refinishing roulette tables.

I've been obsessing over the second Go West line up for the last four days. Jaz Lochries Status Series II sounds great and Alan Murphy is killing it on that Aria Pro II Esprit. One day I'm going to add an Esprit to my limited arsenal. But it won't be happening any time soon.

I've used Animotica for youtube vlogging. It's OK but the user interface is not as refined as it could be for some tasks, there's quite a bit of switching between screens for adding extra features. And synching hits in the music with video events is usually a PITA. But if you're interested...

I had written off Gibson basses generally until I saw this Pompamoose vid with the lovely Hagar handling the low end and I just thought...'wow, what a solid tone'. Sits really nicely in the mix. You learn something every day. Lovely arrangement too.

I owned one of Cliff William's basses for a while. The case had a Florida address on it. Great year BTW, birdseye maple cost the same as normal maple back then so EB just chucked it into the mix.

I've been scrutinising the user manual and it's not looking very positive for my specific purposes. The most frustrating thing is that there are hold functions available both as effect parameters and as part of the oscillator block so the functionality is there. But it doesn't seem possible to arrange the signal chain in a way that allows the hold functions to feed into the sequencer. So I wouldn't be replacing all of my current signal chain, just the C4 and whatever modulation pedal happens to be on there (at the moment an Adrenalinn 3). Given these things are US$1000 each (and probably close to that in GBP once VAT and import duty are included), it's a pricey alternative to the C4. Especially considering I probably wouldn't be using 50% of the features on a regular basis.

I have a 13 pin socket installed in my Shuker 6, connected to a graphtec piezo in each bridge so I'm hoping that might behave itself with this set up. Can't see if it allows hold of one sequencer yet while playing through the other.

Initially I thought it only offered one waveform but I may have been confusing it with another Boss synth pedal. I can see in the specs that it offers sine,tri, three saws and PWM which is good. And the 16 step sequencer offers filtering per step which is great. Very interesting...

I'd suggest anyone stumping up for this pedal has already made a commitment to using it above and beyond 6 patches. My set up is also smaller than many non-synth boards. - no overdrive and only two modulation pedals (ne for each side chain). Anyway, it's all moot. Roger Smith has stated there's no space left on the C4 now for any of the improvements I'm seeking. So I'm probably going to sell mine as soon as possible as it doesn't do the job I bought it for.

It's not a pedal then, it's a sound module.

A synth pedal with apeggiator/sequencer with silent steps, MIDI port and envelope filter per step.

I wasn't aware that the MC6 couldn't be connected directly to the C4 via USB without an additional purchase. So that means the lack of a basic MIDI port iin this pedal s now worth £180 (MC6) + £50-100 (hub) which is borderline insane. And the pedal doesn't offer all the features of a basic sequencer...(hopefully...yet).

You can use the same membership over at Guitarchat, listings are free for the forseeable future.

I bought the original a couple of years after it was released!

Sounds like he's using a coin for a pick, too. Surprising to see entire families there too!