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Probably a bit more practical though: the classic warning sign

I can see this thread going on for ages...

Just before Xmas I bought a set of Hipshots for my MIM Precision. The bass itself is great, but the tuners weren`t so, and as I`m going to be using this bass on a few overseas gigs this year (I ain`t flying with my US basses) wanted the tuners to be as good as I could get them. Reviews read, Hipshot HB7s ordered as a direct fit on MIMs. Except they weren`t, all screw-holes lined up ok, but the supplied ferrules/bushes were too small, and the Hipshot tuning pegs rattled in the Fender ones. So I e-mailed Hipshot asking where I could purchase a set of these, and they said just send us your address and we`ll put a set out to you, no charge. Received them today, fit like a glove. Quality customer service imo, so a big thumbs up to them. And have to say, the tuners are a real quality bit of kit, much smoother than the stock Fender ones.

That's not the words, it happened to me in Venezuela where a friend invited me to dinner with his family and at the table I asked his youngest sister if I could have a spoon and suddenly a deafening silence and after receiving what seem like an eternity of stares I asked if I said something wrong...

I was close, I said '92!

Lana Del Ray is just awful, I don't understand how that rubbish exists. Not a legal viewpoint. The melody of the song, the inflection in the vocals, the misery, it's a "tribute" to Creep undoubtedly. I would rather Radiohead issued a complete cease and desist against her career.

I guess for 99% of gigs you won't be sustaining notes on the bass guitar for very long, so fair enough. Personally I like to play some weird stinky poo and sustain is often essential

Update. A full refund has been issued with no comment. I should receive in 6 days. So a happyish ending :-)

+1 To the OP - In my experience a bass that sustains well usually sounds better than average on the rest of the notes. Sustain is essential to have but that doesn't mean that you have to use it on every note, but if you need it and the bass can't sustain then it's not a good instrument.

Problem solved on the Line 6 forum. Go to command centre and select one of the 'lightning bolts' at the top. Then just enter all the midi details that correspond with the channel and patch of the Strymon, save and job done. Each time I solve a problem like this I marvel at how good the Helix is. Probably the best designed piece of kit I have ever used.

For me its a great tool for dynamics. Letting it ring sounds great, but also adds to a sudden stop of silence. You may not notice if if you had decent basses. I had a usa precision which had loads of sustain, then i moved to a cheapo jazz copy and the difference was amazingly bad! The sustain couldnt even last a bar never mind any longer.

Great question. I think it’s just another tool for us to use depending on the music your producing. I find it really useful in a lot of the Fretless stuff I play. It lends itself to using sustain as the very nature of Fretless is the ambiguity of the note. The “left hand wobble” it has its place

I listened to them this morning and have to agree. But then again supposedly Radiohead were sued for ripping off 'All I Need Is The Air That I Breathe' by The Hollies, so they haven't really got a leg to stand on!

@Al Krow you would have said something along the lines of if you had to pay for a date with a lady and maybe get some playtime would you prefer Joan Collins now or Scarlett Johansson.

Very much so! Si

lesson learnt... in Venezuela, use a fork for soup if you must...

Dude I don't know you but I was actually born and bred in a spanish speaking country so don't take it from me. In latin america which is her closest spanish speaking area lana is slang for money. So for Mcnach being spanish lana would just mean wool.

Yep. No perspiration

I have to say I agree wholeheartedly with this view. I am sorry to say that I am old enough to remember when an increasing amount of the gear which is now considered "vintage" was new and current. When I see mid- to- late 70s Fenders selling for thousands of pounds I am a bit aghast. Then again, I think Mk 1 Wal Custom Basses are grotesquely over-priced at 4k+ on the second-hand market. Because I am well familiar with basses from that era they hold no particular mystique for me. At the risk of stating the obvious, the problem with a lot of vintage instruments is that they are old and worn. A lot of these instruments were made without any thought of longevity. No one suspected they would become holy relics. More often than not, once the romance has worn off you are left with something not particularly special, riddled with niggling problems that you have paid over the odds for.

That's still more than I have heard of!

Bling has arrvived today ! Cant fit the lights right now though, as life chores are getting in the way

Ashdown products

They're usually built reasonably tidy inside - nice layout, neat cables plus pre and power stages on their own boards. I became quite intimate with the inside of my 4808 combo as there were a few ropey solder joints on the pre-amp board. It had the later 320w Clive Button power stage after it's former 'Bi-Polar Bear' gave out with it's previous owner. The later power amp was very good and as ever, plenty loud and clean..

Sealed or not a 15 doesn't have the dispersion of a 12. It may have less low frequency output than a ported 12, but the ported 12 is still more likely to distort at a lower power input. That said I'd rather matched 12s. You probably find that the 12 and 15 sound better together than either does alone, but that's the case with almost any cab pairing.

