Doctor J

It has been happening on ebay for many years too, where a seller uses someone else's pictures, but it's a very, very small percentage of genuine transactions which take place between honest buyers and sellers. One must encourage buyers to take care and perform due diligence, caveat emptor indeed, but how can that happen when sellers will cease communicating if a buyer requests something as fundamental as the serial number? 😉

I'd wager there are more buyers out there than scammers. Would your experience here be that you've encountered more scammers who would go to that trouble than genuine potential buyers?

Similarly, I wouldn't buy a used instrument without seeing the serial number first. If I asked a seller who refused to provide it, there is no way I'd buy from them. I've yet to hear a good reason why one would hide it from a potential buyer. What does it achieve other than making the buyer think you've something to hide? There is so much serial number information out there now, going from basic manufacture dating functionality to the detailed specification info the likes of Warwick, EBMM and Fender now make available. It's the best way for a buyer to verify they're actually getting what is advertised, or to fill in the gaps a lot of sellers leave in their information.

I installed a Sadowsky in an old Blade B4, replacing the original, rather quirky pre-amp. I needed to create a new hole to facilitate 4 knobs but I had a Metro many years ago so knew what I was getting and didn't see it as a risk or anything I'd ever want to undo. It's a 9V system, not designed to take two batteries, ever. The bass and treble are boost only, they do not cut. The VTC is on all the time. It's in the circuit whether running active or passive. It's a very musical preamp provided you don't overdo it. The low boost is at 40Hz, IIRC, so loads and loads of boost will do more harm than good. I love them, but the bass has to sound decent without it. It's a pleasant colouring of the tone rather than a radical overhaul.

Congrats. Looks great!

Sid Vicious would still be useless, earning a lucrative living as a surprisingly engaging corporate motivational speaker.

Having had an epiphany while hearing the band name through a delay effect, Karen would have abandoned the music industry and, through deft use of the apostrophe, set up The Carpenter's Carpenters - a bespoke woodcraft business catering to high-end Laurel Canyon tastes. They're not cheap, but you deserve the best.

Hendrix would have bought a shareholding in Floyd Rose and confused older concertgoers by not spending half the gig tuning his guitars, maaaan!

Is he one of Cobblepot's young lads, I wonder?

Proof is a two-way street. They could also walk down streets pointing at cars saying "That was stolen from me". It doesn't make their claim credible.

Alternatively, if someone is reporting a stolen instrument only after an ad goes live and have no proof whatsoever of ownership and no pictures of it outside of those in the ad, the police are not going to spend a lot of time on it.

The ad had been around for a while before I went for it, but It's really very nice 🙂

It changes every now and then but, at the moment, it's El Presidente.

Got blown up in Return of the Jedi?

Surely one is UB40 and the other is UB42?

For me, EQ should be the finishing touch to fine-tune a solid fundamental tone. From there you can gently caress to perfection to suit taste and circumstance. When you have to chase something decent to begin with, it limits what you can achieve with the instrument - and not just for active instruments either.

No forearm contours Over 40mm nut width Matching body and headstock paint with maple fretboards Thumbrests and thumbrest screw holes I love active basses but if it doesn't sound good with everything flat, it has to go Relics, especially home made ones

Yeah, it's common, people.

"Unchecked electronics" usually means "checked, not working, not bothered to fix"

I replaced a Bartolini system in my Bacchus 24 with a 5-pot, 3-band EQ Glockenklang setup. It's a very well made and very transparent setup - it does not colour the sound as much as other pre-amps I've tried. You really need to like the raw sound of the bass you're putting it in.

I generally agree, I love post-Cavalera Sepultura, for example, despite being a fan since BTR came out, which seems to be quite divisive, but Jim Martin is the one where I think the music was noticeably weaker afterwards, despite the considerable ability of those who replaced him. The strained relationship between them, coupled with Jim's general cantankerousness and refusal to follow the bass made for enthralling music. They lost a lot of what made them so unique when Gould became the big dog, there was far too much of the guitar following the bass by design. They veered towards more traditional songwriting than jam-based creations and sacrificed a lot of what made them great as a result... to my ears, anyway 🙂 I preferred Moseley's shambolic drawl, too, but there's no denying the brilliance of the first two Patton albums.

It takes more time for a low frequency wave to be generated, it doesn't suit speed at all. Fast downtuned stuff usually sounds like mush. Why rush? 😁

As for the difference it makes... even though Geezer never tuned down to match the guitar, there is weight to the early version which is missing from the effort a few years later when they tuned to E

I've been a fan of tuning down since I started playing in the late 80's. The first band where I was actually able to downtune was when I wrote all the music and we played slooooowww, which formed in 92. Since Sabbath had tuned to C#, we decided to go "one lower" and tune to C. It really suited the music. After I left that band, they continued, playing the songs I wrote, but tuned to E. It was awful 😂 Since then, I have played in bands who tuned to dropped-D, another who went between B standard and dropped-A and another who tuned down to A standard but had some songs in dropped-G. It's down to the music you're playing, that darkness and weight really suits lower tempo, heavy music. The last stuff I put out was tuned down to A. There is a lot of joy to be had playing the same octave as the guitar and then introducing to low A on the bass for effect. It's something I have always enjoyed immensely since I was a kid, but it's definitely not right for all music types. Some examples...