NancyJohnson

3 hours ago, nekomatic said:

I see that Bass Direct list Mark Bass 'LongEvo' coated strings in stainless steel or nickel, and Ernie Ball also have coated strings although I can only see those in nickel - all at a little bit cheaper than Elixirs. Can anyone comment on any of those?

There's a thread elsewhere here about LongEvo strings, I can't wholly remember how I got a set of them, but they were on a reduced introduction price.  Might have been a direct purchase from Mark Bass.

Anyhow, moving along.  Interesting enough experiment, can't remember which bass they went on.  They were OK, but given there's several manufacturers making coated strings, there just didn't seem to be anything in the product that made me think it was worth repurchasing.  Just reverted to form and went back to Elixirs!  You get what you pay for.

25 minutes ago, bubinga5 said:

£4000 on a bass, no way.. Amazing and I mean amazing basses out there for £1500 to £2000 second hand, even 4th hand. For me a Lakland 5502 deluxe and Aguilar. But if I had to..  USA Lakland, Suhr, Sadowsky, MTD, F Bass, .  

I have a couple of basses that cost me more than £4,000.00 each.  They're lovely and all, but realistically are they worth 40 (or 55) times the money my old Aria bass owes me?  Nooooo.

I have little preference for scale length.  They're all as simple as each other to be honest. I've switched between 30/34/35 without issue.

Sure if I was five feet tall, a 35" scale bass would be problematic, but at 6'4" it's not a problem.

$4k in the US (unless this is a typo), will buy you significantly more than £3.2k here on a direct exchange value; I think we'd all concur a $4k US ticket price would be £4k here (so nearer $5k).

The answer to what are you buying is much the same as that expressed elsewhere, nothing mainstream.  I'd be looking at used Hamer, Mike Lull, Kubicki; if the budget extended to geetars I'd try and find a first run Ibanez Destroyer.

6 minutes ago, ern500evo said:

Once you notice the gurning and mouth noises, you can’t watch his videos without focusing on it 😂 As you say, im sure he’s a very nice guy, I’d just prefer to see someone else demo it, he works for Tech21 so he’s not exactly unbiased 

I honestly don't get the posting to You Tube thing.  Obviously it's worked for TS, but what do people expect from this?  Recognition?  Praise/approval?  A roasting?  There's thousands of them up there, noodling.  There's probably a few guys who aren't with us any more as well, whose family can take cold comfort in them being forever immortalised on You Tube playing along with YYZ.

Perhaps there's also a small minority that are actually thinking, 'Oh, maybe one day the phone will ring and it'll be Alex.  He'll sound desperate and go, 'Hey, this is Alex from Rush.  Ged has hurt his hand, we saw your cover of Red Barchetta and we so blown away that we wanted to see if you're free Thursday for the show in Nashville.  Have you got a kimono?''

Dunno.

1 hour ago, ern500evo said:

I’ll be quite interested to see an in depth demo/review of the XB, preferably not done by Tim. Would like to see Amos Heller demo it 

I'd concur about Tim Starace, at least.  I'm sure he's a nice enough chap, but his whole 'career' seems to be pretty much off standing on the shoulders of a giant.  I find his gurning while playing somewhat off-putting as well.

'Yeah mate, we know you can play those lines, but you didn't actually write those lines, now did ya now, eh?'

Just now, wateroftyne said:

IMO no. The fewer silos the better.

I like looking at photos of basses as much as the next person; I did a quick count a few days ago and the ratio of basses was something like 7:1 in favour of Fender shapes.

You're a Precision-lad; you can get a fix of all those one trick ponies in their own area!  😘

Given the amount of Precisions, Jazzes and Fenderesque basses in the sale area, is it time to consider splitting the bass area into two areas; all 'Fender style' and everything else?

Likewise amplifiers.  Split into heads, enclosures, everything else (combos, rigs).

I'm honestly amazed that this is still here.  These are wonderful, wonderful instruments.  

Wake up kids!

Phoenix.  French indie.

On 03/02/2024 at 14:12, Billy Woodfield said:

Hi All, looking at putting some new pickups in my squeir PJ. 
 

ideally looking for a vintage 60s/70s sound. 
 

Anyone have any recommendations? 
 

Cheers

Please quantify 'vintage 60s/70s sound'.  What tone are you actually chasing?  Ponk?  Clank?  Mwaaaaah?

You have to realise that Fender were never so hot or consistent with how they wound pickups and remember this is a company that signed off on putting Stratocaster pickups in Musicmaster/Mustang basses as they had a huge surplus of them.

As I've posted elsewhere, it's really not worth 'upgrading' unless the pickups are dead or have failed.  It's just one facet in the signal chain.

Save your money.

