SumOne

I'm not sure I'd accept selling via Paypal as a business as isn't the issue then that all of the risk is with the seller: If I sell a £1k Bass as a Paypal 'business' rather than F&F and the buyer scams me (e.g. says it never arrived, or isn't what it should be) then Paypal refunds the buyer and leaves the seller out of pocket. Or I imagine the onus is on the seller to somehow prove that the buyer did receive it and it was what was described (good luck with that! my experience with trying to talk to Paypal is 'computer says no').

I think sellers sometimes go off RRP and that's possibly it is what they bought it for - but often there are shop reductions a year or so later (when they are also trying to sell second hand). I'm eyeing up a new Ray34 that is £800 from one shop, RRP £1,200. Someone that bought one for £1,200 new would perhaps try to sell for about £800 after a year of owning it and they'd think that's fair enough, it is the average sort of price on eBay and Reverb. For me though, as a buyer it'd have to be quite a bit cheaper (£500 ish) for me to get a second hand one from eBay with all the risks associated and wear and tear etc vs £800 for a discounted brand new one from a shop with Warranty etc.

Any owners of new versions of the Sterling Stingray Ray34 on here that happen to know the weight? I've got my eye on one but the shop can't/won't tell me the actual Bass weight and I can't see info online apart from some old Talkbass and Reddit threads where people are perhaps talking about older versions.

Put a donk on it!

No, which is partly why even though I play a lot of Reggae/Dub I have quite bright roundwound strings - because as I also play some more Ska/Punk stuff with distortion. Can take off the highs, can't really add them if they were never there though. The general view is Reggae = Dull Flatwound, but I've heard at least one famous exclusively Reggae Bass player (I think it was Flabba Holt) say he used brighter roundwound as can take off the highs, but it is good to have the option to include them if ever needed.

I think EQ makes the biggest difference, and what your Cab can reproduce. I've gone into the finest of details testing pedals A-B and picking apart why one preamp or distortion is better than the next, but nowadays I've pretty much come to the conclusion that once it goes through an Amp/Cab and playing with a band the difference is almost imperceptible - especially if using EQ to match the sounds. Perhaps a keen audience member could hear the difference between a Rat vs Muff vs Tube screamer, but I doubt anyone could notice any more detail 'that sounds like Green Russian , they should be using a Ram's Head', likewise- bright Roundwound strings can be made to sound a lot like dull flatwounds with the right EQ.

If the band agrees that playing Bass live while a backing track also has Bass is a bad idea (it is!) then there are a lot of ways to remove Bass from a backing track (e.g. Moises app). I suppose the other option is to remove the live Bass - mime, or don't bother attending.

Nice. I've got tickets to see African Head Charge in May, looking forward to it.

Behringer B-Tron III available in March: https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=0709-ALB

Here's a challenge:

Yeah, luckily though the only issue the 7 piece ska band I'm has had from venues is actually fitting in. The main limitation is that the pubs tend to pay the same fee for a 3 piece of 7 piece, so it isn't exactly a money maker being in a bigger band. I do feel that 7 piece is a bit OTT sometimes, could potentially be trimmed down to 5, or perhaps even 4 if we were good enough musicians (myself included, I can't sing backing vocals while playing bass). Capdown managed it well with 4.

I didn't say I was a Taylor Swift fan (or that I wasn't a metal fan), just that she is popular and rock music (or 'band' music) in general is getting less-so. And I didn't say people in an orchestra wouldn't know their fellow musician names, I'm saying that that a general audience won't know their names - but they will know the conductor/composer or the 'star' of the performance, similar to a Taylor Swift concert.

Perhaps we've circled back in a way - not many could name the musicians in an Orchestra, in music halls, or in big bands, there was a frontman 'face/name' and the other musicians were quite interchangeable and unknown to audiences, somewhat similar to the Taylor Swift of Bruno Mars live band musicians. The days of pop bands with the whole band being reasonably well known as one unit was perhaps a bit of a blip in the timeline of popular music - and even in 'band' heyday there was still a lot of popular music without being a band, stuff like Motown or a lot of Reggae with session musicians supporting the singer, and solo artists like Elvis, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Michael Jackson. It's possibly more a sign of declining pop success of rock and punk music, which are almost always bands.

Older people in the 1960s were probably saying the same things about the change from big bands to 4 piece pop bands. ..."declining society, the youth of today are clueless, media control, not proper musicians - can't even read music, record companies, commercialisation etc"

Something I like about the GX-10 is this mode: Simple but good live: One footswitch for 'clean', one for 'dub', one for 'dirt' (and press two together to scroll through to other groups of 3x presets). I set the knobs for EQ. Expression pedal for volume, heel down for tuner/mute, toe press to engage an effect (e.g. on 'dirt' it makes it dirtier by engaging a fuzz, on 'dub' it engages an echo and reverb). That does me well for live stuff without getting complicated. I think you could do similar with the Core and an expression pedal - not sure how it'd do the heel down and toe press as switches things though.

