FDC484950

4 hours ago, Kiwi said:

It's actually a strategy to test interest out.  They can monitor the number of watchers and, if they're serious about selling, they'll lower the price for a quick sale.  Alternatively they will hang on an outrageous price to hook someone who is desperate and willing to pay above the odds...thereby setting a new precedent for others to use as the basis for yet an even more outrageous price.  It worked for Wal basses.

It’s a curious strategy with something that although interesting and reasonably rare, is a niche instrument (6 string with awful upper fret access, very tight spacing, and almost definitely north of 5Kg). Wal have a certain cachet that they got very soon after Pete the fish hung up his tools, and their unique electronics and celebrity users (Paul McCartney, Geddy Lee, JMJ etc) helped fuel the mystique. This seller may have some rich desperate clown hit buy but it’s more likely to sink a fair bit below £2K before it shifts.

Speaking as someone who hardly ever puts pen to paper for anything it may be worth highlighting that if you do want to use software, Musescore is totally free and better than many paid for packages (I’ve had Coda and Sibelius and I’m perfectly happy with Musescore for my needs). The massive plus point is that you can hear what you’ve written, including chord symbols, and can download and use other peoples’ scores. 

On 17/08/2022 at 10:32, AndyTravis said:

Yeah that’s the one.

 

the six is now at 2500, obviously nobody wanted it at 2900 🫣

The one on Reverb? I get the impression that many sellers on there are in dreamland about what their bass is worth. It was a steal but I picked up a Dingwall AB2 6 that started up there at £3,500. I paid just under £1800 for it in the end!

Burners, especially a 6, are a bit tricky to price. They’re not the boutique US elite quality, but I’ve heard great things about playability. Still wouldn’t pay a penny more than £1500 for it

Better photos as promised, wearing the pearl pickguard, including the tiny dings.

That seems to work very nicely. I don’t generally like turquoise but with the NS shape and all black hardware it looks great.

Needless to say, if you do want a 5, the B string is incredible. And I say that as a Dingwall owner - it very much holds it own and it’s so tight sounding I’ve stuck with EB slinkies as it simply doesn’t need a tapered B. EB has worked their sorcery on this bass too as despite it being super light, balance, even seated without a strap, is perfect. I’m not even sure why I’m selling it to be honest and seem to be doing a good job of talking myself out of it 😆

I’ve had this lovely bass for a few months. It’s a stunning instrument - the charging green finish has a subtle sparkle (let’s be honest - it’s British Racing Green!) and it’s an absolute featherweight at 3.7Kg. Nut is 44.5mm and string spacing at the bridge is 17.5mm

Condition is excellent. Two dings - one on the top of the headstock, the other on the upper bout, which is finish only and not down to the wood.

Comes complete with an immaculate MM hard case and 3 pickguards to suit every mood - off white, black and a brand new OEM MM pearl white (the extravagance!)

It has all of the Special series appointments - super light tuners and bridge, 18V circuit and neodymium pickup.

I have suitable packaging so shipping to mainland UK only at cost is fine.

Indicative pics below - better ones coming tomorrow.

Price is a frankly eye popping £1550. No offers thank you - it’s much cheaper than any recently advertised specials and the Green is pretty darn rare

No trades, thank you.

Jazz pickup: 94mm x 18mm. Pickup holes are 40mm apart centre to centre.

Precision pickup: 68mm inc ears or 56mm for just the pickup housing x 27mm each. Holes are 60mm apart centre to centre.

5 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

I've just noticed that the scratch plates go over the control knobs which are fixed on the bass. What a great idea that is. I don't think I've ever had a bass with that before.

I also noticed that it has Luminlay front and side dots. Brough it in from the garden after taking the above photos and it was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Given the amount of basses that have passed through Hackenbacker Towers over the years, I'm stunned I've never had these before.

 

 

It is a great idea! The only other bass I’ve seen it on was my Music Man Big Al. Shame more makers don’t do it but I guess it’s cheaper and easier to anchor the pots on the plate than into the cavity?

Superb condition, complete with instructions and pickup screws. Boxed. Price includes UK postage

9 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Problem is that it just shows it left Poland but doesn't say its arrived in UK so its kinda in Limbo according to the tracking.

From what Parcelforce tell me it wont show anything on their system until it has gone thru customs and is allocated a GB tracking tag which i'm guessing just means they change the PL to UK but the number remains the same.

