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It's great that he's refunding people, but don't let that be an end to it. He's ONLY refunding people because he's been caught and the sh*tshow is being shared all across social media. He wouldn't have done so otherwise. Don't let this situation go. Contact the Fraud people, push the Police on it and make sure he NEVER does this again....

And today, with the bandsaw still out from cutting @Jus Lukin 's tailstock relief (photo in the morning once it's light) I got to work on the great big - but surprisingly light - lump of swamp ash: I've left around a mm or so wiggle-room larger than the paper template @Fishman sent me. Looking at the above, this is why I wasn't overly troubled by the sensitivities of re-bodying a classic - the shape is, I think you will agree, 'maybe, itself, influenced by the styles of the era in which it was built'

The Royal Philharmonic. Those bastards have been trading on the name for 100 years!!

I couldn't find him on Companies House and Funktion Junction Entertainment isn't a company. I am keen to track him down and see to what extent he can be banned from being a company director (if he is one).

I've been hunting for the perfect OC-2 ish thing for my board, and eventually decided the only way to figure this out was to gather as many of the options as I could. After some discussions on the 3Leaf and OC-5 threads I ended up filming some of the comparisons in the hope that it can be useful to someone in the same situation as me. The options available were: Boss OC-2 (the old faithful) Boss OC-5 3Leaf Octabvre Mk1 COG T-47 (2x T-16) (the current incumbent) Markbass RAW Octaver MXR Vintage Bass Octave I've tried to use musical examples for context. If anyone has any questions please let me know! I'm still gathering my thoughts and will report back a little later, including what happened when we did a blind test with my OC-2 loving friend. The current settings are always shown onscreen. I would also love to hear from anyone who has compared the Octabvre Mk1 to the brand new model, which i couldn't get my hands on!

Shall I merge this with the abstinence thread and be done with it 😂

they don't count, they're just a covers band 😂

Look at it this way, it's enough to get someone elected US president these days.

OK, I've pulled the trigger on an Ibanez SRF 700 Portamento. Should arrive Friday. With the new national lock down going to look at / pick up used gear is not going to happen. The Ibanez has a 120 day free return policy and I got it for a decent price. New year, new gear :woot:

NCD : Spector NS flight case, many thanks to the team at Bass Central , Florida. Sadly these are not available via the UK distributers although they tried but it wasn’t financially viable. The original TKL Kramer/Spector tolex case is still as new but the Gator version is definitely a step up from it , very surprised that these are not shipped as standard with US models.

I thought I'd give the ski slope one more try What does everyone reckon?

Dey Do Do Do (dat, don't dey doh) - The Police

I was one of the idiots who bought what I have come to regard as the mythical Timeshare Sansamp off this scammer. The thread I created is still active on Facebook ''Bass Market’ page. im happy to report that after many many emails back and forth between myself and Mick Mason, I eventually had a refund from him yesterday. It looks like another at least another two folks (who had also bought a Timeshare in this pedal) have eventually had refunds. There's one guy who hasn't yet but he's receiving help and support from those of us who've somehow successfully persuaded him to do the right thing.

I'm the fortunate owner of Travis Bean TB-2000 No. 883, originally bought brand new in 1978 from Nadine's Guitars in Hollywood, CA for what at the time was a precious amount to a 21 year old, $380 if I recall correctly. This baby has served me well, is such a unique bass with remarkable low end, clarity, roundness, and sustain. The TB-2000 is instantly recognizable as the instrument Wyman used to record the Stone's album "Some Girls" which included the hit song and classic bass line on "Miss You". This bass suites my sound perfectly & I feel very lucky to be it's one and only lifelong owner. Weight has never been an issue and when the neck is cold (depending on the weather) coming out of the case, once warmed up in short order it's ready to play to my heart's delight, completely uninhibited. Love my Travis Bean... Old No. 883 & will continue to play it 'till the day I die!

I am really good friends with Jeff. Infact just spoken to him recently. [he is living out at Clacton] Not doing any Bass stuff at the moment. He built me a couple of Basses in the late 80's [one was a great 6er, also his repair work was great] If you want to speak to him PM me your name and number, and i will pass it on. He likes his privacy these days. Garry Hi Gary, My names Jack Finch & Jeff was my grandad unfortunately he passed away in 2013. I’d love to know what you know about him and if you know anyone that has one of his guitars? My Dad Lee Finch unfortunately, didn’t get to keep one of his guitars as it was so sudden. Reading this makes me so sad & I just know how much it would mean to my dad if i could get hold of one. Funnily enough, Dave Swift was using my Grandads guitar on BBC live on the NYE countdown! I would love to hear from you! Kind Regards, Jack Finch

If Thomann stop selling to the UK, the next largest stockist of Harley Benton is ' @stewblacks Bass Emporium', so all is not lost.

