SumOne

I'm sure an SP1 is great, and I might treat myself - but I think I'll feel like I've paid a bit much if they rise much above £2k. Not least as the D-Roc 5 is about £1,750 and I can't see many (any?!) reasons the SP1 should cost more to produce. (the D-Roc often being about 4.4kg rules that out for me though). With quite a big multiscale range from Ibanez (EHB, SR, BTB), and a lots of others others doing it (Cort, Spector, Maruszczyk, Hils, Sire, Strandberg) at least there is a fair amount of choice/competition nowadays. I think Dingwall are onto something good with he SP1 doing the more traditional passive P Bass thing though for the sound and look and front jack etc. almost all of the multiscale competition has gone the ultra-modern route.

Bass Direct ticks a lot of boxes for me: Fair part excahnge prices, great selection of basses to try out in a friendly place, and it is often only shop in the UK to get certain basses.

Bax seems to be back. For places like GAK and PMT with physical shops mostly making their £ selling mass produced new instruments then they can't compete on price with big online only shops for price, so what's their selling point? Even if people want to test the instruments, they can just do that in the shop then buy online elsewhere. And even that isn't really necessary as all online sales can be returned for refund within a month. I don't think they've adapted with the times with internet, return laws, big automated warehouses, cheap delivery. We've seen it with shops like Our Price and HMV going under while shops like Rough Trade have expanded. They do in shop signings/gigs, have cafes, have fairly obscure vinyl and merchandise that can be tricky to get online. Personally I'd try and do similar with an instrument shop - don't compete directly with online shops for shifting mass produced boxes, put some effort in to offer alternatives: In shop demos, talks from musicians and manufacturers, small gigs, product launches, lessons, good part exchange deals, second hand, servicing, in shop experts happy to help, equipment rental, practice spaces, cafe/bar, boutique brands and custom stuff. Incentives like 'buy here and get a free lesson on how to use your new keyboard/set-up your bass/pair your mixer with your Laptop' etc. really make it a 'go to' hub for musicians. I think places like PMT have dropped the ball on this.

Nice one. I should've got in there with the original Bass Direct prices, their prices have now gone up to £2,050.

Nice! So I assume <4kg? Yeah, I've usually found that fretting for the fanned frets is not really much adjustment - especially for that area where most fretting is done from about frets 4 - 10 where it's nearly verticle and covers roughly 2x octaves where most basslines live. More to get used to right up around fret 20....but no need to venture up there too often! I see Bass Direct have another one in stock (unless it was this one and they haven't updated the website). I'm very tempted to make the trip there to give it a go and potentially part-exchange....but the 5hr round trip means I don't think that'll happen any time soon.

Nice! A bit off topic, but just for my education - why drop A? Do you use the low A or is it more for helping with certain chord/open string stuff across all strings?

Yeah, I bet the SP1 will be great. I've been in contact with Bass Direct to get a part-exchange price for my current Bass and they've offered a fair price so I reckon I'll go for it once they have some in stock to try.

So are the Bass Direct prices the actuall prices, or just a pre-order estimate? ....I dunno about paying more than £1,950 (for the 5) as even that feels slightly over-priced given that it is about £200 more than the D-Roc 5, and what is there on the SP1 that costs more than the D-Roc to produce given that the D-Roc has 3x pickups, metal flake or colourshift paint? (I'd probably get a D-Roc other than the fact I've seen them weigh up to 10lbs/4.5kg, nobody needs that kind of backache in this day and age!). Compared to other multiscale basses ,the SP1 5 at £1,950 is £250 more than the most expensive new Ibanez EHB (or about £900 more than the basic ones) and £250 more than the Spector NS Dimension. Saying that though, some more real-life weight measures are available now from USA shops for the 4 strings, they tend to be about 8.2lbs (so roughly 3.7kg) so I'm guessing the 5 strings will be slightly under 4kg (which is my self-imposed weight limit). I reckon I'll get one but £1,950 is my spending limit.

The split path is good, can use as a simple A/B switch or as a blend, and the blend can add more complex stuff like dynamic sensitivity and cutoff frequencies for each path. I found that it isn't really necessary for most compressor/drive/effects though as the 'x comp bass' is multiband compression (Boss like to confuse things and call it 'multi dimensional processing') and has a clean mix (Boss call it 'direct mix'). The same with distortion like the 'X-OD Bass' and in fact I think all the amps and all the bass effects have a clean mix so I often use the split path just as a simple A/B switch to make it visually easier to see what is going on to turn a few effects on/off together (which can be done without a split path). The split path things is useful for the Royal Blood type separate Guitar/Bass amp split and I've found the split path and dynamic sensitivity things also useful for nerding out with effect stuff like slicer+delay etc.

Yeah, I guess there's a certain amount of supply and demand for the pricing of these first ones, but the 'out of stock' pricing at Bass Direct is best. Seeing as a D-roc is about £1,650 for a 4 string or £1,750 for a 5 I'd hope that is roughly where the price of an SP1 settles. If anything then not having a preamp or fancy glitter paint jobs would presumably make it a bit cheaper to produce.

I got an SR305E in part exchange to have as a relatively light/small/cheap backup. Gotta say though, after doing a thorough setup (which it really needed) there now isn't much difference between this and basses I've owned worth £1k extra. 16.5mm spacing is a bit tight for me, can live with it though. The only thing I'm really not a fan of is no passive mode, feels risky potentially doing a gig and finding out half way through that the battery has died.

Generally, our audience is people who happen to be at the pub, some people that go to the pub because they see a band (any band) is going to be on, friends/family, or they've heard us play at their local before....but last night was the first time there were a notable amount of people that had heard us before and specifically travelled to hear us - which felt like a bit of a 'next step'.

