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Latest, and hopefully final, iteration...

Hee hee, some fun from Saturday night: 20250118 Nine Lives Wilsons Holiday.mp4

Ok, I'll bite. 1) 1975 refinished Daphne Blue (at least that was the colour I asked for). Bought for £450 in about 1997, it was a horrible kind of orange peely red. Possibly the nastiest neck I've ever seen, looks like parts of it were sanded down and then varnished with a wallpaper brush. Forget playing anything up the dusty end, BUT it's got a very old set of flatwounds and sounds gorgeous. Much heavier than my other two. 2) 1964 Sunburst. All original, my holy grail bass. 3) 1975 natural refinish. Got this for £450 (£400 plus £50 for stripping off the horrible DIY snakeskin finish) from Birmingham Musical Exchange in 1996. Seymour Duncan Quarterpounders, Schaller bridge, in many ways it resembles Fender's Nate Mendel signature Precision. A bit of a dog but the most comfortable neck ever.

I made a fume extractor that sucks the fumes through a carbon filter using cooker hood refill. 3D printed and has a computer fan fitted. Front Fuselage.stl Fume Extractor Base.STL Filter Housing.STL

… what can i say, i’m in love..

PMT don't have a particularly strong used sales department unlike GuitarGuitar or Andertons. PMT probably don't actually want to take in much used stock and will only do so for a high profit margin or the ability for a quick flip. My advice is not to take offence by low offers, the item is yours to do with as you wish, simply decline their offer and move on. They're under no obligation whatsoever to offer you what you want, it's their business, they can offer you want THEY want to pay and you either accept or decline.

After far too long (getting on for 20 years, in fact), I'm a Trace Elliot owner again. I've been really happy with my Genz-Benz Shuttle 9.2, and the 6.0 before it, but when I was looking back through my feedback thread I realised I'd been using the Shuttles since October 2009. Time for a change. I'd been intrigued by the new Trace TE-1200 since its release. Everything I'd read led me to believe that it had Trace DNA flowing through it, and with the old GP12SMX still being my favourite preamp ever I hoped perhaps this would get me somewhere close. My redundancy payout meant that suddenly I could afford it, so I said 'sod it' and pulled the trigger. Thomann's price was by far the cheapest anywhere online, so I gave them my money. And yesterday, the nice DHL man left it on my doorstep without ringing the doorbell 🙄 it's a bloody good job I was in. Anyway -- I was unnerved when I picked the box up, as it weighed a ton. On opening it all up, I soon found out that this was down to the supplied 4-way footswitch, which actually weighs more than the amp it's still in the box now, as I'll probably never use it. I've finally today got round to plumbing it into my rack case and damn it looks good in there. If there's one thing I really dislike aesthetically, it's those huge green words on the rack ears. They just look tacky and will have to go. I will just cover them up with insul tape until I've decided it's a keeper, at which point I'll either t-cut them off or spray them black. Tomorrow, it's time to fire it up and see how much of my garage I can destroy. 😈

Basschat to the rescue!

No disrespect but your guitar isn't worth £3000... it is 'used' (it might be immaculate/unplayed but still not 'new') and by your own admission worth about £2000; so realistically they have in fact offered you your expected value of 50% of £2000 = £1000. It has always been the case that a High St retail store will offer the absolute lowest value for a trade in. They have overheads, tax, paperwork, come-back concerns and ultimately have to make a profit never mind just breaking even. I'll concede that your expectation of the Ric for a used Spector @ £1700 isn't totally out of the question. As has been suggested, BassBros or similar might give you a better trade price but I'm 99% sure that if you sold on BC and had the readies in your hand you'd get the best deal buying the bass you are after... possibly even cheaper on BC.

Bassbros is the only place that have offered me decent prices, when buying my basses and taking them as trades. I learnt a long time ago that the "big" shops are never going to offer what you hope for. That's not a rip-off and honestly the idea if leaving a Trustpilot review because you took umbrage at a low trade offer is a massive overreaction.

The prices are in flux...

