molan

Nice idea - I'm not sure I could hear multiple different playing styles across a 45 minute period from 15 different instruments and be able to make any sort of rationale opinion of them all though Might be better to cut down the number of instruments? Could be fun to drop a couple of hem in more than once to see how many people are able to hear that they are being duplicated and vote the same way both times - or is that just me being mischevious

I've tried many of the combos you've mentioned here and I'm not sure any of them are up to serious gigging. The two baby PJB's are very nice and produce some lovely bass tones from a very small box but you can't gig with one unless there's some form of front of house support. The MarkBass 802 adds a lot more volume and depth of tone but there is some colouration. In my small rock band setting it's just loud enough to compete at rehearsal volumes but my MB 121 combo kills it for volume and depth. My personal favourite PJB cab for smaller and quieter gigs is the C4. This packs quite a punch for the size but you'd obviously need to budget for a separate head to go with it. The little Aguilar TH350 is a nice match or the MarkBass Big Bang adds both additional power and the flexibility of headphones out and aux in. I'd say test the MB802 first and see how it sounds. It's not as light as some of he alternatives but it does have a decent core bass tone

I'm in the 2 x 410 camp as well. Sounds great, my favourite large rig!

The flame on this bass is particularly nice - one of the prettiest Carvins I've seen

La Bella make a 6 string set of flats but I think the B is a 128 so it's just creeping over your max size

La Bella have a range of flats in short and medium scale plus they have special ones designed for thru-body stringing. They also have 3-4 different gauges in each length as well. Not all dealers hold them but they can be ordered - we recently got a really obscure 6 string baritone set specifically designed for a Shergold with a bridge fitted half way up the body!

The Rezillos used to be great fun live, saw them a few times back in the late '70's I wonder if their baby still does good sculptures, yeah? http://youtu.be/CKly-dga3Nw Note the pre Human League Jo Callis on guitar

I like tuning my basses - I check the tuning several times during rehearsals every week. Gives me something to do while the guitarists are discussing whether they should really be playing a C# Major 7th diminished in the bridge or just knocking out whopping great power chord at full volume to drown out the vocals. . .

What amp/cab are you using? Could simply be that it's the amp settings rather than the bass. Also - have you asked someone with a decent ear to listen to you out front in the audience? What you're hearing on stage will be quite different to what your audience is hearing.

I received a bass for a setup a couple of years ago. It was a vague attempt at some sort of Aria SB copy. Quite nice woods, multi laminate neck and a decent body shape with active electronics. Upon strapping it on I noticed the awful neck dive. Worst I've ever experienced, plus it must have been 12lbs+. The next thing I discovered was blood on my left hand! Some of the fret ends were so sharp it had literally cut one of my fingers. On closer inspection they were also really, really uneven in height. The active electronics included switch positions where literally nothing happened. Some of the tapered pots were either off or on with nothing in between - this included the volume pot. . . Spinning it over I discovered the neck screws to be bloody great flat-head wood screws. Looked awful but they did hold the neck pretty tightly. I adjusted the neck which had some serious banana bow action going on, spotted the bridge which was really solid but looked like a school metalwork project and went to work on the tuning and intonation with a new set if strings. Did a quick test and discovered the 12th fret harmonics were way out and wouldn't ring cleanly. I looked a bit closer and realised this was because the fret markers went 1 / 3 / 5 / 7 / 11 / 13 / 15 etc. I simply hadn't spotted that the double dots for 12th fret were at 11 instead! How could anyone get this so wrong! It must have been a project build bass put together by someone with some basic woodworking skills who knew very little about musical instruments. When I handed it back to the owner he said it was much better and he was really looking forward to gigging it!!

Competed a great deal with Gilles - everything handled really smoothly and efficiently. If anyone wants to trade with him they really should not be worried about shipping to Luxembourg, it's really very simple

I thought the market price for a used Sandberg was around the £650 - £700 mark? I looked at this one but didn't think it was a particular bargain

[quote name='jazzyvee' timestamp='1401648974' post='2465564'] Hi Chris did you go for the padding and if so what do you think? I'm considering some covers for my Mesa boogie powerhouse cabs and wondering i need padding or the slot for a board to protect the player control area. Jazzyvee [/quote] Don't buy a standard Roqsolid for protection from anything other than the odd drop of rain or maybe dust if you leave your cabs unused for any length of time. I've experienced lots of problems with poor fit and finish and the non padded ones are really just slip covers that might prevent the odd gentle scuff. I remember a recent thread here about major problems with fitting to some new cabs. http://basschat.co.uk/topic/233446-roqsolid-cab-cover-my-bad-experience/page__hl__roqsolid__fromsearch__1 You definitely need some decent padding to prevent any damage to control pots. There may be a higher grade Roqsolid available but all the ones I've seen have been very basic

I'd go 610. One of my favourite cab designs but too heavy for me I like 212's but feel 412's can get a bit 'woofly' (is that even a word?).

We did stock them at BassGear but demand was very low. People generally didn't like the feel of the exposed core strings, especially the B and E. We can easily get more though. Wouldn't take long to arrive

For soapbar and three band options I'd look at Aguilar. The OBP3 is fine pre and has lots of different options available to let you keep routing to an absolute minimum

[quote name='Faithless' timestamp='1237633975' post='440975'] I couldn't believe about that SRX700.. Anyway, I've never spotted Victor using that hair band, I mean, it doesn't work (mute strings) in [i]that [/i]place, where he's normally holding that thing in, right? Finally, it doesn't work to me like that.. [/quote] Oddly enough Vic has almost always had a scrunchie on his bass whenever I've seen him play I use a Gruv Gear Fretwrap to achieve the same effect. It's about 10 times more expensive (as in £10 instead of £1!) but holds shape better and mutes more evenly across the strings. I've seen quite a few pros using scrunchies or Fretwraps in the studio to help keep any unwanted string noise down.

They haven't hit the collectors' market yet and, to be honest, I'm not sure they ever will. Whilst collectors like anything with a rarity value they also look for stuff that stays pretty true to the original design ethic of an instrument (there are always exceptions to this of course!) and the Urge basses are quite a long way from a simple Fender J or P. In the main they seem to sell for less than their equivalent standard models from the same year. Personally I really like them but I certainly wouldn't look at getting one with a view to a future investment sale

Jaco, Pino, Geddy, Hurley and Dusty Signatures are all made in the US Custom Shop in Corona, CA

We've just spent 20 minutes testing a good old '90's rack mounted ART pre-amp with a vast array of multi-effects. It has zillions of sound options and you could easily spend a day just fiddling with the controls. Literally every effect is combinable (including a tube pre-amp) and each one has total control over each parameter! Then we plugged in a new Demeter head with just 5 knobs and a couple of flick switches. Got a better sound in just 2 minutes with virtually no fiddling Obviously the Demeter is in a different league of quality and construction but it did bring home that starting with something good in the first place could make more difference than loads of options.