Leaderboard

First gig on Saturday with Wilcock Mullarkey. A dream to play

Headsticks on Saturday at Eleven in Tunstall (Stoke-on-Trent) It was an all day event with 6 acts on, starting at 3:30. We got there at 1pm to load in up a fire escape. Not too bad. The sound engineer tried arguing that we couldn't use our own mics. We insisted that we use our own due to hygiene concerns. We have this problem very occasionally, and it's only ever with the stereotypical grumpy sound guys. The rude control freaks. You know, the classic soundman. Anyway, that's exactly what he was, talking to us in the rudest possible way all night. We (including the other acts) all tried to kill his attitude with kindness, lavishing him with praise and thankyous. It had no effect. Why do people stay in jobs they hate? Anyway, despite that it sounded great on and off stage, and the lighting was great too. Here's a photo with us doing our song Miles and Miles with Carol Hodge on guest vocals. She did it on the record so whenever she's on the same line up we persuade her to get up for it. What a voice! That's me on drums. I supplied the kit for the whole day with the following note to be sent to all drummers in advance "Drum shells will be provided. Please bring your own hardware. Your own stool is a MUST and not negotiable" This is because sharing stools grosses me out on account of the arse-sweat. I nipped out from the venue to get my girlfriend and when I returned I saw the drummer from another act sat suspiciously high up. Yep, he'd helped himself to my stool, which had been at the back of the stage with other equipment piled on top of it. You'd think musicians would have more respect for each other but this is pretty common in my experience. 🙄

I find the best solution is to play music that only a handful of chin-stroking goatee- and black polo neck-wearing pseuds will want to watch, if you're lucky. That way no-one is likely to ask for Wonderwall or any of that cack, though you may get embroiled in a heated discussion on whether James Carter's sax-playing actually counts as chord play or, in extreme circumstances, on the relative merits of the BR Standard Class 9F compared to the Deltic.

Firstly, apologies for any missing capitalisations, my pc is playing up. As many of you will know, I make cables for others and would like to bring a few to sell at the bash. Of course, i pay my bc seller's subs each year, so all is good. If anyone is looking for a specific cable, please let me know, and I will make it and bring it to the bash. Of course, any cables bought at the bash will not incur the cost of postage. I am planning to bring 3, 5 and 6 metre instrument cable made with sommer spirit llx low loss/low capacitance cables. Some with neutrik standard plugs, right-angled and straight, some with silent plugs. There will also be some lower cost ones made with sommer tricone cable. I can also make/bring; mic/balanced cables, wireless body pack cables, shure, Sennheiser, line 6. speakon speaker cables they are not the cheapest, as they are the best quality parts and cables I could find. However, they are cheaper/better than any of the designacable, lynx or any others, of course lynx cables do smell nice. I will post a price list for some of the cables on here shortly and check whether I can offer bash discounts.

It's roughly 7.5 pounds from memory. I have degenerative neck damage and fractured 13 ribs last year so heavy basses are an issue for me. I didn't even notice the Mullarkey at the end of our 45 min set and am confident I could easily play a 1.5-2 hour set with it

Lets not descend into the frothing gammon bait nonsense of "going to prison for Facebook posts", obviously you can't incite violence, murder, call for a building with people in it to be set ablaze etc on any platform. This has been law in this country for a long time so the "these days" stuff doesn't work either. Although our police are an absolute joke and are unwilling to pursue anything that will take them longer than half an hour (unless it's a personal vendetta, in which case they'll direct all public resources to it) the other issue here is that Facebook refuse to work with the police in most cases. A friend of mine I was in a band with (he's on here) with was ripped off by Mick, our guitarist at the time was a DI (now retired) and he said unless it's a public post FB won't co-operate at all, so screenshotting FB messages is going to give the police the out they need when it comes to doing a bit of work. The worst thing about all of this is that Mick isn't even a good scammer, he's just repeating the most basic routine every time and getting away with it. The best thing to do is just compile all the evidence of scams and forward it to every venue he gigs at, every company he works with and everyone commenting on his posts. Maybe set up a "Ripped off by Mick Mason" FB group and target him on the same platform he uses to target others, cut him off at the source.

