Al Krow

Looks like the Akai may now be out of production though? ...and as Woody has just commented very expensive used - true of a bunch of other Akai pedals e.g. Deep Impact - they clearly have a cult following!

My tuppence worth would be: The 200 are not diagonal strung through whereas the 400 and upwards are. The offset B string saddles were a feature in the older 1 and 2 series 5 string basses, so they may have a bunch of left over stock? They don't look quite as good aesthetically as the higher end bridges IMO, so I guess it's part of the small incremental changes in design, build and finish as you head up the BB range.

Damn - I'm going to end up getting one of these myself, if I'm not careful, I can tell 😂 One of my bands just has bass, and one guitar so we could similarly do with filling out the sound, and this might just be the answer (another bit of expenditure I need to blame Woody for - haha!) The pitch shift is pretty good on HX the Stomp, but weirdly the octave up effect less so (more latency and certainly not as good as the Mosaic). Be interesting to see if I can get a decent Fishman Powerchord patch on the Stomp using several pitch shift effects combined. Ok that's a little project to keep me out of mischief...

So has the Q\Strip won a reprieve? Save you buying it back for a third time after you next sell it on 😀 Thread seems very relevant to me (so thanks to the OP for starting) when using Yammy PJ and previously finding that it was getting a little lost in the mix with my BF SC on a solo'd P setting, although that issue has completely disappeared with the more mid punchy Fearless F112 and its dedicated 5" mid-focused speaker. However, whilst my DG M900 amp isn't as fully sweepable in the mids as your Q\Strip, it does still give a fair bit of flexibility and I've got the low mids set at 250Hz following @Dood's recommendation on another thread a while back, and the high mid switch will now be set to 3kHz rather than it's current setting of 1.5kHz when I'm using my Yammy PJ with the BF SC, following Lozz's recommendation earlier in this thread. [Aside: speaking of DG M900s...I noted from another thread that you're loving the B7K sim on your Stomp and were thinking of getting a B7K pedal. The B7K = B3K in terms of drive circuit but it has a preamp & DI in addition. Well there is also a B3K circuit, preamp & DI all present on a DG M900 amp (and has a VMT drive on top). There's a DG M900 in the FS that has just been reduced from £650 to £500, whereas the B7K pedal by itself is nearly £300... just a thought!]

Really useful tip, thanks Lozz.

Just found the ad, it was actually almost two years back, in fact! Here's what some of the other sellers said about their Fishman Fissions... "When I got it I was in a three piece and it was specifically for the times in songs like american idiot where the guitar goes for a solo and you are left with a bit of a space that needs filling. This does that well. It gives you a sound of your bass plus one octave up, one fifth up and a forth below. Or with another switch the 5th and 4th are around the octave. It works very well for some songs (american idiot being one of those)." "It's a great thing if you put it at the front of your signal chain and want that Royal Blood kind of sound" "In a 3-piece? Need more bass oomph during guitar solos? The Fishman Fission Bass Powerchord can do the job for you. To the note you're playing you can add an octave above, a 4th below, or a 5th above. You can choose just one of these, or you can use two, or even all three of them. It really beefs up your sound so that the guitar player can go off on one without the whole sound seeming empty."

Ah yes, thanks Woody, I was trying to remember the Fishman. I recall having seen one in the FS around 12 months back and thinking that looks really interesting, at the time and the chap selling it describing it as a great way of replacing a rhythm guitar (or more precisely for a 3 man band) - which would seem to be just what Stew is after. It's a lot less than a Hog 2, but still not a budget option at around £240, though. I've not personally owned any Fishman gear, but it does seem to be highly regarded by fellow BC'ers.

True. Although I'd personally say it was so good Stew won't necessarily even need to run in parallel. Some sound clips of the Mosaic posted earlier this year, so Stew can hear it in action.

Well just before we all rush out and trade our Yammys for Sire V7s(!) here's a second clip of my BB 1025 in action a couple of week's back. It was actually recorded for Dave's benefit 'cos he was interested in finding out whether the Fearless F112 cab had as much / greater clarity than my BF SC in a band mix (the earlier clip from the same gig was posted on the 12" cab thread). Signal chain was very simple: purely passive BB1025 --> amp (DG M900 on clean) --> F112 cab. No pedals or compression in between. I'll let you be the judge (usual recommendation of listening through headphones) whether you think the BB 1025 cuts through or not. @lee650 - hey buddy, further to our chat about 1025 tone, this is the post with a clip of mine in action.

If you're prepared to play a couple of notes on bass or even chords, just add a polyphonic octave up (Digitech Mosaic is my fav, virtually no latency) and you're good to go!

