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Thanks for the above folks, having done a little bit of digging around I found he has numerous ebay identities - five at least (some are linked to the account he bought with and some are not - and several comments on guitar forums about him doing what he has done here, sometimes even before he'd actually bought the guitar in question! He has a refund, I get to keep my 4003S

I got a half page in Bass Player magazine this month. What a hoot! I think I did the Q&A about ten months ago...I reckon half that gear and rig has found new homes now.

And some more piccies in the garden sun! I replaced the original string retainer bar as I got a comment that the Hipshot one on the ash bass I made looked much better. I quite agree!

UPDATE: as recommended, spoke to Ashdown, fantastic response as people said on here, so they stepped up to the mark, main option was to pop into Ashdown, they’d sort it there and then...then take it home...fantastic service but then the problem of location popped up....so me and the guy had a good laugh about that...genuinely nice guy to talk to....hadn’t heard of that type of problem with that model....so next suggestion , get in touch with retailer for exchange. Past experience, some retailers to be truthful don’t have the player at heart but this time (and I’m happy to name them now) PMT stepped up to the mark, said it’s not good an amp should fail on its first outing, arranged for a new model to be delivered and the faulty one uplifted at the same time...THE NEXT DAY! and as I’ve said, there is a stretch of water involved which usually complicates things and adds to cost as well. So new amp working well and I’m really happy. Apologies to other replies on here, I’ve had a hectic week, our “original” band has just released our first single and video to accompany it, and our covers band has been rehearsing non stop and playing at the same time...3 gigs this weekend coming , one a big outdoor show....so again, apologies for delay in replying and a BIG THANKS to those of you who offered advice, even the lend of gear and especially PMT and ASHDOWN for the fantastic service... heres our video by the way, love it if you could like our page and like and share our video. https://www.facebook.com/EndlessDivision/

Well the pedal gets a big thumbs up from me! Playing along to my (ex) band’s albums which were pretty light in the bass department, it delivers such a ‘produced’ tone that it just sounds like they’ve been remixed / remastered with better bass! I thought I was getting this effect from my B3K also, but now that tone sounds completely off. It’s funny how our ears adjust - I’ll probably change my mind next week! It’s made me change my technique for the better too, forcing me to play with a lighter more consistent touch and only dig in when I want to hear distortion. You can get a lot of sound variation just from how you play.

The band I was in, Inter managed to get a record deal. We were part of the post brit-pop scene and worked our rears off playing as much as humanly possible to build up a following. Started to get a name for ourselves and released a song on the Pet Sounds label and then later on our first single, Happy Ending in 1997. This got noticed by John Peel who said it was his favourite single of 1997 and gave us our first John Peel Session. This promoted us even further and it got to the point where Virgin were trying to decide to sign either us or The Stereophonics. They chose the Stereophonics in the end but we still managed to get a half decent record deal. We were all about 28 and got about £36k advance each for 3 years plus £5k to buy gear and then royalties from merchandise, sales etc. Going to the Bass Centre with £5k to go buy whatever I wanted was the best feeling in the world. I bought a Stingray, a Status and a massive top of the range Hartke rig 😊 We recorded our debut album at Loco Studios in South Wales which was where Oasis, The Manics, Stereophonics and many others had recorded stuff. The studio was also owned by Geoff Downes of Buggles fame and John Payne of Asia who both played on the album. We lived at the studio for three months in our own cottage and even had our own chef 😊 Our producer was Mark Wallis who has recorded with everyone but is most famous for recording the IT Bites album, The Primatives album, The Smiths, The Travis album and was the engineer on U2's Joshua Tree. Prior to choosing this producer we came very close to going to Seatle and recording the album with Rick Parasher who recorded Pearl Jam's Ten album but we told the record company no as we wanted to sound English still and not end up sounding like an American band. The album, titled Got My Nine sold 7k copies in the first week and we released 3 singles, National Paranoia, Speed Racer and Radio Finland. All got mainstream radio airplay and led on to a second John Peel Session, a live Virgin Radio Session and an XFM session. Also one of our tracks was used to advertise Casio G Shock watches in an advert for Spanish cinemas. We also did other TV stuff with tracks being used on Eurosport and Rebel TV. Q Magazine gave the album 4 out of 5. We continued to tour which was amazing with our own crew etc. and were doing really well but then things started to go wrong. We were getting offered some big things like going on tour with Feeder in Germany, film soundtracks, gigs in the States but the record company was saying no to it all. To cut a long story short, we found out we were being ran as a tax loss so initially the record company were happy to pump money in to us (the album alone cost £120k to record etc.) but as we started to get more successful they put the brakes on. We were literally being hung out to dry and missing out on great opportunities which at the time made no sense. Anyway, they breached contracts so we sued them and won and that was the end of it. It was incredibly hard work, constantly recording, touring, song writing, promoting, photo shoots, interviews etc. but I have no regrets as I lived my dream for 4 years, the best time of my life with the most amazing experiences. Plus I still get the odd royalty payment now and again 😊 More details below. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_(band) Other things I've done is go on tour with Paul Weller in another band, supporting him for 4 nights at the Roundhouse in Camden and recorded an album at his studio in Ripley. He also played on the album and I had to teach him to play this piano part that we wanted. I've been the Bass player in a video for a charity song that ELO were recording. Played at Brixton Academy using The Levellers back line. Supported Cactus World News and Let Loose and best of all chatted to Andrea Corr whilst making a cup of tea 😍😍 Now I play in an amazing 50s and 60s cover band, doing about 100 gigs a year and totally loving it.