I’ve added a few things, sold a few things and experimented a wee bit and a re-route of one or two things here’s the board. The top row is for FOH only so tuner… preamp (DI out)>compressor>CabIR and is basically a clean signal chain. Everything below runs as you’d expect from right to left in order form the pre-amp> LBA2020s transformers(hidden underneath)> comp> dirt> fuzz> EQ> HPF (hidden underneath) I think I may still look for a low gain unit but the preamp does have some degree of boost and a nice gain range to keep things lively! I’ve a MarkBass comp which can add in some extra ‘tone’ but I’ll see how this goes for the next few shows. The fuzz will go next I think - I’ve been trying out various drive pedals as I think it’s the one thing which I can rotate to taste as the rest of the signal chain is sounding great.

We went to that Brewers Game today Dave. I couldn't help but bring it up. They agreed it was a disaster. Daryl

Gig last night at Whittles - Tokyo in Oldham with Sons of Nirvana. It was mighty!!!! The RD Artist is an amazing beast, even managed the 2 hours no bother with the incredible Pinegrove strap. The Ripper was a standby and is equally awesome, I do own 4! The Hiwatt and Barefaced 610 combination is just sublime!

We played a charity night for a good cause I'm Cullercoats on Friday. Sarah's Stars are a little charity that help people with terminal diagnoses. The singer and I are both NHS so we were happy to help. It was nice to have another good gig under our belts, this project has been struggling to find its feet since we started. Our guitarist's son recorded the medley of songs at the end of our set and edited it into a nice little video, shame there's no bass on the phone mic but rest assured it was sufficiently pumping in the room. Hey, I'm the soundman. Bass all round. Sorry about the song choice, the medley is specifically for songs that were kind of feel obliged to play as a party band, but that we don't want to do full renditions of.

You sound like you couldn’t have been more reasonable to me. Like some others though, I wouldn’t have set up on a wet field in the first place, and think the organisers didn’t appreciate the risks and cost that could ensue. Years ago I did a festival in the north east, and the weather wasn’t looking great. The ‘stage’ ( back of an an artic lorry trailer) was barely covered against the elements, and as I watched a couple of bands before us I rapidly came to the conclusion that I wasn’t happy going on. Rest of our band soon agreed, and our BL went to discuss options. The organiser just didn’t want to see the problem, and thought we were being too precious. By this time it was pouring down with a very strong wind blowing. We eventually agreed to go home for half our fee. As we left we heard the band performing after us on the bill start playing in the beer tent, as the stage covering had apparently blown away. I’d suggested this as an option earlier on, but was told it wouldn’t be possible. Think we dodged a bullet TBH.

The more I think about this, the angrier I get. If Epiphone was a mate, you'd take them aside and try to talk some sense into them. £929, what the hell are they thinking? How much does it cost to produce a bolt on, single pickup bass these days? Different body shape - big whoop, it's CNC, just get 'em made - it's absolutely no different to any of your other models. I'd go so far as to say the different shaped headstock is the same deal - change the CNC program, how effing hard is that? They have seriously misread the room and are attempting to take people for mugs IMO. When you have market disruptors like Sire going about, producing instruments which I'm quite sure would kick this Grabber's arris in terms of fit, finish and features, at half the price - it's absolutely suicidal pricing. People aren't stupid - they're going to compare and contrast and if they've got half a brain will realise they're being taken for a ride. The Gibsonification of Epiphone is in full swing - I had hoped it wouldn't happen, but it looks like an unwise, premature, and very ham fisted attempt to move Epiphone "upmarket" is happening. It makes me sad. Angry, but ultimately, sad. There's no way in hell I'm buying this Grabber at £929, and because it's a signature bass, the G-3 will be more like £1200. I was so excited by this development when news first broke but Epiphone, you've broken me instead. I'm out.

Many years ago I had a chat with Martin Ace, the long-time bass player for the Welsh band Man. He said, “if you’re bothered about being under-appreciated, overlooked or misunderstood, you’ve probably chosen the wrong instrument “.

Here's the enormous slab of boutique gizmos I'll be schlepping around to my next few gigs... My band have got a few gigs coming up where space is tight, or the load in/out is horrible.* With that in mind, I found a cheapo Zoom B3 on FB Marketplace which matches the one on my regular board and scooped up a cheap-but-decent tuner. The Zoom has a tuner, but you have to "long press" the middle switch and who's got time for that? As my wireless receiver is on my regular board, I've gone with the Lekato WS 70 bug system. The footprint is about the size of a sheet of A4 and everything sits on an offcut of MDF wrapped in black gaffa tape, making it more PedalTram than PedalTrain. I'll miss the immediacy of being able to scroll through patches quickly which I can do on the modified Zoom B3 on my regular board, but this mini setup fits neatly into my "odds 'n sods" bag. I'll also be using my lovely old, lightweight TC Electronic BG250 combo and leaving my Hercules double instrument stand at home. * Tight space: Acapela, Pentyrch Scary load in/out: Theatre on the Steps, Bridgnorth. They're both lovely venues, but a bit of forward planning is required.

