simisker

Interestingly, I'm a User Interface / Experience Designer and I have the opposite opinion, tau! The seemingly industry-standard approach to bass knobs - i.e. unlabelled with no numbers, lines/gradations, and often no pointers - has frustrated the hell out of me for decades. That Pbass-originated piss-poor UI has inexplicably become the norm - even on instruments of expense with complex electronics. I recently bought a Dingwall. £2500, and 5 blank unlabelled knobs. Want to know what the knobs control or what they're set at? Have a twiddle and see if you can figure it out - it's the only way to know. Good luck!* 🤷‍♂️ It's doubly frustrating when you consider that Leo himself got it almost perfect first time with the Stratocaster's knobs. We've gone backwards through laziness, naivety and misguided aesthetics. Having owned a Wal myself, I can say with certainty that they are still my benchmark rotary control. Ian and Pete knew what they were doing. Admittedly, they're not the best looking, but boy, they are a delight to use. Great work, @remizik ! * And don't get me started on unlabelled Active/Passive or Series/Parallel switches!

No way that's a bass. That's a cake. An absolutely mouth-watering tour de force of a cake. What do I win?

I bought a lovely LTD Deluxe bass from Quent. I would buy from him again in an instant. Here's why: Advert: Lots of detailed and honest info and photos. Didn't hide a thing, and highlighted all the things that you'd expect to be highlighted for a used bass. Comms: Quick, detailed, efficient and friendly. Perfect! Condition: the bass was even better in the flesh than described, surprisingly! Quent clearly looks after his instruments. Packaging: Seriously, the best packaged bass I have ever EVER received. double-boxed, everything bubblewrapped, itemised and labelled. He'd even taken off the bottom strap button so that it couldn't cause any transit knocks, and then wrapped it in its own labelled padded baggie, along with the screw which he'd gaffa-taped along its length, so that the thread wouldn't scratch anything. Absolutely superb attention to detail. Overall, Quent is a fantastic example of why this community is so great. So: recommended, then

I can echo what Lemmywinks says here - I've got a Cort that came with Mk1 pickups and a proper Bartolini preamp [HR-5.4AP/918], and the combined output is totally usable. In fact, the sound has even drawn compliments from my guitar tech. The MK1s get a bit of a bad rap because they're usually paired with a cut-price preamp, as Lemmywinks points out. Unless you really need the hi-fi sheen of top-end humbuckers, I wouldn't worry about them - It's the preamp to which you need to pay more attention.

Judging by the extremely underwhelming poplar burl facing, I'd say it was a modern Spector.

One for the Furrow & Ball catalogue.

Egg pun.

Yeah, I don't think we need to be afraid of being singed by the white hot crucible of innovation after all There are some sensible upgrades/evolutions across the range, the colour options are nice and non-vintage (I love the Solar Flare) - and it's great they're still giving the Meteora their backing. But oof - over £2k? That's a grand per mid-range frequency option. Not even a sweep! Two grand!!

You won't regret choosing the Neve. 👍 It looks a bit odd on paper - "20Hz? Twenty?! Really?!?" - but it's just like Neve console preamps: musically sweet rather than surgically precise, and with a noise floor that's in the basement - even at the extremes. It's just quality.

I don't think anyone's going to argue that ALL Fender's core basses were innovative when they were first released. The problem is that every one of their birth years starts with a "19". EDIT: And to be fair to past Fender, every time they've created [or acquired!] something that starts with a "20", us bassists have gone "ooh no, can we have one of them 19-something jobbies, please?". So as much as we're having a dig at Big F's marketing, we collectively have to shoulder some of the blame for an industry-wide reticence to innovate.

I've found the best way to deal with people who find the concept of sweepable mids tricky is to hand them a tambourine and tell them I'll meet them in the car park.

This is an industry where we don't even have battery power indicators despite 35 years of active instruments. Let's not get giddy about any promised "innovation"

nvm

As someone who spent nearly a decade in and around email marketing, I can confirm that this is the optimal solution. Played, sir!

Ta for the Hippotraktor tip! I'm from the ISIS "Oceanic" era, so all my post-metal listening is over a decade old now [eep!] But I've listened to a few tracks from Hippotraktor, and I really like what I'm hearing.

In that case, if you ARE going to be sending an email out to that list, it absolutely needs to be a message along the lines of: "You probably won't remember us, but here's a reminder of who we are, and why your details are on our mailing list. If you still want to be on our list, CLICK THIS SHINY BIG BUTTON. If we don't hear from you in the next week or so, we'll take your details off our list and we won't contact you again. Love, light and peace etc..." Even so, it's going to be a bit of a gamble if your list is old. You're almost certainly going to invoke some spam reports, as erroneous/unfair as that may seem. Some people will have forgotten that they ever signed up for anything.

Guild B-301F

I'd ignore them. You'd only end up having to change your user name, and swapping Spiderman for Venom.

It's a silly price. But my god, it's also a stunner. I saw a couple of these trans reds at the workshop when I went to pick mine up back in the early 90s, and even though I was pleased with the Schedua facings on mine, I remember thinking "wait... I could have perhaps had a translucent purple?!? Damn!"

That is eerie/funny as hell. Play that video at 0.25 speed, and it's like a Chris Morris "Jam" sketch. I mean, just look at all the amputated victims displayed on the wall behind him like ghoulish dendro-trophies

Wow, that reads less like "an interesting perspective" and more like "a crushing reality bulldozer". He does sail close to the "all you need to do these days is press a button on a computer" wind, but yeah - I don't blame him for being a smidge jaded. Though I would like to add that as a member of an 80s metal band, he was ALWAYS selling T-shirts more than other professional musicians.

I overlooked this initially, because I'm not a big fan of Warwicks, scratchplates, or Warwicks with scratchplates. But this is a stunning upgrade! Absolutely perfect. I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but keep the scratchplate. It adds a huge amount of character, in my view, and looks right at home with those J pickups and matching block inlays. It's ace