No worries Peter! Now sit back and watch the 2nd hand prices soar!!! 👍

I don't currently, but have a strong desire to start an Ian Dury tribute - as the vocalist

Started cutting and gluing!! I'm going to try to make 2 or 3 of these to try a few different things. First off is a sapele body, wenge veneer and maple top. The maple should look quite good when oiled (I'm hoping!!) Glued up sandwiches.... To make running wires through the body easier, I drill holes before gluing the two halves together. I then insert a straw in the hole to prevent any glue clogging it up when the halves are joined. To ensure I don't drill too far into the body, I draw the rough direction of the hole then mark the length with masking tape on the drill. The side have then been joined Then the outline of the bass is rough cut ready for routing

OK, one last time, these are small but the ones out there are far away.....

When I lived in Austin, used to go to Ed's bass emporium. Also watched him close up on upright, gigging in a duo with a guitarist at a pastry shop. My wife and I were front and center and the only one's giving our undivided attention. He sat with us during break and couldn't have been nicer. Quite the class act and wonderful musician.

I was in a band in the early 80s in Leeds... 2 of the members went on to become the Utah Saints, one went and joined the Rollins Band and one - the son of a famous agony aunt - went on to become a famous tv foodie and restaurant critic. I stayed resolutely unknown.

Great to see Ashdown on it!

Also where are you based? Would likely be much easier and in fact better for us to sort directly for you rather than shipping unnecessarily to the retailer and back etc if they are a distance away as you say...

Hi Torby, That's not good. Can you let us know a few more details and we will have a look at what we can do to get you sorted. Amp Model - Serial Number - Date Purchased - Retailer purchased from -

Best one I ever played in was The More Specials. We used a mix of BBC sessions, singles and album tracks. Some amazing musicians and only band I've been in where the audience was on their feet and dancing from the very first tune to the last, guaranteed, every gig. Not much money in it with so many members to split the fee with but some unforgettable nights and even got a few of the original Specials up on stage with us at various gigs.

Played in a Free tribute band for a few years, absolutely loved it. We ended up with Jeff Rich ex Status Quo on the drums. Used my by big Markbass rig and even bought an EB3 bass, bloody awful thing to play, headstock dive, but looked and sounded the part, I would have preferred to use my MM Stingray, but not authentic enough. We were fairly unusual that we were a 5 piece which included a keyboard player, about 80% of the Free recorded tracks actually contain keyboards, that gave us a live sound that was so close to the original. Would still be doing it now, but the vocalist decided to leave to form his own band with original material, the most difficult person in the band to replace, couldn’t find anyone else good enough and the band eventually folded.