In my arsenal (I have occasional shoulder issues) are these light basses. Dano Longhorn (short scale) Hofner Club (SS) Sandberg Lionel (SS) Nordstrand Acinonyx (SS) Maruszczyk Jake (long scale but just over 7lb) Sandberg P bass (LS 8.1lb) Aria Sinsonadia (LS skeleton bass... weighs nothing) I'd recommend any of them but the short scale basses can help in more ways than just pure weight/mass.

There’s the discontinued Yamaha RBX4 A2, which was light weight. Maruszczyk Elwood Ls are very light (I have 2). However, my first thought was the aforementioned Danelectro. And just for @warwickhunt… https://www.thomann.co.uk/danelectro_58_longhorn_bass_red_hot.htm?glp=1&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADuDMCVv1qoIZ3fNWkAPJwPEc5lrb&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIq_KstK3qiAMV4oRoCR3KsxD2EAQYBiABEgIuz_D_BwE

NO! Why did you alert me to that? I like Dano LHs... I like F holes... I 'might' need one of these!

I went to a Brewers Game today and was sitting next to our band leader and I couldn't help it. I said " Hey, was it just me or was Bob really struggling last night?" He agreed and felt it was a confidence issue. Daryl

First outing for our new punk band, 'last gang in town', last night. Actually just a warm up gig at the guitarist house warming but quite a good audience. First proper outing this Thursday with my new 'Hendrix' band Purple Haze in support. Thursdays gig should be fun as it's at the Canadian dip bar and lots of oldies like us who feel like teenagers again when we play the punk stuff. Will post pics from that one. Punk not normally my thing but I can't believe how much fun it was to play!

I did the gig last night as a duo that I had thought we would have to cancel due to my impending surgery, but that has changed to next week. So a nice bar down by the sea we’ve played before. Good crowd singing along which is always encouraging, proves we picked a good set. I got to drive the HX Stomp live, recently bought from @maidens97 of this parish. It works a treat, makes me play a lot better. Well probably only in my head so thanks again. My wife acted as my roady as I’m not supposed to lift anything over the weight of a bag sugar. Ridiculous as I spent the two and half hour gig, without a break, with a 10 pound Stingray round my neck. Anyway a member of the bar staff helped her load out and even insisted on loading up the car, under my supervision. Nice people. Next gig is mid November when I should have recovered

Next Thursday, I'll be interviewing the amazing Gail Ann Dorsey for my bass player's podcast. Of course I have some stuff I want to ask her about, but maybe you guys also have some questions for this giant And while you're at it, feel free to check out other episodes of the podcast. Many are in Dutch, but the English episodes are: Henrik Linder, Brady Watt, Renaud Garcia Fons, Adam Ben Ezra, Martin Méndez, Joe Dart, James Genus, Kinga Glyk, Tal Wilkenfeld, Pino Palladino, Damian Erskine, Dale Davis, Tim Lefebvre, Stu Brooks, Michael League, John Stirratt, Jeff Berlin and Jeroen Paul Thesseling.

But my cardboard bass is the most comfy and lightweight to play. Sounds amazing too 😀

I have noticed that when Gail played Bowie songs live, her basslines didn't slavishly follow the original line on the records (after all she wasn't in a Bowie tribute band). I wondered if Bowie ever noticed, or commented on her particular version of the bassline on his songs, or did he give her carte blanche to play however she wanted? I suspect Lenny Kravitz was a bit of a control freak when she played with him.

I think you were more than accomodating, playing in an open field on a day that had mentioned it was going to rain would be a pretty well non starter. Seems that the morning they got up, checked the field, found there was no gazebo for the band, and no chance of getting one, look at the weather forcast and saw the options, they should have contacted you and cancelled then. It would still have been a pain, but such things happen. More than fair. We have had discussions about these sort of things before, like weddings of 'friends of the band' - I am happy to do a wedding for a friend of the band for normal gig money, rather than wedding money, but 'friends of the band' tend to be friends of the singer and guitarist, sometimes the drummer, and rarely mine. If they were mine, then yes, I would be happy to do it free. If they want to do a free gig for someone, I am perfectly happy to take their cut of the fee out of what we are charging, leaving mine.