Ah cool. So we are both loving the ARP section it seems then. We'll that was pretty quick landing on that between us! I do agree this is a brilliant little pedal. No question at all and right up there in terms of ones I'd 'save in a fire'. The only other pedal I might keep ahead of it is more than double its price and happens to be a multifx

Arpeggiators. I now realise it was something I was missing on my FI! Having so much fun on this pedal! @Quatschmacher as our the national expert on bass synths, you really should get your hands on one of these! Here's a setting for you Woody to have some fun with: Seq10.11.4.4 i.e. Sequencer 10, Variation 11, rate 4/10, depth 4/10 with clean blend max'd

I can only think that there was some message from on high that 'black is the new black' or someone else had been listening to some Amy Winehouse that day and thought they had best get back to...or more likely they'd ordered too many black headstocks. 😀

I'm not convinced it quite works with the midnight blue on my P35, but as it's always facing away from you when playing, I never noticed until Dave pointed it out to us! But definitely not something anyone else has ever commented on!

Well here's a little known fact before @dave_bass5arrived on the scene to point out to the rest of us with less beady eyes: apparently all the headstocks are black on the 3 series, even when the body colour is not!

@Wolverinebass - some lovely gear you have there (as I know having had the privilege of playing several of them albeit briefly). Loved your fBook comment btw, when you mentioned you'd recently started doing your music full time, that "we're a long time dead". Too true & massive amount of wisdom in that short phrase. The tour sounds great. Fingers crossed for you.

Thanks for reassuring vote of confidence on Gruv Gear - looking forward to getting mine more so now! 9lb 3oz should feel both 'substantial' but not too heavy - sounds perfect!

Thanks Mick - did you mean it that way around i.e. Yammy more responsive than the Spector?

With due respect Mark, you make more of your one bass than I do of my ten combined. No question. Hope all is going well down south!

That's kinda amusing. Well at least you know that I've got your best interests at heart with my earlier post i.e. I didn't take the opportunity to give my P35 a surreptitious plug! I guess part of me is hoping that folk will forget it's in the FS (which my head insists on it being left on) and I'll stick some flats on it and start using it as a goto gigging bass, which it truly deserves to be. @M@23 who had it before me had it set up beautifully. He's a pro bassist, so I would have expected nothing less! The reason for bringing Mark back into the conversation is actually a note forward to both of us - I'm hoping to get hold of a Gruv Gear Duo Neo strap shortly from @fretmeisterand, if it does the job I'm expecting it to, it will mean playing basses weighing 10lbs to 11lbs (or even heavier) should become a breeze and weight won't be a limiting factor in our choice of basses going forward.

Hmmm...not sure who the current BB 435 owners are, hopefully one will crawl out of the woodwork shortly and give you an idea on weight. There's definitely a step up in construction and some parts, plus higher end pups between the 435 and P35 which probably accounts for a fair chunk of the price differential, the rest would be due to more expensive labour costs of MIJ vs Indonesia and whether that justifies paying extra is a topic in itself. If you can, get yourself along to the Yammy store in Central London or one local to you that stocks them. Whether overall the price difference is 'worth it' will be down to individual preference. Personally I would be happy to pay the used difference in prices, but I'm far too tight on the purse-strings to buy a P35 new! FWIW - my advice would be to kick-off with a 435 and if you find you're loving it, think about getting a P35 down the line - you'll then be very familiar with the 435 and be able to easily tell whether the P35 justifies the extra spend.

Very true! Osiris possibly volunteering to take one for the team...so we can maybe get his thoughts post facto. I personally find it much easier to hear my amp & cab in a rehearsal than I do on stage** with my band and FOH PA plus monitors blaring for all the band members. No doubt the 'right' answer for that is to move to IEMs, but that's a whole 'nother topic! 😉 I've always valued having a bit of headroom with my amps and my D class head isn't exactly heavy and I can always turn it down! Trouble with just having 45W on tap is that if you find you need more oomph, you're out of rope. Have to 'fess that if I wanted something smaller than my DG M900 as a power amp I'd be thinking Baby Sumo. If I wanted a headphone amp (and I didn't have my Stomp) I'd be looking at the TC Spectradrive which is very well featured and has aux in. But hey, that's just one BC'ers view. **actually tbf that's less true with the F112 cab which was as clear as a whistle.

Just two Wals - quality over quantity!!! Jazz 5 will be from which maker, if you don't mind my asking? Those Marleaux basses do look really good, although I've never had the privilege of playing one. Saw a couple in the FS and you know how it is with creeping GAS, it gets you in the end... 😄

I think he’s either referring to the number of gigs he's doing in the next three months or the age of his mistress 😁

So close...