Dave

Not necessarily. I’ve had foreign EMS purchases turn up in the UK and go through Parcelforce ending up with a completely different tracking number. They don’t seem to be set up well to handle imports - DHL and UPS both emailed me about customs charges before the item was in the UK so once it did turn up it was delivered next working day.

Taking reviews as just one aspect of the magazine, a monthly printed or even online article with someone describing what a bass/amp/effects pedal is like with a couple of pics vs a detailed YouTube vid is a no-brainer, as is just about everything print media related. Bass Player was quite interesting initially, way back in the 90s but as music has increasingly been made with machines rather than instruments, and a career in music playing bass has largely disappeared and been replaced with hobbyist interests (not a criticism, just a fact of life), by even the late 90s/early 00s I’d given up buying it, let alone subscribing. I have in the last couple of years stopped my only remaining print subscription (for a magazine in another area of interest) because better 4G/5G/WiFi and the improvement of content online beats the printed mag hands down. Plus all that paper going in the recycling bin after a couple of months because much of the content is read once and bin was rather a waste!

Given there are basically no US Fenders for sale in the UK (well the odd ex demo and one or two left over, probably dogs no-one bought), Fender UK has pretty much nothin available and even Thomann are quoting several months, then they won’t be servicing that demand for a while to come. Maybe they are prioritising the US as Ernie Ball did for a time (some stock seems to be coming through recently after a long drought)?

What he does is incredible. The amount of hours and persistence to practice, practice, practice is amazing. His execution of some very tricky stuff is flawless. Most of what he plays has a musical point rather than just showing off technical ability.

Those criticising need to understand that being a gigging music, or being in a band, is an older and rapidly disappearing option for a viable music career. YouTube and other media gives people the opportunity to do things and make many that would never have been an option via the traditional band or even session musician route.

Personally, his videos impress me but nothing more, and I don’t subscribe to his channel or watch many because I find him irritating and the result not musical enough for me, but then I’m one of those old farts who did all of that.

Would I rather be doing what he is doing than my day job for my income? If I could live on it - hell yes!

Just now, BigRedX said:

 

IMO the sorts of failings you describe would be unacceptable on any instrument nowadays irrespective of where it was built and what price point it sold at.

Totally. If Thomann can flog Harley Benton basses for £150 with no substantial issues there’s no excuse anymore. Problem is some of these issues crop up on much more expensive instruments as well. Not wishing to bash Fender as I have played some corkers, but I’ve sat in a shop with 10 new Fenders and 2 were excellent, 5 OK and the other 3 needed a full setup, overhaul, fret and nut dressing or even binning. If you can put 3 or 4 credit cards into a neck pocket gap what else did they screw up!

To be fair the G&L L-2500 Tribute I bought and shortly afterward returned was nicely finished but like a lot of budget instruments (Sire included) when you looked a bit closer you could see it was built to a price - poor finishing in the nooks and crannies, sharp fret edges, slightly uneven fretting, nut not cut evenly or deepen enough, some electronics gremlins (MFD pickups are very hot so can exacerbate any EM interference or shielding deficiencies) and it weighed an absolute ton - 5.4Kg I think. The Fullerton Deluxe version I tried was definitely much better made and finished, although the shielding wasn’t much cop. I’ve seen one or two other Tributes in a shop and they were similar. Perfectly workmanlike and no problem to gig with I expect but not good enough for me. I think the only brand I can honestly state has consistently excellent at any price is Yamaha 

56 minutes ago, karlfer said:

The cynic in me wonders if the cheaper to produce Mexico range will replace the US Professional & Performance range, leaving Corona to produce American Vintage & Custom Shop?

I had a look at the Player and Player Plus series when I was in GuitarGuitar last week and they were basically identical quality-wise. Paint finish, joinery, pickups, hardware, weight, feel, sound. Given they’re now about the same price the US equivalents were 10 years ago, it sounds about right.

5 hours ago, OliverBlackman said:

For the record, I do not need a new P bass as my £300 Mexican fender from 2006 is fantastic. But the point is that prices are out of reach for some and if I was 16 now I would only be able to look at Harley Benton’s and Squier if I wanted to buy new. A Fender US P bass was the gigging standard so I used it as an example.
 

Second hand values have basically followed. About 10 years ago I sold a Fender AM deluxe jazz V for around £500 which is around what I paid for it and a MM stingray for similar amount, about half what I paid for it. I’d get over £1k for each now.

