Wolverinebass

Well, it appears that the bods at Ernie Ball have pushed the boat out too far after overindulgence in "Mickey Rooney's Crazy Pills." £3k is laughable. 2 years ago you could get an HH ash/rosewood from thomann for £1900. They are mental if they think anyone will take that up in decent quantities. They can go and do one as far as I'm concerned.

I loved the 12 band heads of these. When Peavey pulled out of the UK, the Bass Centre did a fire sale of the amps and cabs from this range. I remember it was £250 for thr 4x10 brand new. Was insane, but the weight put me off.

Exactly. I'm in my early 40s and associate Trace with John Entwistle due to him using the V8, MP11, poweramps and TVT9 preamp. I think it's being suggested we should only associate Trace with Mike Kroeger of Nickelback or Mark King or whomever we shouldn't like. I'm not a slap monster. Definitely not one of those 50 year old Mark King fans that have paid kept Status graphite in the black for the last 20 years. "New, marginally tweaked Kingbass!! Bendwell!! 16.5mm string spacing!!! Set up like Mark!!! Listen to me play Mr Pink on it!!!" Not me. Sorry.

"Range?" Sorry, just to confirm that word again. "RANGE?!!" Trace Elliot have a sad window corner in crack converters where their new products (sorry - range) is covered in dust because nobody wants it. The 12 band Peavey era was great. This new stuff is pish.

That is very true that 90W at that level would be virtually impossible to hear. But, running out of headroom and redlining the amp the whole time kind of defeats the purpose. Now all I'm saying is that from what I read there were reports that it was underpowered. I've never tried one. Hence my post was more of a question rather than "Didn't everyone know retroglides are rubbish?" type post. The simple reason was I was toying with getting one until I saw the multiple negative comments about it's output.

Would that be because of the drive adding harmonics? Also when looking at the manual the retroglide says 710 watts, not 800. I would bet that the newer RMs have a different power module to the older ones as they are now lighter, but from what I've read, the retroglide appears to be underpowered which is a shame.

If you haven't had white Russian cornflakes you haven't lived.

Gibson copies Cataldo copying Gibson.

I'd be voting for an assortment of Polish, Finnish and Russian vodkas with a packet of cigarettes actually. I would have said crack pipe, but sometimes you can overdo it. Plus this is a family forum.

That's because Warwick literally copy anything and say they invented it.

I appear to be of the odd opinion that I really like the Peavey era stuff from about 2002. The older stuff is great as well. This new stuff is awful. Unless you play a jazz gig you'd need an 8x10 to play anything bigger as the Elf is so anaemic. You can put it in your pocket? Whooptee do. You'll be red lining it the whole way as it's got so little power. Also, whomever priced the new cabs is on crack. They're ludicrously expensive for what they are. Get the preamp of the older models bang a 1000W class D behind it. Job done. Instead, we get this ludicrous set of products that look like someone forgot to add water to get them to the correct size.

Just to clarify, do you mean tonally, functionally or both? Just curious.

Look, we need to see pictures of your rehearsal room lying in rubble after you played an open E. Oh, and if you set someone on fire as well that would also insinuate that the amp either has a flamethrower or possibly a pop out cigarette lighter that can "get a bit out of control."

Immensely powerful, but the eq is awful. Completely woeful. I couldn't get a decent sound out of it because of that simple fact.

Letting the side down. You'll never be heard in that jazz cafe gig. You should have got 4. At least.

Exactly. Much like the Helix stomp. The power supply might say 3A, but it's been shown to work fine with 1A.

Quality! Let's be fair, if Nolly has done this it'll have been tweaked and refined to an inch of its life so I would posture that virtually no post production will have been done or necessary.

Also doesn't hurt that he's not Patrick Hunter either.

I think you could say this is "Darkglass with presets." That's worth the money for me. The amps will only do clean/dirty. So, is it robbery? Not at all. If the TV doesn't make your bass sound better, what's the point of it?

I had the master volume about 2/3 up, but neither the low or high end was boosted massively. Maybe about 1o'clock on the high side. Could be faulty as you say though what I'm talking about isn't massive, it's relatively subtle in some ways. I'll PM you a video tomorrow squire.

It's like a buzz. I thought I was going mad actually but then I turned off the treble side and it was still there even with the filter all the way up to about 500Hz or so. It's enough so that you can hear it. Or, at least I can hear it. I played it straight from the jack output into a power amp. I have the Tech21 Dug Pinnick and I was hoping for something more versatile. In actuality the Darkglass is harder to get a sound I'd like out of it. I'm happy to send you a video to show what I mean by the bottom end not being clean. Literally, when the compression level and low level reach 5 it starts to go fuzzy.

I've come to the conclusion that despite the fact Darkglass make great gear, it's not for me. I have an AO Ultra and X7 Ultra which I occasionally break out for clients in the studio. The thing was I couldn't pinpoint it until last weekend. Both have a fuzz on the low end the minute the bass goes above 5. Now, this works best for using a 5 string as it'll help the fundamental harmonics of the lowest notes be heard better. For standard or drop D, it doesn't work for me. Nolly is an excellent producer and due to his influence in the metal community people will lap it up. He wouldn't put his name to anything that wasn't good or that he wouldn't use himself. However, the sound in itself has become passe. I now steer clients away from it if they want to sound different. Is it worth that much? Depends really. If you like the sounds, yeah it is. Darkglass can't get that many more high profile people as they have Nolly and Jon Stockman. As long as they keep those kind of people happy, they'll not be changing strategy anytime soon.

Having played a few Cog pedals they're great and Alex has chosen both wisely and shrewdly in who to collaborate with. I don't even really like fuzz that much myself and I think they're brilliant. In truth, I don't like the symbols on this pedal. The Orange bass butler is another culprit. In fact anything by Orange is. Labels for the controls please, not weird squiggles. I'm not wanting to learn ancient Egyptian just to figure out how to work a pedal. That being said, I'm sure it'll be good. Whether it'll be massively successful remains to be seen.

But Chris, you just have.... 😋

I appreciate that this is a long shot. Does anyone have a 34 inch bass with 16.5mm string spacing? If so, obviously not until this lockdown is over, would it be possible to have a go on it? You'd be free to have a go on any of mine (the last ever Buzzard anyone?!!) should you wish to. So, if you have said bass and live somewhere near SE London or Kent you're more than welcome (when conditions allow) to pop over for a coffee and play some insane basses. Send me a PM if you're interested.