Painy

Couldn't agree more. Plenty of companies with good products that feel it let's them off having to provide decent service but if you've got a great product backed up by great service too then you deserve success.

Just to update my contribution to this thread. Replacement cable is winging its way to me in the post now that the bank holiday weekend is over. Great customer service again! Thanks @D'Addario UK

This is always the big problem with private functions - especially weddings. Nothing worse than working your way through a hard rock or punk set the whole time under the stern, disapproving glare of the mother of the bride.

Got booked for a private gig - 40th birthday party - but the chap said all his biker mates from his club would be there and we could expect 200+ people to be there. Arrived at the address he gave us for the venue and were a bit confused at first as we couldn't see and pubs, halls, hotels or anything that looked like a venue for a party - just a big council housing estate. He then comes out of his garden gate and calls us into his small back garden where he's just about managed to fit an old army mess tent for us to play in. We got to play for him and his immediate family (literally him, his wife, 2 kids and his elderly parents). Turns out he didn't even own a motorcycle let alone be in a biker club - or apparently have any friends. The low point of the evening (although only one of many) was when he got into a fist fight with one of his neighbours over the noise. The high point was watching his elderly parents slow dancing romantically and not letting the fact that we were playing Paranoid at the time put them off.

Got mine strung with flats at the moment for a bit of contrast with my other basses and it sounds lovely. All 3 of my gigging basses are 5 string passives - the other 2 being a Fender modern player Jazz (which like the Gibson is loaded with a pair of coil-tappable humbuckers) and my main bass which is a Squier VM P5. I love the Squier - it just suits me perfectly despite being one of the cheapest basses I've ever owned - and it is my clear number one overall. I do have to concede though that the Gibson has the better low B.

Yeah, my message is unread at the moment but I'd put it down to the bank holiday weekend. I've now sent the same message to D'Addario UK on facebook so hopefully it'll get through one way or the other.

I've been inspired by this thread to send our friendly local D'Addario representative a message regarding a faulty guitar cable (lifetime guarantee but bought new off eBay so got no receipt). I hope the poor chap isn't inundated after this.

Sad to say there's a lot of truth in some of the comments above. Having just gone through a painful 7 month search for a new singer though I know how hard it is to find a good vocalist (and we were very much too fond a really good one in the end). Plenty of averagely mediocre singers (and with disproportionate egos in most cases too) but good ones are really hard to come by. If she is one of the good ones then I sincerely hope she's given the same chances as anyone else - although I suspect there is still a lot of bigotry out there to be overcome.

My number one is a Squier VM P5. The only bass I've ever owned that cost less to buy new is the Harley Benton that lives under the bed. It is my number one for no reason other than it is by far my favorite bass that I have owned (which includes basses that cost several thousand pounds). Everything about the look, feel and sound is just perfect - for me. I COULD perform my current role on something OTHER THAN a Squier bass. I just wouldn't choose to (as my main bass at any rate - I also use a Gibson EB13 and a Fender Jazz at gigs but only for a few songs each. The Squier gets the nod for about 3/4 of the set). All subjective though innit!

Yeah, I'm kinda wondering what kind of bass player would be in a gigging band without actually having a bass or amp to gig with. I can just imagine Lewis Hamilton turning up for an F1 race and phoning round his driver mates to see if one of them has a car he can borrow.

Well I eventually got around to trying it after getting some LaBella Deep Talkin flats from @krispn . At first it did sound a bit too dark and lacking in clarity for my normal tastes straight into the amp but I normally use this bass through a Lomenzo Hyperdrive on a low gain setting to bring out the mids anyway. Increased the blend on the pedal a touch more than my previous settings and it sounded lovely in the mix at this week's band practice. Very much that flatwound thump and no zing on the top but still plenty of articulation. Lovely feeling strings too so all in all a very successful experiment!

Just had a 5 string set of LaBella flats off Gavin. Loving the strings and a great guy to deal with. Thanks buddy!

I've just worked out my current gear is a shade under £5k. That's a lot less than it's been at points in the past (most expensive bass I've owned would currently cost around £4700 on its own) but I'm as happy as I've ever been with my gear. If I were to work out what I've spent on this stuff over the last 23 years though I think that would be a much scarier figure (and one I probably wouldn't be sharing with my wife either ).

To be fair though I briefly lived in a 1 bed flat in Great Yarmouth and at that point there were petrol station sandwiches with a value that exceeded that of my home .

About 18 years ago we had to total up the value (new prices) of all of the band's equipment (which also included a custom built box-trailer admittedly) and the total value was just over £38k. I dread to think what that would be at current prices.

Love it!