I'll have 4 gig this week. Was at work Monday and just before 5pm quitting time, one of my drummers calls and needed me to be house bass for the music school he teaches, doing open jam for their students at a local all-ages club. Wednesday night (tonight), will be back to my weekly live karaoke band. Fri & Sat nights, my main band is doing casino gigs.

Accidentally bought this over the weekend, it arrived today. Very impressive little thing.

Accidentally bought this on eBay over the weekend. Very impressed with it, though the 18-fret fingerboard may take some getting used to! Pickups very punchy, nice variation with the tone, not as heavy as some reviews had suggested. Happy days!

Orange O bass.

If you look at the great music created in the last 60 years, a lot of it was created under the influence of one thing or another. Back in the day, I've seen and experienced music being played at various stages of influence and most of it was very good. Drugs are not always a problem. How some people can't deal with them is always a problem.

Update: After another rehearsal with the orchestra, I've decided it's not for me. Fish out of water. I asked for the rehearsal tracks and bass tabs for the last rehearsal to be sent in advance so I could practise at home. Some arrived, some didn't, which was frustrating. Also, to my ears, many of the backing tracks for rock songs really did not sound much like the original rock songs. They sounded like - errmm - an orchestra playing a rock song. All of that, together with my complete absence of experience of playing with an orchestra, meant it was clearly not the right place for me. A drummer friend has contacted me about setting up a pop/soul/funk band from scratch. Drummer, bassist (me), keys player already in place, with a couple of female singers showing interest. Now then - that's my scene...

A Yamaha BB would be a shout, either reverse P or normal depending on your preference. Reverend or ACG for a different look.

Brilliant Guys and thanks, I reversed the wires to the neck pot and all sounds as it should, they must have soldered the pickup up wrong....Output restored, another learning day

Many moons ago I was looking at a bass in one of the big names. I had a bass to trade so phoned them up as it was a fair distance to drive. The person that answered was so evasive as to offering any indication of trade in value. In the end I got a little (more than a little) exasperated and said look, I know the resale value of my bass is xx pounds. If I bring it all the way to your shop and I’m offered half that I will hit the person over the head with it. Now, in possession of that knowledge would you advise I get in my car or stay at home. I was advised to stay at home. I’ve nothing against being offered a low amount, and am perfectly aware that the final offer is dependent on condition, but it was the evasiveness and refusal to give any indication of a value that got me. To be honest if they’d come straight out with a sum that was half the resale value I’d probably have taken it, as it’s the evasiveness cost the a sale and a future profit on my trade in.

After my new PSU arrived I integrated my Shure wireless receiver, replacing the old tuner. My simple board:

If loyalty points are okay I can’t see how trading children or pets would be a fail.

That's unfortunate that it's tough to get £400 out of venues in your area. I think we all agree that location means allot when it comes to the number of good places that book live bands. We're in a great location for gigs. But even so we had to work our butt's off to get to the point where the minimum we'll accept is $700.00 range. And for that your getting a decent band, sound and lighting. I think it's a bargain. Daryl

Finally got my latest video uploading - I bring to you the new Mark 2 version of the Lusithand Double NFP Special. Spoiler, I like it a lot. Edit: Hmm, some of the audio is clipping. I am going to re-upload it. Edit 2: Fixed the audio. New version coming now; new link below.

It's not a rip off. They offered a price that makes the deal worthwhile to them. You weren't happy with the price so you decided not to take their offer. No harm is done. No one got ripped off. Its all fine.

Popped in to my local music shop earlier today and he’d acquired this yesterday… Fortunately for my bank account, he hadn’t had chance to set it up and it had been sat in storage for a while. So, it didn’t blow me away on the spot although it was very nice. Can’t get over how nice the top is on these for the money though 👌

But you have to supply your own cape.

