Musicman666

15 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

When you posed the original question, you wrote:

and if you just get on a plane buy it and bring it back as personal luggage ..is it zero tax??

 

The key thing here is the word 'buy', you didn't say anything about bringing in personal effects.

 

As @Downunderwonderposted, check the C&E website or take advice.  Sadly, just because an instrument is old, well travelled or battered doesn't automatically exclude it from being seen duty-exempt.  Border officials couldn't be any less interested in provenance.  Do your diligence.

I thought I was doing my diligence, I get many opinions on this but the one opinion I can’t get is  from uk customs.  If you are buying secondhand and bringing it in I can’t see any difference comparing that to my situation as far as the customs officer is concerned, all he sees is a less than new guitar being brought in as personal luggage. I thought there was an exception for personal household goods being exempt, ie they are not your professional tools. But I’m probably at some stage going to bring a few guitars over as necks, and the next time it will be the bodies just to be sure. It’s a pia but what else can I do, I don’t want to pay tax twice. 

1 hour ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

Anything to declare, sir?  Red channel/green channel. Doesn't matter if you ship it by DHL or carry it in.

Are you saying you have to pay tax? What if it’s an old bass you had in your other international home …I have a stingray bought in the uk in the 90s, it’s been all over Asia, looks really battered and I’m thinking of bringing it back to the uk, would I have to pay tax again on it and how would they value it…this isn’t hypothetical.

and if you just get on a plane buy it and bring it back as personal luggage ..is it zero tax??

Any of Gabriel’s monologues when he was in old genesis.

for unusual i have a six string short scale musicman silhouette bass/baritone tuned e-e with bass vi strings and a chapman stick railboard dual bass reciprocal... 

4 hours ago, lemmywinks said:

Almost forgot Gus basses. Not sure if those are chrome dildos or those hand rails that pensioners use to get in and out of the bath. Either way an odd choice to stick on a bass.

Some things cannot just be unseen….

12 minutes ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

 

Like this? 😁

The main offenders know who they are…

Anything that looks like it might have fallen off an antique Spanish galleon gets a no from me…it’s just wrong.

3 hours ago, Lfalex v1.1 said:

I was referring to coil splitting/switching as I figured that was what you were after.

I can't see musch use in coil taps on any bass, let alone a modern one with an 18v active EQ.

Ah …my bad, I misread the spec, yes it is both switching and tapping. I’m going to have to chat to status about this like you mentioned earlier and see what they say. Thanks. 

Ok …I’m not getting that mod, I was getting coil tapping mixed up with coil splitting, I was after coil splitting which it isn’t.

7 hours ago, Lfalex v1.1 said:

Leaving aside my experiences with my Status, and on a more general note-

 

If you have specific requirements from a build or alterations from the norm to be made in any bass, be very specific, otherwise you'll get the builder's interpretation of what you asked for. Don't just tick a box on an options sheet, discuss how it'll affect the performance of the instrument.

 

In this case, I'd find out from Status how they implement single-coil taps, which coils they use and why, and what effect that has on output and tone. 

If the manufacturer can't answer that sort of question.. Well, decide for yourself how well tried and tested the modification is.

 

I ended up paying extra for something that was useless based on the assumption that it would work like my previous positive experiences of series/parallel/single coil switching.

It worked really well in the aforementioned Stingray5, a Warwick Corvette $$ and (subsequently) an Ibanez ATK derivative (SC with hf roll off and slight mid-scoop, SC, and parallel)

 

* I think I'm going to drop out of this discussion now as I'm concerned that my personal experiences are biasing my views.

 

I hope that your S2 turns out to be awesome, and stays that way.

this will be my second s2 status build so there wont be too many surprises hopefully, but yes literally its a yes or no type deal, anything custom that deviates from the norm is going to cost a lot with these guys. I'm sure they will think its a good mod but forums like this will hopefully give me the real down to earth no bs user point of view... I already think their prices are way too high so I don't want to add to it unnecessarily but on the other hand i don't want to be kicking myself for not getting something that later on I wish I had. I do appreciate the single coils on my jazz with that tight response... 

ps...this is a forum, we are here to hear your honest personal experiences!!!!!!!!!!!!..

3 hours ago, Lfalex v1.1 said:

As long as the pickups have enough (3?) output wires, coil switching for series, parallel and single coil are all possible.

The issue you'd face is knowing which single coil in each pickup you'd want to select.

By definition, one coil of each will be Reverse Wound/Reverse Polarity. You'd ideally want it to be selectable with its opposite number in the other pick-up (Normal wound/Normal Polarity) in order to give some degree of hum-cancelling (life a Fender Jazz)

 

I'd guess that you'd  end up with either inner or outer coils running as pairs to achieve this. 

You could always have that as a switching option- front coil/parallel HB/rear coil for both pickups on two switches.

 

Don't know whether that'd yield worthwhile results. 

Last time I had a "good idea", it was having series / parallel switching on my Streamline...

This is a new build so it’s whatever status would normally do.

2 hours ago, Lfalex v1.1 said:

Does the S2 share electrics with the Streamline?

I ordered mine with series/ parallel switches on both pickups.

Waste of time. 

They sound too thin in series, and the level boost is quite considerable.

 

The best bass I've had for series/parallel/single coil switching was a Stingray5. Musicman implemented it properly; 

 

The series and parallel options are reduced down to match the single coil output, so no volume jumps. Other filtering may also be employed. 