I've found the HB PSU to be really good. Completely silent even though a couple of the pedals are daisy-chained as it only has 5 outputs and plenty of juice to run everything on the board at once if I wanted to. Not a Pedaltrain type board though I'm afraid - it's all above ground. Here it is anyway such as it is

When I sit it next to my Ashdown Lomenzo Hyperdrive it's definitely a bit of a head-scratcher!

I'm running it at 9v (Harley Benton Power Plant Jnr so no 12 or 18v option). With the trim pot turned up there's actually quite a significant low end boost if needed but even turned right down the low end loss was still less than a lot of drive pedals I've tried using a blend control.

I recently received this little pedal in the post and last weekend managed to give it a run out at a gig. First thing I noticed, before even plugging in, was the excellent build quality. There are plenty of these micro pedals on the market and it seems that most of them are at the more affordable end but this feels very much a premium product. The controls in particular have a nice resistance when you turn them but are still very smooth indeed. I also love the rich metallic green colour with the gold lettering. Another difference from almost all the other micro pedals on the market is that this actually allows you to run it off a 9v battery should you want to where everyone else's only seem to allow them to be run plugged into a mains supply. Somehow One Control have managed to cram all the circuitry into just the top 1/3 of this tiny little enclosure. Now I've seen and heard demo clips on YouTube of this pedal so I already had a fairly high expectation of how it would sound. When I plugged it in at home after receiving it to test it out though it wasn’t really what I expected at all. Just to explain, a big feature of this pedal is that the designer claims it doesn't require a blend to retain the low end that is normally lost when overdriving bass as the inherent EQ'd sound of the pedal is designed to compensate for this already. Should you want more lows though there is a trim pot on the side (fortunately accessible without having to open the pedal up) that allows you to boost the lows even further. As soon as I clicked the pedal on I thought the speaker was going to leap out the front of my little practice amp there was just so much low end. Rather than the warm but articulate overdrive I was expecting this was a thick, Subby, synth-like and almost fuzzy sound – even with the treble on full. Fortunately though it seems the trim pot was already set on full and after turning it right down it was a little closer to what I was expecting. After a bit of experimentation and very subtle tweaking of the trim pot I soon found a sound that kept all the lows intact but without over-blowing the bottom end. Once that was set I had a bit of a play about with the main controls and was very pleased to find that the full range of both the treble and drive controls yielded a good variety of very usable sounds. The treble control seems to act like a tone control on a bass/guitar so cut only rather than any kind of treble boost but this makes sense as excessive highs can often sound fizzy with bass distortions (typical wasp in a tin can sound). As I generally like a bright and articulate bass sound though I ended up keeping the treble on full. Drive sounded great all the way from a very subtle break up when digging in at the low settings through to a much fuller, distorted overdrive on full but I found a nice sweet spot for what I was looking for at around the 12:30 point. There I was getting a nice smooth drive with really strong harmonics giving good note definition and a full, warm, rounded low end but all with a nice, subtly aggressive bite. All well and good at home but – as is always the case with all things bass tone related - it's all about how it sits in the mix. So, after having played around at home to find a sound I thought would work with the band I took it to last week's gig to put it through its paces. I'm happy to say that it didn't disappoint. No problem with the lack of a blend control here – it sat loud, proud and fat in amongst the 2 guitarists drums and vocals with no problem at all. I also found it played very nicely alongside my other drive pedals when I wanted to push it over the edge by layering it up during big song endings etc. Overall though it just has a really sweet, creamy sound which is exactly what I've been looking for and it still sounds fantastic in a band situation. These things are always subjective obviously but personally I love this pedal!

The Aguilar AG700 is a little under half a the price (not to mention about a tenth of the weight) of the DB751 if that helps at all.

I happily pay for their full service. I have a couple of hundred albums at least downloaded onto my phone that I can listen to whether I have an internet connection or not (I live out in the sticks so 'not' is the default setting unless I'm actually at home) and without adds. Any one of those albums might have cost me the monthly fee to buy on CD. Plus if I pay then I can live in hope that at least there's a little more that could go to the artist (probably not the case I know but you gotta have hope). As for limited selection the choice of music is infinitely more substantial than any high street store could have even dreamt of stocking back in the days of Our Price and Andy's Records. It's all relative innit.

It's definitely different to Mudvayne (I remember freaking out the first time I heard his playing on Dig) but I really like the kind of 'jazz but heavier' aspect of this.

I'm a big fan of Ryan Martinie's playing and love his tone but only stumbled across this last night while browsing Youtube. Downloaded the whole album last night and been listening to it today. Not sure if you'd call it prog-jazz-metal-fusion or what but whatever it is I really like it!