The GX 10 has some annoying interface things, but generally it is pretty good. It is similar sounding to the Core, but not as many routing options and a few little things missing (like a visual display of the Compressor levels), and I've got a suspicion things like the GX pitch shifter have a slightly longer latency. The Core is better for the 'brains'. GX 10 screen and expression pedal are nice to have though. But yeah, Core with an expression pedal and some external footswitches would generally be better.

I love trying out new pedals and mucking about with sounds nearly as much as I love playing Bass, it is sort of a hobby within a hobby. ...saying that though, I've come to the conclusion with any bands I've been in there really isn't the need for fussing over small sound details. Going through an Amp/Cab and up against a drummer, 2x guitars, singer etc any subtleties get lost and it comes down to the fundamental things: simplicity, reliability, being in-tune, transportable, perhaps stomping on something for boost/drive, and compression helps but isn't essential. At the moment a Boss GX-100 is doing that for me. Now I almost take it as two separate things: 'Bread and butter' tough, reliable, gigging equipment, and 'mucking about with sounds at home' equipment. For the 'mucking about with sounds' as I'm just doing that at home I'm finding a good Laptop, Interface and Plugins (via 'Gig Performer 5' host) to be a very deep rabbit hole as the possibilities are pretty much limitless (and using a synth/keyboard, but that's a whole other thing), it does potentially lead to too many options, and isn't very road-worthy, but then again, I'm only really mucking about with it at home for the sake of mucking about rather than Bass gigging so it's all good for that.

It's basically an extreme tremolo where you can change the effect patterns....not particularly useful for Bass! But I quite liked mucking about adding it to pad type effects (lots of reverb and delays) and then 'slicing' the sound. I expect an expression pedal to blend it in would be good.

Nice one, yeah the Core does a good fuzz, and the Octaver tracks very well. If I'm being picky I am a bit more of a fan of analogue octaver sounds - until they warble, which they do quite a lot! The core octaver is up there with the best of the digital ones though. I couldn't get the Bass synth sound I'm usually after (Minimoog sort of stuff) or envelope filter (MF101 & Mu-Tron), but that might be my programming skills lacking - with 3x split paths and up to 24 effects blocks I'm sure some great synthy sounds can be made, I got it doing some great atmospheric/pad type stuff with a lot of reverb, and using stuff like the swell and slicer, and and octaver and fuzz and gates do some good more agro sounding stuff.

The Octamizer and other analogue octavers I've used (MXR, Markbass) do all tend to do that 'warble' thing with sustained notes. You can limit that a bit with playing style - clean/muting, pickup selection, dial back the tone, quite high string action to get rid of as much buzz as possible, and string choice - trying to reduce harmonics and focus on the fundamental. Certain strings often seem better than others, and not playing notes below about low A on a 4 string. Although that is a lot of things, I'm yet to find a digital octaver that sounds quite as good as the Octamizer when it's working well. The OC5 did track and sustain notes much better though. Some of those same tracking problems are similar for synth pedals but generally I found the C4 to work well on sustained notes.

I've gone through quite a few of them and in some ways it's much of a muchness for the sounds when played through an Amp/Cab and the rest of a band, so a big part for me is size/practicality. I'm liking the Boss GX-10 as it fits in my gigbag and has pretty good visibility and controls. In this mode I basically have a preset for each footswitch, can use the knobs for EQ, and the expression pedal for tuner/volume and 'toe press' for different things on each preset (e.g. engaging Reverb in the 'dub' setting, or a boost in 'clean' setting). For me doing cover band stuff, that is enough. Someone in a jam band wanting a footswitch for each effect, or a professional band needing more outputs would probably want something bigger.

So, Collider with a makeover?!

Yeah, great isn't it! I was playing Dawn Penn's 'You don't love me (no no no)' with the band at rehearsal the other day and we unexpectedly just keep going around - guitar solo, around again, vocals, around again, brass solo, around again, only bass and drums, around again...and kept going, like group meditation. And for me, standing in front of a loud cab and just repeating that dubby bass that you can feel almost as much as hear, locking in with the drums and everyone else, nothing virtuoso or flashy - providing a hypnotic foundation is my favourite thing with bass playing. 'meditate with bass weight'

C4 XL (in the hardware of the Ventris & Collider pedals)

A couple of my favourites are the Creation Audio Grizzly Bass (partly probably because it looks cool!), and the Idiotbox Landphil. But I suppose it is like 'what is the best food/bike/car etc' in that there isn't a definitive answer, depends on specific tastes and needs.