Russ

Nate's a great player. He's been getting some good gigs lately too. He toured with Devin Townsend a year or two back, and he's just been announced as the bass player on Porcupine Tree's upcoming reunion tour.

Just realised I've never actually posted a pic of my three. Let's remedy that.

@MertonSo far so good. Not had a chance to gig or rehearse with it yet, it's been in its bag most of the time, but I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Is it just the CHB and SWB basses that are going to be made in the UK from now on? Is the Retrovibe range going to continue? Kinda had my eye on a Tony Butler Retrovibe as a nice modding platform - thinking of modding it into a Rick/Jazz/Wal hybrid by adding Herrick or Rautia multicoil pickups and a Lusithand filter preamp.

Thought it might be Ben & co. I was struggling to think of many other guitar manufacturers in the West Country!

BC is proving to be a rather good advert for Ibanez EHBs as of late. They are great instruments, and I love how unbelievably light they are. They look absolutely tiny on me though!

Stunning. Are those tiny white LEDs in the fingerboard, or Luminlays or something? Or is it a trick of the light?

Mine is under 9lbs... just. 8lbs 12oz.

My 2007 Bongo 5 weighs about 10lbs and is a bit of a boat anchor. My 2018 fretless 5 is much, much lighter, with the newer lightweight aluminium hardware, and tips the scales at a little over 7lbs. My most recent Bongo (a sixer) weighs a little under 9lbs, and I reckon most of that extra weight is from the neck. If you're going custom, a lot of builders are using a timber called paulowina as a decent lightweight replacement for ash - I know ACG, Sei, Sandberg and several others now offer it as a body wood option. I've heard good and bad things - the tone is supposed to be good, but it apparently dings quite easily.

Take the scratchplate off (or get a clear one) and the whole bog seat vibe goes away.

Agree with everyone here who points out that there's absolutely no need to tune down that low. There's no audio equipment short of an actual PA system with subs that can reproduce a 23.1Hz fundamental - all you'll end up hearing is the first harmonic anyway. For instance, if you want to talk heavy, D!ck Lofgren from Meshuggah plays in the same octave as the guitars - their lowest notes are A or A# so just a step or half-step down from the regular low B. Just EQ it nice and low with a bump in the low mids.

Still playing with it. It's good. And my BF Big Twin II is a good pairing for it, since it's got the power handling capacity to properly do it justice. Regarding what I was saying about the input monitoring, an active/passive switch might have been nice. I was using my MM Bongo (VERY hot output) and it was distorting slightly at about 50% input gain. My J-Retro-equipped Jazz and my Spector were super-clean at that level. Did the A/B test with my Mesa WD-800. The Mesa isn't as loud, the tone is a little smoother thanks to the valve preamp, and I really appreciate its highpass filter control to dial out the super-lows. More versatile EQ too. But it's nowhere near as punchy as the Trace. The Trace is, for want of a better expression, more lively and feels "bouncier", if that's actually a thing. One other little niggle though - I've just packed it away in its gig bag and the bag has a carrying handle but no shoulder strap. But at least there's room for the amp, the footswitch and a bunch of cables.

OK, first impressions: This thing is LOUD. And - let's get this out of the way - it does sound like a Trace, especially with the pre-shape engaged. It's got that characteristic scoopy punch in spades. The compressor is great, possibly a little heavy-handed, but I recall the original SMX compressor was no different. The volume goes down noticeably when it's dialled anything above around 10 o'clock. EQ las a lot of flexibility, the two mid controls seem to affect quite a wide bandwidth, so there's a lot of sounds in there. I like the footswitch, but it might have been nice to have a cordless Bluetooth one - the MIDI cable kinda gets in the way. Rack ears are cheesy. Only thing I'm not liking so far is there's no input gain monitoring LED or anything like that. It'd be nice to see if I'm overloading the preamp. Might have been nice to incorporate that into the LED that lights the gain knob. Going to A/B it against my Mesa WD-800 next.

It's here. I'll post some thoughts on it later once I've had a bit of a play.

The head has shipped - I should have it Wednesday or Thursday, so I'll post some impressions once I've had a bit of time to play with it. I'm actually quite excited - really hoping it's not a letdown.

I've travelled a lot, and had various issues with neck warp on some of my basses, to the point where I've had to have the necks on a couple of my basses "reset", or, in one case, had it refretted using compression fretting to straighten the neck out. Here in the US, the variation in humidity is crazy, from bone dry in winter to sopping, walking-into-a-wet-towel territory in summer, so graphite necks that don't move are very attractive to someone like me. I was gutted when Moses shut up shop, as they offered replacement graphite necks for all different sorts of basses, from the standard P/J style, all the way up to replacement necks for Ibanez 6-strings. I was going to commission them to make a graphite neck for my 5-string Bongo, but, by the time I had the cash together, they'd stopped making them! As for the traditional/modern thing, I've tried out P-basses with flats that just happened to have a Status neck, and they sound like a P-bass should, just a little clearer and with a bit more of a "bump" in the low-mids. To anyone in the audience, they wouldn't notice the difference.

The 15" sub was a powered cab, wasn't it? I think it added another 300W. I remember playing through the 600w stack back in the day at the Bass Centre a few times and being quite impressed (especially when I found out it was made by Carlsbro!), but they obviously never really took off. Chris May from Overwater (who was also involved in its development) reckoned that Carlsbro had no idea how to market it, plus apparently Carlsbro's founder died a short time after they were released, sending the company into administration, and, when they returned to market, they dropped the range. A rehearsal room I used to occasionally visit had some of the more recent Carlsbro bass gear in it, and it wasn't bad. Incredibly "vanilla" though.

Yep, from Croydon, but living in the US right now. I'm sure we'll move back at some point, but probably not to the Cronx again! I ordered from Sweetwater, but the one unit they had in stock must have sold while I was placing the order! So I guess I have to wait.

So... I've ordered one. I'll post my thoughts once it arrives and I've had a chance to play with it a bit. I'm not particularly good at the whole video thing, but I might have a go.

I'd be surprised if they did, but it's certainly possible. Most of the variance of Class D amps comes from the preamp. I've had an Ashdown RM-800 and a Mesa WD-800, which I believe share almost identical power amps, but sound completely different.

It's built by the people at Peavey, but the actual Class D amplifier is going to be the same type of off-the-shelf Chinese item that is in pretty much all Class D amps, regardless of manufacturer, or place of manufacture. I'd say it's still a Trace if it implements design and sonic elements that are characteristic of earlier Trace gear, regardless of who is producing it. It certainly looks the part - lots of green and backlighting. Supposedly the character of the EQ is very Trace-like, it's got the classic pre-shape included, the dual-band compressor (working on the same frequencies) and the pre-post EQ switch. No graphic, but that's not a dealbreaker, since everyone seems to set it as full smiley or full frowny anyway. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, basically...

Seems I was wrong about it not being out until June - they're out now. Sweetwater in the US is selling them already, so I'm sure they'll be making their way over the pond soon enough.

$999, apparently, So £999. And apparently won't be available until the middle of June (which is fine, that's my birthday, and it can be a nice present-to-self. )

I played some fretless on my band's album from last year. I think it turned out quite well. No fancy video, alas, just a lyric vid. The bass is a fretless Musicman Bongo 5.