FDC484950

Yes I am. Some of the HH 5s are going for £3200 and they have been £2200 for a long time. There is no “retail” price. This is how much the new ones are now and the previous ones were even this time last year (I have been looking at the Stingray Special for a while). The Bongos are a similar price (e.g. 6HH is now £3549 and when I enquired about one about 18 months ago and it was approx £2500.

Oh lord. Those P5s in mild green and red look great. Just think; the same price for a V7 5 plus a P5 as bottom of the range US Fender or Indonesian Sterling... and probably just as good quality-wise. Its astonishing what you can get for so little money.

That’s all well and good but not really sure how any of it has got anything to do with the prices shooting up (and far more so in the UK than in the US) for essentially the same product. Would you pay £1000 more than two months ago for the same instrument in a different (but not necessarily better) paint job?

Yes I have the same experience every time I have international shipping via UPS. I get the feeling that their handheld scanners don’t work very well and tracking events appear in batches. If you compare with more modern/accurate tracking systems it’s pretty pointless really - and their explanation of what each tracking event name is hilarious.

Let’s hope the restrictions are temporary and once things pick up they offer a full custom service in terms of woods, finish, electronics etc. That would at least offer some differentiation from the cheaper Sterling line and go some way towards justifying the custom shop pricing. I’m not going to hold my breath on that, however...

Apparently they’re not even being given a choice - they just get an allocation of numbers each quarter but not specific colours so can’t even tell customers what’s coming ahead of time. As you say, you used to be able to do a customer order for something specific. However in the chat on the MM site about their new models, someone asked about a bass in a particular colour, and the cryptic response was that the colour is discontinued but contact customer service if they have a cool idea??

Actually that’s but currently the case. On speaking to a dealer there are only stock instruments available in 2021. It may change in 2022 but it sounds like very limited stock this year.

It is worth mentioning that instrument prices for many manufacturers have been on an upward trajectory for quite a while. Even Fender. If you take the original American Standard P bass from around 2008, it went for about £830. Today a virtually identical bass is almost exactly double the price at £1650. I’ve had both a 2008 original and now a Professional (v1) and I cannot tell the difference. However, I don’t get the Ford/Aston Martin comparison. There are tons of stingrays around and the for sale section always has a few. MM has the Sterling series like Fender has Mexican, player and Squier ranges, and at that price point, as others have said, that’s where most of the action is likely to happen for MM in future. They definitely upped their game with the Specials, but having played one, TBH I’d prefer a regular, more production-line instrument as they produced previously at £1500-1600 tops. It’s easy to forget that many indie, hard rock and metal bands not long ago had a Stingray-wielding bass player (as well as top level session guys like Pino and Tony Levin, two of my all-time favourite bass players). I’d be more than happy for them to go custom shop, so long as the pricing represents the choices on offer. For £3K+ I’d expect to choose a wider range of colours, fingerboard, matching headstock, pickups (H, HS, HH, even Big Al setup would be cool) and hardware colour. 8 fixed colour ways on what is essentially the same bass for a lot more money is sadly unrealistic.

In true Internet forum tradition... that sofa needs a tidy

As a sometime studio bassist, it’s perfectly possible to play what you think is a great take, hear it back... and it sucks! The problem with recording is that every tiny hesitation, uneven attack or slightly fluffed note gets magnified a hundred times. It’s not playing to a click or quantised but something that fits the groove and feels right. IMHO a lot of “band” musicians often only listen to themselves, or maybe the drummer if they’re a bass player. Good musicians are listening to everything - am I bang on with the snare and the rhythm guitar? Can I hear a flam between the bass and the kick? Are the hits clean? Before I recorded in studios I learned along to tracks on the radio - problem there is you have the actual, in time and great sounding bass part already. So if you do get a chance, record yourself, and often. It does get better with practice

BassDirect’s website has all the UK pricing.

And just for sh*ts and giggles... a Bongo 6 HH is £3,549!

I think the point of the OP’s thread was to indicate that used sales from EU to UK and vice versa will now attract VAT, when this wasn’t the case previously, and that BC should indicate this on ads. I think this has been discussed already on a number (ever-growing) threads on Thomann, Br***t and new/used sales from 2021-on.

Setting any politics aside, it is a shame to lose access to all those fantastic used basses for sale in the rest of Europe that are now unrealistic with 20% VAT added - and vice versa

Um, becuase... they play it in the Congo?

On a slightly sideways note am I the only one thinking the sellers on here specifying collection only during a hard lockdown are at best being unrealistic? Last time I looked, collecting a bass isn’t one of the essential reasons for travel (or maybe it shows that government is made up entirely of non-musicians ).

I get what you’re saying. However, we are talking about a specific piece of music and how to get around it. If you have something you can’t play you have no choice but to slow it down until you can, then work out the bit that’s actually causing the problem and fix it. It’s usually either because you don’t actually know the line off by heart, or there’s a technical limitation stopping you from playing it. This is naturally abstracting the problem away from the original piece of music, but when it comes to fingering there are lines that fall in the hand and others that are really awkward (like playing 4ths across all 4 strings, you could just barre across neck, or use index, middle, ring and little finger to fret each note, but both are pretty nasty at any kind of tempo). So, rather than “meaningless” exercises, which I absolutely agree aren’t really of any musical value, I prefer to think of it as a technical musical challenge. Try a few options and pick the one that feels best slowly, and still feels the best when you speed it up. What you’re doing by repeating things over and over is committing the muscle memory of learning the line into your long-term memory The beauty of this (like any language) is that once you’ve got that fingering down, it’s ready for you next time you need to play that same line. Many musicians learn the major scale early on - you never just play it up and down on a gig but how often do you use bits of it in bass lines? All the time. Back to the OP - there are various ways to tackle the song - index, middle, ring and little finger for Root, 5, octave, 9 (and the reverse back down the line) falls under the hand quite nicely but it depends where you are. If Root is Bb on the A string (1st fret) you may want to try something else as the frets are quite far apart; if on the V chord where the 9 is a b9, higher up in the neck index, ring, ring, little finger might well. Whatever fingering option you choose, start slow with clarity, efficiency and accuracy, and speed should come naturally.

Actually I'm kind of surprised they do trades given the amount of new stock they hold. I guess it's a tough one - depends what you wanted to buy, how much margin they have in that, and what they think they could sell yours for. I've only traded one bass in the last few years and Bass Direct offered me more than I had it up on for sale at (and that was before it was reduced twice and then withdrawn!) - but maybe the stock more high end goods so can command a higher price?

I think you need to count the tuners...

Yes I had an SR3006e from the early 2000s and the parametric mid was quite good. Fast forward to one of the earliest SR5006 basses with the 3v preamp and the EQ was pretty much useless, I even changed the batteries as I thought they were dying.

Paul bought a couple of sets of Super Slinkies from me. As easy a transaction as you can get

Should have bought the set I had for sale - would have been cheaper

Don’t worry. I had the exact same experience with UPS during Christmas with a parcel from the US. It took less than 24 hours from pickup in the US to arrival in the UK.., then a week to “clear customs” (they asked what woods were in the bass, I guess trying to rule out Brazilian Rosewood). Within 48Hrs of being cleared they were delivered. Tracking still said the parcel was in Stansted I think they’re doing their best and aside from a slightly dodgy tracking system (they could learn a thing or two from DPD - 1hr time slots, name and pic of driver, prompts when your delivery is soon) they’ve not let me down in 20+ years of sending and receiving basses... yet!