Dan Dare

Ah, Soul

I agree with Bill (as I usually do). If you want something that gives you more than your Bass Cub, I'd look at augmenting it with an additional power amp and cab or powered cab. I use and like PJB cabs and take out between one and five of their 4x5s, depending on how loud I need to be. Obviously, you need a vehicle to move more than a couple of them around. I used to live in London and found a decent folding trolley very helpful when I had to use public transport. It took two C4s without difficulty.

Don't these muppets think one might check one's PP account for payments before parting with the item?

20w and an 8" speaker will struggle to be heard over anything other than an unamplified solo acoustic guitar and voice. The laws of physics and all that, Jim. You definitely need a bigger amp.

"JM's voice thin and expressionless and his lyrics as badly crafted and banal."? Typical of what one expects from snotty nosed public school boys who write for the broadsheets. JM was one of those responsible for bringing a lot of good and interesting music to our attention and for that he deserves our gratitude and thanks. He had a long life and lived it well. RIP John and thanks.

True. We have become used to cheap products in recent years due to the global economy. When I started playing, well over 50 years ago, stuff was much more expensive, in terms of the percentage or multiple of your earnings that you needed to spend to acquire it. Quite a few musical equipment companies build little themselves nowadays (even the big names tend to produce only flagship stuff in-house). They design/specify products and have them made by massive manufacturing firms situated in low wage economies. As consumers, we benefit in the short term from cheap products (albeit of sometimes questionable quality). If anything goes amiss, however, it can be difficult to get a problem solved. In the long term, if we outsource/offshore too much manufacturing capacity, our own economy suffers. We can't all feed ourselves courtesy of financial and service industries. Someone I used to know, who owned a small manufacturing company that is UK based, told me he had looked into the possibility of having stuff made in the Far East. He found two problems. Maintaining quality control and getting faults rectified was one. If you have to wait for two months for replacement stuff to arrive in a container from China, customers tend not to be happy. The other was patent enforcement. If you give your designs to a company thousands of miles away in a completely different jurisdiction, you shouldn't be surprised if low-cost knock-offs start appearing on the market. Trying to stop that is a nightmare and often just not possible. He decided against in the end. If someone is prepared to manufacture at home, pay their staff decent wages and offer quality products and after sales back-up, I think they deserve our support if we can afford to give it. I try not to buy Chinese if I can avoid it. If we all did that, the economy would be in better shape.

It's the same for many companies, especially those who don't source their stuff from Chinese factories staffed by people who earn £2 a day. Their costs have gone through the roof and they have to pass that on to consumers. On the plus side, if you want after-sales support, it's a lot easier if the manufacturer is in the same country as you and firms such as BF tend to stand behind what they make and sell. You pays yer money and takes yer choice.

Depends what kind of bassist you are, I think. Being a no-frills P or J bass type, a Telecaster is my weapon of choice. Has what you need and nothing you don't. If I played a 7 string active Fodera, my choice would probably be more adventurous.

As an oldie, I don't think it's a case of people not being able to make a living from music "anymore". It never was an option for most. When I started playing as more than just a hobby (slightly north of 50 years ago), the dream was to "turn professional". For the majority, including me, it remained just that. A dream. Occupations that everyone wants to pursue tend not to pay well for the majority. It's a case of supply and demand. If everyone wants to be a musician, actor and similar, the pay offered tends to be low because someone somewhere will bite. For much of my life, music has been a side-line, occasionally a moderately lucrative one. I've enjoyed brief periods during which music was my only source of income, but they were brief. It was always necessary to return to a day job to make ends meet, unless you wanted to live on baked beans, never own your own home, run a car that was on the verge of falling apart and not be able to have a family. Looking back now I'm in my dotage, I'm glad about that. When I hit 40, I realised that I had 25 years to pay off the mortgage and build some kind of provision for my old age, which I managed to do. I quit part-time casual working and got a "proper" job. The funny thing was that, once I had made the decision to keep music strictly as a side-line, I got offered a lot more work. Some I accepted if I could fit it around the job. The rest I politely declined, explaining that the job wouldn't permit (obviously sensible to keep people sweet in case they offered more in the future). It was a luxury being able to turn down offers to play in toilets to a room full of animals who hated me. All in all, I've done OK and can afford to enjoy my twilight years if I'm sensible. With the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

There's so much I could say in response, but I fear it would fall on deaf ears.

