Doctor J

Was Project Fear not the creepy demonisation of the EU?

Sepultura - Quadra Still pushing the boundaries, a really creative and aggressive effort.

And add "SEE VOO PLAY, MISS YOUR!!!" at the end. It's nice to be nice.

Wait a minute, that's not what it said on the brochure!

Reducing competition seldom drives prices down, usually the opposite, but, you never know, there's a first time for everything.

I've bought basses from the US and Japan over the years from private sellers. When they arrived, I paid Import Duty and VAT on the value of the goods plus the cost of postage. It was all presented to me as one lump sum due, but usually worked out at roughly an additional 25%. There are different thresholds at play, depending on the item being imported, where you might come in under a taxable value but still liable for Import Duty.

If you look at the light shining on the headstock, that's a lumpy spray-can finish, clear as day.

Just to counsel caution at this point, if you're caught trying to defraud The Man it won't end well for you. Import duty is a bitter pill to swallow but fines are no fun at all. Also, consider that asking a stranger, the one selling the instrument to you, to knowingly declare the value lower to help you defraud The Man isn't a good place to find yourself and also makes the seller an accomplice in the fraud attempt. Shops will not mark down values and it's a lot to ask a private seller to do. Consider that we've got a big thread running about a chap trying to defraud others at the moment and that making statements on a public forum about efforts to defraud aren't going to be the brightest things you have ever done.

It doesn't matter what I call it. It's the law.

The obligation is on the buyer to comply with tax laws. If you intentionally try to circumvent these laws by having something marked as a gift or declare the value as lower than it actually is, that is fraud, as Steve says.

Before Brexit you paid your local VAT rate from Thomann, not the German VAT rate. Depending on the business' sales per annum to that country, if they exceeded 80 grand you pay your local rate, the tax rate of the recipient not the VAT rate of the seller. Thomann comfortably exceeded 80k PA sales to the UK so all UK residents paid the UK VAT rate in accordance with EU law.

You might be better off creating a new thread in the Bass Guitars section than resurrecting a 10 year old thread here.

Serial number: 8FX2062 Production year: October 1998 (serial: 2062) Made in Japan. (F is an internal factory code) Courtesy of https://guitarinsite.nl/serienummers-yamaha_eng.php

Nino used Sadowsky knobs on most of his basses, IIRC, but that it has push/pull to engage the passive circuit is what leads me to think there's a Sadowsky pre in there.

I would guess it's a Sadowsly pre, but you'll only know by popping the lid.

If the ethics bother you then you should embrace bandcamp. Over 60% of the money goes to the artist. There is no other platform which even comes close. Plus, you can download purchases in lossless and wav formats so sound quality should not keep you awake at night either. If the music is good enough, you'll find a way to come back to it

Define "better". If you want something which sounds as close to what the band and producer were aiming for in the studio as commercially possible without going into super high-resolution digital audio, CD without doubt. If you want something with fuzzy warm low end and a lack of detail which some find pleasing to the ear and others claim is pleasing to the ear, then records. Do you have an impressive beard?

I like them a lot, nice variety in there, not just the usual mundane P's and J's 👍

This is what the people wanted. Consider control taken back.

As far as I'm aware, with the Global Shipping Program, you ship the item to a local ebay hub who ship it on to the recipient. At least, the last thing I received through it had been shipped to an ebay address first, as I found when peeling off the shipping labels. As ebay are then the ones shipping into the destination country, they pay the duty at that point. It's not perfect, I suppose but, as a buyer, it is nice to know the final cost when you're buying rather than an educated guess until the postie arrives with an invoice.

If Reverb don't have something like the Global Shipping Program set up then you will pay the courier when it arrives in your country.

Ebay have had the Global Shipping Program for years. Essentially, you pay the import duty to them and they pay The Man, rather than you paying the courier or the Post Office. Either way, you pay. It is used, in this case, to simply illustrate that import duty is being charged for second-hand goods moving between the EU and UK.

And it looks like it applies to items under £390 too

Just browsing through ebay and they are applying import duty to items leaving the UK going to here in the sunny EU so, obviously, the same will apply for second-hand goods going the other way. Ah well, the FS section was beautiful while it lasted.

Hate crime?