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To be fair to thoman, it costs a lot of money to send parcels from Europe to the UK, and vice versa. I'm sure they will subsidise the postage, but it doesn't seem financially feasible for them to subsidise returns. I'm afraid it's the cost of doing business with a European company in a post brexit world.

I still have stuff to sort before both tops can be fitted but, even if a switch needed fitting on the bass side, there is nothing I can't do with that one glued on...so that's what I've done. And out comes the radius dish again to clamp against After a few experiments with ebony offcut, I decided that the block plane was probably the safest and most effective way of carving the ebony: But yes - it's a slow process. Lots of 'walk away and come back to it'; lots of 'resharpen the blade comprehensively b******d by the b*****ing ebony' This, I reckon is about 1/3 of the way there. By the way, I've dampened it to give a better idea of how the colours will coordinate on the finished guitar (not exclusively, but especially for Neil ) I won't fit the bottom binding until the tops - particularly the edges - are done, otherwise there is a tendency to sand down at each stage until you realise you've run out of walnut! Fretboard blank is due later today!

Well i finally made a decision and bought this from a fellow BC'er. Quick strip down, clean and polish then refit with new D'addario nickels. Adjust string height down a bit to 1.75mm and tweaked the intonation on E string and its sounding absolutely amazing. No need to adjust the truss. I'd forgotten how much i liked a P bass tone. Its probably the tone i've been searching for.

A Flock of Snowflakes.

Way to chuck the baby out with the bathwater! The DHL options will make the re import paperwork straightforward for them. Sending through the regular post would make them jump a whole extra set of hoops in order to not lose out big time on VAT. Too bad for anyone that simply changes their mind. The way I see it Thomman goes out of their way to continue to do business with the U.K. They do well to maintain competitive pricing and service across the border. Your loss if you abandon them.

It has finally arrived. Beautiful bass. The best I've ever played. Can't wait to actually try it out for real!

You've probably thought of this already but just so I've said it, don't forget to mix down to mono. Backing tracks are likely to be stereo mixes so might sound a bit weird if you don't.

Why would you expect a shop to pay for your error? Sales via internet would grind to a halt within two months or products would increase in price with the postage factored in.

So while I have a couple of days off work, I really wanted to take a couple of hours to scratch a P Bass itch I have, I don't know where it came from as I have NEVER liked the look or the thought of a P Bass, but I've been bitten recently and the itch is too much, so got to scratch it. I popped into Guitar Guitar in Newcastle and asked them to unfurl their in stock P Basses, line them up and let me try them all in a shootout fashion to see if any of them were a suitable ointment. With that said I was presented with lots of basses highlighting Fenders highly confusing catalogue of models, with a £5000 50's custom shop propping one end and a Squier Classic Vibe at the other, sandwiched in the middle were American Pro's, Vintera's, and Players series'. What a bloody hit and miss selection of basses they are, some were good, some were awful, combinations of good / bad strings, setups and neck feel, the £800 Vintera having a much better setup than the twice the price American Pro for instance... I can quickly talk about that £5k P bass here, and this is for people who have played it... that neck... WTF... it's a tree, U profile? sheesh!... ...So for an hour I went back and forward between 5 or 6 basses until I was playing just one and didn't want to put it down... that bass was... drum roll please... a... Squier FSR (Factory / Fender Special Run?) Late 50's Custom Vibe P Bass (awful mouthful) in a two tone sunburst (never liked this colour) with a anodised gold (never ever would have wanted this) pickguard... so it's a P Bass in a colour combination that I would never have looked twice at, it's got a maple fingerboard which I have forever told myself I don't like, and it's a squier... so why did I buy it? well put simply it's one of the best basses I have ever played, ever, I couldn't put it down, I went back to it after playing US Pros and Mex Vinteras and Players Series' and for me it was just better, the neck was better, the frets were better, the feel was better, it was just better so I left with it and then played it for 2.5 hours straight when I got it home, it's tremendous. £400, was the American Pro 4 times the bass? not a bloody chance. As for P Basses I thought they could only produce a stuffy wooly thumpy jumper sound, but it knocks most basses out the park for bark and bite, volume up, tone down and it just nails everything I want to play. I'm converted! It's a wonderful instrument, and I'm definitely coming round to the two tone sunburst and gold pickguard, it's classy in a "late 50's" kind of way 🤔.

The Worst Decade The Band That Taste Forgot Agadon't 😆

I have one of these on the way from Tides guitars (TTTides officially), but it'll take a year to be finished. It's going to be 30" scale, pickups will be single coil in thunderbird housing and moved closer to the neck, with a series/parallel switch, and will either be a wood body or composite wood. It will be neck through. Can't wait! This is what the pickup positioning should look like.

