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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!

I've owned a Sterling Ray 34. USA Stingray 3-band and still own a USA SUB. Honestly, there was minimal difference in sound between them . The 3 band USA and Ray 34 were slightly more hi-fi/sparkly/brittle but certainly nothing that couldn't be eq'd out or in. The 2 band USA SUB has a bit more of a fatter, punchier sound that gets my vote! Anyone of of these will get you the sound you're after and then some. 😀

A prototype, I think. I've only ever seen one other, played by Mick Jones near the end of his days with The Clash (its on youtube somewhere) . then he went on to use a 'normal'(?) Electraglide with BAD. It works well, but easier to slide up the neck than down. I think they would have been more popular if the electronics ( which mine hasn't got. and never had!) had been more reliable, and if Andrew Bond hadn't died, and had been able to develop more reliable models. Mine has the stepped neck, and passive electrics - perhaps he should have stayed with that.

Sssssh

If it's any use, I have a TMB30 and it easily fits in the Fender Urban Short Scale Gig Bag.

...that cost an arm and a leg and a kidney and a liver and... with detuners the price is over 10 k$. A used Ashula has a price tag that is less than 10 % of the Hyperbass. http://www.zonguitars.com/zonguitars/bassbuilder/index_hyp.htm https://reverb.com/marketplace?query=ibanez ashula If you are really lucky, you may find a fretless tune Bass Maniac with 3 octave fretboard. But it is really rare! I think that Ibanez has recently had a fretless with over 2 octave fretboard in their catalogue.

It was years ago now but I had no trouble whatsoever when I changed the strings. I didn't even need to tweak the neck. I'm playing the bass a lot these days as my band rehearses in a very small room, for financial reasons. My Thunderbird struggles to fit in the room. That said, the Hofner really does sound wonderful, and has such a happy tone to it.

I think this ought to go down a storm with the TalkBass members: given the number of them who reflex-post things like: 'there's no money above the 5th fret,' or 'But Jaco...'

Yep, looks like a Q4 Pro http://www.spectorbass.com/uploads/Resources/Archived_Korean.jpg

Sunstroke? Had it, and not nice feeling at all.

If you have an £800 budget just go direct to getting a used American Stingray from the classifieds on here. It may be a bit scruffy but they're tough basses and it should be perfectly usable. If you get a new Sterling for £800 you'll always be wondering if its the same as a 'real' Stingray. Which it isn't..... Its close but not the same. If you buy at the right price used you can always sell it on for about the same price if you don't bond with it. But you'll have scratched your itch. Re the 2 band /3 band sound - they are quite different. There isn't actually a flat setting on the 2 band as it's a boost only preamp but the 3 band is centre detented. And that isn't necessarily a flat response. The 2 band generally has a warmer bootier sound in my experience.

a) barely anyone likes or cares about reverse P’s, it’s niche at best. b) maybe 1 masochistic person out of a thousand wants this. c) every fender clone maker already does the humbucker pj, it’s been done to death. Fender did p/p in the 80s, didn’t sell well and didn’t sound that useful, it was a novelty. If you want lots of small interesting changes, look at the Mustangs, Fender are doing exactly that with this range. The result is that half of the people who like Fenders love it, the other half thinks it’s an abomination. They also have a custom shop btw. The prices are a joke but they will make you whatever you want. Honestly, the main thing everyone moaned about with Fender pre-2012 was that they varied in quality and the general feedback from their customers was that they should focus on their classics and make them as good as they can. Given that even a sub£200 Squier is giggable these days, they’ve done ok. People are p!ssed about the prices - not much you can do about that, as the main customer base (boomers) dies off, USA stuff is going to keep decreasing in demand and increasing in price. Plus the value of the pound is going to keep falling endlessly as long as we have idiot voters putting idiots in charge, but that’s another conversation.