It’s also worth mentioning that very inexpensive basses are now generally speaking way better quality than 20-30 years ago. I remember trying a Chinese squier back in the late 90s and it was firewood, as were many sub-£200 basses back then. 

1 minute ago, NancyJohnson said:

I'd be incredibly cautious about buying instruments as an investment, certainly where the instrument is mass produced.

 

I'm not currently on the market for something I can flip for profit, but I do have c.£30k in premium bonds that my wife has said I can draw from if something came up.

 

I follow Hamer... specifically three digit serial# Standards.  Gibson.  Hmm. I nearly pulled the trigger on a Gibson Theodore (could have almost doubled my investment in under a year), missed the Slash 4 Les Paul.  Suspect that if the Gibson Kirk Hammett  Flying V happens - and it's a limited one - I'll buy one  (or two) of those and just stick it/them under the bed.

What’s the Cary Grant quote? “They say money talks. All it’s ever said to me is goodbye”

2 hours ago, Burns-bass said:

Import duties, raw material costs, wage increases, transport costs, lower production volumes…

 

Anyone involved in selling stuff can tell you how costs have increased across the board.

 

Moaning about how much a Fender costs is the same as my dad complaining that a Mars bar cost 9p in 1965.

 

So what?

 

Given Fender has laid off 300 people they’re hardly making a mint from building basses and guitars.

One might say that moaning is the purpose of this forum

Not sure you can compare cost of a bar of chocolate over 57 years with cost of a big ticket bass over 14. However you are right that they’re certainly isolated in doing so - many bass brands have gone up by a similar amount in that time. Scarcity of good instrument grade lumber that’s light enough not to result in a boat anchor bass is one of the biggest issues. Whatever the cause, it’s likely Fender is laying off people not because they don’t make a profit out of these instruments, but they’re simply not selling enough (and probably wouldn’t even if they were £1500 retail instead of £2K). It’s notable how few shops in the UK have any non-custom shop US Fenders in stock, so it suggest supply chain problems are still very much an issue.

Just for clarity (instruments only as other items may have slightly different duty rates):

Cost of goods plus shipping in source currency, converted to Sterling at the HMRC prevailing monthly exchange rate (which is usually conservative and therefore unfavourable)

- then add import duty as 3.7% of the Sterling figure above

- then add VAT at 20%
- then add any courier handling fee for collecting said charges (to my knowledge every courier does this)

So yes, you are paying duty on the goods and the shipping and VAT on the goods, shipping and duty! Of course the above applies whether the bass is new or used and the VAT threshold is so low you’ll always be paying it.

I’ve imported from the US and outside the EU many times where items aren’t available here, but because of Sterling exchange rate it’s now very unattractive.
Shipping charges have also rocketed - typically I was paying around $100 from the US for a bass in hard case, but now it’s more like $300.

The same applies to the EU now, except for places like Thomann where you’re paying a to-the-door Sterling price. Other retailers will deduct local VAT on new goods but their schemes don’t appear to be identical to the UK - for example in Germany they use a calculator that seems to deduct about 14% off the price, even though German VAT is currently 19%.

So the long and the short of it after all that waffle is what @BigRedX said - it’s basically not worth it.

No longer available.

I’d go with the prevailing opinion that there may just be enough Fenders in the world for anyone who wants to own one. There’s tons for sale here, on Reverb and eBay. £2k for a US standard bass when they were £800ish in 2008 is probably inevitable from a production standpoint (California is hardly the cheapest place to build instruments, or to live). G&L seem to be able to knock out similar instruments are similar prices, albeit at a much lower volume. Ernie Ball went down the boutique route for US made instruments and probably generate the bulk of their instrument revenue now from the Sterling line. 

Are these Gotoh GB7? I had these on my Zon, which was a bit neck heavy, and replaced with Resolite (GB350) tuners. Quite a lot lighter (I think the lightest in production, mine weighed about 37g each) and very nice thy were too (if a touch hard to find). Even though they’re resin they felt much higher quality than the GB7s.

On 03/08/2022 at 21:15, javi_bassist said:

It's finally here!! My BB414 has arrived. I must say that I am very surprised about the quality. It hadn't been played for some years (according to the seller) so I did a setup, some lemon oil, new string, intonation... Now it's perfect. It's a little bit heavy, but it plays like a dream. And it sounds really really good. I will probably change the bridge and the tuners (one of them is bent a little bit, even though still works) and I will add a pickguard. 

 

 

Gotta love metallic orange but please god don’t ruin it with an ugly pickguard. So much cleaner without!