That is a nightmare - I think you were pretty good about the money. As an aside, I wouldn't have set up like that, no pallets (or similar) - no music - simples ! 😎

A gig I’ll never forget! A tale of disaster and a moral question… The venue was the Turnpike Showground near Shaftesbury in Dorset, and the event was a ‘Tractor Run’ over a Sunday lunchtime. This raised a smidgeon of alarm, but a gig’s a gig – so the organisers booked our band to play from 13:30 to 16:00 to entertain the multitude of attendees they were expecting. Now, the showground extents to 39 acres, it’s flat and exposed to the wind from nearly all directions and can accommodate 10,000 people at a time for big annual shows (we’d played there for one of those back in May). However, tractor runs are really meant for the owners and die-hard enthusiasts of agricultural machinery, giving them a chance to watch and drive their pride and joy in procession around the back-roads via as many pubs as possible – the general public aren’t very interested and don’t usually attend unless it’s held in a town-centre or as part of a bigger event (e.g. county show). Add into the mix the truly awful weather forecast (gales all day and heavy rain from around 15:00 til midnight) and you get the picture. We turned up at noon – no rain yet - only to find that the gazebo they’d promised as the band shelter wasn’t there – it had apparently been blow away overnight and ended up half a mile away in a hedge, completely wrecked. There were thirty security staff but just 17 other punters sitting miserably on a few straw bales in the biting wind. Would we play out in the open air, pretty please, the organisers asked? After a band huddle we said OK, but at the first drop of rain we’d be packed up and gone. The pix below give some idea of the vastness of the field but it can’t tell you that we were playing directly into a Force 5-6 gale – no need for foldback, I thought sardonically. There were no tractors there when we arrived. They were away on their run, leaving us to set up next to the burger tent and raffle stall. The tractors (about 20 of them) returned at 13:00 and we started playing early, all of us wearing a motley collection of whatever warm hats and coats we could beg or borrow. The tractor chaps collected their souvenir plaques, and ignored us (as well they might – we didn’t have three-point hitches or turbochargers!) At halftime, the organisers tried to hold an auction for the colossal amount of bacon, baps and burgers that were never going to sell – they virtually gave away most of it (to the tractor guys) for token amounts. They then embarked upon a lengthy raffle draw, where most of the ticket holders had long gone home so the same prizes were re-drawn again and again. At this point the first drops of rain began to fall – our well-oiled band-emergency-packing-up machine swung into operation, as it had to – we needed to get the gear into our cars asap as there was no other shelter! End of gig for us… So this is where the moral issue arose – your thoughts are welcome on whether we dealt with it in the best way. Should we have insisted upon being paid the whole fee? On the minus side we only did one set, not two, but that was after agreeing to risk our gear in inclement weather so as not to disappoint the organisers who hadn’t (through force majeure) been able to provide the agreed shelter – and before playing we had insisted upon a rider that if it rained we stopped. I had a lot of sympathy for the organisers as I’ve been on their side of the fenceas an organiser of similar events myself. However, experience had rapidly told me that they’d been wildly over-optimistic about public attendance, had invested far too much money in the wrong venue, over-catered for food drink, security etc, and were entirely at the mercy of the weather – they should have at the very least cancelled the band to save money but they didn’t. Anyway, as always it was about money… · I said I’d be happy with token diesel money to help out · Our dep guitarist (yet another!) made the valid point that he’d made a 100-mile round trip, played under difficult circumstances, fulfilled his commitment and so wanted the full fee · The other three thought that accepting half-pay would help the organisers while recovering something for a partly-wasted afternoon After a fairly heated discussion (without me, I was making the long trek to the Gents 150 yard away!) they’d agreed that we should take the full fee, but individually we could then donate whatever we thought appropriate back to the event… fair enough or not? My goodness, what a shambles, and what rain came down yesterday after we left!

Hopefully, I will be a voice of Hope in a Sea of Woe... Our new singer Auditioned 4 weeks ago, were getting up to speed for our first gig mid-October... Pinged an advert into the band's WhatsApp for a used Yamaha PA, a little 500-watt Yamaha PAS, (powered tops 250 a side)b, She was purely after advice from us Amp knowers/havers... if this was sufficient power-wise to keep up with the drums and amps considering our drummer is also light-handed this should be more than fine if not we'd make the guitarist turn down ( Too many Valves) She pulled the trigger and intends to store it too, absolute result so not every singer is clueless on this front.