The difference is that instrument cables don't use large enough gauge wire to handle the current that an amp delivers to a speaker.

I play in Her way to hell, the only female fronted Bon Scott tribute in Scotland, mabye in the UK. We just played Bonfest for the second year running, up in Bon`s birthplace of Kirremuir last week and went down well. The tunes are exactly as the band played them either on record or live versions that the band did, except of course we have a girl singer. This comes in quite handy as we can play all the songs in their original key and even ac/dc don`t do that! We don`t add in any fancy widdiling that wasn`t there originally unlike some of the other dc tributes, just straight ahead rock n roll.

So, like many here, I've spent lots of time and money "researching" basses and amps. Some of the gear I've acquired I love, others "not so much". In the past 10 years I've probably owned 50+ basses in the search for the ultimate tone palette. The list reads like a What's what of quality basses - Wal, Ritter, Status, Overwater, Shuker, Warwick, Spector, I've got a number of custom builds, I've even owned a Fender or two. I generally have basses on a rota, play them for 3-4 months put them back in their case, bring another out. One of the basses I've neglected to play (been in it's case unplayed for over 3 years) is a Veillette Citron - most of you haven't even heard of them, never mind played one. One of less than a handful in the UK, It's always been top of my list of my "never to be sold" list. I also had a fretless which I foolishly sold here, only because it wasn't getting played. I rotated basses yesterday, went looking for my Overwater Jazz but instead pulled out the VC. Recognising it hadn't been out for a while I took it to the amp and plugged it in. WOW!! Yes WOW!! Indeed!! I now remember why I decided that this would be "the last to go" - man, it blew my mind. Tough, kicking tones - proper punchy - everything I've ever wanted tones-wise from a bass. Made me question why I've ever bought anything else ( other than i wouldn't really want to take it anywhere it might get hurt/stolen). All this time chasing the "unobtainable" when the whole time I've had what I wanted in a case. Photos and sound clips to follow.

"Ah grandma", said LRR-H "all the better for my bank balance then..."

Agree - it's well laid out with a good progression. However if you can't read music, consider Bob Magnusson's book, also very good and includes tab: https://www.halleonard.com/product/viewproduct.action?itemid=695168

