peteb

I've bought a Fender Am Std Jazz from Bass Bros and part-ex'd a 5 string Spector . Will was great, very helpful and did a reasonable deal. He used to work at Bass Direct down the road and they still seem to be mates.

It's a good job that I didn't buy that one from the Bass Centre then! It wouldn't have lasted half a dozen gigs with me...

Yes, you always put a higher price on Reverb, which makes it slower to sell stuff. What tends to happen, and I have seen this myself, is that people put something on Reverb at an inflated price to cover the fees, then advertise it for a lower price on Facebook marketplace groups. If you see something that you fancy on Reverb, you then search through the various FB groups until you find it and then contact the seller through there. I would only use use retailers that I trust for commission sales. These days I tend to use Bass Direct, although I have used others successfully in the past. BD are completely upfront about the 20% they charge, then advertise at the agreed price on their website. To be fair, they will generally get a higher price than I would and I don't have to bother about postage & packing, etc with the bonus that I don't have gear that I need to get rid of taking up room in the house! It seems a reasonable deal for the commission charge...

I once got the train down to London, fully intending to buy an Alembic from the Bass Centre. It was one of the lower priced models (maybe an Epic??), up at £995 in the mid 90s. I picked it up and played it, but didn't like the neck. I didn't even plug it in! It would have been nice to own an Alembic for a bit, but that bass just didn't feel right for me. I ended up buying a red Warwick Streamer LX from a shop in Leeds a couple of weeks later, which I gigged for many years!

I must admit, I haven't been keen on Reverb - fees make it too expensive to buy from and too much of a hassle / takes a long time to sell. Also, too many idiotic low-ball bids from chancers! I suppose that it does depend on what you're selling. These days, I end to use commission sales by Bass Direct - less hassle, things move quickly and you tend to get a reasonable price (even after the 20% commission).

I'm not sure that a number of musical instruments would be seen as personal effects by HMRC. If you take musical gear into the EU from the UK, you have to declare each item on a carnet and pay VAT on the value of each one if you sell them. I'm not sure about paying duty, but would be interested to find out. Something the OP would definitely need to confirm if he was actually going to go ahead with this idea!

Indeed - I thought that Denmark was supposed to be one of the best places in the world to live...!

I'm not sure that's a great idea. You will have to pay VAT and import duty on every instrument and the UK market isn't great at the moment. Have you thought about selling them throughout the rest of the EU, especially Germany? There must be a German (or French, or Italian) equivalent of the Bass Gallery or Bass Direct that could sell your gear on commission.

I played a Harley Benton at a party on holiday a couple of years ago. No, it wasn't as good as a US Fender, it was rather heavy and a few things on it were a bit rough & ready, but it sounded OK and played great! It was owned by a rather bizarre Belgium chap with an even stranger wife, who also owns a WAL 5 string and seems to gig them pretty much in turn! I'm not looking to get one myself right now, but if I needed a cheap bass for some reason then I could do worse. It certainly wasn't bad at all...

Sorry, please ignore - I re-read my post and realised that I had missed the point of the post I was replying to...!

I'm hoping so! I'm going for tests on Friday to see if there is any sign of gout. I've not had an attack since, but I have started to get pins & needles in my fingers when I wake up in the morning. I used to get that before, but it stopped when I gave up smoking 20 years ago.

I had an attack of gout in my big toe last year - never had one before, it may have been triggered by resting a cab on my toe whilst chatting to someone after a gig (no idea why I did that). I was given some tablets and was recommended to drink lots of cherry juice. I haven't had an attack since, so maybe it helped! I've got to go for some tests this week to see if it is likely to be an ongoing issue.

I would have been interested to see how that played out. Rocky was apparently a martial arts teacher and by all accounts could seriously handle himself! I played a gig supporting him once in a packed big club in Brum about that tie (87 or 88 or so). We stormed it, great reception, and were changing in a room behind the bar when Wrathchild took the stage with a pretty impressive percussive boom as their first salvo of pyro went off. Ten minutes later, our sound engineer came backstage to say you've got to come and see this! The bass player had a cut below his eye, where someone had thrown a bottle at him and the dancefloor in front of the stage had cleared. At some point in a song, the guitarist took what we shall charitably call a 'guitar solo', when Rocky hopped off the stage and went up to some guy who had been yelling insults at them, dropped him with one punch, then jumped back onstage to continue singing and throwing shapes, etc! Good times...

Dude, I've got some stories about the mighty Wrathchild...!

Double post

I believe that Girlschool were originally called Painted Lady!

I use the same type of D'addario nickel roundwounds as Dood (although not the Balanced Tension set). I have used DR DDT strings in the past when I've had to detune below Eb in the past, which work pretty well .

I used to use them back for a bit in the 80s when they first came out. The 110 was to accommodate a drop D when in concert pitch and worked well enough, but the higher strings were to light (for me at least). I currently use 105 - 50 D'addario nickel roundwounds for one bass in concert and for one tuned down to Eb. What you need as a minimum is a hex wound string and I would suggest that a 110 E string, or even a 115, is a good idea if you are regularly going to drop down to Db. Next time I change strings on the bass tuned down 1, I may well try a slightly heavier guage set of strings.

Some of the guide prices for the guitars look quite reasonable, but you have to factor in mega-fans getting giddy and putting in silly bids and then you have to ad 32%+ in fees.

Yea, I can see that, with maybe a touch of Glenn Hughes (but without all of the over-singing)...

I saw Kotzen with his solo band in a small club in Leeds about fourteen or fifteen years ago. He was really good, but perhaps not the greatest frontman in the world! Seriously talented though - I reckon he's an even better singer than he is a guitar player! Beware, not all of his albums are great and he does seem to repeat himself a bit (inevitable really when you're putting out as much product as he was at one point). But his good albums are very good (Peace Sign, 40 Deuce, Live in San Paulo, etc) and some of the songwriting is top class. I rather liked the first Mr Big album he was on (Get Over It) as well...

I always thought that he was going for the "comedy Yorkshire" thing! I see him in the local pub from time to time. Nice guy, but very short!

I just want to know which Richie Kotzen songs you were playing in a covers band in a pub?? I wouldn't mind seeing that...!

A mate of mine, who's a really good drummer with a pretty decent CV, was always a big Quo fan. He was always a bit defensive about it, as a few of us found it quite amusing! He's now got a Status Quo tribute up and gigging, with some good players involved. I'm going to have to go and see them at some point - Roll Over Lay Down (and a few others) were always a guilty pleasure...!

I think that you've got it exactly right there! People can like tribute bands for different reasons, just like they can for any other band they go to see. First of all, you've got to be a good band that is worth seeing, and secondly, you have to be a tribute in some way, in terms of image or sound or attitude or whatever. As a tribute band, you are trying to satisfy different sections of the audience at the same time: the hardcore nerds who want to hear some of the more obscure stuff and for it to sound exactly how they think it should, the normal fan of the band who just wants to hear a reasonably accurate version of the songs that they loved when they were growing up and the more casual fan who just want to hear all of the hits and aren't too bothered about anything else!