neepheid

Ahh, but you'll be going out loudly. Now hand in your month's chip that you got... yesterday

I would say that the sooner Thomann can relieve D!ck Heads Limited (DHL) of their duties the better - they "lost" one of my basses on the way here. How the f do you lose a bass, it's not as if it's a set of car keys, is it? To give Thomann their due they pretty quickly gave it up after some investigation and sent another which thankfully made it through that time. Also I have absolutely no expectation that a bass will arrive set up for me. Setup being such a personal thing, I have no idea why people think they can expect to grab a bass out of a box and just start playing it. I learned to setup my basses early doors in my career and it doesn't faze me one jot if one arrives not to my liking. Box shifters aren't going to open each and every bass and set it up before sealing it again - can you imagine how much that would add to costs? You want cheap prices AND you want individual attention paid to each bass? Come on - that equation just doesn't solve.

Active mode is just a line boost, I think it was added simply so you could use longer cables. Active with treble boost does make an actual difference to the sound beyond loudifying it (duh neep, the clue's in the name), but I always found it scratchy and horrible sounding. I left my tookay in passive mode all the time too.

Then you've got a wiring fault somewhere, you might want to get that looked at. L-2000/ASAT basses should be able to play in passive even with no battery physically installed.

Oi, ninja post editor - it's funny, you should have just left it as "boke", because it sounds like the Scots word "boak" which means retch or vomit, often used in the construction "to give one the boak": Oh, that pure gies me the boak! Translation: "That's fkn disgusting!" Ergo, Mr. Letts' business practices give me the boak.

Alarmed? Yet another keyboard warrior - probably couldn't punch their way out of a wet paper bag.

Are you eating popcorn?

It's maybe time for Mr. Letts to change career. Anecdotally (I have not played any of his instruments - so I'm just going off what I've read/seen) it would seem he's not as good a builder as he clearly thinks he is (by his own words), and he has absolutely torched his reputation. When you are operating in the same space as the likes of ACG, Shuker etc. you'd better make damn sure your product is on point as well as your business practices. With that in mind, speaking as a neutral bystander with no skin in this game, my assessment is that this enterprise is dead in the water.

Cheers! Ha, it's a thought, but I think I'll leave it there and agree that it'd be a step too far. The woodburning came out really well, way better than I thought, I'm happy with it as is.

Well, that's January almost done and dusted. Here are the scores on the doors. 35 remain standing, 5 out. How are the rest of you doing? Any near misses? I am not happy with Sire releasing some tasty basses this year, that's going to be something that will require effort to resist. I've already got a shopping list forming for next year - a white Fender MP Dimension, and a Sire Z7 in a yet to be the determined finish. I don't know if having a list is a good idea or not!

You do you, but a thought occurs - what have these brands done to earn this fierce loyalty?

I had a three pickup Hodad. Super light, super weird, kinda wish I kept it - but at the time I didn't know how to get the best out of it and was on a mission to consume as many basses as I could.

I use my own amp in our rehearsal space, because it's just a room that the drummer leases from the council. Any time I've used commercial rehearsal space, it's been a ragtag of mismatched stuff. Sometimes the heads are OK - notable heads that I remember have been the Ampeg Portaflex PF-500 and Hartke HA3500. They're usually plugged into something unidentifiable which has long since lost its logo/branding (and half its coating/carpet).

I'm a bugger for copy pasting images on here, and when I do that it's always called "image.png". Probably half of my attachments are named "image.png" which makes searching through them a real drudge. I would love to reuse attachments easily so thought I'd go through mine and give them meaningful names. I can't see a way to do that. Correct me if I'm wrong. If I'm right, and there's currently no means to rename attachments, could there be one?

@Frank Blank - Jabba short scales, fretted and fretless, Ibanez SRC6, QSC K12.2, Grace Design preamp. @rwillett - Ibanez short scale, Fender Jazz bass, Fender Mustang bass, Telecaster, Westone six string, 3d printed guitar, small practise bass amp, small practise guitar amp, Mod Dwarf, various guitar/USB interfaces and quite a lot of software and a fair few laptops as required. I live next door Probably cake as well. @ossyrocks - '73 P bass, '73 J bass, '78 P bass, '87 MIJ P Bass, Fender Bassman 50 (rebuilt from the ground up by Gartone), Bergantino Forte D, TE Elf, Barefaced Super Compact and One10, Fender Rumble 100. @sifi2112 Vigier Excess 4, Mas26 (x2) sfx D3 preamp Koch ATR4502 poweramp @neepheid - Some and hopefully all of Epiphone Jack Casady, G&L L-1000, Epiphone Les Paul Standard, G&L Tribute LB-100, Sire D5, Reverend Triad, Yamaha BB1200, Harley Benton HB-50, Soloking MJ-1, Epiphone Explorer, Markbass Mini CMD 121P IV, Markbass NY 121 cab

I don't have any opinions on the BB1000. This guy does, if that helps:

I'm in. And in a transparent attempt to shame people into attending, I will be travelling 5 hours each way to do so

Which bass is that one then?

Decision P is still £879 at Merchant City in Glasgow. The listing for the new Decision P finish (black with gold pickguard) at £999 is a mistake I think, as the description makes no sense.

But I can get a South Korean made Reverend which does more (ie. has two pickups) and will be excellent quality for less than £900. The grand is quite the psychological threshold to cross, so manufacturers had better provide reasons why I should. This bass doesn't provide any reasons why I should when you stack it against cheaper instruments of excellent quality which are manufactured in places with theoretically higher labour costs. Hard no from me. Sorry, EBMM/SBMM fanbois, but their pricing has been ridiculous for a while now. I'm still prising my jaw off the floor at >£1000 SBMM Rays. What is this market segment they're aiming at? The affluent cheapskate? Does it even exist?

I think that's a foolhardy waste of time - but I have heard plenty times of people planning what mods they're going to do before they've even bought the damn instrument. Seems daft to me, get the thing first and see what it's like before making any decisions like that. I had half a mind to replace the pickup in my G&L Tribute LB-100 for a split MFD to make a cheapskate SB-1, but I ended up liking the sound of the stock alnico pickup just fine so I left it.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, as it usually is.

To be fair, I don't think they're aimed at you. I'd imagine any official Stingray aficionados will give these a wide berth. They're for chancers like me who are interested in the idea and vague spirit of a 'Ray but are in no way interested in paying the price of USA models or the top end SBMM offerings (of which I've already opined about how ridiculous I find their pricing).

At least they didn't take it out to the back yard and shoot it in the head (Big Al)...