Yeh - you've hit the mail on the head - 3 times the size and 3 times the price of some separates. The Mooer Mod Factory does look good on paper - but the review (below) seems to be a fair one 'warts and all' and another instance of you get what you pay for (not always the case, I know)! Actually the query has been driven, in part, by my slight disappointment with what my Zoom MS-60B seems to be capable of delivering. I spent an hour knocking my MS-60B patches into shape with the ToneLib editor (which is such a good piece of free software for Zoom multifx pedals - I found the interface and editing was a bit tortuous before this excellent bit of software was made available). I basically need the MS-60B to cover off: tuner, and occasional use delay, tremolo, chorus and HPF*; I've got dedicated pedals for the rest. The MS-60B is just fine as a tuner, passable (but not amazing) on delay and HPF but I really struggled to get a tremolo that came close to the rich / vibrant tremolo I had previously got set up (with little effort) on my B3n. I guess the difference in processing power between it and the MS-60B is starting to show. The B3n is a great headphone / home use pedal but going to take up too much pedal board real estate given the occasional need for the various effects I'd be using it for. [Update: one of my fellow BCers suggested adding the 'Air' effect to the Tremolo and the Delay to give it a bit more reverb and that seems to have worked well] *and possibly bit-crusher after today's exchange with @dodge_bass! Most likely singly rather than together, although I can certainly see situations where being able to use in combination may be nice (but not critical) The Line6 stuff is also a little chunky and I guess if I was looking at the Line 6 m9, we're kinda getting into Helix HX territory in terms cost / size (and I guess I'm holding out for a Helix HX Mk2 with DI & headphones out and aux in and then I can upgrade my B3n! ) Mooer Mod Factory Review (on dV247): "Great idea, poor execution" 21.05.2014 Having seen some brilliant demos of this pedal, it took me a long time to reconcile with the fact that it actually doesn't sound that great at all and is very impractical for live situations. The most annoying factor is the significant DROP IN VOLUME whenever the pedal is engaged (for any of the sounds). Unfortunately, there is no volume control to offset this problem. It's unfortunate that Mooer went through all the trouble of making a pedal with such great features, but failed to get the details right for each of the features. When considering that it's a pretty low-priced pedal that takes very little pedal-board space, one of the first thoughts is: can I keep it for one or two good sounds? You be the judge: Chorus: not great, but okay; basic chorus effect is usable, but when tweaked, it doesn't blend well and sounds metallic and hollow. Flanger: does not sound like a flanger at all; no amount of tweaking will make it sound like a half-way decent one; in comparison, Mooer's Elec Lady is miles ahead and is a beautiful pedal, if you want a great flanger. Phaser: it's all right, not great; It is quite mild and no amount of tweaking will bring it to those sharp phasers used for cutting funky rhythms; if mild phaser is what you want, this will do. Envelope phaser: I was unable to find any good use for this. Tremolo: too mild, disturbs the guitar's tone. Stutter: I did not find any useful applications for this. Vibrato: I'm not a fan of this effect, so my opinion is negatively biased. Univibe: misleading function name -- did not resemble anything like the EH small stone (univibe). Auto-wah: I'm not a fan of this effect, so my opinion is negatively biased. Touch wah: envelope sweep not sufficiently responsive to be interesting; controls not sufficiently versatile to adapt to various forms of playing or signal output strengths. Envelope ring modulator: I'm not a fan of this effect, so my opinion is negatively biased. In summary, I am negatively biased for some of the features, but the ones that were of interest to me were somewhat weakly executed. I will keep the pedal for its small size and the usable chorus and mild phaser. It's hard to find even just these two sounds in such a small pedal. Although I will have to compensate with volume every time I engage the effect.

And a very fine 50s and 60s cover band it is too...😊

Whiskey in the Jar - all one-hundred-and-fifty verses of it. I don't mind Oasis in small doses. Goes down well in the right place. Noel Gallacher's High Flying Birds is a more reasonable compromise though.

It's a shame he's not up for trades, I have a pre CBS P Bass, could add some cash too...

We were back at the Wine Vaults in Banbury last night, always a great gig and last night was no exception. Early plans to play outside were scuppered by early evening showers, but no matter - great atmosphere, an ‘up for it’ crowd, and everyone up and dancing by the end. I had my MIM Fender Jazz going into my Genz Benz rig, and my Joyo American Sound overdrive thingy on all night for a little bit of crunch; sounded lovely and cut through nicely. Next stop for us is The Swan in Banbury, another favourite of ours in a couple of weeks. Here’s the calm before the storm...

I'm based in Walsall

Played a fun charity gig at The Waggon and Horses in Peasedown St John Somerset in aid of the South West Air Ambulance, outside and weather held up too, very chilled event, decided to take my ‘big rig’ as I wasn’t sure of the PA setup etc. Glad I did in the end - we were sounding good (The Watts) and went down rather well. love outside gigs 🙏🏻😎

You'll find two of these enough for most venues and one is good enough for the smaller pubs. A pair of the 50l cabs work well outdoors where the decent bass output helps with the losses you get from not having any wall reinforcement. Anything above that level and you and the drums will be miked up so no problems with the larger festival type events. I've yet to gig the smaller cabs so nothing to report as yet from direct experience. If you are based in the West Country you could always come and try them.

If you want to play it more often, Mick, I'd suggest you stop leaving it lying outside on the lawn ...

