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Fear not. They would be foolish to ignore the mellow market. There are rumours of a limited, "Beige Cardigan" edition being released. The end caps are supposed to be made of recycled leather elbow patches! Get comfortable in your favourite armchair and gently feast your eyes on this leaked image. Speaking of leaked, I think it comes with some Markbass signature incontinence pads, lest we get too jiggy with those low frequencies.

socialising can be fun when you find out you've got something in common to chat about, hard work when you haven't, unless, like our singer, he has no problem at all, he just talks about himself 😀

Nothing like being a tart. Planning on using all of this on Friday night, because why not?

Good thing Y. T. has apparently a self regenerating supply

I think this came up before. The word 'friend' means different things to different people. Some people regard the people that follow them on Facebook as 'friends' and have lots. My understanding of the word 'friend' is something more deep - someone with whom you can share your darkest thoughts, someone you will always be there for because you know they will always be there for you. I have very few friends. I am 'friendly' with lots of people, however, and this is how I would describe my relationship with band members. Apart from the guitarist in the band that just folded, of course.

Someone has plenty of things he should be doing but is choosing to selflessly sacrifice cleaning the kitchen and bathroom so that I can enrich the forum with my ideas. I'm very generous in that way.

One thing to watch out for is the nature of the padding on these. If you have instruments with a nitro finish, these don't play nicely with the plasticisers used in some formulations.

Interesting comment. Not sure I fully agree with the "woman as potential friends" part, I'd be more inclined to put forward Jordan Petersons view which suggests that men have much more of a threat of physical violence than woman do. Woman's expression of violence tends to be verbal. This is probably best demonstrated by types of bullying behaviour children engage in. Boys will bully by pushing, shoving and hitting, girls bully by causing reputational damage by spreading rumours or social exclusion, which is very evident in how girls are affected by (and are perpetrators of) online bullying much more than boys. With this in mind, it offers an explanation as to why men tend to be on guard around other men, basically in case it kicks off, whereas woman will be more to be "friendly" to each other, then talk about that person when they aren't present.

Reminds me of a tale I've told before on this forum. Back in Yorkshire we did a Wedding at a posh venue for someone our female singer knew and was associated with music. Inbetween sets we were asked if the groom and a couple of his mates could do some songs after we had finished our second set. The guy who wanted to play my Bass had obviously enjoyed some of the refreshments and asked me if it was OK. I responded with 'Fine,as long as you give me the keys to your car' This took him aback and he did not understand why I was asking for his keys. I explained if any damage was caused to my Bass or rig, it would give me some collateral to negotiate restitution. In the end I relented and they were very accomplished players, I found out later 2 of them played for Embrace.....

I love their configurator!

Met up with Basschat forumer Karlfer this afternoon, to do a trade and ended up with this rather nice US Deluxe HH Dimension Bass. It was a pleasure meeting and doing business with Karl and talking bass, of course. For some reason, Fender's Dimension series of basses didn't seem very successful, coming and going rather quickly. I remember buying a new SQUIER Deluxe Dimension Bass V MN Black, for under £300 and being very impressed. A lot of Fender players are very traditional and I guess they didn't take to Fender's attempt to produce an EBMM Stingray beater. My first impressions of this particular Dimension bass, are very positive and having owned a number of EBMM Stingrays, can see the similarities and differences. The Dimension uses some very nice woods and hardware and the build quality and finishing are very good. The 2 HB pickups come with a 5-way selector switch, that gives 2, double pickup, single-coil options. And it is these 2 options that I like the most. The pickups in full HB mode, singly or together sound good but I prefer the clarity of the SC options. So how does it compare with a Stingray? The bridge pickup is a lot closer to the bridge than on a Stingray. So if you are after a bass that can do that Stingray sound, you'll be a little disappointed. The Dimension's pickups don't have the HB quality of an EBMM Stingray, IMO. But they do have there own sound and a lovely variety of combinations to delight your ear. This bass sounds great through both my gigging rig (Galien Krueger - Mark Bass) and through my practice/back up amp (Fender Rumble 500 combo). It's a lovely mix of Stingray and Jazz Bass, to my ears, with something of it's own as well. This Deluxe bass came with very low, very solid action and this combined with a very comfortable neck, make it a pleasure to play. To my eyes, it's a bit of a looker too, with a translucent sunburst finish, over some lovely wood grain. Although, on a personal level, I'd have preferred a tort scratchplate, with black, Jazz Bass style knobs. As in it's name, this bass comes with some welcome, Deluxe features. A very tasty, Hi-Mass bridge, a Heel-Mounted, Spoke Wheel, Truss Rod Adjuster and a very capable 18V Preamp with Active 3-Band EQ. I also really like the Fender "F" Light-Weight Vintage-Paddle Key Tuners, with Tapered Shafts. OK, I've only played this bass for about an hour, both solo and along to my own recordings (bass muted of course) but so far I am very very pleased with it, both as a very capable/usable instrument and as a tasty addition to my bass herd. I don't think I've played a bass quite like it, which is a very good thing, in my book. So cheers Karl.

How fast does it have to spin before the guitars are all horizontal?

I will never have enough kidneys to thank @Teebs...

Don't let a certain "Guitar improver/bodger/ruiner" see this or we might be seeing a rash of six-stringed saz conversions on ebay for fat-fingered saz players with more money than sense, and a corresponding lack of the seven-stringed variety.

Nice rack

+1 for this. It's first-class. My wife bought m one for Christmas a couple of years ago. I subsequently came to regret pointing out that she had created abundant spare capacity with all the empty individual stands. Apparently, that wasn't the point.

