jonno1981

Ah I can’t say I live in Crowthorne, I’m just down the road in Sandhurst past wellington college. It’s a nice part of the world, I hear Hungerford's not so bad!

Home now, it’s great to only live ten minutes from the venue! Thanks Paul & co for organising, I think the venue worked really well with the two rooms. Lots of great gear on display and friendly folks who allowed me to badly try it. I LOVED Mike’s satin finish sunburst Fender MIJ Jazz bass. The talks worked really well, lots of interesting stuff from the chap from Monty’s, the 60s Jazz pickup set sounded killer. The cab demo was an eye opener, you really don’t need a big cab to get a good tone. Chris Child’s interview had great stories and experiences to share. Thanks to Mike Brooks for facilitating. Overall that was a lot of fun!

I love this one: https://yamahaguitardevelopment.com/2023/10/26/yamaha-guitar-development-custom-shop-amos-heller/ Exotic top bb! They could certainly do more like this as a production model.

I’ve always wanted to try one of these but I’ve never seen one in the flesh. Looking forward to taking a look and if possible playing (badly!) a few notes.

Looks legit. I remember these. Fender were getting slated at the cost of the USA standard, so they brought out a cheaper us model with a gloss finish. No hard case, some cost saving measures but a made in USA tag! If it was an affinity body it wouldn’t have the truss rod access at the body end. Enjoy your bass.

This is super useful thank you so much!! I have similar restriction on the jazz bass, the neck volume becomes master volume when you pull the tone pot up. You still have all the original sounds so it’s no biggie. I’ll consider this layout for my bass. Thank you!

Hmmm. I’m curious. My bb414 has factory vol/tone/pickup switch. I changed the wiring on my jazz to a push/pull on the tone for series parallel and I love it. Could I follow a similar approach and change the wiring on the bb to match the layout you have? Do you need four conductor pickups to make this work?

I’d say no, but having any bass with a P pickup is really, really useful!

I often end up searching for very basic terms like “bass” and just seeing what turns up. You have to scroll through pages of fishing gear and car audio but you get some gems. That’s how I found my Yamaha bass!

Some people are really bad at listing on those sites making them not return in the search results. I’ve seen plenty of “base guitars”, “squire guitar”, “fender twine”, “less pal” etc. Dealers are very hot on this and have all kinds of weird search strings to find the true bargains.

I think the price is only a question mark if not enough time has passed. For instance, what if you brought a Wal bass in 1988 from a mate for the going rate of £500. You sell it in 2025 for £5k. Seems ok to me. However, if you brought it from them less than a couple of years ago for £500 and sold for £5k and he found out, it’s gonna be a sore point in your relationship isn’t it?

Yamaha trb6 is brilliant. Pickups don’t sound hugely impressive outside the context of a band, but in a mix they just work so well.

Where did that come from? Cort not looking after their employees?

That’s such an enlightening video. Fascinating that they have entire buildings for the different production lines.

Agreed. In our case we have to factor in a baby sitter so add another £50 for the cost. If it’s a London gig and we want to watch the support act it’ll be out the house from 5.30- 12. Gigs have gone from at least monthly to a special occasion these days. So many times I see a tour announced and then give up as it’s like £90 or something. I know it’s not 1990, but it doesn’t feel like good value.

It’s not obviously a fake, the headstock and logo are the usual giveaways. The case is era correct, the candy is right, the body looks correct with the truss rod being at the heel (exception of non-original scratchplate), but the quality of the pics and the weird inlays are making me suspicious. £700 is a good price though as it looks in good condition. I’d insist on better pics or a video call with the seller to hear the history before exchanging any money.

I recall the 3.1 was really underpowered and heavy. The 3.2 was night and day over the first version. I’d get the ashdown.

I can understand shipping damage as it’s outside the builders control. This however…. These issues must have been present when it was boxed up and were missed or ignored. I really hope the builder is willing to be reasonable and get you a working bass as described with no issues and an acceptable finish. I’d send it back and ask for the issues to be rectified or a refund. Unless they jump all over this I’d lose faith very quickly and write them off for any future business.

Maybe try Facebook marketplace for where you’re heading? Post an advert asking for bass hire and see if anyone fancies earning a few quid for a week.

It’s absolutely nuts, complex, fascinating, entertaining and funny. It’s brilliant!

Every G&l bass I’ve played has sounded great but had ergonomic issues. I’ve played 4 and each of them was really heavy, balanced poorly and missing a lot of modern refinements that I’d expect. Stuff like unshielded cavities, chunky feeling neck profiles, plasticky battery compartments. Providing fender don’t do an SWR (buy and shut the place down), continue to invest and modernise the product, I’d see this as a positive for the brand.

How’s your back and how many people were required to stack the combo? I assume many vertebrae were compressed in making this pic! Bet it sounds good!

Un-trimmed strings on guitars. Resulting in string ends dangling off at eye-poking height. You’re not Tom Morello! Cut them off dammit!

If I recall correctly, ashdown just made a whopper of a delivery of these to sound control as they went under. This is a distributors worst nightmare as chances are you’ve lost your stock and won’t see much of anything back for them. I think a lot of them were sold off cheaply as a result which canned the reputation of the brand.

I still have the rumble 200 I bought from you and really rate it. It’s not as loud as the 4x10 half stack I used to have (no suprises), but it’s a quarter the weight and sounds marvellous. If you’re not playing a big stage or with a daft metal drummer it’ll suit most folks more than adequately.