Update on this monster! Looks like the circuit's an easier fix than I'd feared. There's two relatively cheap components - a pot and a battery clip - which are misbehaving, and when they do so at the same time it gets messy. I'm hoping to get the work done by Status and to get the all clear on the circuit from them, but if they're not able to it's apparently a pretty straight forward job. I've rehearsed it a few times, initially with the original strings, then with some flats, and most recently with Lo Riders, and it's a phenomenal, extremely sensitive, versatile, and if needs be, huge sounding instrument. It's everything you'd expect a top-end instrument for Status to be. But.......... ........after rehearing last night I picked up my Precision, and then my SUB, and knew that my growing realisation over the last few weeks that ultimately the Buzzard is not the bass for me was accurate. OK, this thing makes it extremely easy to play some of Entwistle's more demanding parts, and to sound ballpark doing so, but oddly I suspect that owning it has made me more determined to do the early 70's Who material on a Precision. So for Who stuff I'm going to head back to my hybrid Precision - late 70's body, Warmoth (maple cap) neck, Fender '63 PUPs and some nice rattly strings - while keeping a keen eye open for a used Status graphite Precision neck It ain't the destination, it's the journey 👍

The underside:

You could also maybe try Rich Tone in Sheffield. They buy guitars and basses, and from my recent experience offer fair prices. I sent pics of my guitar and they made me an offer based on them.

@JohnDaBass seems happy with his 👍

Bad time of year for business and therefore cashflow, they just don't want money tied up in an instrument that might be hard to sell, the used market is extremely unpredictable at the best of times. There's absolutely no reason for any form of rant on Trustpilot, you asked them the question, they gave you an answer. Let's hope eBay provides a solution 👍

PMT? Bax? Andertons? Are there any shops left that haven't hurt you Ed? General used rate online for the Ric seems to be around the £2k mark, so being offered half its value by a big chain shop, whilst shocking, doesn't sound totally alien to me. Best just to sell it privately and hopefully pocket a bit of change! Is there a guitar equivalent of the likes of Bassbros? Will offers really fair prices i've heard, your better bet is trying to sell to someone smaller, and I assume some will buy if its a desirable bit of kit. But they naturally need to make a decent profit.

Nice Peavey amp you have there!

A mock up of my board before it gets all wired up. I still might swap out the Darkglass compressor for the new Cali 76 though.

She was good in Moloko.

Missed it last year due to being ill and no car, so going this year for definite!

OK, so its done..kind of. I have reamed out the hole on the e string tuner using a 3.5mm HSS bit and my trusty Makita on a slow setting. It seems to be OK. I'll string it up just now and report back but the Thomastik low E (.96) now definitely fits through the hole.

I only sell or trade to shops because I work on the basis that dealing with somebody who is absolutely upfront about their sole intent being to profit from my loss, and will even tell me the minimum margin that they're willing to make, is actually a lot less annoying than any of the possible negative private sale experiences that people report on here. That's just what works best for me, and I know that many will think differently - it's absolutely fine. Anyway, my list says I've moved on about 80 items (basses, amps, pedals, parts etc.) that way since I started to clear house in 2022, and I work on a reasonable offer from a shop being two-thirds of the average eBay or Reverb price for the same thing in the same condition. I'm usually able to get that, though recently I've noticed one or two shops that I could previously rely on for reasonable (sometimes even good) offers have started to offer much less - about half of the lowest price they can find, irrespective of condition. I'm fairly lucky that Rich Tone is my local and still makes reasonable offers for most things, taking the condition into account. If I were a betting man, I reckon they'd go to the Reverb price guide, take the £1900 recommendation and offer you £1250... so that local £1600 cash offer might be quite generous, and the PMT offer maybe isn't that scandalous.

You can buy that Ric for £3k new (PMT themselves have it at £3.1k), a shop isn't going to give you anything like the used market value as they'd be essentially competing with their own new stock. The manager will look at the profit margins he makes on a new Ric, figure out how much he can sell a used one for and make you an offer accordingly. He'll also have to factor in the possibility of a customer returning it due to a manufacturing fault (it's a Ric after all) and the shop having to take the hit. Nothing sinister, this is just how retail works. Might be different if it was a rare instrument that the shop didn't stock.

Secure the toddler to the wall.

Just finished and packing away now. Two new songs sorted for the party set in Mid February..........

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