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Jon sent me a few pictures.

Finally it's back! I traded this beast away several years ago and always considered it to be 'one of those that got away'... I think we've all been there, trading a bass and then suffering instant regret! However... finally after 3 years of failed attempts to get this bass back, the right sequence of trades has now landed this monster back in my hands. It's a Warwick Thumb Single Cut 6, a horrendously expensive thing if you wanted to buy it new (price tag is a shade under €8000). Warwick only made 120 of these and now only make them to order. These are heavy, but they are exceptionally good basses. The tone is outstanding and slices through any mix, the construction is immaculate. Pommele Bubinga top with USA ash body, flame maple neck and thick ebony board. Solid brass 'invisible' frets, MEC active/passive pickups and preamp. This one is near mint, with the flight case and Warwick folder. Very glad to have it back!

Well I don’t know about anyone else but all I have ever really wanted from Fender is decent build quality and some interesting colours, not just black and sh*t-burst.....so on that note, well done Fender and yes please to this....

As part of my ongoing search for a decent Overdrive pedal (ie a warm, slightly overdriven sound rather than a dentist’s drill), I decided to pick up one of the new Fender Downtown Express Bass pedals incorporating and Overdrive, Eq and Compressor. Build-wise this thing is high quality and a really substantial bit of kit both size and weight wise. It was apparently designed in conjunction with Mr Aguilar and I can well believe it. At just under £150 the quality of the Compressor (analog) and the really meaty Overdrive (all the way from thick warm valvey sounds through some serious dirt) as well as a decent eq and a DI, it really seems to be very good value indeed. Granted I’m not a massive user of effects, but it really is a good (in essence) multi-effect pedal as one that is very intuitive and easy to set up. The LEDs are something else too!

The Q\Strip is very capable as an analog speaker sim if set correctly. I'm not familiar with the other pedals you mentioned. For a speaker sim, it's best to use after any distortion producing pedals. You should obviously have the LPF engaged. You need to make sure everything is gain staged correctly as you could be getting fizz from overloading the interface. If you're running a number of pedals in series you want to set the gain structures so you have unity gain. Here is a video showing the Q\Strip as a speaker sim in action.

I'm asking Rocco to fund my holiday to Crete

A new Fender range. "Vintage style for the modern modern era" 60s Jazz 70s Jazz 50s Precision 60s Mustang

A fellow Scot here, with a Sterling Sub Ray 4 in my arsenal. (No cheap shots, please, about tight Scotsmen, or I will hunt you down like a dog.) Like the OP, I wanted to test the MM waters, but I find the wide nut on EBMM basses to be too wide for my delicate little paws, being a Jazz Bass player by temperament. The Sub Ray 4 I nabbed may be cheap, but it really packs a punch, and sounds close enough to the real thing to me to be well worth considering, to get a sense of these things, which are very different to the Jazz. I got mine for 200 quid, and there are plenty around, so give one a whirl, I say. I will now duck into my previously prepared bunker, so as to avoid the inevitable incoming from those rightfully enraged by my maundering.. Carry on.

Always looking for a bargain...one day somebody will post an ad for something I want but missed. Hope that I'm doing the same for somebody else... That or I'm fuelling everybody's GAS...

I'd like to take some of the credit but I think at least 95% must go to @Andyjr1515..... As you say "amazing skills"..

...Handbox looks great, but sadly only 200W at 8ohms, otherwise I would have been very tempted myself! Mesa M6: definitely a bit of fan noise with this one (not noticeable at all as soon as you start playing). But does it just deliver the best tone of any amp I've come across to date? Yup

Thunderfunk all the way.

The Portamento basses has 30 “fret” boards

Every time you buy a cd with tracks you haven’t heard in the radio. Every film you’ve gone to see at the cinema, or bought as a preorder.

The basses are ‘no great shakes’, but some of the telecasters look quite tasty...

I've actually always wanted one of these. When you think about it they are ridiculous, having only 15 frets and the same range as a 4 string but I still want one but I like the odd balls from the 60s & 70s like these:

Brilliant, thank you

@cetera Oh Spector King - knowest thee what this is?