 

The pickup has a dummy coil for the single coil setting, so no hum (not relevant to this question)

 

Unless you can find someone to add some sort of compensation to the switching, it's not worth it. I couldn't even EQ out the shortcomings. 

 

Different pickups might yield different results, but it didn't work at all well with the soapbars in my Streamline. It was a  huge disappointment, and not worth the extra I spent to have it included.

 

 

 

Ok …thanks for the feedback…appreciated. I suspect the s2 and slimline do share a lot of the same tech when it comes to the electronics. I think the upgrade you had is different since the coil tap as far as I understand just turns the humbuckers into single coils.

Is it a useful upgrade worth having?

love everything from these four guys in all their various formats. Having young's fragile voice weaving amongst the harmony is like taking the whole thing up a notch from a solid 10 to a sublime 11.

quite surprising that he would dump the shergold and eccleshall....  is this auction like a symbolic final separation from new order??

6 hours ago, Russ said:

I remember playing a Thunder III Mk2 many years back, and, apart from it being quite neck-heavy and unbalanced, it was a pretty spectacular bit of kit - a proper bargain basement Alembic wannabe with loads of tonal options. 

 

They did come out with another bass, the Genesis, that addressed the balance issues. I think it was basically a headed version of the Super Headless, complete with the string-popping cutaway on the treble side. 

 

Fantastic gear for the time (let's not forget this was the era of the likes of Marlin and other plywood rubbish), and very collectible these days. 

Yeah i remember the neck seemed really long in comparison to the body so you had a bit of neck dive on the thunder iii.

4 hours ago, tegs07 said:

I was a bit too young to see The Cure in 84. Saw them a year later at Brighton Centre with what for me was the classic lineup and just as the were on the cusp of playing much bigger venues (particularly abroad). Never really liked much of their music from Wild Mood Swings onwards but they were  always excellent live. I know a few ardent Cure haters who have changed their opinion after watching them at festivals.

 

Would have really liked to have seen them as a 3 piece in smaller venues.

yeah i was at that same gig, did the quadrophenia thing and slept on the seafront, their best gig for me was Glastonbury about the same time when they played during a full on lightening storm which just took the whole experience up to a whole new level...robert himself remembered it as being one of the best as well.

glad you got a good one ... i recently bought a squire classic 60s vibe jazz literally as something just to noodle on in lockdown since all my gear was in storage abroad. I honestly didn't expect too much for 300 quid new but i am absolutely blown away by it, it sounds great, pretty light and plays like butter with low action. So now its a keeper, didn't see that one coming at all. Reminds me a lot of my old early 80s Japanese squire precision, should never have let that one go.

just check out this live concert track, definitely a peak, it is the cure with what i think was the best lineup including andy anderson ex hawkwind on drums. I love the use of the flanger here, they never seem to do it like this anymore. Funnily enough i saw thornally first so for me he was the definitive cure bassist.

1 minute ago, Cat Burrito said:

Just some random bass facts the casual listener might not know (& I am sure a few of you DO know this) - 

 

Michael Dempsey played on the first album. (Personal view) The bass playing on that album is great, much busier than Gallop's BUT Robert Smith wanted much simpler parts. That album sounds more like somewhere between Buzzcocks and Elvis Costello! Incidentally, the playing being too fussy was the same reason why they lost the keyboard player (Matthieu Hartley) on the second album, Seventeen Seconds. He was too jazzy, apparently.

 

When Gallop first left he was replaced by Phil Thornalley. Phil was actually a producer more than a bassist. He played the upright bass on Lovecats, something he'd never done. If you look closely at the footage you can see the tape on the neck to let him know where the notes are.

 

The Cure have had a few stand in bass players for the odd show, TV appearance and tour - these include Steve Severin (Siouxsie and The Banshees) and Gallop's own son. 

 

The song Primary is performed exclusively on basses with just the drum kit and the vocal for accompaniment. Robert Smith uses a lot of six string bass all over the albums too. 

 

And just as an aside - as mentioned, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th albums are the gloomy period. A lot of it is really quite pop (Inbetween Days, Lovecats, Just Like Heaven). I appreciate a lot of people are commenting on how they either don't like or struggle with the band (hey, no band is for everyone!). Personally I spent most of Lockdown revisiting them and really rediscovered the bass. 

they initially wanted to use two basses on primary but ended up using one four string and the bass vi for sonic reasons...and thornalley specifically was the producer of pornography and filled in on that tour.

1 minute ago, shoulderpet said:

If you don't like Disintegration then the Cure is not for you, by far their best album

generally with the cure the older the album the better but you cant go wrong with the trilogy ie pornorgaphy/disintegration /bloodflowers.

Bass driven cure tracks …there are so many that it’s hard to choose.

12 hours ago, Piers_Williamson said:

OK, I have found this interesting.  I take it the bloke I took a picture of a long time ago was Michael Dempsey:

 

Quite surprising how much Gallup looks like Dempsey… at least I think so.

2 hours ago, Barking Spiders said:

I've got around half a dozen Cure albums but their total output has been pretty inconsistent and can understand why people might not enjoy them and same goes for Joy Division and other post punk 'miserablists'. There are some gems among the Cure's albums but also some real duds. I'd put Disintegration at around #3 or 4 and but definitely place 17 Seconds at #1.

Miserabilists..lol