molan

We had a Bugera BTX3600 in the shop not hat long ago. We sold it, including a rack case for £60 and were pretty happy to see it go I'd go for a decent quality pedal graphic eq and run that in front of the Hartke. I quite like MXR and MarkBass personally.

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1405343378' post='2500977'] Surely though, if you're a UK retailer, and you see someone selling something that you are, but they're selling it for £100 less than you. It's got to be better to match that price, and maker a smaller profit, than to ignore it and lose sales ? [/quote] This works in theory but not in practice unfortunately. Some items are being sold by the big euro guys at virtually zero profit (there's actually some available at below trade price). For a UK dealer to match them and sell without profit, or at very low margin, would simply mean they'd go out of business. The simplest thing for them to do is cut losses, sell off existing stock and de-list the brands. This allows them to reinvest in higher margin products. I've seen this happen before with a net result of significantly reduced availability and even brands disappearing completely in some markets. There is often a knock-on effect at a later date of the prices going back up again, maybe even to a higher price than originally available at, once the competition has been taken out. In fact I've seen this in a few markets and, if you believe all the stories, this was exactly what happened with the availability and price of neodymium a couple of years ago I did wonder whether the massive discounting that we saw on Genz-Benz had something to do with their demise. Even before Fender pulled the plug they were one of the heaviest discounted brands in the market and now they've gone completely. I think Aguilar are generally in a different market to Genz for some products but the TH & SL range is bang in the middle of the price war sector and they've put a lot of store behind these. As mentioned above this level of discounting is good for short term consumer gain and it's all cyclical anyway. If a shop or brand disappears then someone else will fill the gap at some point. However, in our little niche market it may not be of such benefit to the consumer as in other, more commodity based, markets.

I rather like this [media]http://youtu.be/kAT3aVj-A_E[/media]

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1405294505' post='2500573'] I'm interested in an Aguilar Tone hammer 350. Ebay - £529 - [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/261493615446?limghlpsr=true&hlpv=2&ops=true&viphx=1&hlpht=true&lpid=108&device=c&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=108"]http://www.ebay.co.u...f13=80&ff14=108[/url] Woodbrass - £443.80 - [url="http://www.woodbrass.com/en/ampli-basse-tete-aguilar-tone-hammer-350-p153933-af833-gbp.html?gclid=Cj0KEQjw3IieBRDl1oG0gr_PweoBEiQAwGHVwwiScBAHIvGdCLp6F25tfRzBZjgxY3fRJv-K_bkpgasaAsfe8P8HAQ"]http://www.woodbrass...pgasaAsfe8P8HAQ[/url] - what a strange price ! Bass gear - £449 - [url="http://www.bassgear.co.uk/product/aguilar-tone-hammer-350/"]http://www.bassgear....one-hammer-350/[/url] a shame because I really like this shop. Bass direct - £399 - [url="http://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Aguilar_Amplification.html"]http://www.bassdirec...lification.html[/url] Thomann - £335 - [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/aguilar_tone_hammer_350.htm"]http://www.thomann.d..._hammer_350.htm[/url] that includes shipping. What a range of prices, almost £200 ! [/quote] You may need to make your pricing dynamic - my guess is that prices are falling daily on some stuff at the moment . . .

Yep - there's a little price war on over in Europe at the moment. Definitely good news for consumers but not for UK shops and, potentially, not for UK consumers. There are three overseas retailers selling either at, or below, the UK trade price on various lines on the moment. The reason this might not be good for consumers is that UK dealers will simply stop stocking those lines. No-one in their right mind is going to order new stock that makes zero profit so those brands will just get de-listed over here and consumers won't be able to go into a store and try them out. There's still the option to buy from an overseas retailer and use the 7 day returns policy to try something out but, as a consumer, I'd much rather go to a store and try four or five brands against each other.

If you really fancy an Alain Caron then PM me - I may be able to track down an ex-demo one somewhere

The MarkBass Alain Caron combo is pretty special. Puts out the full 500w into 12" and then has another 100w in tap for the horn. This thing goes very loud indeed! It's usually priced at £1,149 new but you might someone who'll deal on the price a little.