I've tweeted the link to the new subforum.

That in BC orange would be my favourite! What, are we American now?

Eric Clapton 'Blackie' tribute guitars: http://www.guitaravenue.com/guitars-basses.htm#xl_fender Gone right off them, I have.

Just got mine! I like it, sounds like a mish-mash of the HGBM, Blueberry, SFT and VT Bass. No gain control is a downer, but at least the presets accessible via the switch (clean and slightly dirty) are well chosen. Works really well with a passive P bass straight into headphones, bags of low end too. Not tried it through an amp yet.

My recently bought beauty

Thank you for explaining my "left-hand wobble" in the correct terms. . That's why you're the teacher. Sustain is essential for feel and emotional attachment to particular styles of music.

Stop getting us lefties all excited about a bass, only to find out you mirrored your webcam

Yes. No subs. I just wanted to hear what they sounded like. I was very impressed. I'm sure it all depends on how loud you are, and what your "sound" is etc. I loved them though.

Damn! Can I blame predictive text? 😁

I might be missing something with what you are asking but as sustain is a measure of the length of time a note sounds for, so why wouldn’t you want a better sustain characteristic? There are way too many songs to list, but to pick one - she sells sanctuary by The Cult, the bass starts with two ringing A notes so without sustain it would sound terrible. You can always mute a note if you want it to sound for less time.

Maybe it really is just me these days, but when I was first getting into music in the early 70s, one of the my main memories was that when my musical heroes made one of their infrequent appearances on TotP they would be wielding ever stranger custom guitars often from the work bench of a certain John Birch in Birmingham. Later on with the advent of punk and post-punk, sometimes the choice of instruments would be dictated as much by what was affordable as it was by what looked cool and interesting, but it also introduced me to the instruments of Microfrets, Burns, Hayman, Mosrite to name but a few. I always felt that if you chose to use an instrument that wasn't in the mainstream then maybe your music might be a little more interesting too and perhaps worth that extra effort to check out. Of course it wasn't always the case - no matter how cool Jerry Garcia's Travis Bean guitars looked it couldn't make me like the music of the Grateful Dead! And sometimes those imperfections can kill the music stone dead. I've lost count of the number of times a record has been completely ruined for me by the acquisition of a scratch or piece of grit stuck in the grooves of a vinyl LP, usually on my favourite track, and more often than not at some point after the record in question has been deleted and therefore difficult to replace with a pristine copy. CDs and lossless digital files are the answer to this, I no longer have to worry that the act of playing the music I love might destroy it for ever.

Delighted to hear it Mike. All I can say is welcome to the "Andy built me my favourite bass" club. Take a pew between me and TheGreek, gelfin has that whole side of the table incase he pokes out our eyes with the Mouradian-esque

many, many people would disagree with you strongly on this. it also has absolutely zero bearing on the merit of the case

She is a quality lady, those strings are great. I have expensive taste too and have a thirst for DR DDTs, to me they are great

Nicely played! What are you recording it through?

Quiet morning, so thought I'd dust off some of the gear, and give them a spin, here's a bunch of my '61 stuff, and their various bits of case candy.

That's what I tell the missus.

I've never understood the obsession with resale value. Maybe because I've never bought any instrument with an eye to selling it on at some point. I've always bought because I have an actual need for the instrument at that particular moment in time. If I can afford it and it's something I'm going to use then I'll buy it. At the time I rarely think I'll be selling it later. If at some point I no longer need it I'll probably sell it or if I think I might use it again in the future it will go into storage. When I sell stuff sometimes I make money compared with what I originally paid for it, and sometimes I lose money. If I loose money, I look at the that amount as the rental value of the instrument for the time I was using it. TBH the amount I've spent on guitars and basses in real terms is small beans compared with what I was spending on synthesisers in the 80s.

It's just occurred to me that I haven't posted this. When I upgraded to a bigger board a month back I meant to post this photo, but for some reason forgot to. Only thing that is missing is my valeton dapper unit that sits across the top...

This is the latest revision. The signal path isn't totally obvious from the layout, but it works for band purposes -the awesome El Cap being the final pedal. The SnU and Harmonist aren't final decisions and the latter may be on notice thanks to it's erratic 'on off' response to an expression pedal. I need to make way for a distortion to stack with the Pork Loin anyway, so anything not punching its weight is at risk.

I once bought a used Wal from a shop in London. Took it to Pete at Wal HQ for a service and he said it had been nicked a few years earlier. I gave it straight back to him, and he gave me a brand new Wal as a thank you

Latest addition, very scarce 3-knob 1961 Fender Jazz. Probably the nicest bass I've ever played, I've only seen one other, and after playing this one, just fell in love. [url="http://imgur.com/rNuOIMl"][/url]