Plenty of fair (and unfair) criticism in this topic. Figured I'd add my 2 cents as well... I think Fender, like most iconic brands, is doomed to be a victim of its own legacy. On one hand they've got the most successful and time-tested instruments of all time and are pretty much set for life. As long as "traditional" instruments stay in the world of music, I can never see basses like the Precision or the Jazz going away (as well as their guitar lines, obviously). On the other hand, with that reputation comes the fact that everyone wants to have a Precision or a Jazz and nothing else - they don't want weird Fenders, they want THE Fender bass. You wouldn't really go to a BMW stand to buy a family car, would you? You'd go to Volvo or Volkswagen...when you think of a BMW you mainly think of a luxurious sports car - that's their thing. HOWEVER, there are a couple of fair criticisms we can do here: 1) They keep rehashing the same production lines and only change the wording, the colors and more importantly THE PRICE. I think the "Player Series" was a step in the right direction - lightly increase the price but also improve the features, much like what Musicman did with their Stingray Specials. But these new "Vintera" basses are just the same as the Classic ones except with different colors and most likely a price increase. People keep paying more for the same stuff we had 10 or even 20 years ago. 2) They don't innovate when they could. Listen, I'm not saying that Fender needs to go all wild and do something really crazy because, as I said above, I think they're a victim of their own legacy. However, just do simple and small changes. Offer some little variations that will maybe captivate the player-base. Something like: a) a P/J configuration with a reverse P pickup; b) a Jazz Bass with a P style neck; c) a P/P or a M/J configuration (with the M pickup being able to be coil split and call it a Jazz Bass); Plenty of small changes that would perhaps make an interesting model sometimes. It'd still be a FENDER but it'd be something that would captivate longtime fans. That's just my opinion anyway. I think Fender ought to stick with their traditional models but also spice them up a bit sometimes. Keep the money flow steady but try to slowly do some changes in order be fresh and relevant. After all, isn't it a bit ironic that a company who advertises so much with young people & new music keeps relying on the same instruments that were made 70 years ago?

Dodgy deal done in a motorway service area today with Harry. It was a transcontinental epic trade of basses with Harry travelling about a million miles and myself settling for a lowly 100! Fabulous comms all the way through. Great guy and a total gent to boot - one for the Carlsberg Basschatters group :-) Enjoy the Stingray Harry!

Thanks for that skidder, I'll check it out now.

Leeds is cool. I'm happy with this move. NORTH.

That was pre-Basschat and well before I knew what an efficient cab was. To be fair I was playing alongside a huge Ritchie Blackmore fan who had about 5 of his signature Strats and about 8 Marshall 4x12"s on stage.

The thing is, when Gibson were going bust, everyone was saying “they need to go back to what they do best, Les Paul’s/SG’s/335’s!” And were criticised for all their “innovations” (which incidentally were poop...) Fender and Gibson do what they do, Imagine Levi’s making tracksuit bottoms or Dr Martens making tennis shoes. It just doesn’t work that way. Fender have a staple 5/10 models and have to work with that. They try stuff and it doesn’t always sell - there are 100’s of models which didn’t stay long. I sold Fenders for years as my Job, and all the weird and wonderful sat on the wall while black strats and white telecasters turned over in huge numbers. For years their best selling Telecaster was the butterscotch 52, their second biggest selling telecaster was the left handed version. After that it was a natural finish USA with a black pickguard and the Baja Tele in blackguard blonde...etc. Its about an “Icon” thing for players. Jaguars/Jazzmasters/Mustangs were sort of dead until Grunge - the artists bought them because they were reputable branded guitars but cheap. Then in the early 2000’s the 72 Custom Tele/Thinline Tele/Tele Deluxe were in vogue because of all the hip indie bands using them for that same reason - before that they couldn’t raise an eyebrow let alone a big ticket price. They have a legacy and they’re bound to it, damned if they do (by some) and damned if they don’t (by others). More stringent quality control and they’d be away - but that adds cost, and that’s why a Deluxe USA Jazz is £1800 or so and a USA Sadowsky is about £4500. Incidentally - I side by side compared a USA 2010 Deluxe, A USA sadowsky and an Alleva Coppolo (check spelling) and the Fender held its own, massively. I preferred it in sound to the other two and it felt as nice as the Sadowsky. It was just a bit heavier than the other 2. It was also about £1449 at the time. They should open up 12 month contracts to us all and see if we could do a better job. Anyhow, as someone said earlier - if you weren’t thinking of buying a Fender this year - these probably aren’t aimed at you...I’m off to play my yamaha 😂

The newer Dimension was a killer bass. Beautiful compound radius, oiled neck, great weight and balance, 18v active electronics, dual humbuckers. They tried. We didn't buy them because they weren't 'Fender enough'. We don't actually want Fender to do anything other than what they are currently doing, it seems.

The manual for the Plex pre-amp gives details of the frequencies affected by the filters. I don't know if they will be the exactly the same for the Legacy amps as they seem to be either on or off but will share them for reference.

Fantastic bass. My Zoot was the bass I should never have sold. Love the neck, love the spot and block-free fretboard (never liked fret-markers). Enjoy, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Excellent review and Mike does make some fantastic instruments. I am glad to see he is now concentrating on bass building again rather than spreading himself a bit thin with cabs and amps. That said I still have my Zoot cabs and plenty have been and gone, but they are with me for good.