Personally I much prefer the 2 to the 4 but the 2 is a heavy beast. Need to check that the valves are in very good condition because a complete re-valve on a 2 can be big money

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=201117447410

[quote name='Green Alsatian' timestamp='1404643143' post='2494330'] I remember a thread from some time ago regarding simple basslines and somebody posted Gene Chandler's 'Does She Have a Friend?' which features all of 3 notes, no fills, no runs, so slides, just locks in with the drums 4/4 throughout the whole song. It's great! http://youtu.be/2xwL-7fKKUE [/quote] Haven't heard this for years - I'd forgotten how good it is! Thanks for posting, will have to dig out my old copy

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1404666170' post='2494550'] it must be a bit annoying for some of these wee companies to go on forums and find loads of negative rubbish about your product. mind you if you can be this season's trend on talkbass you've got a 4 month window to make enough to retire on! [/quote] Funnily enough one of the other things we find in the shop is how few customers ever visit (or have even heard of) the online bass forums. Manufacturers tend to know about them but it's very rare, from what we hear, for any of them to get too upset about user comments. TalkBass has a lot more manufacturer involvement - I guess because of the overall scale but also because there are more of them for whom TB is their 'local' market.

[quote name='GrammeFriday' timestamp='1404664744' post='2494536'] I'd be interested to know who these brands are - and I bet a few seconds of searching the threads here will find plenty of posts slagging them off! [/quote] Pick a brand, literally any brand, and you'll find plenty of negative comments on forums about them unfortunately All I can offer is my personal view, based on user experience, and that of customers I meet in an everyday working situation.

[quote name='GrammeFriday' timestamp='1404644003' post='2494339'] I'm afraid I'm not on first name terms with him so must bow to your superior wisdom on this point! But I can already see that it was a mistake on my part to throw in a flippant joke about celebrity endorsers - far too easy for nay-sayers to shoot down. All that really matters is that my TC rig works for me, and it does that in spades. [/quote] Sorry - didn't realise it was a joke I have a, vague, professional interest in Janek G and visit his site fairly regularly to see what he's up to and every picture on his home page shows him with his Aguilar Th500 and pair of Aguilar SL112's. I've seen pics of him playing these live many times as well so always assumed this was his main choice http://janekgwizdala.com/home/

[quote name='GrammeFriday' timestamp='1404646088' post='2494356'] Interesting post - thanks for your thoughtful reply, Molan. So, when you say that people complain that the TC amp robs their bass of its natural tone, I can't help but wonder whether they really mean that it sounds a bit different to the amp that they usually use and are most familiar with - which is in itself no more 'natural' than the TC sound. [/quote] It does seem to be amongst the most common opinions about the TC heads. Stuff around them being a 'tone-sucker' comes up quite frequently as well (It's how I found my RH450 to sound but I certainly didn't originate the description). I work part time in a bass guitar shop and we get to hear the opinions of a lot of players and people who've owned TC amps who are surprisingly singular in their outlook. Everyone likes the idea of the form factor and tonal options but then find they don't work for them in a live band environment. For some it's simply the complexity of the controls but for most its just they, and their bands, didn't like the sound. Even the shop that I first visited, another bass specialist, to buy one said this to me but I went ahead & bought one anyway because I loved the idea of all those controls, lol. We hear a lot of, often very strong, views about amps and cabs in the shop and people are generally way more opinionated about amplification than they are about instruments. In terms of amps there are only really two brands that people tend not to like at all - TC and Ashdown. We do have one customer with an RH750 that really likes it and we sometimes get people that like the older style 'warm' (I'd call it muffled!) tone of Ashdown but these are definitely the least popular brands amongst our customers. There's only one dedicated cab brand that's really unpopular but that's not something to debate in an amp thread. It can be fascinating sometimes to listen to one customer waxing lyrically about a brand and then hear the next one say how much he dislikes them. Of course there are a few brands that seem to be universally liked as well so it's not all negative stuff

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1404642213' post='2494311'] An endorsement is just that. It doesn't necessarily mean that these people exclusively use a certain product. John Paul Jones generally uses SWR gear, for instance. [/quote] Janek only ever seems to use Aguilar - that does seem to be a brand that a lot of gigging pros use.