I'm going through a similar phase. Thankfully for me, I've not been suffering with back pains. For me, it's an aching left shoulder - and that sometimes lasts through the next day. Also, the fingers on my left hand are "feeling" those stretches a little more. So I've been gigging short scale more. My Danelectro Longhorn is an amazing bass! It's short scale, yet it seems like it isn't, somehow - as it has more frets than say a Mustang. It also sounds brilliant, and is hollow bodied - and light as a feather. I also have a SS Headless Ibanez (EHB 1000), which is also stupidly lightweight. I have also worked on acquiring lightweight amp gear - and that's another story... If you want lightweight 34" scale, then maybe a Fender P Lyte, or Aerodyne Jazz? Good luck with your search, and let us know how you get on 😀

Ibanez EHBs.

I'd like to add a little personal experience re similar... identical situation (I had to check your location)! I was asked by my Mother in Law if I could look over quotes they had for a PA system for their church; they had quotes which were eye watering and totally inflated/unnecessary. My greatest concern (aside from price) was that there was no/little provision for the hearing loop (you do tend to get a few users in church settings) and the user interface. I'm really sorry but unless there is a person always on hand to operate ALL of these systems, there is no way a non-muso could operate the PA; complex desks, radio mics etc etc. I can't point you to the ideal solution but please take on board these main two points, hearing loop and ease of use (by all). Good luck.

Rule Britannia eh! Freedom of speech being a scamming low life.

https://youtu.be/qBaXXbEPwZQ?feature=shared https://youtube.com/watch?v=GnMfJDNUQ2M&feature=shared

Playing 2 nights at Chorley Festival next weekend… Weekend after with a fellow basschatter. Would be great to see some BC folk at some of these

Yes exactly this. The one thing almost every church has in common is well meaning but totally naive PA operators who can make any system sound rubbish. But deadening the room as much as possible is a good start. You can do things like hide acoustic foam behind banners, put a curtain behind the musicians as a backdrop, carpet with thick underlay underneath the musicians, make an artistic looking diffuser to hang on a reflective wall, and probably the best thing is to aim for a silent stage using IEMs and an electric kit, although appreciate all of this brings lots of politics! We've spent a lot on our system - upwards of £60k over the last ten years, and while it sounds awesome in the right hands, even starting from stored setting doesn't help some of our operators. I had someone readjusting all the gains in a stored programme the other day to make the faders line up neatly... sigh...

Hands

Talk to us, plenty of old farts here to sympathise with you

It was a long drive. We were way out in the country. It was very dark when I left and almost got hit by a car I didn't see when turning onto the highway. The car was moving at approximately 70 miles an hour. We have a nighttime gig coming up in the city of Milwaukee in a neighborhood I don't care to be in late at night at my age. I'm going to tell the band leader that I won't be able to drive to that gig. As for the gig,our dep drummer struggled a bit. At times the timing just wasn'tthere..Very nice guy, great attitude. Hopefully it was a confidence thing. We depend on our 2 dep drummers a lot. As it is with many private parties the pay was generous. I haven't discussed what happened with the dep drummer with our band leader and I probably won't. It's not really my place. Daryl

Local pub that is a tiny venue where you get no room at all, but on the plus side, you get 20 people in and it feels like its crowded. Easy setup, unusual as normally you have to persuade a load of people to move out of the way, so we have loads of space (of a small space!). Our keyboard player didn't realise we had the gig and went away, so we had to remove the keyboard songs from the list and bring back some of the old ones - however, it did give us more space. Kick off a bit late, I thought it was a 9 start and it is 8:30l, but it is hard getting things setup in such a small area without people getting out of the way. From pretty well the start, people were joining in, and very up for it, and when I said you get 20 people in it feels crowded, if you get 50 people in it feels like a stadium, except much more up close and personal. But they were singing and dancing along, I never heard a crowd singing the words of baker street before, and even some people doing harmonies of things. So notible interesting things, because the keyboard player was away, baker street has some keyboard trills that I always used to do with a loopman pedal. I brought that back, tested it before the gig, all good. Because I was going into the PA from the XLR on the Boss ME90B, and using a small amp for backline from the jack, I plugged into the send/return that Ihad never used before, it worked. But before the song, I tried it and it was making no volume, maybe dodgy jack or something. I turned the volumes up (I never remember which volume it is), still wasn't loud but oh well, whatever, no time, going into the song. Got to the first trill, kick the pedal and BLING!!!!! - massively loud. But the band thought it was fine! I had reset the effects on my boss before I went, and near the end I thought that it seemed there was too much distortion, then went back to my normal clean patch for one song, and sure enough, distortion, then play that funky music, switched the autowah patch, nope, distortion, I realised this is my new bass I bought a few weeks back, hadn't even checked the battery, active only, it was running out! During the single note parts of the song I unzipped the bass bag that was next to me for my spare, then at the end quickly swapped bass, ready for surfin USA with no distortion at all! Schoolboy error. But don't know what it was about it, but it was the most enjoyable gig I have done in months, maybe just that noone was complaining about the sound.

