Al Krow

Managed to pick up an used CMD 121H from the forum last year which would have been comfortably within your budget. The high end roll-off Lozz mentioned is pretty easily sorted with an EQ pedal and boosting (I'd recommend +6DB) at around 6kHz (treble) and 1.5kHz (high mids). The "bite" or presence button on a Tech21 VTDI preamp will do something similar. You're not able to add "presence" on the amp itself on the older Markbass LM2 / LM3 heads as there is a huge gap on the amp EQ between its high mid centre of 800Hz and treble centre of 10 kHz. If I had known about this fix a couple of years back I would have held onto my AC 121 Lite (which can be had used for around the £600 mark). This is still one of the best bass combos available: it will deliver its full 500W without an extension cab and also has an aux in and headphone out which the more budget MB combos, such as mine pictured below, don't have.

Well that's going to be plenty of treadmill time sorted isn't it! 😊 Do you have a link to the article for your magazine?

Exactly the same number of gigs as I had last year! But in a weird sort of way I had quite a gear focussed year -sold more gear than I bought for the first time in 6 years, but ended up with a set of bass gear that I'm really happy with. Completely echo your final sentiments - fingers crossed.

You are funny. For me Project Fear finally died with this article. Of course, feel free to argue if you consider that you're more expert than the guy who wrote it (he happens to be the economics editor). Either way, I'm not listening to any more claims of "this or that doomsday scenario is going to be the result". It's been mostly tosh so far. Let's see what actually happens eh?

Well, Douglas, I'm biased: I think the album is a superb piece of creative song writing and I'm full of admiration for anyone who can craft something with such catchy melodies, some excellent bass lines and will get people up and dancing.

Do you prefer / really like the actual album then?

It's not entirely clear, but I don't think you're a fan 😁

Liking this already!

2020 was very possibly the worst of years many of us have lived through. But it didn't stop some great creativity by musicians around the globe. What new release in 2020 particularly blew you away? I've been very very impressed with Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa - so many great tracks on one album. Here she is with her band, performing 4 of the tracks from the album in a stripped down set. Lovely version of 'Love Again' - third track. The bass line on the album version is a lot of fun - I'm gonna see if I can persuade my band to add it to our set this year.

Yup, thanks I'd spotted that 😁 Trade deals are definitely a good thing, no question. It's win win. Alongside the UK do you know who the EU's largest trading partner is?

Come on, that's bordering on plain silly. We already trade more with non EU nations than with the EU. There are plenty of small retailers who are geared up to import from outside the UK eg Mark at Bass Direct will happily source you a 3 Leaf pedal or a Mesa amp. He's hardly a "large corporation"! Yes, I'm sure there will be an initial learning curve, but if we can learn a new song we can surely cope with a new form to fill out which is pretty much the same as what you do for a courier. YMMV

Missing the point big time. No changes in tax when buying new - so yes, we will continue to buy new goods from the EU and EU manufacturers will want to continue to export to their most important export market, the UK. It would be seriously daft to think otherwise - can you imagine BMW or even Thomann saying "screw that we have a 10 minute customs form to fill in?". The key change is when buying used goods from private sellers - we now have UK VAT when we import these just as we do with new goods and just as we have always had with used goods from the rest of the world (USA, Jersey, Japan, India, China etc) However, there may be a work around for the used goods issue too - we're just looking into that on the thread Bunion linked into above.

Well, one things for certain no more 2020 purchases possible now! So you should definitely know by now what your best purchase of last year was! 😎

That would be superb if something similar was available here. I guess one obvious problem is if you were the second owner and hadn't paid any GST/VAT when you bought it off the first owner. Would there actually be anything to reclaim?

5 string in my case, preferably with a 3 band EQ and passive option, please.

And just to be clear, which hopefully it is in the context of this thread, Steve is just referring to cross border sales of used bass gear between GB and EU. ie second hand stuff sold by private sellers in GB to other GB purchasers will not have this additional VAT. As @chris_b said a while back, surely there are enough sellers within GB to buy from if you are living in GB (and similarly within the EU to buy from if you are living in the EU) to be able to avoid the second layer of VAT on private used purchases? @Steve Browning - do you think the UK and EU were aware of this double layer of VAT issue? Typically tax treaties work quite hard to avoid double taxation such as this. If not, it could certainly be something worth raising via our professional organisations.

Yeah agreed. More difficult for us 5 string players - trying to find a 5 string Spector PJ EuroLX at the mo is hard work! I did have a look at the Ibby 655E and nearly bought one, but advice was that it would fall short of the SR Premium I had in my herd. And not sure that the TRBX 170/270 would stack up against the BB 1025 / 735A on anything other than number of frets. I understand that the Yammy TRBs were bought out as more 'aspirational' models. Would love them to relaunch with a lb or two shed from their waistlines!

Nice comparison. Providing 24 frets on a PJ is pretty neat - not too many PJ basses available with 24 frets as standard these days. The modern series Yammy BB PJs are 21 frets which is pretty typical.

But a lot better than doing so while Rome burned, eh? 😊

I need to qualify my earlier comment from a while back as I think we may have been at cross purposes! There are similarly a couple of key pitch shifter models and Octaver on the B1-4 also and I agree that one (BaMnShift) is less wobbly than the obvious one (PitchSHFT). If you're mixing with a dry signal to try to get a powerchord - it's really pretty poor; Helix does that much better as it can layer pitch shift in parallel, whereas Zoom is purely series. However (and this is what your comment above seems to be relating to and not the powerchord stuff I was yacking on about!) in terms of purely changing key with 100% wet, whilst Helix IMO still considerably better / tighter etc., I agree that Zoom is, indeed, decently passable at dropping a tone, even in a home practice environment etc.

This I believe... You've just cost me £20 Mr 63 😁

...and exactly why did you sell that and so many others?! I guess if you were taking a break from bass and thought you might not be picking it up again, then fair enough...

Stunning! Which model?

Sometimes it's the only way! I was finding that I was getting an unpleasant crackle from my little PB, but which wasn't always there. I wondered whether it might be my WL 20s with an active bass (which has had some comment on that score from others), particularly when they were running out of juice - but the issue was still there with a full charge and they were completely fine when connected directly to the amp. After checking each connection in turn it turned out to be my VT Bass DI feeding into my Proton filter either directly, or indirectly via another pedal, even when both were in by-pass mode. Didn't happen the other way around i.e. Proton --> VT Bass DI was fine! Weird, huh? Anyway, I've just swapped the running order of the pedals and all now seems to be well in the Krow bass-ment, much to my relief!

Harry - totally understand the sentiment. Except I think it will be a fair few months before the message actually sinks in that there is now an additional 20% on EU <--> UK purchases of used goods, and we are just at 1 Jan. I still come across BC'ers unaware that they will need to pay VAT on imports from Jersey and that's been the case since they brought VAT in, in the 70s! And this is a much bigger issue for forum members as there are a lot more sales EU <--> UK than from Jersey <--> UK or EU. The "right thing" IMO is for a pinned notice to be put up on the FS along the following lines: "When buying from outside the UK or from outside the EU (depending on where you are based) please note that local territory VAT rates are likely to apply". I think we are all now (sadly) agreed that this will be the case and I hope the expertise of someone like Steve B will have given @ped the reassurance to do this and, frankly, no one is going to criticise him for putting that red flag up. Please could you and the mods give something along these lines consideration?