[quote name='GrammeFriday' timestamp='1404637084' post='2494258'] I currently run a TC RH750 through 2 TC cabs (1 x RS212 and 1 x RS210) and, contrary to the above, am getting the [i]best[/i] live sound I've had in decades of playing. Amazing power, clarity and versatility, and in an extremely cleverly designed package, too. Loads of compliments from FoH guys (not that that necessarily means anything, but whatever) and it does everything I want a bass rig to do, and do it really well. I totally understand that tastes differ, and each to their own, fine, but I really cannot understand how you could have had such a bad experience with a TC amp, Molan. Might the problem have lain elsewhere, perhaps? For a company that makes such horrible-sounding equipment, TC certainly have some very impressive endorsers - John Paul Jones, Janek Gwizdala, Nathan East, Ida Neilsen, etc. etc. Must be paying them a lot of money to put their names to their products! [/quote] On balance I know more people who can't get a decent sound with TC than those who can. The most common complaint is that they just seem to suck all the life out their tone. Maybe there's a lot of artificial compression and tone shaping baked straight into them and this is robbing the bass of its natural sound. I really wanted to like them when they came out and when the prices plummeted to under £400 for a new one I actually bought both an RH450 and a Staccato but, despite putting a lot of time into each of them, I never found a sound I liked for live work. The thing that surprised me was that I could get a decent sound at home but they just disappeared in a live mix One thing I should add is that I've not used a 750 so maybe some of the problems were ironed out when this came out. It was around the time of the massive price drop on the 450's so it does seem that TC were trying to clear these out quickly.

Hi all, Thanks for all the ideas and pointers As many of you guessed we did initially start this thread out in order to get some of your thoughts about the new D Lakin basses. However, as it moved along and we also thought we could use the information for other brands as well. For various reasons, not least some of the comments here and references elsewhere, along with some concerns we had we've decided to pull out of the potential deal with D Lakin. However, your collected thoughts will most definitely be used for two other brands that we're about to place orders with so huge thanks to everyone who contributed

The GS is basically a classic Eden if that helps. I think the 410 is virtually identical to the ones that seemed to be on every stage for an American artist for many years. The actual speakers in GS & DB's are identical so it's purely the cab design that changes the sound. The GS412 has now been discontinued so there obviously wasn't a huge demand for it. This will almost certainly be reflected in the price if you come to re-sell. GS's are always harder to sell and carry a lower value on the used market. Paul Turner uses a pair of GS 410's for big gigs and they sound amazing for his brand of funk with both 4 and 5 string basses. I saw him use this rig with a DB751 and it was simply the best live bass tone I've ever heard I guess because of this association I always think of the GS being more of a funk and soul cab and the DB to more rocky. In all honesty you can get a great sound from both cabs - unless I had a road crew the weight difference alone would push me towards a GS (and I'd try to negotiate a discount because it's discontinued and harder to sell).

I never liked the song but would imagine it's quite fun to play in a band setting. I think we all get a bit 'precious' about what's an 'OK' song to play in a covers band. If the audience like it and ask for more then it's a good song. If it send people howling to the bar or even out the door it's not so hot!

What sort of sound are you after Javier? I know two guys who use big Aguilar rigs and one is very much a DB player and the other a GS. I've always liked the DB's but one of my favourite ever rigs is a DB750 into a pair of GS 410's!

[quote name='andydye' timestamp='1404117585' post='2489328'] wise man, do the homework, set your limit and stick to it, if some excited chap gets click happy that's his problem mine was a last second 'I can't believe it's going to go for this much so I might as well try a cheeky next tenner bid', I was very susprised when I won it [/quote] I was bidding on something else that was 'mine' at £695 with 4 seconds to go - it went for over £1,300!

[quote name='andydye' timestamp='1404116552' post='2489315'] I thought it a good price too matey willingness to post and giving the poor thing a decent title in the first place makes a huge difference! I reckon a good few folks will have skipped past it assuming it was a battered MIM or something...ah well! Did you win the '75 btw? [/quote] No - I set a limit of £900 and just got outbid. However there was a lot of last minute activity so I think it would have gone higher if I'd kept bidding.

[quote name='BigBeatNut' timestamp='1404079872' post='2489165'] Ooh, that looks interesting, thanks. [/quote] If you PM me with an email address I can 'invite' you - it gets both you and me additional storage as soon as you set up

I've seen it before but dismissed it as a bit of 'Gumtree/Craigslist' type of thing and maybe not very safe or secure. It's just a free listing site that links to a load of private sellers. If buying privately from the US I'd prefer TalkBass because they do provide a decent help service if anything goes horribly wrong.

We used a closed group with Copy - it's similar to Dropbox but the free storage is way larger. If you set it up correctly then each band member can get really large storage and each person effectively shares their storage across the group. Eg If user A has 20Gb and user B has 40GB then there's a band total space of 60gb. In Dropbox if the total volume stored went to 30Gb then user A would have lots of problems. In Copy this is just fine and it works perfectly /)