I missed out on a bargain sansamp from some bloke called Mick on Facebook.

Over the last 6 months or so I've been creating a little home studio is the tiniest of rooms (about 8 times as long as the lower bout of a concert sized acoustic body and about 4 times as wide, so its small!!) It currently houses 16 guitars/basses, 3 amps, a drumkit, a full Cubase recording set up with midi keyboard, monitors, vocal mics, ukuleles, various percussion items, a Helix LT etc etc. So everything one needs to record almost anything! And a fair bit of my Lego collection! Just for funzies, has anyone else shoe-horned this much into a tiny room? Everything, including the drumkit is direct into DAW, so the sound quality of the end product is actually surprisingly good! I mean, its not quite Abbey Road quality, but it's far from terrible!

Ah finally a place I can call home 😂 Out - Gibson Thunderbird 2003 , Custom built Gold P and Ashdown ABM600 In Bergantino IP310 from Owen, 1988 Battered Stingray, 4 packs of Bass Boomers and 4 packs DR Sunbeams. Im also trying to not buy a US Ampeg SVT CL 🤷‍♂️ Sorry, not sorry

Gong! Although the new line-up is approoved by all PHP's...

Another song I loved as a kid. This had a real other-worldliness about it. Something different going on. I think Errol Brown was a really underrated songwriter. Can’t think of many songwriters who have a breadth of work, in terms of Top 10 singles, that can be unashamedly ‘pop’ one minute and then cover subject matter such as suicide and interracial relationships the next. A talented guy...

Bravewood eh? Now I’m scanning your collection for swaps... damn this thread, it’s like reverse psychology 🤔

I’m in. 2020 was nuts for purchases, so a dry 2021 will be a doddle 😉

Woooahhhh! Who says I’ll fail like? To be honest I’ve already traded a Bass, sold a bass and bought an amp this year 😂 I was probably out not long after midnight 😂

Shall I just mark you as “out” now?? 😂 and while I’m doing that I’ll do the same for @AndyTravis & @walshy... no hope. Unless I win the lottery and get a Ken Smith and a Sadowsky PJ then I have no need for anything and have every confidence I’ll make it through 😂 honest! 😂

We are now entering the next phase of 'Adventures in Hofnerland'. I spent a long time to-ing and fro-ing over whether to try and find all genuine parts to make it as original as possible, or just get the parts to make it a decent usable bass whilst looking period correct, a resto-mod if you like. Unfortunately for @Shaggy he kindly messaged me to let me know of a Hofner pickup on ebay, I then proceeded to bore him with the details of my dilemma. 😉 And now I'll bore everyone else. 😄 Whilst a proper restoration would be lovely, sourcing genuine tuners, pickups, electrics, knobs and scratchplate would likely cost more than the bass was worth, or what I could buy a genuine one for, and it would still have a badly molested body which is painted the wrong colour. Also I have my Club for proper Hofner tones and my 4005 for that retro 'pickups at both extremes' tone. So sympathetic resto-mod it is. If the correct parts ever came my way it would all be easily reversible anyway. I've ordered the chrome mini humbuckers from Warman, as the Hofner staple pickups are mini humbuckers and these have very similar specs, some switches and pots and my scratchplate material is here. The pickups are four wire jobbies so the plan is to install two slide switches where they were on 185s and wire one pickup through each switch, the three way switches will give me single coil and double coil in series and parallel mode. These will be wired through two tones and two volumes (one for each pickup) with one of the pots being a push/pull which will put the pair of pickups in either series or parallel with each other. This should give me a much better range of tones than the standard ones but still retain the core original tone. If I can work out how to wire it up. 😁 Hopefully everything will be here by the weekend and I can get to work. Here's a few more pictures showing the body with the white scratchplate, to show how creamy beige the body is. The body, scratchplate material and neck, to show how the colour scheme should fit together, the cream and brown is meant to reflect the neck inlays. And another of the pickups which are on their way, I've ordered the chrome surrounds as well but not sure what they'll look like, I'll see when they turn up.

I can't face wading through all of the above so apologies if this has already been mentioned.

Hands off

Agreed. Do we know the names of all of his companies? I want to put the word out to my network to be wary. Also, this was his final message to me after I called him out. I said this on FB and will say it here: Thank you to you all for your help and support, I feel it really counted in getting my money back. You bunch of legends.

Ordered...jeezo, Basschat can be a dangerous place when you can be an impulsive buyer...!! 😂🙈😂

Sugababes. After individually leaving and being replaced, the original members subsequently reformed, but had to use a new name.

EU & China have recently announced a trade a trade deal. If WTO is so great, why did they bother? UK international trade Everything you might want to know about the UK's trade with the EU - Full Fact But it's wrong to say that all non-EU trade was done on WTO terms. Through the EU we had over 140 international trade agreements. Most trade was done through these. As a past leader of the WTO has said; UK has chosen to go from Premier League to 4th Division. As far a Thomann is concerned - If Thomann can't get a carrier to take your Yamaha bass from Germany to UK, then your changing to a Ibanez or Fender still leaves them with the same problem to get it to you. Germany can still get them. It's UK that has chosen to go to 4th Division.

