Beedster

48 minutes ago, Salt on your Bass? said:

Im still desperately keen to try a tt-800 and a wd800. 

My biggest frustration with the bass market is availability of multi brand equipment to try at volume. There's a berg here, mesa (nearly) there, genzler, orange, etc etc...to actually a/B them side by side. 

 

I have no doubt mesa are well engineered and they're comparable to berg and the upper echelons of the amp market....the proof is always in the pudding in terms of whether it works for you - sound, flexibility, intuitiveness, and hoc features etc. 

Anyway, I'm gonna be chasing the gibson garage, cause I really want to try em out....hopefully they'll also be available via other retailers in the UK soon 😎

That, in part, is what the Basschat Bashes are for 👍

Last point, do NOT buy from anyone who also sells antiques, an old instrument is not always a good instrument and can cost you a small fortune to make playable 

Advice above is good. My tuppence……

Either buy from a respected dealer, or take the bass on approval and have it checked/valued, or buy from a long standing member here.

Or as I have done, if you really like the bass, buy for it’s value to you as an instrument and hope you never have to recoup your investment 🤔

Nice, assume that's 3/4?

Beautiful instrument 👍

Sort of thread that makes me want to leave Basschat 

2 hours ago, Minininjarob said:

I am bewildered as to why someone would pay extra for something made in the USA. It’s hardly a guarantee of quality. 

I prefer my gear to be over-engineered to under-engineered, OK there may be a price premium but the functional reliability and structural integrity that comes with it is worth that premium. Ever tried breaking a Mesa cab, we dropped a 1516 during the load out a few years back, and I still laugh recalling the singer's "Oh shit mate, I think it broke your car" 

4 minutes ago, oldslapper said:

 

Gentlemen! 
Chris, not really in need of any studio kit presently. 
Brendon, I’m open to suggestions mate. But chaps, I’ll likely move whatever I trade on, as I need money tbh. 
 

 

cheers

Understood John, I’ll happily buy the neck now but am equally happy to wait for a buyer for the body or for the whole thing so you can get it all gone at once 👍

What sort of trades are you looking for John, I've got quite a lot of studio gear I'm about to list, mics, interfaces, some rack gear.....

1 hour ago, Kiwi said:

£8000 for a Warwick Thumb NT now. 

I have a few bits of Mesa guitar kit at home, and the Bass 400+ is the best valve bass amp I have ever owned.  They made some utterly fantastic kit in the nineties.

But check out the manouverings of Ernie Ball, Warwick and a few other brands this year.   They have spent the last ten years cultivating a fan base in the US and leveraged on that to support sales internationally.  Helped to no small degree by lump sum pension pots being made available within their customer fan base.  This isn't really about demand and supply as it is about goose, gullibility and raiding golden (nest) eggs.

 

I owned three Smith basses in the mid to late noughties.  I owned three Celinders.  I owned four Musicman Cutlass basses and I still have an Alembic.  I have given up any hope of being able to owning a halo model from a boutique builder now.  In some ways I'm OK with that because I don't really have GAS any more and my tastes have become very specific.  But in China there are some very nice imported brands available second hand for about 20% less than they might get in the US or Europe.  Ernie Ball, looking at you in particular with £800 for a nineties SR5.  Or PRS with £1200-1500 for a core Custom 24.

Dingwall seem to be one of the few manufacturers who have retained any degree of self control on prices. 

 

 

Very well put @Kiwi 👍

2 minutes ago, SimonK said:

So I have been reflecting on this thread, and perhaps another thing that has irritated/bemused me is the distinct shift in marketing strategy as represented by the Gibson Garage, and I appreciate a couple other big brands have done likewise.

 

We all know and love the higgeldy-piggeldy music shops with eccentric staff and the person in the corner playing stairway to heaven/smoke on the water. Granted Thomann, Guitar Centre, Andertons etc. have become behemouths, but they are still a natural evolution of the little shops dotted around the country/world.

 

But the Gibson Garage seems to be a different type of thing - marketing high end equipment to wealthy, often older, people. Obviously there is money to be made in that market, but it feels a long way from traditional music stores and gigs in dodgy pubs with punters knocking people unconscious while spilling their beer into the mixing desk*. I think the worry is that if brands start focussing on this high end status seeking customer there is less for the majority of the rest of us who keep the music scene alive.

 

*story for another time

It's been that way a long time across so many retail sectors, cars, clothing, furniture, it was only a matter of time before it hit music, and in fact has been there a while with some music brands e.g., the Yamaha store in the West End. But why is a brand store selling to the wealthy while Thomann are not? You can spend some serious cash in Thomann et al? Music is, and always has been an expensive game

And that's part of the problem, like you we all miss the local music store, but they went under for a reason, we all wanted more choice and lower prices.......

33 minutes ago, AndyTravis said:

Jesus…

Given the price of some pretty average Fender and EBMMs these days that doesn't seem too bad

3 minutes ago, IanA said:

.....so sorry to hear of your health conditions… Sad times ☹️

Likewise Dave  

The neck on this is stunning, I've been lucky enough to play some amazing fretless instruments from a very Jaco '69 Jazz to 70's Precisions to 80's Wals to 90's Ray's , even an 00's Rickenbacker, all of which had glorious necks, and I still own a 'keeper' Warmoth fretless Precision neck that for me is my ideal neck in terms of profile, radius, materials and feel, but one thing that my ownership of this Status neck taught me was just how much easier it is to pitch a note on a well-engineered graphite fretless neck than on other necks, and just how harmonically full the note sounds (OK, that's two things I know). If I were playing fretless on stage or in the studio (as opposed to for pleasure) I would have absolutely no problem buying this bass just to get the neck back (nothing wrong with the bass it's on I'd just prefer it on a PJ). If you play fretless seriously, haven't tried a Status, and have the budget, seriously, do yourself a favour, you won't be sorry 👍 

51 minutes ago, SimonK said:

 

I don't think that is what people are saying, more "value for money" is more important than brand or where somethings was made. Which of course opens up a can of worms when it comes to musical gear/instruments given how hard the major brands absolutely try to make it about name and place of manufacture.