I love Zodiacs, I have five of them now! Weirdly enough the white and rosewood ones are the lightest, have the thinnest necks and a less deep sound. The bridges are poor quality pressed steel which will eventually cause your strings to break if you play super hard like me. If you replace it with another metal it'll make the tone noticeably less bright. They look nice with hipshot kickass bridges, and if you get the steel saddle inserts it will sound very close to the original bridge

This might look quite good on paper: Played bass with David Gilmour; Been in the charts; Headlined the Isle of Wight Festival All this was done after the age of 30 (to counter the disillusioned youngster earlier on)! Oh, and I killed a man while playing the Birdies Song (did I mention that before?) - rock'n'roll.

Are you sure it’s not you looking at it incorrectly?

Hi Torby, I wouldn't worry too much yet, I recently sold my trusty 14 year old MAG300 2x10 combo on here about a year ago and when it arrived, the buyer said it was dead. This had never happened to me before. Thankfully he was willing to open it up and found an internal spade connector on the mains side had fallen off in transit. It might be something as simple as that being loose. I know it is not what you want in a new cab, but I'm sure Ashdown will sort you out. If it's any consolation, I paid a lot more than that each for my two "boutique" Barefaced cabs and have no end of issues with the Tolex peeling, and Alex just keeps fobbing me off.....

I once stood next to Curt Smith (Tears for Fears) at a zebra crossing near Oxford Street tube. Only 15 minutes later Joan Collins brushed past me in the furnishings dept in Liberty. not that she's rock n roll. Just sayin'.

Songs I hate playing: Seven Nation Army. We play it because it goes down well and people sing along to the riff, but jeez am I sick of the brain dead piece of 💩 that it is. Songs I just hate: Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader. I hate it and it’s phony geezer Jamie Oliver associations, and I hate the fact that they even sampled the original instead of doing a pure cover.

Does seem odd... maybe he's taken advantage of a last minute holiday and is out of reach? Torby if you are there and this is genuine then lets get you sorted...

I, too, hate power ballads. But the thing that irks me most about this particular one is that, if I hear the bandleader announce it or see it on the setlist, I always get my hopes up that they might play some Huey Lewis. And every time, I am disappointed.

Hi Torby , you said a stretch of water as involved , If you are on the IoW you can borrow one of my Ashdown rigs until you get yours sorted , plus I'm going over next week & could possibly take it down to the Ashdown chaps or get a friend who does amp repairs to cast an eye over it , if that's any help .

I'd be inclined to go ask for a refund myself. That said, if it's the 'long distance retailer' I think it is, then I had to return a faulty item to them. They were very good. Very prompt and the issue was fixed. All told, I think it was less than 2 weeks to sort out and that included transit time. It was much better than the service I received from a local music store. Still, I'd go for a refund.