Not being a fan of the size or positioning of Fender thumb rest or tug bar, especially on a Mustang, I knocked up a quick, reversible mod, thumb rest. I was so pleased with it, I even stained and sealed it.

I’d advocate a white Precision with rounds and a pick a la Dee Dee and Simonon all day long, however don’t discount how good a maple necked ‘Ray can sound in this context, I give you the legendary live version of Waiting Room…

If you buy both you get a set of basschat strap locks free!! 🤪

I started playing during the early (76-77) punk years. Me and my mate, a guitarist, managed to buy a twin neck SG style, half bass and half six string guitar of 'unknown' brand. We ended up sawing it down the middle, bodging the wiring, had half each and started some sort of band - punk as f@*k if you ask me!!! We did a great New Rose and the Ramones I Don't Care I seem to remember

Johnny Hates Jazz, Immigration & the Metric System.

I'd be fair of my face... But a bit of speed would see me right. 😉 But nuts i do in metric... I think it can matter and combinations can matter more. Small/Big Hands, Long Thin/Short Fat Fingers, Narrow/Wide, Thin/Thick, Radius, Scale Length, How Low or High you where ya bass, especialy if ya get cramps, arthritic, brokem wrist from a bike prang... can all make a differeance to enjoyment of the experiance.

Political comments will be removed, so please refrain from posting any. To be honest, I do think it would be unfair to expect Thomann or any retailer to cover return delivery costs if it's not a faulty item. Can you imagine how much that could cost them? However, surely you could arrange your own courier, they're not insisting on going through them, are they? You can ship to Germany for a lot less than what they're quoting.

The A Team (A Ts = eighties}

Its not the one advertised on BC but its exact same. Because i couldn't get to KeNt area to see the bass before buying it was a no go for me but another fellow BCer saw my comment and got in touch via PM's and he lives 45mins away from me so that was excellent. He said he would price match the one advertised on here. Now that i know how good these basses are i might look at a back up one. Dave

As a lot of us do, I’ve been picking up the odd bass here and another there, this pedal, that bass cab, until I’ve got a house full. Even though I have a few basses that have been long time dreams to own I’ve never actively sought them out: 1) Wal - not bought for that bit of extra cash you have lying around. 2) Brooklyn NS2- not exactly advertised daily. 3) A modulus funk unlimited, seen more often but still some money not that common in the UK. I’ve decided to thin the herd, shed some weight as far as other gear goes, streamline myself (there’s a few things I won’t sell) and make a concerned attempt at getting those 3 basses in my grubby mitts. first up modulus funk, I’ve gotten a bit obsessed lately with that trebly/snarly tone you can get with a graphite neck so look out for NBD

Never fails to make me smile; absolute, comedic genius.

A few BC'ers who we know to be successful, very capable, regularly gigging and having a lot of fun, with decades of experience under their belt, have already 'fessed on this thread to not using any pedals (yup not a.... anywhere in sight! 😁). So when you say: ...that for me neatly sums up 90% of what we angst about on BC on so many gear related matters!! Once we have a "good enough" rig & bass, being a better bass player and a better sounding bass player to our audiences is then no longer about the gear but how well we play it i.e. it really is then "all in the fingers". But having said that, if it just gives you, the bass player, and no one else pleasure in hearing that difference, then why not?

Should have used two layers. Everyone knows double denim is best.

The G6, the guitard version goes for about £350 now, so I expect that price will drop quickly. I was saying to @Merton, if they get the price right, they could have a big seller on their hands, but if it's more or even the same as a Helix Stomp they may as well forget about it. Eude

😁

That and re-stocking, selling it to someone else as B stock at a discount.... And so on.

I wouldn't count a tuner as an effect - more of an accessory. I use a plug in tuner before each gig, then it goes back in my bag. I've had the same tuner for 16 years. I have never felt the need to add any effects to my bass playing as I am perfectly capable of sounding dreadful without any help.

