What are your irrational prejudices? I have some bonkers ones...

[Terry M.]

Other customers wanting to talk to me when I'm in a guitar store trying out basses I'm not going to buy 🙃 

[petecarlton]

8 hours ago, Terry M. said:

Other customers wanting to talk to me when I'm in a guitar store trying out basses I'm not going to buy 🙃 

Or, worse, members of staff wanting to talk to me in a guitar store, etc., etc. 

[snorkie635]

12 minutes ago, petecarlton said:

Or, worse, members of staff wanting to talk to me in a guitar store, etc., etc. 

"Hey man! Great bass buddy! I'll just get you a lead and you can plug it in to this amp. We can do both for a one-off special deal. Are you trading in?
Your bass is the wrong colour, weight, make, neck-length, string count, and they moved to the 'mark 3, ten minutes ago, so what you're looking for, isn't realistic, you know, with us having to pay the dreaded VATman, you know mate.

 

What you're trading just doesn't move nowadays. We could have this sitting here for  months, you know man. Have a play around and see what you think. I'll go and ask the manager what our best price is, but our Tam, the guitar-tech, has already found seven things wrong with your old bass. What's that? You bought it from us two months ago! Ah well, you see, that company is out of business now, so there's not much we can do.
 

You'll be needing a case, strap and tuner with that. That bass really suits you man!"

[Terry M.]

19 hours ago, snorkie635 said:

"Hey man! Great bass buddy! I'll just get you a lead and you can plug it in to this amp. We can do both for a one-off special deal. Are you trading in?
Your bass is the wrong colour, weight, make, neck-length, string count, and they moved to the 'mark 3, ten minutes ago, so what you're looking for, isn't realistic, you know, with us having to pay the dreaded VATman, you know mate.

 

What you're trading just doesn't move nowadays. We could have this sitting here for  months, you know man. Have a play around and see what you think. I'll go and ask the manager what our best price is, but our Tam, the guitar-tech, has already found seven things wrong with your old bass. What's that? You bought it from us two months ago! Ah well, you see, that company is out of business now, so there's not much we can do.
 

You'll be needing a case, strap and tuner with that. That bass really suits you man!"

You don't work down Denmark Street do you? 😅

[kwmlondon]

1 hour ago, Terry M. said:

You don't work down Denmark Street do you? 😅

Must take a moment to say how good the team are in GuitaGuitar in Camden. Really helpful, not pushy. Also, in my experience, Andertons have been great and so have The Bass Gallery and Bass Direct. Been very happy to put money their way over the years.

[Terry M.]

30 minutes ago, kwmlondon said:

Must take a moment to say how good the team are in GuitaGuitar in Camden. Really helpful, not pushy. Also, in my experience, Andertons have been great and so have The Bass Gallery and Bass Direct. Been very happy to put money their way over the years.

I agree with all of this. I like the guys in Wunjos too.

[dclaassen]

Also Music Street in Huntingdon….top notch folks!

[petecarlton]

Are you all saying these are irrational prejudices?
 

If not, ahem…

 

 

22 hours ago, kwmlondon said:

Must take a moment to say how good the team are in GuitaGuitar in Camden. Really helpful, not pushy. Also, in my experience, Andertons have been great and so have The Bass Gallery and Bass Direct. Been very happy to put money their way over the years.

 

21 hours ago, Terry M. said:

I agree with all of this. I like the guys in Wunjos too.

 

7 hours ago, dclaassen said:

Also Music Street in Huntingdon….top notch folks!

 

[Terry M.]

33 minutes ago, petecarlton said:

Are you all saying these are irrational prejudices?
 

If not, ahem…

 

 

 

 

 

There are a ton of comments on here that while not irrational prejudices in and of themselves are legitimate and direct responses to irrational prejudices. All part of the fun in my books ☺️

[prowla]

1 hour ago, petecarlton said:

Are you all saying these are irrational prejudices?
 

If not, ahem…

 

 

The passive-aggressive use of "ahem"...

 

[petecarlton]

I apologise if I appeared to be passive-aggressive, but we did appear to be straying off-topic.  I'll make myself clearer next time.

[cdog]

Painted heads, painted necks, 24 fret necks, people playing with their bass at their knees, leaning the bass against a wall strings facing out, not tucking lead through strap. 

[dclaassen]

2 hours ago, cdog said:

Painted heads, painted necks, 24 fret necks, people playing with their bass at their knees, leaning the bass against a wall strings facing out, not tucking lead through strap. 

Just curious…what bugs you about 24 fret basses?

[tauzero]

1 minute ago, dclaassen said:

Just curious…what bugs you about 24 fret basses?

 

Two frets too few?

[Terry M.]

3 hours ago, petecarlton said:

I apologise if I appeared to be passive-aggressive, but we did appear to be straying off-topic.  I'll make myself clearer next time.

Threads going off-topic is a way of life on Basschat. When it gets too much for me personally I unfollow the thread. I'm not suggesting you do this but in the grand scheme of things we're not on here discussing anything that deep so it doesn't really matter. I didn't appreciate the call-out is what I'm saying I guess.