Forget any advice about 'rising above it', I advise to 'sink beneath it', ideally with with cowardly and underhand tactics. Start off by going to their gigs after you've had an industrial amount of beans - stink the place out then run away.

I'm very fickle, but having owned the Cort Space 5, and and Ibanez EHB, and now considering different lightweight 5 string basses I'm led back to the Space 5. It's suprising what a difference a few hundred grams can make to comfort, and headless seems the only way to achieve that and still have good balance (and the bonus of being very stable tuning). The new Ibanez EHBs look good but they cost about £1k more, that feels difficult to justify, and I'm not against multiscale - but also don't feel it is particularaly game changing stuff, it isn't without some drawbacks. One thing I think I will do though is sand down the right-angle edge on the top of the body where the forearm meets the bass and I guess try and put on some wood dye...that'll immediately significantly de-value it for any resale as I'm no craftsman! but perhaps that will encourage me to be more committed to it rather than selling on again!

This is very useful to know, in fact as far as I can see it is the first/only time the actual weight has been mentioned anywhere online. It is just about on my self-imposed 4kg limit. Once Bass Direct have them in stock I'll make a trip there to try it out vs the new Ibanez EHB. I think I'll probably prefer a few things on the SP1 like the tone and front facing jack, 22 frets (more room in that plucking area), body shape, and the look...but I expect the Ibanez will stack up in a similar way for scale lengths, tone, and playability and will be about 0.5kg lighter (and £250 cheaper) so it'll be a tough call.

I just got myself the Spark Neo and so far so good. The headphones are good quality - comfortable and good sound, and so is the transmitter - it feels quite robust. The connections all worked fine straight away (you just need to remember to close the app down before re-connecting), the app all works well for presets - AI that can do an alright job of making presets e.g. 'Reggae Bass' and 'Doom Bass' both had okay results, there are some quite good 'play along' features via the phone, metronome, tuner, and can make a signal chain of effects (there aren't a huge amount of bass specific effects - but enough, only slight downside seems to be the fixed location of effect types in the chain). Having owned the Boss Waza Air Bass I don't think there is much difference - Boss has the spatial movement thing, but I never used it. This is day 1 though, so will have to see about stuff like durability and battery life.

Yes, it was. It's a great bass, I did a gig with it today and it did well (me a bit less so!).

It looks like his only UK show this year is at Reggae Land (2-3 Aug Milton Keynes), big lineup. https://reggaeland.co.uk/

I think they will be good combination of scale lengths and playability. People often rave about 'great sounding B' on their 35" scale basses, 34" seems the sweet spot for an E, and people seem to like short scale Basses partly for playability and the warmer sound from the higher strings - so hopefully 32-35 is a winner. The 33-35 on the Ibanez EHB worked well for me sound-wise and is comfortable whereas the 34-37 on the Combustion felt a bit like sacrificing some comfort with reach, weight, overall length (and perhaps a 34" G isnt ideal, I thought it was fine though) all done mostly for that B string - the B was very good, but it comes at a cost.

I think the SP1 solves a few of the issues I had with the Combustion: Strings: Combustion 34"-37" has quite a limited selection of strings available. 32-35" means the SP1 can use normal strings. Length/weight: I found 34"-37" on the Combustion a bit OTT for reaching some of the lower frets on the B and the overall size of the Bass felt a bit unwieldy and heavy (the headstock is quite a long distance away - meaning the body has to be quite heavy to balance it), I thought it could all be a shorter scale and still sound good. My Combustion was about 4.5 kg (to be fair though I see most are more like 4.2kg so I think mine was unusually heavy), I've seen that some Super P's are a fair bit less than 4kg so hopefully the SP1 is too. Number of frets: I prefer 22 frets (vs 24 on the Combustion) as I never use those very top frets but appreciate that extra space between the pickups and the fretboard for slap/pop. Passive - front facing jack: I'm keen on passive with and front facing jack for real-world practicality e.g. can briefly put the Bass on a stand at rehearsal and keep it plugged in without the jack hitting the floor (and the body shape looks like it'll fit a bit better in a stand), can sit on a sofa to play while plugged in without the jack poking in to the seat, can see it to easily plug in/out, never need to think about batteries. I plug into pedals and Amp for EQ stuff that is a lot more powerful/precise than any Bass EQ so don't really need that to be on the bass. Tone: I'd have trouble saying 'that sounds like a Combustion' in the same way as, say being able to hear the character of a P bass, hopefully the SP1 has some of that that passive P bass character. I'm pretty much sold. The only competition for me is the similar scale (33-35) Ibanez EHB MS range, they now have a few more high-end ones (about £1,700) which get a cosmetic and pickup and preamp upgrade, but their big selling point to me vs an average Dingwall is how lightweight they are, my bank balance would appreciate saving a few hundred £ and my back and shoulders would appreciate the weight savings. I think the real-world issue of comfortably/enjoyably actually standing and playing a bass for a couple of hours on stage or at a rehearsal is often overlooked...but yeah, if the SP1 is <4kg then I think that'd be the winner.

I think the SP1 P bass type neck pickups solves an issue I have with multi-scale (admittedly it isn't an issue I've ever seen anyone else mention, so perhaps it isn't an issue!). Play horizontally down the strings and the usual multiscale pickup angle/position (like the bridge one here) means that you are playing the B string just in front of the pickup, but the G behind the pickup (green line). That has always felt like an issue for me - the tone playing the G relatively further back is different to the tone of the B ahead of the pickup. But now, if playing ahead of the neck pickups (yellow line) it at least means you are playing slightly ahead of the neck pickup on the B and on the G which I expect is a more even tone across all strings.