SamPlaysBass

Great to see some old school iron still doing the heavy lifting. I’ll always commend someone choosing the gear they want to use over the ‘convenient’ alternative. This era of Acoustic looks divine. Speaking of heavy lifting, start the beer tab early and get a few mates in to carry this bad boy up the stairs. The Lexington has quite a few!

Cheers Merton, very kind of you. Bruce loves a challenge, shoot him a message!

Genuinely fantastic basses, everything I’ve ever wanted from a working, gigging bass. Beautiful details and great support from Bruce. I’m really happy with mine. Bruce’s workshop is great as well!

I owned an Ashdown CTM 100 a few years back and I’m currently using the SVT CL above. The Ashdown wanted to distort earlier and didn’t go as low and deep as the Ampeg. The Ashdown had a brilliant distorted sound, proper Live At Leeds. It didn’t have loads of low end, but I was using it through an Ampeg SVT-HE 4x10 cab which isn’t known for its low end so YMMV. The Ampeg is deep and rich. Much less keen to distort, but it does have three times the power of the CTM 100, resulting in greater headroom. Voicing wise, I prefer the Ampeg, but if I was playing in a band where bass was front and centre, the Ashdown would clinch it. I really love the Ampeg for what I play, which is rock and soul based blues.

Alex is a fantastic guitarist with a bright future ahead of him. Tasteful! Thanks for coming! It was a great gig. Thoroughly enjoyed.

Beings I started this thread a few years ago, here’s my current set up! The Sampeg SVT CL into a Fender Neo 8x10. Overkill in every sense of the word. Tone and volume for days, though I usually keep it sensible. Usually… Sounds incredible. @Bassworks JPJ4 featuring in front - a wonderful bass, outstanding craftsmanship. Hot take, but an 8x10 is far, far easier to move around than a 4x10, even up stairs. Happy to arm wrestle anyone who thinks otherwise.

Absolutely drooling over this. I've looked at the Epifani's and the Nexus heads at some point over the last 18 months and nearly pulled the trigger. Seriously good rig!

Yes. This is the only logical explanation. A modular 8x10 for under £400 🤯 😉

Epifani stuff comes up every now and then and for relatively little money. Super high quality and great sounding, even after a few years. Time to cash in on the bargains. Haha, I think it's quite funny that new-school cabs are lighter than old school heads and by quite a margin. My Ampeg SVT CL weighs about the same as my Fender Neo 8x10 and that's massive!

This is exactly the sentiment I was talking about - a perfect example of good performance from a brand that isn't flavour of the month and a huge saving to boot. Wonderful looking rig. I think Laney offer some serious bang for buck, especially when you buy direct from their eBay store. Laney stuff in general is solid, well made and sounds good. I honestly don't understand why we don't see more of them around, but I think the 'flavour' element of Barefaced, Aguilar etc. means that people will pay a premium for those brands. Nothing wrong with that, either. The 16 ohm cab thing is weird, though. Good plan to work around it. Trace stuff of that vintage is outstanding. That's a great looking GP11 and I reckon that head is probably heavier than the cab! Still, plenty of power to blow the bloody doors off, punches well above its weight. The equivalent Aguilar set up would be well over £1500+ brand new (a Tone Hammer 350 head and an SL210 cab). £150 all in is a bargain.

Does anybody else enjoy picking up gear that was flavour of the month but is now no longer as popular? I’ll start. I picked up a TC RS210 yesterday for £225. That’s on the cheaper end of the scale these days, especially considering they were around £600+ 10 or so years ago. And d’you know what? It’s fantastic. I bought it to add to my ‘small’ rig. It started off with a singular RS112 that Thomann was selling off cheap around 10 years ago. This led to me acquiring a second RS112 a few months later to make a small stack as my old Trace rig wasn’t best equipped to deal with the 4 flights of stairs to get to the main room in Clwb Ifor Bach (big up, Cardiff bassists). After a raft of heads including a Markbass LM3, a GK 700rb and a TecAmp Puma 900, I eventually picked up a tatty RH450 from Marketplace for peanuts. They sounded fantastic together - you could really tell that the RH and RS series were designed to work hand in hand. During the RH450’s tenure with me, I replaced a pot, superglued the buttons back together, changed the knobs to less broken ones and I had a rig that I was very, very pleased with; moreso than the other, more expensive heads. A good deal on NOS RH750 from PMT a few years ago led me to picking up a brand spanking new one for £350. I sold the RH450 to a mate of mine, which paid for itself and then some. I ran that rig for a few years but always fancied adding an RS210. Lo and behold, one came up yesterday about 20 minutes from my house. Done deal. I still remember the marketing videos coming out on YouTube when they were launched 13 or so years ago. I remember TC pushing this series quite hard, and the fallout on TalkBass about the 236 watt power section not being very honest about its output (it is, in fact, plenty loud enough for any situation). The design is coming up 15 years old now, and TC stopped making them long ago. In fact, TC has undergone a bit of a personality transplant and isn’t really a contender in the bass amp market any more. These were certainly flavour of the month 10+ years ago, with Mark King and Nathan East appearing all over the marketing material. Fundamentally, these were and still are fantastic amplifiers and cabinets. They’re not perfect (the coating gets a bit flaky, the knobs are made of pastry, and they’re no longer contenders in the ‘lightweight’ category) but for several hundred pounds less than a mid-tier, 500 watt head today, you can get a fantastic sounding and extremely practical stack that will happily see you through many, many gigs. You just have to wait 10 years or so… 😂 Anyone else buying up not-so-cutting edge equipment?

Fantastic, thank you! And of course, pop down at the end of any gig and have a play and a chat. I do, playing with CB warrants a fatter, warmer p-bass tone so I’ll always favour the P pickup in that scenario. I prefer passive electronics as well because I find myself constantly adjusting the EQ on every active bass I’ve ever had - I find a single tone control to dial out the highs when I need to much more useful. That could all change in the future though! The passive Bartolini PJs are really, really nice and the whole bass is a complete slap weapon. Both pickups on, it sounds incredible and has that inherent slight mid-scoop that makes it perfect for slap. It’s just as happy being a thumpy P bass though!

Found the same on my Spector, and I’m not very vertically gifted (5ft 9) so the 35” scale, top horn not being around the 12th fret and the small body made it feel like I was playing a bass that was way too big for me. Swapped it for a Stingray 5 (albeit with a 34” scale) and it feels like home again. The Spector’s B string was spectacular though, I just had the wrong body shape for it! Worst experience I’ve had of this was with a beautiful Mayones Victorious I had in lockdown. Stunning bass, beautifully made and a real work of art, but it gave me the most horrific shoulder ache. Couldn’t understand why until I plotted out on a mirror where my hand, elbow and shoulder were and compared it to when playing a Fender Jazz. My left arm was fully extended when fretting the first fret of the Mayones. Literally couldn’t go any further. Swapped it for a jazz many moons ago! I need basses for short fat people 🤷🏼‍♂️