As an artist I think it is somewhat presumptuous and disrespectful to your (potential) audience to expect them to crowd fund your recording. It is my experience as a artist that if your music is worth releasing you will find a way to do it without resorting to begging. It is also my experience as a fan of bands who have used crowd funding to release their music that the incentives being offered aren't really that special. What I am primarily interested in is the music. I'll be able to buy that for £10 when the album comes out. Nearly all of the other stuff is irrelevant to me. And in this particular case $50,000 just seems to be far to much money to ask for with no explanation of exactly how it will be spent. Is it just for recording costs? Getting your music on-line with all the major download and streaming sites only costs $50 for an album, so unless he's going for a large volume physical release that seems like an awful lot of money. For that kind of money just for recording plus mixing and mastering I'd be looking at a couple of weeks lock in with a name producer and mixing engineer with the aim of producing a fantastic sounding album and turning at least one of my band's songs into a potential hit single. Getting your music recorded and released has never been cheaper. My last studio recording (made earlier this year) was charged at the same hourly rate (£6/h) as my first back in 1980 and while both were made in similar locations (converted garages) the quality and range of the equipment (as well as the acoustic treatment in the studio and control room) used for this year's session was vastly superior to 1980's semi-professional 4-track tape machine fed from a modified 12 channel PA desk and the sole effect available being reverb and echo from a spare 2-track tape machine. Maybe the way forward for crowd funding recordings would be instead of offering useless "special" incentives would be to give everyone funding the album a cut of the sales? I might be tempted to throw a couple of hundred pounds at my favourite bands in return for 1% of the sales of their next album.

Yes, I've forgotten to thank Luke for his work on the badges - looking good.

What a negative thread! Give them some credit - they've made up a word!

Check out the money back guarantee offered by Thomann who have great customer service and are happy for you to try things out and return with no questions asked. You would obviously need to be careful to ensure that the item is returned in pristine condition but it's well worth considering IMHO. https://www.thomann.de/gb/helpdesk_moneyback.html

OK, I see where I'm going wrong - I assumed that getting a harmonic at the 12 fret by damping the string there meant that the node was at the 12th fret. From what you have said, the node is not there, but is close enough that damping the string at that point will produce the harmonic. The rest of it now makes more sense. Thanks David

Medium scale. My bass is 33”, I bought regular long scale strings and had to send them back. Luckily they came from bass direct who're brilliant.

The pics weren't available last time I looked, but they are back up now. I keep telling myself that I don't *need* another mustang, but the sunburst one looks rather tasty

The first thing I do to all of my basses whether they need it or not is fit Hipshot Ultralites. I like to play with my bass at almost a 45 degree angle to help keep my wrists straight and as well as losing a few grams in weight, they help to balance the bass better. The second thing is a wide, padded strap set at the correct height as the height of the strap can affect how the bass feels. The third is to move around as much as you can. I'm not talking about busting out your old 70's TOTP Legs & Co funky dancing but any movement will help shift the bass around as you play. My Harley Benton Jazz weighs 9.8lbs but is incredibly comfortable on long gigs thanks in part to these things.

Friend of mine has this and got some lotion to help the symptoms. Later on he found out that he was allergic to some ingredient of the lotion... so beware. By the way, you might try that newer Ibanez Ashula 7-string to play with both fretted and fretless in one neck. Lots of tuning possibilities included!

The tops of most 'flat top' acoustic guitars are dished at around 25' radius. The backs vary, but are also dished usually to around 15' radius. So all of the braces have to be curved to suit, and then the back and top forced into shape while gluing those braces and thus hold the dish-shape. For this, you need a couple of radius dishes and - most of us use - a simple go-bar rig The radius dish I use is just a 20mm thick piece of MDF suitably scooped out. This is the 15' radius one for the back. The four maple back braces have been shaped to suit their relative positions on the disc and also shaped roughly parabolic, leaving the tops flat: The go-bar deck is just two stiff boards separated by threaded rods and wink nuts: Basically, a combination of dowel rods and fibreglass rods will be used to force everything into the dish. First I use the pretty stiff dowels to press the back fully into the dish: And now, progressively glue the braces into position, again using them to force the back sheet into the dish and therefore help it hold the curve when it's all dry: This is why I left the tops of the braces flat!

Welcome JJ - glad you've returned to bass. A great choice of basses and amps, by the way. 👍

Decent basses then?!

That's pretty good. Youtubed and good live too.

He did a great job and was singing a semi-tone higher than usual since GnR tune down.

Time for me to come clean. It was me who bought the "Black strat." Bit of a stretch at just under 4 million bucks but hey, gotta do something with all that cash form the Class A. Can`t really put it in the bank now can I? But everything is good, Big Dave is well happy and so is the climate. And I don`t need to worry as I had a text form DPD at 11 am this morning saying Fred their driver will drop the guitar off between 3.42 pm and 4.42 pm at my addresss. 👌

I love Fender but honestly, what's new here? Zzzzz . . . .

I was genuinely expecting it to be a new model, like the Dimension, but yeah - someone's hit the random configuration generator a few times and this is what you get, with another sneaky £100+ on the price tag.

Same basses, different 'series' name.... zzzz....

The best ‘legacy’ GK could do is restarting manufacture of the original 800RB exactly as it was.

Two lumps of wood, a pickup, bbot and some tuners, just like like any other P bass to me.

And here is my basses; Arpege Series II sept. '86.

Some up to date photos