Cato

Unless of course the Deep State forces Trump to declare a state of emergency and he has to temporarily suspend elections until the threat is over. I'm half expecting it to happen if only because the changes he's making to America seem like they're intended to be permanent.

The US owned sports shoe industry is going to take a big hit as well, especially as Nike and others pivoted away from China to set up production in Vietnam specifically to swerve future tariffs on Chinese made goods. Now Vietnam is getting tariffed at 46% so all that cost and effort in setting up new production facilities has pretty much gone for nothing. I think I'm correct in saying that the only US big brand sports shoe company that actually still has some production facilities in the US is New Balance, so it looks like every major brand of trainers apart from NB is going to get tariffed in the US. TL:DR It's a bad day to be buying trainers in the US. I wonder how many more examples of pretty much the whole market for an item including the US owned brands being hit there will be.

Interesting article here on some of the more unlikely recipients of the new tariffs. https://news.sky.com/story/island-home-only-to-penguins-hit-by-tariffs-and-other-things-you-may-have-missed-on-liberation-day-13340958 Almost makes me wonder if there may have been an AI element in how some of the calculations were made. You'd hope a human would pick up on the fact that calculating tariffs on uninhabited islands is a waste of time and effort.

My understanding is that US companies who manufacture outside the US are one of the main targets. I was reading somwthing earlier about US running shoe manufacturers, who dominate the global market but who almost exclusively manufacture in Asia, being amongst those at the very sharp end of the tariffs in the US market. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/us-tariffs-vietnam-would-be-blow-nike-other-sportswear-brands-2025-04-01/ But it's early days & I'm not sure anyone, posibly including those in the Whitehouse, really knows how this is going to work yet

Not sure about that. I think it may depend on whether the basses are imported into the US before they are exported to British buyers. There's not a lot of detail yet on exactly how the tariffs will be implemented or whether there will be an exemption for foreign buyers in the above scenario. Might be a while before we find out.

I've never played one but I've been interested in PJD's skinny string offerings for a while. They're manufactured in the UK. They only seem to offer 1 bass model at the moment but there's a few pickup options available. https://www.pjdguitars.com/product-page/st-john-bass Just under the £1500

If it wasn't for the £200 shipping I'd be very tempted to get a JD1 and maybe see if I could get a preamp fitted at somepoint down the road. At £393 they look like a bargain. At closer to £600 not so much.

Bass £393 Shipping to UK £182 In case anyone was wondering.

It's a fine line. One of my favourite bands in the 90s was Carter USM who I saw a few times as a duo. Their set up was live guitars and vocals everything else was pre recorded backing tracks, but they still had a great live energy in their performances. At the other end of the spectrum I saw Kiss live on the Unholy tour, which to be fair, seemed to be mostly live but when they played 'God gave Rock n Roll to you' not only were there backing tracks but I'm pretty sure there was also some miming along to perfect vocal harmonies and the whole performance had a sort of 'Top of the Pops' feel to it which stuck out like a sore thumb in the rest of the set. I couldn't really say why the Carter thing worked for me while the Kiss thing didn't.

Wouldn't be a huge shock if true Just annecdotally from recent posts on BC from disgruntled customers something hasn't seemed right with Bax for a while. Their recent Trustpilot reviews make interesting reading too, it's all either glowing 5 star or angry 1 star reviews

I really like the look of the unfortunately named single pickup 4 string.

I know Cort does stuff for Ibanez and probably others in a similar price bracket , but, perhaps unfairly, I think a lot of people will be reluctant to part with £2k for an Indonesian Tobias branded Cort made bass. Assuming it is Cort of coursr?

Given the curren vogue for headless instruments, with several companies launching new lines in he last few years, it will be interesting to see if it has any effect on the prices of the original wave of headless instruments. In some ways Steinbergers, for example, have gone from being a bit of a historical curiosity that had a fairly brief moment in the 80s to being the grand daddies of a whole new lineage.

Broadly speaking more expensive basses 'feel' nicer to play, although obviously 'nicer' is subjective. I wouldn't necessarily expect a £1500 P or Jazz bass to sound radically different than a P or J costing half as much. One thing I have learnt over the years is that the answer to 'is a £2000 bass four times better than a £500 bass?' is generally 'no' but I would expect it to be more pleasant to play in multiple small ways such the feel of the controls, the finish on the neck, how smooth the tuners are etc. All those small details can add up to noticeably more pleasant playing experience over all Finally it's always worth considering buying used. £1500 should get you a lot of bass on the 2nd hand market

Unless something we don't know about has happened to his personal fortune then he surely doesn't need the money, he must just really enjoy thinking up new ways of taking cash off his fans.