Jean-Luc Pickguard

I've sent thomann some pics - I wonder whether the guitar dept will tell the customer services dept that this is normal for this model & they're all like that - like they initially did for the issues on the first one.

I sent my HB Kahuna bass back for a replacement due to the weird asymmetrical chunky neck profile & some visible tooling marks on the neck. The replacement arrived this morning. The neck profile is still slightly asymmetrical, but nowhere near as bad as the original and not chunky either, so it is much more comfortable to play. Also I've not noticed any tooling marks on the neck & the nut is fitted better as the original had a 3mm (ish) gap under the nut which had been filled with glue. I don't want to be picky about such a cheap bass - especially after its been replaced once already, but on this new one, all four nuts & washers on the tuners are actually rusty. I've never seen anything like that on black hardware before - surely no one would fit rusty hardware to a bass - the packaging shows no indication of having been damp, but unlike the previous one I didn't notice any silica gel bags in the packaging, so maybe this occured in storage or transit. Has anyone else noticed rusty nuts on their little kahuna?

I visited a town during the summer where a 99p store opened up undercutting poundland and taking away their monopoly of cheap crap, so poundland dropped their prices to 98p leading to the 99p store reacting by dropping to 97p. At the end of the week when I left, one of the shops was pricing everything at 95p, but I don't know how low they eventually got.

If there's a poundland near you they often have decent belkin ones. I'm not sure how much they cost though.

I did a Sunday afternoon one at the now defunct Grove Tavern in South Wimbledon & my car was broken into while I was playing. Another that band played in Guildford, it was plainly obvious that the 'charity gig' was really an excuse to get the mayor to cut the ribbon when they reopened under a different name and get publicity in the local paper and a bunch of goodwill from the locals. The promised free pints for the band and petrol money never materialised. My opinion these days to not play 'em for free unless the bar & security staff are also working for free. Its a ripoff - even if the pub makes a song & dance about donating a few hundred quid from the takings, I doubt they're likely to be out of pocket if the beer has been flowing from lunchtime to closing.

Could be worse - I've just seen on twitter that people with blackberries are getting a Nickleback album sent to their phones

I put a kent armstong hot rails humbucker into a 71 musicmaster and a kent armstong enclosed cool rails humbucker into a 72 musicmaster. The cool rails sounds a lot better to me darker & punchier where the hotrails has more mids and less bass. The enclosed cool rails I used looks just like a stock musicmaster pickup as well. I don't know how the KAs compare to the SDs though

Yellow with an S8 serial (or S9) would most likely be a 1980/81 'Monaco Yellow' as part of the 'international' colour range. This range also included capri orange, Maui Blue and cherry sunburst. The cherry sunburst Precision I bought new in '82 & still own is could probably be used as an anchor for the QE2, as could the others in the international range I tried at the time. I believe the weight is due to the heavy northern 'baseball bat' Ash of the body which weighs a lot more than Alder or southern Swamp Ash

Dunno about U2, but something that sounds like a coldplay album and labelled as a U2 one seems to have appeared in my iTunes library

a set or two of these thomann own brand ones might be worth looking at http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_valuestrings_bassguitar_medium.htm you'd need to order 48 sets to get free shipping though

I found a Burns B3 theremin in the Local Trash converters for £50 last year. I sold it on ebay a couple of weeks later for £138.

This sorry episode seems to be due to a lack of communication being built into the business model. No one wants any surprises when they pay such a large sum for a bespoke article. Using weird & wonderful names to describe something so visual even with the samples alongside is never going to work as you'll never have the same piece of tort twice and as the pattern is so random that the way it can be described will aleays be subjective. In this case the description of the samples and what was supplied do not seem to correspond well. The obvious way around the issue to prevent this from reoccurring in future is for the vendor to take a photo of the piece of tort he initially selects to fulfil the order with a clear overlay on top to show the outline of how the pg will look once cut & email a pic to the customer for approval. if it isnt what the customer had in mind, he still has the uncut material and a better idea of what the customer requires. Based on the feedback received he'd then either cut the pickguard or similarly send another pic using that until the customer does say "yes thats the one".

I've had mine a couple of weeks & it still needs tuning every time I pick it up, but it has seemed to settle down a bit since it was brand new. I'll probably try some kala/aquila Rumber silver strings (once I've checked they'll fit) which may help improve tuning stability, but compared to my (now sold) Ashbory bass the uke bass seem a lot better behaved. I think some smoothing of the nut slots and application of graphite may help with the stings catching when tuning, but if its possible to make some kind of roller nut that would be ideal. For now I just raise & lower the string from the nut to even the tension when tuning - which seems to work as the strings are so stretchy.

