Basilpea

Bought a set of “Honey” strings which went badly wrong - no fault of the seller I hasten to add. This seller went above and beyond to remedy the situation, he refunded my money after return of the strings and is now dealing with the manufacturer. Can not recommend highly enough, excellent guy. Thanks.Milo

I've also written to Rick Turner for advice so I'll see if they respond.

Yes I do have some of these but only about 5 or 6, so I may not have a suitable colour, I'll check it out, probably worth buying some more if necessary. I'll let you know how it goes. From YouTube, the pro's seem to set some store by using Superglue ss a filler, then levelling with a shielded razor blade, then sanding and polishing locally With multiple grades of wet/dry. That sounds like the sort of thing I should try on an old piece of polished wood first.

This is a new one on me, I've not heard about the soldering iron trick. I'm a relatively new member, was it the subject of a previous post?

I discovered a horrible gouge on the front of my Rick Turner tonight (see photos). The family were here today but needless to say nobody else knows anything about it- it's been unanimously agreed that consistent with my senility I must have done it without realising it. I'm not that precious about these things, but it couldn't be in a worse place so I'd like to try and mitigate it if possible without spending a fortune, so the question is do I take it to a luthier or have a go myself? I did think about carefully painting in some clear lacquer, but would it need some form of colourant first (the wood looks like spruce)? The one thing I don't want to do is make it worse. Advice from one of you bass genii out there would be most appreciated.

Thanks TPJ, that's really useful. Also the pics with the bass on it give much more idea of the size. Thanks for taking the trouble to do it.

Any chance you could let me know the height of the flanks that the bass sits on? Just wondering if I would have to retract the end pin in order to stand the bass on it every time.

See later post

I would have bought that one, except I prefer not to have lines on the fingerboard. Love the 'f hole', and the walnut looks great.

I think you have more stock than Rob Allen does according to his website.

Yes it's certainly subtle compared to the Warwicks I've been used to, at least I know it's not faulty now. Gain up and volume down on the bass does give a much less confusing sound on the 'phones. Thanks

The tone control on my MB2 is a preset accessible through a hole in the rear cover.

P.S. Comments/advice on the above would be gratefully received.

I was idly doing my daily trawl of the web for a Rob Allen, when there on page 5 of Google one popped up. It was up in the wild and woolly badlands of Lancashire but serendipitously I was going near there anyway the following week. I got to the shop and found it to be an immaculate example, although unfortunately without the original Rob Allen case, it had a Hiscox one instead. They had priced it rather optimistically, then discounted it but not enough for my liking, so we had a conversation about the price and eventually came to one that we could both live with - I emerged smiling from the emporium with something of a spring in my step (not something that happens very often these days). This was all just a few days prior to the CV19 lockdown. I've since had ample opportunity to put it through it's paces. I must first say the fit and finish of everything is faultless, one thing I noticed is the tone control appears to make almost no difference. Not sure if that's normal or if it's faulty, but the effect of min to max is almost imperceptible to my ears. The other thing I've noticed is when silent practicing through headphones (I just use a Focusrite 6i6 mixer to add a backing from iReal Pro/youtube/Sightreading Factory etc) there is so much going on in the harmonics & mwah department, I almost find it difficult to identify the fundamental. It is of course different when run through an amp & cab (Tonehammer 500 or ABM500 + Barefaced Big Twin), I'm wondering if the headphone set-up is a bit too "Hi-fi", the headphones are Sennheiser HD600's. I have found the best way to mitigate this problem is with a Nordymute. Changing the strings to Rotosound RS88's did make a big difference, but I think that's going away from what the bass should sound like, and the important thing is not what it sounds like while I'm practicing. Haven't had the chance to try it on a gig yet. So no doubt you are wondering why am I selling the 5 string when I have just bought a 4 string? Well, just prior to this all happening, I located a Rick Turner Renaissance 5 string, and agreed to buy it, but was not able to pick it up before the lockdown, so there will be another NBD just as soon as I'm allowed to make the totally unnecessary journey to collect it. Meanwhile I have enough to be getting on with. Not sure if I'll sell my fretless Starbass 4, I may just keep it as a spare as it's like an old friend, or a comfy old pair of slippers. Here are some more photos - not one of my strongpoints but hopefully better than the others I posted.