I've been putting off posting this. My problem is that all I have are the sketches and notes that I used to build a prototype, and I do not have the skills (nor the motivation) to redraw everything so it is as clear as the instructions you would get with a kit. If there is sufficient interest, and someone wants to take that on, I wouldn't have a problem with that. This is the layout of the current battery powered head. At the back of the head, the feed to the amplifier is fused, and the feed from the battery is fused, so regardless of whether the amp is being run from an external battery, or the internal battery is being connected to a an external power source, they have some protection. I transport the head with the external battery-out and amp-in connectors disconnected, so that I cannot arrive at the venue with a part-discharged battery due to the power switch being knocked in transit. Slightly left of centre is a stereo class D amplifier pcb capable of giving 22 W into 4 ohms per channel on a 12-13 volt supply, or about 10 W into 8 ohms per channel. Each channel contains two amplifiers in bridge mode, so you cannot bridge them to obtain more power. The pcb is designed around a TA2020 chip originally made by TriPath (and marketed as 'CLass T' just to confuse things). Various pcb designs are available, but I can only comment on this one. The sensitivity is high enough that you can plug an active bass directly into it, so if you have on-board EQ, you just need this pcb amp, a speaker or two, a battery (hopefully with a fuse) and you are go to go. Alternatively, you can buy an off-the-shelf amp and preamp in a box. Googling [Tripath amplifier pcb] found this supplier of the amp module that I used - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MKIII-Tripath-TA2020-PCB-25watt-Class-T-amplifier-UK-/251464814688?clk_rvr_id=1520242820360&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=twenga&utm_campaign=twenga&utm_param=eyJlcyI6MCwicyI6OTcyMDIzNywiY2kiOiIwMzhhMTZkNDRlYWJmMDNmNjZiODRkYzNjZWUzYTQ1NSIsImkiOiIyNTE0NjQ4MTQ2ODgiLCJ0cyI6MTUyNTQ1NzQ4MCwidiI6Mywic28iOjE1MDAsImMiOjE0OTcwfQ%3D%3D&rmvSB=true Power supply To the right of the enclosure is the power supply pcb. This is the circuit and layout. The stripboard tracks run along the longer dimension, and are only shown where they are needed; links run across the shorter dimension; cuts in the track are shown with an x. This provides a fused feed for the preamp circuits, and a mid-supply voltage rail so that the op-amps can run with plus and minus supplies. The chip used is a TLE2426 which will be difficult to get cheaply unless you have an account with CPC or RS Components. An alternative would be a pair of dividing resistors each parallelled by a capacitor, as discussed here - http://sound.whsites.net/project43.htm Input circuit The front right pcb provides input buffering and gain, muting, and a feed to the tuner jack socket on the back of the amp. This is the circuit and layout. There are two input sockets, for active and passive basses. Plugging in to the passive (right) jack socket feeds through the left socket switch contacts and into the first stage op-amp. Alternatively, plugging into the active (left) jack socket opens the switches and places an attenuator in the signal path, bringing the level down to match that of a passive bass. The two jack sockets are standard Cliff or similar, where the jack socket contacts cross the tube where the jack plug fits, and are physically lifted by the insertion of a jack plug. These sockets are available with pcb pins, but they are not at 0.1 inch spacing, and do not fit stripboard. However, if you take one with solder tags, cut off half of each solder tag, and squash the remaining bit into a crude pin, it will be pretty close to the spacing you need, although the stripboard hole will need to be enlarged. The first stage op-amp feeds a buffer to the tuner jack socket, and feeds the filter pcb via the mute switch. The other pole of the mute switch is used to change the supply polarity to the front panel LED, so it shows red when muted and green when live. Filter circuit The front left pcb in the first image contains the variable HPF, variable LPF, volume control and buffers to feed the line out and amplifier pcb. This is the circuit and layout. The dual op-amp 1A and 1B is used in two standard filter Sallen Key circuits giving a roll-off of 12dB/octave. The HPF is optimised as a Butterworth filter, giving a sharp cutoff and good transient response while the LPF has a more gentle transition, intended to take out fret and string noise. The HPF operates between 30 and 120Hz (copied from FDeck's design), while the LPF operates from 20KHz down to 200Hz (copied from a Walter Harley design from 2000). I prefer to use Omeg conductive plastic potentiometers because I like the way they feel, but they have a gap of 2 rows between the two tracks. Conventional carbon 16mm potentiometers have a gap of 1 row between the two tracks, so if you want to use them you will need to modify the layout slightly. The authors of the original designs both recommended antilog potentiometers and lamented their lack of availability, settling for a log pot working backwards instead. I have used linear potentiometers and they work well over the important part of the range, but antilog pots are now readily available in carbon, although not in conductive plastic. The dual op-amp 2A and 2B is used to feed the amplifier module at the right level, and to provide a buffered line output. On both the input and filter pcbs, there is a link to allow ground-lift for the tuner, line out and amplifier out in case there were earth loop problems. I had no problems, so the earths can be hard-wired in. Apart from the supply-splitting chip TLE2426, and conductive plastic dual 100K potentiometers, all components are available from www.bitsbox.co.uk and the conductive plastic potentiometers from rapidonline.co.uk. David