In case anyone's after one of these, a new batch of these Frey Bentos uke basses seems to be available at Thomann: [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_kahuna_clu_bass.htm"]http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_kahuna_clu_bass.htm[/url]

My epiphone pro-v is wearing a set of thomastik jf345 flats - its just a bass nothing special about it that would prevent flats working

ik multimedia are having a half price sale at the moment on all the amplitube stuff. I use the ampeg svx package as my home practice amp and its the best bass sound I've ever got when plugged into a laptop. I also have guitar rig, but after I upgraded the HDD on my macbook by cloning the old one & also upgraded the OS to mavericks, guitar rig thinks I'm trying to pull a fast one, and whenever I try to use it, it outputs a sine wave after a few minutes and flashes up a message falsely accusing me of using an unlicensed copy. I will probably need to totally uninstall it & set it up again from scratch. I probably won't bother reinstalling it though as amplitube sounds a lot better to my ears.

The only basses that I have taken out of the house recently for gigs, recording, rehearsals & jams have been my CIJ mustang, Squier VM SS jaguar & danelectro longhorn — all 30" scale, plus the harley benton uke bass. My long scales haven't been getting much action lately.

This looks interesting but pointless http://www.youtube.com/v/PJCRBPY_bJ0 Shame that the resultant sound as awful as is the choice of song to demo it

It looks like the current batch is sold out. The bass is showing on the Thomann site as "not part of the current product range anymore." http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_kahuna_clu_bass.htm so I guess the slightly weird neck profile isn't enough to return it - I'll live with it for now & maybe reshape it sometime later. I had heard reports that on the previous batch the response was not even across the strings - some people were saying the E string was very quiet. On mine it seems perfect. The output is fairly low compared to magnetic pickups or how I remember the preamp was in my old Ashbory, but that isn't a problem. Turning the eq knob to the treble side sounds scratchy and not very pleasant but turning to the bass side sounds full & punchy. The tuner is pretty useless & doesn't help much. Regarding the talc: I don't think that the oils in fragranced talc will do the strings any good which is why I use 'simple' talc, but the plastic containers simple comes in is quite large and it dumps too much out at a time - I refilled an empty 100ml travel pack of 'johnson's' with 'simple' which can sprinkle just a tiny amount into your hand and fits neatly into a gigbag.

I've had a chance to play with my HB kahuna bass now. The strings seem to be much more like that original ashbory silicone strings than the black kala/roadtoad pahoehoes. They are too grabby to play comfortably — at least when they are new. A tiny amount of unscented 'simple' talc helps a lot. The bass sounds good plugged in as long as the eq is turned all the way to the bass side, but the profile of the back of the neck is a little weird on mine — its very square and chunky around the first fret position, which feels strange and a little uncomfortable on the thumb. I wonder whether they're all like that?

Looks very nice highfox. Mine was delivered yesterday, but I'm 200 miles away so I'll only get to unbox it tomorrow evening. I might try a bit of unscented talc on the strings - like I used to use on my ashbory.

fyi - you can use two vouchers on a single order - the second can be pasted into the 'comments' text field with a note and they'll adjust it as required. I actually emailed to ask whether my second voucher which I received the day after I placed the order could be applied, expecting a 'no' but instead I got a 'no problem'

a ukulele – eg: http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_kahuna_clu_40s.htm

[quote name='Jean-Luc Pickguard' timestamp='1405508119' post='2502484'] I reviewed the other half of my previous purchases last night and got another voucher this morning - this time for €30. It looks like the order I placed hasn't been processed yet so I've been cheeky & asked whether this voucher can also be applied to my order... [/quote] Got a reply back yesterday saying "no problem"and the order dispatched shortly after so I've now saved €55 - just over £40 - on the cost of the order by writing a bunch of reviews. Now I'm realy looking forward to having some fun with the uke bass or the 'little kahuna' as it will probably be referred to.

I reviewed the other half of my previous purchases last night and got another voucher this morning - this time for €30. It looks like the order I placed hasn't been processed yet so I've been cheeky & asked whether this voucher can also be applied to my order. If not I'll have until the end of October to use it. I'm sure I'll need to get hold of some aquila thundergut strings to keep as spares before then so not a problem if I can't apply the discount to the current order.