Maybe this is a "duh" moment for some of you, but I've never done something as crazy as this nor did I expect to actually find anything concrete tbh. Anyway, something came over me a while ago and I decided to try 13 different sets of strings on all four (at the time) of my instruments. Strings used were: -TI flats -Harley Benton nickels -Rotosound 66 -Chromes -Labella white nylons -EB slinky -Labella Jamerson -Fender 7250 -Fender 7150 -Warwick Red Label -Elixir -a couple of used rounds I got with the basses I bought I recorded short clips of each bass-string combination, then shuffled them repeatedly and rated them blindly over a long period in order to make sure I can consistently tell the difference. Now, before this I would buy a set of strings, get some idea of how it might sound and then look for that component every time I'd buy the same set, find it and be content. However, I didn't consider that a bass+string combination might be a more relevant way of looking at things and, indeed, by far the most important takeaway for me was that it doesn't seem to matter so much what strings you use, as it does how they suit the instrument. Of the two of my favorite sets of strings (on the basis on their sound alone), one only sounded great on one bass, and the other didn't really excel on any of them. While I love the sound that they bring to the picture, that sound really might not be what the instrument needs to shine. I also didn't expect strings of the same type to sound as different as they did to one another. Three of these sets of strings have practically covered the entire range for me, sounding awful on one instrument, fantastic on another, and meh/solid on the remaining two. The rest of them were also all over the place. Not a single set was actually good on all the instruments and not a single set was actually bad on all of them. And this is not strictly a matter of taste. If the strings don't match the instrument at all, they can sound completely "broken", dead, no presence, no sustain, as if you fished them out of the trash and they have absolutely no life in them whatsoever just making some sort of dull hollow noise. This is the absolute worst case scenario, but they can sound bad in more subtle ways as well. Strings can easily rob the bass of its character and potential, making it sound bland or cheap. P.S. This is obviously dependent on other individual factors as well, but I think it's a safe bet that whatever "good strings" are for you it has to do as much with the interaction between the strings and your instrument as it does with your own taste in strings. Strings can obviously change the tone of the bass, when it comes to frequencies at least. Whatever the instrument lacks can be successfully remedied with strings that have loads of it. However, I feel it's almost impossible to influence the character of the bass in the desired direction or I just don't know how to. (by character I mean whatever way you would use to describe the tone of the instrument other than bassy/middley/trebly, whether it's soft, hard, warm, cold, sharp, round, whatever crazy descriptions we use.) I definitely can't classify a certain sound with such precision to the point where I would know what the "opposite" of that sound is, not even close. And character mismatch probably plays a big role in why some strings take away from the sound of the instrument instead of add to it. In any case, the only major breakthrough I've had here had to do with the positive extreme, meaning: If you love the sound of your bass, and you've found strings that sound very similar to that (e.g. they make your bass #2 sound a lot like your bass #1), they will likely emphasize that sound and make your #1 instrument sound even better. This was the case with the "best" strings I've found on 2/4 basses. On one of them the best strings primarily remedied the lack of presence the instrument has, without going against its character. And on another by pure luck it's both - they both remedy the purely subjective "fault" of the instrument in my ears, and emphasize the rest of its natural tone.

Rio Grande

I was trying to work out how you’d managed to hold of that bass so quickly particularly as the advertised one appeared to be still available. Thanks for clarifying that.

Thatcher's Hatchers.

I just put a patch over it 😂

I think Rex is a really unappreciated bassist. His work with Pantera was brilliant but he was always overshadowed by Dime

I'm absolutely loving them. I've gigged my P bass twice now & it sounds fantastic,my band really like it. The J I've only played at home so far but it is a superb Jazz bass in every way. I have owned dozens of Fender & clones there of over the last 4 decades & personality I think these are the best ones I've had in all that time. Build quality is second to none,superb finish & so playable with lovely necks. They both balance really well both on the strap & on the knee probably mostly due to the light weight Hipshot tuners,which hold tune perfectly. I love the roasted maple necks too,it really brings the wood grain out. If you are wanting a really nice P or J I definitely reccomend these,massively better then the Vintera P I had or indeed any MIA,AVRI,MIJ or an Overwater J bass I once had.

Listening to Down this morning. NOLA is a superb album but I had forgotten just how good Down II is, especially the bass

That's brilliant!

Oh happy days. My mate still has my old Columbas Jazz. I had moved on and just left it with him. His daughter took up bass playing and he offered it back to me but said no just let the kids enjoy it. With regards different types of pick i made some of my own. Flattened out one pence pieces and shaped by hammering on an anvil. I also covered one of them in denim to get a warmer tone like fingers. That worked until the denim started to wear thru. Still have them all. Also a 5mm thick felt one that never really worked. Have a few rubber types as well but not so good when playing on the strings as it tended to be a bit sticky. Dave

Depends, the eq curves, Q's, and centre frequencies are probably different on the two eqs so they will sum to a more complex final curve than either can achieve on its own.

Mainly for me. I'm in my late 40s playing original material so I can't always bank on having an audience. 🤣