The answer is always black, irrespective of the question.

When I was in New Yawk a few years ago (2015), I saw Corey Glover and dUg Pinnick at The Cutting Room.  Odd one, we bought VIP seating online from here and only had email confirmations of the booking.  Late afternoon, we were making our way back to the hotel and called at the venue to get our tickets, spoke to the guy who owned the place, had a beer with him; he was knocked out that we had come from the UK. 

Anyhow, cutting to the chase, we were there for the load-in and we got invited into the venue itself (lovely).  Saw dUg's rig (the head, cabinets), there was a guy from Tech21 there and we had a chat.  It was surprising that at the time they had no real distribution here; he was saying they generally supplied the heavy stuff (read that as the DP head, Landmark gear etc.) on an ad-hoc basis and they usually tried to combine shipping to Europe within pallets of bicycles and spare parts thereof , in an effort to keep costs down. 

I'm finally clear of all band stuff/recording commitments, so looking for something new at some point.  Original material only, quirky/alternative/punky. 

See video below.  PM if interested.

Detune. 

Snip snip snip snip. 

Unravel. 

=Sum(Rip+Measure+Snip+Install)*4 (or 5)

Tune.

Play.

Recycle.

Repeat.

10 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Add VAT @ 20%, customs duties and shipping and £395 Stateside is not gonna be too far off £599 over here? 

 

13 hours ago, Wolverinebass said:

£599?!! So now Rocky Road surpasses Westside Distibution for the title of "biggest price gouger ever." They seem to have stuck with the formula of:

 

1. Take price in dollars. 

2. Change Dollar sign to pound sign. 

3. Add £100 or more more if niche item.

 

There is no way that pedal is worth that. People (including myself) have criticised Darkglass pricing. This is a whole new level to that. You could get one of the midi controllable Darkglass pedals (ADAM, Photon) for that price.

 

When we had the fun of the Dug Pinnick amp being sold for $1800 stateside and £2500 here, the Tech21 bods said on here that they didn't have any control over UK pricing. That's fine. What they do have control over is choosing to work with middlemen companies ramping up the price by £200. 

 

$499 = £395. Surprisingly not £599.

My brother in law has just taken up a position that takes him to Houston once a month.  I may take him up on the offer of, 'If you need anything, let me know...'

I've got John's circuits in three or four of my basses...the three knob Uni-pre.  They're decent units.  It can be a bit of a squeeze to get everything in, plus a battery, and in smaller cavities it's not pretty, but it's worth the effort.

1 minute ago, neepheid said:

 

Does it still whip the llama's a$$?

Blimey.  I'd forgotten about that!

1 hour ago, Richard R said:

I've settled on WinAmp.

Not perfect, and misses some display functionality, but it does what I specifically needed in picking a random album to play.

 

 I'm now listening to albums I haven't picked out in ages - which is exactly the intention.

 

Thanks all,

 

Rich

 

 

Good choice.

There's a Dynamic Library plug-in that is really useful - it might only be compatible with the heritage versions.

Band On The Run (Underdubbed) dropped today.  Listening in bed.

My first bass was one of these beauties, an Arbiter shortscale SG/EB3 style thing in creme.  40+ years ago.  I have no pictorial evidence, I'm afraid, and I have no memory of where it came from.

Distinct memory of it having shiny flatwound strings until the G-string went and I bought a roundwound for it - I didn't know better.  That string was so zingy I played it exclusively for a while.  [It] got sold to a hippie guy I was at school with; I remember he came to our house with an older brother, who noodled on it while sitting on the stairs without plugging it into anything.  £35.00 changed hands and off it went.  I did see it occasionally after this.  Beyond that, I have no idea where it went.

Interestingly, I remember picks being in short supply and the guy who bought it used to use a green figure of 8 toy-soldier base as a plectrum.  Odd what you remember.

Last year, we had a brief rehearsal and video shoot in The Engine Rooms in Bow.  In the main room (where we did the shoot), they'd just piled in backline to make us look big rawk and there was an SWR Workingman's 8004 going into an 8x10 (the photo below is off their website, ignore the thing sitting on top of the 8004).  I just plugged in without any talent boosters and had a noodle.  Quite stunned at how good it sounded, little bit of grunt/dirt, scooped mids.  Quite lovely really. 

Ooooh.

I have no real desire for these, but I could use them in a spare room as they're that diddy.  I'll sleep on this.

We used Teddy Bears Picnic.

I watched the Anderton video where they were on the Sire stand and to be honest the only thing I got a bit moist over was the matte black Larry Carlton L3, I've already enquired whether (if I bought one) they could get me a tortoiseshell scratchplate (which Sire do on the goldtop version.  £349.00.  It's perfect.