Aidan63

Bought a tidy Cambridge Audio hi-fi amp from Dave, he brought it up to his nearest local gig to me and I took a friend along for a night out and collected it at the end of the night - nice one, many thanks My workshop has good sounds again, as I type 😍

nice job on those bushings; something you can make and sell looking good on the body too

if blending piezo and magnetic pickups there is Noll MixPot, onboard mixing preamp; I picked one up nib, off a member on here, not sure now I will be using it

I've got Spacebeams Aurora, fairly subtle but does work, does come off if not top coated but easy to add fresh, not much of a problem if you don't wrap your thumb around the neck, but if you have a neck strap in the case it will rub off in that area

Maruszczyk getting in on the act https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg9Lp5ATo7o

So what do you think Pete, would a Yamaha 434 make a pretty decent Walish base for conversion, Alder body rather than mahogany with 6 bolt laminate neck with rosewood board , though body end bridge stringing, put the neck pickup in the existing P position, bridge in the J and toward the bridge, would need another knob and maybe extend the control cavity and make a new pickguard to suit, I have one here not being played 😈 🙃

I had a Squier Jazz VM77 over 10 years ago, in natural finish, which had a light body and neck dive (iirc it was soft maple body on the natural finish model instead of basswood used in the painted models) and I stuck a few hundred grammes of wheel balancing weights on the back in the area you have shaded, did the job. I sold it with the weights still on, haven't seen it reappear since so don't know if buyer removed the weights (might have damaged the finish, as the adhesive used on wheel weights is quite strong for obvious reasons) or just played it as it was. To be fair the neck was great and it sounded like a Jazz but only weighed a shade over 7.5lb when i got it.

No, I'm just guessing but based on how many used instruments are listed for sale on Ebay and Reverb, for example the UK accounts for 1/4 of all used Bass guitar listings available to the UK on Reverb worldwide, so I'd say per head we are big consumers, lots of us have multiple instruments, we've bought and continue to buy a lot of stuff, even in these straightened times

I bet preBrexit the UK was 30%-40% of Thomann's sales and I bet it is now like 10%-15% and lower margin and more ball aches for them; you can see that price difference between them and the UK retailers has lessened, are we so desperate to always get the lowest price that we are prepared to risk issues or a crappy delivery or return, sometimes its worth paying a little bit more to support a UK retailer, whether big box shifter or real shop or like Andertons both; good deals often to be found on 2nd and 3rd page of Google if you look that far with smaller retailers

that's me told 🙃

why use plywood ?, a bit of oak or other nice hardwood will add a little bit of weight and as long as it's not all at the neck end won't destroy balance of the instrument and good for taking fixings if you leave a void for a wooden insert for the controls you could use wood to fill and make a feature of it or fit a J-Retro or similar on board preamp

I asked a few years ago and they had no plans to do flats then, it's a big investment in materials, and r and d, and machine time, it's probably the latter that is the biggest restriction, ultimately for not much in sales. If they did them I'd buy some, but probably only 1 set per instrument, in 10 years 😲

Does anyone who deals with them regularly know if they have any plans to ever do flats or tapewounds ?

I am in rural mid-Wales, so not near any big shops, so looking for a good and easy distance purchase and return if necessary option; second hand prices are often on the steep side for the instrument I am interested in, and even when reasonably priced many peeps, rightly, don't want to ship because we can't trust the couriers to do it right every time, hence the question - so far jrixn1 seems to be the only one to have experienced a return with Fender. I'm asking on here because I want to be informed before talking to their sales people who will I am sure promise the earth, but in reality might not quite live up to the advertised 'easy process' as advertised

like the gold foil jazzes were perfectly fine basses, keepers for life type ? with the online discount at the moment they are similar price to most dealers in the UK, direct selling is the model Fender and the other big boys want to go to but returns policy and implementation is crucial and I would feel a lot better if I had to return because I didn't like it to the manufacturer than to a shop, especially if the manufacturer took control of the return as that is the biggest worry when returning anything, will it arrive back at seller in 1 piece as it left you ?

most that have tried this bass find them overpriced neck heavy and offer nothing that many other cheaper PB pickup instruments offer cheaper better

and returned it, because they didn't like it ? Under distance selling regulations with their advertised 30 day easy return policy

forgot to say it has headphone out too and there's one listed in for sale for a barginous £185, nothing to do with me 😲🙃

it's as if they were designed for a high mass bridge but ended up with bbot instead as people expect tradition from Fender (or because they are cheaper, thus more profit) which ever bridge they fit Fender always have the description big up the choice made

watch out for used Phil Jones Double four, especially the earlier version with the external power supply as they can be run using a power pack, that's what I use for practice, 70w, sounds great, works with double bass: decent tone controls, passive and active in, very small, very portable can be used with a bluetooth dongle as a general music listening machine as it has an aux in; there was one for sale at BassDirect complete with powerpack and carrybag for less than £300 a few months ago, was only there for a couple of days as it was a great deal, the combos on their own often go for around £2-250 used

The problem is if you as a small business simply publish your email address online you have to deal with masses of unsolicited scammer type emails, but if you set up a contact form it works well initially so you think great, cracked it 😀 and then as the software used to make the website (wordpress for example) gets updated to help prevent scammers and as the isps constantly update their defences to reduce spam the contact form becomes unreliable and is often blocked by the isp, or ends up in spam. So you end up having to do lots of maintenance of the site and testing and updating, which is fine if you are in the IT business but if you just need a presence for the non word of mouth customers to find and contact you then it has become increasingly a pain, thanks to criminals all around the world and AI. I have found it gives best result if you call companies where possible, they will usually give you a better email address to use if they can't deal with the enquiry wholly by phone, like fred @thebiz.com where fred is the actual person who can sort your enquiry out. The biggest companies are often the worse for contact form not working, maybe because they assign that inbox to someone who leaves the company and they don't reassign the function or have a catch all set up to monitor incoming mail where the 'duty' person everyday checks the stuff that is in the spam filter or hasn't been final delivered. But big companies publish the phone number and have a reception/telephonist person who can route your enquiry generally.

nice work - can you use it to make a B90 😉