Its what businesses have always been crying out for, more red tape. I am glad the government have finally listened.

It's not just a question of not wanting our money! It's whether the extra barriers that the UK Government have put in place make it still worthwhile to trade with us! For Thomann, as the world's biggest (probably!) musical instrument retailer they already have the UK Vat registration and the means to deal with that. They do enough business in the UK and have the mechanisms in place to keep trading with UK consumers profitable. But for smaller sellers that's not necessarily the case; firstly they've got to register with HMRC for VAT. They've got to take VAT from UK customers, do a VAT return to HMRC quarterly and pay their UK VAT bill. That's all fine if you're a UK business (arguably!), but as, say, a German business they already have to do all that with the German BZst - doing the same thing for another country for a few grand is probably not worth their while! Not only that there's also a sense of rejection on the continent - our Government hasn't really made itself friendworthy with some of its actions - people think "why should we bother with them if they're not interested in us?" Then businesses like ours will miss out... Our little orchid supplier, who sell us all sorts of exciting varieties that you just can't get from UK growers, doesn't think it's worthwhile. Our lovely French homeware supplier, who sells us all those particularly Gallic trays and cups, isn't interested either. We'll briefly suffer in the short term - our customers will miss those bits'n'bobs you couldn't get elsewhere - and we'll find something hopefully new and interesting instead, but the real question is why? For what? Have we actually gained anything at all, or is it just about a small section of or society now having the illusion of Empire Rebirth?

Picking this up later 😂

I'm far from an expert, though I've worked in 3 electronics companies buying heavily from China and the EU. China's and our trading relationship with the EU is apples and oranges. China/EU trade is facilitated by a colossal industry of brokers, middlemen and importers/exporters who deal with the bureaucracy. UK/rest of EU trade was much more direct, because it could be. Yes we've dealt with the rest of the world for years, but for the end consumer importing stuff from the rest of the world has been prohibitively expensive for all those years too. America, Australia, Japan etc. Places like thomann, gear4music and countless other businesses across all sectors were built around the assumption that this would never happen. For them, there is only damage control, and we as consumers are only ever going to have less than we did before. Also worth pointing out that yes, businesses trade with the rest of the world more than the EU but its 51.1% to 48.9% so we're still talking about basically half of the average companies business being affected.

Any number of stings on a bass is cool. All basses are cool, full stop! So, play the bass that makes you happy. That'll make you a better player, no matter how many strings you've got.

Here's my transcription of what I played on Fool For Your Loving, as accurately as I'm able. I hope it's useful! Fool For Your Loving NM tab.pdf

Thanks for that, I'll watch it tomorrow. Love a bit of NMA, Stuart Morrow was fantastic with them, driving and melodic but simple and straight forward if the song needed it, and what a tone. Smalltown England, such a simple bass riff yet absolutely drives the song. Just that intro fills me with excitement.

A fond memory of my floor covered in basses when we did some set up tinkering. Like a 12 year old with a Playboy, I didn’t know where to look first 😁

Looks fabulous. Great build (as always)!

Tough call. Depends on whether or not there’s something shiny coming up for sale. I’ll go for saturday 9th Jan. 😂😂😂

I was indeed referring to Swinton, South Yorkshire. Based on my limited experience, Swinton, Manchester, rather than being 'the land of the Gods' is more 'the land of folks drinking meths at 11am, then getting a bit stabby later on'. (By limited experience, I mean playing at Yates Wine Lodge there in a Glam Rock Cabaret type band in about 1996... To be fair, the fact we were in the environs of a Yates may have dictated the type of locals I encountered).

That is a lovely lump for the @Fishman project 😍👌🏼 Has the finish/colour been decided yet? 🤔

Don't....stand so close to me (Pre COVID mix) - The same Police as above

Blimey. A lack of erections too!!!

Hi Stew, The soldering on the jack socket does not look like a factory job to me, so it is possible that the socket has been re-soldered or replaced at some point. They're not the most reliable of components and I've lost count of the number of sockets I've replaced on instruments, including Warwick basses (even made in Germany instruments) that use this type of jack. It is possible that it's been incorrectly wired. The ring connection should be connected directly to the battery negative and nothing else. The tip is signal and sleeve ground. As the bass works when a fresh battery is fitted, it is likely that the tip is correctly wired but the ring and sleeve may be reversed. If you have a TRS jack lead and a multimeter, plug the lead in and check for continuity between the ring and battery negative terminal with the battery removed.

Wow. This looks killer. For a bass like this, BC should introduce a "Mega Like" button 😍