Main reason for wanting a pair is so they stack to a nice height so I can reach my pint.

Me and the drummer. We were founding members of the band and had the idea for our 'product'. We structure it to allow for song sharing between our male and female vocalists, starting/ending with big tunes and looking for complimentary keys where song ending/starts go together well or can flow naturally...

I definitely get that, there are certainly types of male that I don’t feel comfortable being in the company of and will actively avoid. Usually the alpha male type. I’m the least alpha male you could wish to meet and really hate the ‘Richard measuring’ dynamic that surrounds such groups of men. I’ll talk to and try to get on with anyone but I have a problem relating to them.

Not wanting to speak for anybody else but I feel like you might have missed the point here. For me at least, and I share similar sentiments to AndyTravis and CamdenRob, it's not about viewing anybody as enemies and it's got nothing to do with gender. I just find socialising to be massively hard work and incredibly draining. Slightly less so with people I know well but massively so with more casual acquaintances or colleagues. Rather than viewing anybody as a potential enemy I'm more likely to come away worrying that my awkwardness might be misinterpreted as being rude or stand offish

This is the male condition. Men naturally see all other men as potential enemies, whereas women see all other women as potential friends. It's written into our genes. Harsh, but true. 😳 .....err....... have a nice day !

Maybe from the outside looking in. Happiest in my own company. Rarely happens so I generally spend my days being a bit spiky and miserable. It’s not so bad with my wife and kids, but people I don’t know, it’s like scraping sandpaper across my soul.

My Trans-themed MJT-aged Bass arrived. Assembly begins: Allparts neck’s bolted on w/threaded inserts, Seymour Duncan pups are my go-to for most builds. If all goes well I’ll be playing it for the 1st time on the 12th @diyspace4london,

Is that a fifth string?! I always thought it was a thumb rest...

I really really want to see that.

No, it's because you've got 1 too many strings - even p!ssed-up punters know that a bass should only ever have 4 strings.

I might have guessed he had something to do with it 😁

That's simply a saz, a Balkan instrument. 😉

Yeah I feel pretty nervous about joining folk who can really play while I'm still toddling along taking baby steps and resorting to messing around with root notes. Some kind of grouping like you tried to organise would be a great confidence builder. I've spent a lot of today downloading the lyrics an chords from last night so I'm not as lost as I felt. It's a lot about building a playlist now for me and the more different stuff I play the easier it'll be for me to make a decent stab at stuff I don't know in the future.

Colleagues first and foremost. This band is purely work for me (and the rest of the band) and it's all about delivering a good product and making money. We do over 100 gigs a year, many involving long journeys, so it's important that we get along ok. There's no issues at all and we generally rub along well. My band mates are all individuals tho so on a personal level I like them to differing degrees. I like the lead guitarist a lot, he's a really sound guy and we always have a laugh. Band leader is a really nice guy with a great sense of humour but he's very quiet and pensive a lot of the time so not that easy to feel like we're particularly close mates. Drummer can be great and really friendly but also can be an utter knob. He tends to throw strops and chuck mutually owned band gear around so I have very little respect for that. My wife refers to him as "the man baby" because he can be really childish and stubborn at times.

I've been waiting a while for a Jaguar or Mustang style configurator... this could be dangerous!

By seeing it slowly move, do you mean you sat and watched it happening, with a 'I wonder if that will tip into that hole'. 'Yep'.

Someone has waaaay too much time on his hands....

And to complete the saga, I had the Hondo neck transplanted into the Encore body, (Honcore? Endo?) which had to routed somewhat to accommodate it. But I have to say it looks fantastic. It doesn't neck dive, either - I guess because it was shunted backwards a bit so made up for the extra scale length. What I was hoping for - and what has happened in bucketloads - was some extra zing from the maple neck. This is something I've read about countless times tha maple necks give more bite to the sound but never had a chance to A/B it before. It certainly has with this which, combined with the snarley Entwistle pickup, make it a bit of a beast. I was intending to fit some Hipshot Ultralite tuners but these stock one work just fine and are probably lighter. Weighs in at 3.1kg - well under 7lbs.

This Hercules rack is excellent, you can buy a cheap expansion pack to add more capacity. This is by far the best large rack I’ve ever used.

That's a shame - while I'm not the target audience for either approach, I've been dragged to a few jam nights and they're just not my thing, and i could see this being a good way for people like the OP to have an easy way into playing in a band without having to audition

21st June 2014, the last time we let our guitarist choose the set...

It's generally a collaborative effort with both my bands. The vocalists have some input so we try to keep big lungbusters separate, and obvs the horns are delicate little flowers so we keep the biggest blows a} apart from each other and b} away from the very end of the set. We've given up asking the drummer for input; every time we gave him the set list to look at, it came back with drool and shreds of raw meat on it.

Some more progress... Surround to back the handle cutout Braces going in - plus surround for the rear connector plate. For the "sub" cab, we are going to swap the top and bottom panels so the handle is nearest the 12" driver, and also flip the baffle so that when stacked the ports will be vertically above each other - just a visual thing. It does mean that if I choose to convert the cab to a fully tweeter-ed version at some stage, they will end up being mirrored versions of each other.

I don’t even know what we’re playing till I hear the first bar.

I don’t really like other people so try to avoid socialising wherever possible. 😐

Well, I thought they were good mates but then the buggers gave me an early birthday present at rehearsal last night!

Love that colour combination, the tort looks just fine - love it

I now have case storage envy.