 

I think for some of us there is also a level of disappointment, perhaps wanting to try the new Mesa products but realising they are out of reach even for someone on a pretty decent salary for whom music is a hobby that needs to fit in with other priorities. Similarly I can't imagine many teenage or younger musicians playing Mesa products.

Why disappointment, Mesa are relatively no more expensive now than they’ve ever been? Perhaps you’re disappointed that they’ve not - like other brands - outsourced a significant percentage of their production to poorer facilities using poorer components to keep prices low? But that’s why Mesa will retain their market status while others fall behind 

9 hours ago, thodrik said:

In terms of prices the absolute top of the line Mesa bass head is now just under £1600.

 

The M-Pulse lines were considerably more expensive than the current Mesa amps about 10-15 years ago. In terms of D-350 being expensive at £800, in about 2009 the 300 watt Walkabout was about £1300 for the head and about £1600 for the 1x15combo. The M3 Carbine 300 watt amps from a decade ago were also more expensive than the D-350. Essentially Mesa bass amps are more affordable than they used to be.

 

Granted the designs are entirely different and class D amps are generally more cost effective to make (and ship) than the older amps. However I don’t really have an issue with the pricing mainly because this is not a new development. Mesa have always been more expensive to buy in the UK. This isn’t a new development or some master plan by Gibson. 

 

The products really are high quality though and are generally built to last. I bought a new Walkabout 1x15 combo in 2009 and it still works perfectly after hundreds of gigs and sessions.

+100

For those of you who appear to be poking at @agedhorse about pricing of Mesa gear CHECK OUT THE PRICES OF EVERYTHING AT THE MOMENT, basses especially, the prices of which are becoming farcical.

I paid £1200 USED for my first M-Pulse 600 head in 2010 and IIRC around £800 for my first used (300w) Walkabout head a couple of years earlier. New prices were significantly higher at the time. And they were worth every penny in terms of tone, functionality, and reliability, as are the latest range. When you buy Mesa, and in the context of the price of competing gear at the time, you get what you're paying for 👍

Now that is how all basses should look 👍

MM boards always look so, well, nice 👍

if Tonerider were more expensive everyone would be using them.... 🤔

11 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

We've struggled to get a handle on that so far. My research suggests that the recording level is set purely by the Gain on each strip, but that doesn't seem to be borne out in practice.

 

It's easy enough to add make-up gain in the DAW (and of course you can't get rid of clipping if you've recorded at too high a level in the first place) but I'd prefer to have a stronger signal from the start.

 

We've only been working with this sytem for six months so we're still learning.

 

Thanks mate, I'm sure there'll be a workaround for the levels, is it just recording levels or do you have the same issue live?

BTW, re clipping, that's what I thought! I recorded a 40-min vocal track about 6-months ago and was horrified when I went to process that it was clipping about 80% of the time and was very noticeable (a commercial voiceover). I searched through the various audio forums and came across Izotope RX 10 which not only fixed it but opened up a huge new World of options for troubleshooting dodgy audio, most of which I had never dreamed of (I was trained in the 80's and still see audio through an analogue lens)! OK, it took around twice as long to clean up the track as it did to record it, but given the embarrassment of having to ask him to repeat the recording, it was a huge win, and if it left any artefacts, I can't hear them.   

57 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

Spent yesterday afternoon doing exactly that ... running some test recordings to check the new soop-dooper pickup against my existing Schaller 411 and using the Nadine condenser as a benchmark.

 

Setting up "the recording session" took nearly five minutes from a standing start (i.e. with the closed mixer rack case on a shelf in the studio). With 24 channels available (two of them Hi-Z) it's a doddle to do this stuff and you end up with lowish-level but completely raw stems that can then be processed in a DAW in whatever fashion you choose.

 

 

That's what I wanted to hear, although why are the stems low level?

A fave of our gig reviews was 'Nothing like as bad as I expected them to be....."  

The only thing worse than being talked about..............

3 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

The Soundcraft Ui-24 is probably overkill for your needs, but if the smaller versions of the same have the same multitrack recording features (you'll have to look that up) then from my point of view it's a complete no-brainer.

 

As a stage PA it's way, way, WAY easier to operate than the Behringer XR18, and you can do multi-track recording in any environment in a matter of seconds so long as you have a suitably formatted memory stick.

 

If you can get to Harrow (unlikely) then come and have a play.

All I can say is 'great minds.....' Jack!  Looks like the Ui16 and the Ui24 are pretty different beasts, one review suggested the only similarity are the handles  

Do you use your in the studio also?

We're a small acoustic band so a little late to the digital mixer party, but having realised that we need better monitoring and want to record multiple tracks, and having read a lot of threads on here and elsewhere, it seems not only that a digital mixer is going to make life a whole lot easier on stage, but that in many cases it will be equally useful for recording in the studio possibly making traditional studio interfaces redundant? Where on this journey is this tech at present and which mixers represent the best option for stage and studio use?