[Stub Mandrel]

29 minutes ago, tauzero said:

31 minutes ago, dclaassen said:

Just curious…what bugs you about 24 fret basses?

 

Two frets too few?

 

It stops people adding the high c string he loves.

[Kiwi]

On 13/10/2025 at 16:46, tauzero said:

 

Radio series (since repeated), then book, then TV series, and eventually a terrible film. There is a book of the radio scripts available too, there are five books in the original trilogy, and there's a quite poor sixth book by Eoin Colfer with an accompanying not terribly good radio series.

Eoin is a great writer but his writing missed the highly random but unexpectedly profound coincidences that made the originals so worth multiple re-reads.  The randomness was born out of blind panic as a creative byproduct of Douglas's appaling time management.  I agree about the movie also but it was clearly targeted at US mainstream audiences and...simplified...as a result.  

[basexperience]

I used to have a prejudice against basses that weren't 24 frets when I was younger (like 20 years ago...) - now I can see the utility, particularly for slap and getting more bottom end into that tone when playing double-thumb. These days the thing that makes me 🙄 is stuff like Facebook groups where people humblebrag about using Squiers. I do actually have a slight prejudice against Fender, over a decade ago I popped into a bass shop on Denmark st in London and tried a back-to-back comparison of 3 jazz basses - a squire, a fender standard, and a high end custom shop, and TBH through an identical amp, with identical EQ, I really couldn't hear enough difference between them to warrant the price of even the standard. Mind you, I wasn't spending a lot of time with each bass, so it's not like I was assessing the really quality points like hardware, finish etc. Just tone.

 

I guess I've played long enough that my irrational prejudices are all around irrational prejudices, which probably means I've lost my edge 😄 

[Terry M.]

28 minutes ago, basexperience said:

I used to have a prejudice against basses that weren't 24 frets when I was younger (like 20 years ago...) - now I can see the utility, particularly for slap and getting more bottom end into that tone when playing double-thumb. These days the thing that makes me 🙄 is stuff like Facebook groups where people humblebrag about using Squiers. I do actually have a slight prejudice against Fender, over a decade ago I popped into a bass shop on Denmark st in London and tried a back-to-back comparison of 3 jazz basses - a squire, a fender standard, and a high end custom shop, and TBH through an identical amp, with identical EQ, I really couldn't hear enough difference between them to warrant the price of even the standard. Mind you, I wasn't spending a lot of time with each bass, so it's not like I was assessing the really quality points like hardware, finish etc. Just tone.

 

I guess I've played long enough that my irrational prejudices are all around irrational prejudices, which probably means I've lost my edge 😄 

I'm intrigued when you say more bottom end for double-thumb. How do more frets equate to less low end?

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, basexperience said:

 I do actually have a slight prejudice against Fender, over a decade ago I popped into a bass shop on Denmark st in London and tried a back-to-back comparison of 3 jazz basses - a squire, a fender standard, and a high end custom shop, and TBH through an identical amp, with identical EQ, I really couldn't hear enough difference between them to warrant the price of even the standard. 

 

The last time I did that, when i bought a squier classic vibe P bass, I tried the Squer, an fender standard and a fender american - I certainly didn't *hear* that much of a difference between them (there was obviously a difference, but I mean in terms of one being better than the other), but the fender american *felt* better than the others, and the Squier felt better than the fender standard. The squier was certainly a better deal at less than 1/3 of the price of the american, so I bought that and played it for years.

[Sté]

Jazz female singers are divas. (Ok, only based on my small experience )

[basexperience]

4 hours ago, Terry M. said:

I'm intrigued when you say more bottom end for double-thumb. How do more frets equate to less low end?

I've got a theory that because you can play just off the end of the board, through the string, a little further up the string (towards the head), then it's the equivalent of plucking over the bridge pickup vs the neck pickup, as it were - with a 24 fret neck, on the same scale bass, the 21 fret bass would have a little more room to play through further up the string towards the head of the bass. Scott from SBL says he prefers 21/22 fret basses for slap and it got me thinking why.

[basexperience]

4 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

The last time I did that, when i bought a squier classic vibe P bass, I tried the Squer, an fender standard and a fender american - I certainly didn't *hear* that much of a difference between them (there was obviously a difference, but I mean in terms of one being better than the other), but the fender american *felt* better than the others, and the Squier felt better than the fender standard. The squier was certainly a better deal at less than 1/3 of the price of the american, so I bought that and played it for years.

I misremembered my story. I did exactly what you did - there was no custom in there. Squier, standard and American. Thanks for reminding me!

[petecarlton]

21 hours ago, Terry M. said:

I didn't appreciate the call-out is what I'm saying I guess.

Got it!

[rushbo]

On 22/10/2025 at 15:10, cdog said:

 not tucking lead through strap. 

Oh God this...1000 times this. 

 

Every time I see someone casually dangling their lead carelessly, my inner voice screams "SORT THAT LEAD OUT OR YOU'LL TRIP OVER IT AND DIE!" I've never seen, or heard about a fatality caused by an untucked lead, but it's only a matter of time, isn't it? Isn't it? I'm right, aren't I?