We completely set up in the big room as we have previously last night, it was a bit cold. One of the then committee asks if we can set up again in the small bar! A quick reconnaissance of the area by the singer/guitarist gets a rapid negative (apparently it’s tiny, with probably room for just 20 people, without the band). That decided, the heating comes on in the big room and it even becomes a little too warm, very quickly. I can see why they wanted to move us, the audience is sparse, never more than 40 and mostly hovering in the 20-30 slot. That said, we give it our best, even with our drummer feeling under the weather. We try to keep it down, which is achieved, with only one request to come down a bit in the 2nd set, where I pretend to fiddle with my amp, but we don’t alter any levels and the drummer tries to play lighter, nothing more was said. 3 hour or so sets, interspersed with the ever present bingo. Some dancing (some very energetically, sadly they left after a while), lots of singing along and general grooving in their chairs. We had a great sound, confirmed by the keyboard player, who was set up at right angles, slightly in front of the PA. Really digging my sound with the VTDI engaged, very Geddy, Squire, Entwistle, JJB, but only use this where appropriate. Next gig in 2 weeks, without our keyboard player sadly.

Greetings to my fellow short-scale bass players! New to this forum - OK, I have been lurking occasionally - but not new to bass (45 years and counting) or the concept of short scales... My current crop From left to right: '69 Gibson EB-0 (modded), '76 Guild JS-2, '69 Gibson EB-3, '70 Gibson Les Paul Bass, '72 Gibson Les Paul Triumph Bass. Yes, they all sport Hipshot Supertone bridges and no, I'm NOT a paid endorser...

OMG! Private Party today. Tough spot for me. I always brag about my short commutes to gigs compared to some of the commutes you guys make. We're providing sound & lights so there's no room in the van for me. I have to drive. It's an hour and a half one way. I know nothing about this private party. We don't usually book gigs this far away unless it pays well. We're all going to a Brewers Game at . American Family Field ( formerly Miller Park) on Sunday. The Brewers are already in the playoffs. Daryl

Some great grooves around in 1982. Lukather and Jeff Porcaro certainly left their mark in the studio in the 80's. Greg Phillinganes, Steve Lukather, Jeff Porcaro and Louis Johnson.

Hope all goes well, and a speedy recovery has you back to giving the Poppydog cause for concern asap! 😉

Just a little tribute to Kris Kristofferson - a testament to his songwriting in that this Country songwriter wrote a song that was a huge soul hit for Gladys Knight and provided John Holt with this great single:

...Red 5, Standing By...

A hollow-bodied electric bass? Several different shapes to choose from. A Danelectro? An acoustic bass guitar? Have fun in your search!

Some of you may have been following Lemmywinks's struggle to get a Cort GB Modern 5 that's been ongoing for the last few weeks. Well, I've decided that the first one he bought (With the binding issues) wasn't a big enough issue for me to say no to it. That, and it discounted the price a little more. So, I got it transferred over to the Birmingham GuitarGuitar store, took the train over, spent a good hour playing it, checking it over visually for anything else I could try and get a discount for (Didn't find anything) and then traded in a couple of old pedals before I paid my money and left with my new bass. Despite Lemmywink's issues with it (And they are issues, don't think I'm downplaying them, these are issues that really should have been caught at QC, or when GuitarGuitar got it in and should have inspected it) I'm loving it. The fit and finish, the feel, the tone, it's all very lovely, though, compared to my two other basses, it's probably not much of a surprise that I think it's very nice, given how badly I've treated the others over the years I've owned them. I even went and bought myself an expensive Pinegrove Leather strap for it too, which is very nice and definitely worth the money for some high quality leather. You might notice the biggest change I've made so far, which is removing the clear pickguard. It might have just been my own eyes, since Lemmy said he couldn't see it, but I noticed that to me, it seemed like the guard had this almost purple tint to it? I've taken it off either way, and filled the screw holes with caphead allen screws, just to hide the holes.