Muzz

Yup, I'll be there, Drew's place is in Worsley, and parking's pretty much ad hoc on the street. See you there!

My 78 Jazz was 11lbs 12oz (it's long gone), and my Dingwall ABZ4 is 7lbs 6oz (that's staying).

Streamliner 900 and Schroeder 1515L. Match made in heaven (the low-mid bump of the cab tames the big bloom of the amp), and about 45lbs the pair.

I wanted a Jetglo 4001 (thanks to Geddy) when I was 12, after saving and combining birthday and Xmas presents-type of thing, I got one on my 16th birthday in 1980. It was ace.

You know that bit in the first Harry Potter film where he goes into the wand shop? That's Mark at Bass Direct... Seriously, I found on my first visit that I asked to try what I was initially interested in, he set me up and went into the office to answer the phone and do some clerical stuff, then came out a couple of times to suggest other basses/amps I might like, based on what he'd heard. It was a bit of a shock at first, and I could easily have taken offence at his bluntness, but after I'd gone with the flow, I found he was bang on the money. He's a real enthusiast, but to get the best out of the experience, you need to leave your ego in the car...

Great stuff! I love my 900: it's game over for me in amp buying. I've had three other amps in the time I've had it, all very highly regarded on here (and i can see why) - stuff like Mesa Walkabout and M-Pulse, and I sold them and kept the Streamliner. It works very very well with my Schroeder. I'm sure I could live with the 600, too- my 900 never gets beyond 9pm on the Master Vol.

Yup, it'd be a dull world, etc...

In an almost mirror experience, I've owned and gigged (amongst others) a TC RH450, a LMIII, a Streamliner 900, a Mesa Walkabout, a Mesa M-Pulse and an Ashdown Spyder 550. All the big ones went (actually quicker than the smaller ones) and I've kept the Streamliner. Coincidence? It's all about what the player notices, y'see...

Just imagine how much less problems you'd have moving something which sounds as good and weighs half as much I suppose if you needed to man up you could always carry the PA in instead...

Streamliner 900 and Schroeder 1515L: 8/900w 2x15 rig, one trip from the car...

Yup, you could play baseball with my Dingwall and it'd still be in tune after four innings. Ditto my old BB3000. A couple of the others tend to wander very slightly over a period of weeks, but not by much. Don't think I could live with a bass which went out of tune as much as some on here seem to do.

In narrower circles, any of the Charvel/Jackson pointy-headed types are hugely 80s, as are Explorers, preferably in a glittery or stripy finish But yeah, overall I'd say Steinbergers and to a lesser extent Statii.

Our band leader will say to me "Oh, aren't you using the Stingray? I loved the sound you got from that on the album." I recorded 2 of the 11 album tracks with the Ray, the other 9 were the Fender P. I asked him which were his favourite bass sounds, the three he picked were all the P. 18 months later, he still fondly remembers the Stingray sound. Or not, as it happens...hearing with the eyes again...

I think everything I've got has been modded, from just a pickguard (Stingray) to complete Frankenbuilds (Fenderbird, Laklandbird, FrankenPs) - even my Dingwall's got a P-Tone pickup in the neck position. Different necks (Lakland and Mighty Mite), pickups (Wizards into a Fortress, Dingwalls into the Laklandbird), custom wiring (serial/parallel switching), refins, you name it. Can't think of a single mod which didn't improve either the looks, playability of the sound of any of them. Highlights, and parts which for me are pretty much essentials, are Hipshot Ultralights and Xtenders, and Schaller 3D bridges. Oh, and the serial/parallel wiring mod. Oh hang on, I put some EMGs in the Fenderbird a while ago, but to my ears they didn't sound as good as the originals, so I took them out again. That's all I can think of that I didn't like, apart from various makes and types and gauges of strings which worked to greater or lesser degrees - that's a good way, as has been mentioned, to change the sound and feel of a bass cheaply. It can get a bit addictive, reading back over that lot...Er.

Yep, my mate Napper uses exactly that rig with a loud 2-guitar classic rock band, and sounds good, too. I used a LMIII with my Schroeder 1515L for a while (and with a MB410 before that) and never had any headroom issues.

I'm not calling for any more info, and I'm sure there are grey areas on both sides of the fence - the truth, as always, will lie somewhere in between. The thing I'll take away from this is the supplier's aggressive and at times frankly ludicrous response on a public forum to a customer problem. That's factual, and not disputable, despite some apologia on here along the lines of 'he must have been having a bad day' or 'he always talks like that'.

All I'm going off is the aggressive, ranting response from the supplier himself, nothing else. No matter what's gone on and what hasn't (and there are three sides to every story), that was a shocker. Even if I was in the market for a posh Jazz (and I'm not), a display of customer services like that would put me off a supplier completely.