Fair enough, but you have left replies to me up and deleted all of my posts (and those of others), including those which were strictly factual. If you're going to moderate, do so impartially.

This. Many peoples' idea of BVs appears to be bellowing along to the melody in the background. BVs are tricky. All the consonants have to happen simultaneously and, crucially, the intonation has to be spot on for it not to sound like a bunch of lads chanting at the footie.

Is this old chestnut still grinding on? Re. the exchange above, it's interesting (and relevant, I suggest) that Dad has an engineering background. I don't think those disputing with him above do.

Quilter Bass Block is well under 10" wide. Sounds decent, too.

I don't get the "can't take my vintage instrument out of the house because it's too valuable" mindset. Many of us own cars that are worth more than such instruments, but we don't say "better leave it in the garage in case someone dents/pinches it". That's what insurance is for. Yes, vintage instruments are nice to own. Some are even nice to play. But they're tools to do a job.

Not necessarily the case. Were I in BF's shoes (in answer to his question, I think he is being very reasonable), I would take an item of items of equipment equivalent in value to the agreed buy-out amount and leave the band to sort out replacements.

Depends on the retailer. Some are good, some less so. If things do go south, the law is the law - see asingardenof's comment above - and it doesn't matter what Ts & Cs a shop attempts to impose or demand you abide by. You may need to be insistent and refuse to allow them to persuade you to compromise. As far as repairs go, it is not the best idea to accept an offer to repair to a brand new product. The best option is to reject it and demand a fully functioning replacement.

They exist in all forms of business. It's a little naïve to expect that one will not encounter selfish, ambitious people in music. On the flip side (balance, etc), if someone gets a better offer, it's fair enough that they will move on, although ideally they should do so decently, honour existing commitments, etc. In fairness to W and his ilk, I've been in a position where I was the only person unhappy with what a band was doing and where it was going (or not). Once you've tried discussing your concerns and failed because nobody else agrees with you, your only options are to suck it up or up sticks and leave.

A pal of mine refers to it as the "concrete wellie".

I suspect the reason for mounting the strings that way was so that he could turn all the tuners in the same direction to raise/lower the pitch. Looks weird, though and is likely to increase wear rate of the nut on the D and G strings, especially if he's using rounds.

Agreed. Our singer picked one up on t'Bay for £35 in mint condition. It's far superior to a SM58.

I don't feel differently about BC. Most of us have never met and do not know one another. I've been happy to receive enquiries about whether I would take offers on here (and have accepted a couple). I've done the same when I've been buying. As long as people are courteous and polite, I don't see a problem.

Rick Beato's latest vid' discusses how it has become ever easier to manufacture (I can't bring myself to use the words "create", or even "make") music. The downside is, of course, homogenisation, which he points out. AI, which by its nature, has to be derivative, can only increase the trend for everything to sound the same. As has been pointed out on other threads about the way popular music is heading, nobody who is interested in seeking out real or original music should expect to find it in the mainstream/mass market.

Given that this is likely to be a purchase that you want to last you (you obviously, like me, don't change rigs often), you really should pop the Bassman head in the boot of the car and head for somewhere like Bass Direct (not a million miles from you if you're in Leics) and do some comparisons. Go on a weekday when it's quiet and you can take your time choosing. I had that same head, with either 2x15 or 1x15 matching cabs and moved it on for similar reasons - age and not wanting to lug it around. You'll find modern cabs far superior to the old Fender ones (the drivers were pretty poor - I replaced the drivers in mine with Peavey Black Widows back in the day, which were a big improvement). Fwiw, I'm running an Aquilar AG700 these days, which I like. It doesn't quite do what the Bassman did, but it's pretty close. In your shoes, I'd concentrate on finding a head you like first and then look for cabs to match it. I note you have an old Ampeg classic cab just out of shot, which would do the job whilst you look for something. Happy hunting.