Cato

Card fees used to be a problem for small retailers because they hit the profit margins on low ticket items disproportionately hard, hence the reason that a lot of small corner shops used to have a £5 minimum card payment limit. But these days card fees are much lower, the shop I volunteer at will take card payments for 50p newspapers. And even if as a business you were saddled with a high % card charge for whatever reason, surely on a £2500 bass you'd just pass that on to the customer.

Pearl Jam don't like their fans getting ripped off. Their one band war against Ticket Master in the 90s started over a 1$ admin fee that Ticket Master wanted to charge people for tickets for a free concert that Pearl Jam were putting on and rapidly escalated to Pearl Jam boycotting every Ticket Master associated venue in the US and testifying before congress over Ticket Master's monopoly. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/pearl-jam-ticketmaster-1995-boycott-booking-fees-gigs-ticket-prices-a8989516.html

I've been listening to hip hop since the late 80s and, to honest, I think the whole 'gangsta' thing may have been a little over done over the last 30 or so years. Rap is a fantastic story telling medium, but the genre could definitely do with some new plots.

I remember seeing adverts for after market guitar strap 'spinner' kits in Guitarist magazine during the early 90's, which ties in with the age of the bass.

Eight albums last year according to the article in HJ's link. By the way is Sonny T quite a small chap or is that bass (Warwick Dolphin?) massive.

It looks like Music Tribe/Behringer are doing the same with Sweetwater in the US. https://guitar.com/news/industry-news/music-tribe-sweetwater/ It sounds like it may be an exclusive or semi exclusive dealership deal. We are now focusing on a select choice of the most influential e-commerce partners who have the largest customer reach and depth of services,” he wrote. “Only large e-commerce partners are capable of delivering this service.”“As a consequence, this unfortunately disqualifies all small brick-and-mortar stores and traditional distributors, as serving them adds little value and increases cost,” Behringer added. The report mentions that they're doing something with Amazon as well but it sounds like Behringer gear may soon be exclusive to just a handful of albeit huge retail outlets.

Boyle's probably better suited to making a Pistols series than many. I'm guessing it'll be more 'Trainspotting' than 'Slum Dog Millionaire'.

Epiphone have just released a series of guitars based on classic Epiphone (not Gibson) designs from the 50s and 60s. https://guitar.com/news/gear-news/epiphone-crestwood-custom-wilshire-coronet-2020/ Maybe if they do well they might start looking at their bass back catalogue?

I've developed a sudden and unexpected GAS for one of these since seeing @Quilly's thread yesterday. There's something else I'm saving my pennies for at the moment, but if there's any change....

Really nice looking instrument. I've never really fancied an acoustic bass but this has got me reconsidering.

Active and/or passive is also a big consideration. For me it's a plus to have the option of both on a single PJ bass, sometimes I like to solo the P in passive mode for a more vintage vibe other times I might go all out on both pickups with the preamp engaged for a more contemporary tone.

The sad fact is that just about every company Gibson has acquired in the last 3 decades either only now exists as an almost unrecognisable sad parody of it's former self, such as Kramer and Steinberger, or no longer exists at all.

Gibson have such a such a great history of running amplifier manufacturers they've bought out......

With Gibson's reputation where it is at the moment they might be concerned that calling it a takeover will devalue the Mesa brand. Not that I'm sure I believe the rumours, it seems like odd timing for the new consortium that took over a bankrupt Gibson 2 years ago to be looking to expand.

Tortoiseshell? Mind you, I've recently gone from hating tortoiseshell guards to picturing them on just about every bass and guitar I see and liking the result, so I'm not sure my judgement can be trusted.