binky_bass

Congo

That link takes me to a strange, apparently hand made, bongo type bass...

And a near 4 year wait would also be a massive no! I am however looking forward to hearing what you can do with the finished product!

Nice, that was my first bass too! Yamaha RBX170 I believe?

Yes. The cat's out of the bag... it is I... BOJO!!! And I shall smite you all!!! (Also, I'd argue YOU'RE the government representative, editing my post to best suit your agenda!) 😂

One bass to rule them all... ACG. I've been through almost all major bass manufacturers and boutique bass builders and ACG are the ones that just do everything. So much so I have 6 of them! Horses for courses of course, but dang they be good slices of bass pie!

Should be in hand in the next two weeks or so, exciting times! I've said it before, but it's worth saying again... Alan at ACG is such an easy guy to deal with. Always responding within a day if not a few hours, always providing updates, very fairly priced within the custom bass market and the builds are just impeccable.

Nice! Don't feel bad, I lasted all of one week!

Cheers, but I was looking for something a few leagues beyond Behringer. I'm not a fan of their stuff at the best of time. The Seymour Duncan Dark Star, the Source Audio Collider or the GFI Specular Tempus would be the ones I'd be leaning towards if I hadn't become re-smitten with my Helix!

Cheers mate, however... After not having used my Helix in some time, and wanting a 'smaller' delay/reverb option, I'm actually going to stick with the Helix, it does everything and more than the Collider and effectively you can have 16 different delay/reverb combinations running simultaneously if you use the 4 cable method over 8 stomp patches - which is more ambient options than anyone could ever want! Plus of course all the extra gubbins the Helix can do... So even though it's a chunky beast, it's actually an incredibly good bit of kit that I may as well use and not spend the dosh on a Collider!

The email response times from Bass Direct are very good - no fault there at all. I've not been there in person yet, I came close a few months back when @Bunionand I were due to meet there, but then someone decided to have a crash and the M25 got shut down. Luckily Bunion came to the rescue, went to BD, paid for my cab in full, then met me further down the road and we did our deal, so if this was a custom service review for Bunion, he'd get top marks! 😂

Just to chime in - I absolutely hate the Hofner 'violin' body shape! It is the ugliest major production body out there... The Fiat Multipla of the bass world. EVIL I tell thee! There. Off I go!!!

Curious how people's experiences can differ so wildly. I bought an GR AT410+ a few months back and absolutely love it. Shame you had the issues you had as when they're 'issue free' they are fantastic bits of kit.

I don't disagree entirely with what you've said - and usually I don't both writing such things. If it had been a case of me buying the pedal, saying nothing, and them contacting me the next day apologising and saying they didn't have it, then so be it. A little disappointing but OK. The specific gripe on mine is that I explained exactly why I was asking for clarification, I laid out the precise reason for my concern and they didn't look into it at all, the just said 'yeah we have it'. If they'd actually looked into the concern I outlined then they'd have known they didn't have it. The secondary gripe is them not even entertaining the idea of an alternative or potentially a minor discount if I bought a new version of that pedal. It was all very much "here's your money back, go away". What I didn't add to my initial post is that the day before this issue I spent a considerable amount of money with them buying a new amp, and only a few weeks ago I spent a considerable amount of money with them buying a new cab, (over £3000 in total) and even with those recent very expensive purchases there was absolutely no effort to make sure a sour taste (such as it it now) wasn't left in my mouth given my recent not insignificant custom. Bass Direct aren't the devil by any means, and they offer a great service (when it goes right!) The seemingly consistent point of issue is that when it goes wrong, you get treated poorly. Good customer service, like manners, doesn't cost much and it doesn't need to be that way.

I haven't used it in a band setting yet, but one thing I have immediately noticed is that it isn't particularly quite... even with the gain and volume each at the 9 o'clock position there is a lot of hum. When you turn them both to the 3 o'clock position the noise is extremely loud. Did you find the same thing with your amp?

I am by no means saying that Bass Direct is terrible. I am however saying this particular situation fell down because of multiple unnecessary failures at their end, all of which could have been handled differently. There is a fairly constant underlying vein of poor reviews that seem to fit the same outline as mine, but there are also a lot of good reviews too. Bit of a mixed bag. What let me down is effectively asking them to do a stock check due to a suspicion of them incorrectly listing a pedal (which ended up being the case!) And instead they just ignore what I said, insisted they had it, then the next day admitted they didn't and refunded the payment to avoid any discussion of providing an alternative.

I'll be honest and say I've bought a good few things from them before (basses, cabs, amps etc.) in fact GR Dual 1400 arrived today with no issue. But... and the big but here... is that if nothing goes wrong, its fine, but if something goes wrong it seems that the service stops dead. I've long maintained that the mark of a good business is how they act when something goes sideways. At some point something will always goes sideways, but if it's dealt with well then its not an issue.