Wolverinebass

Yes. Obviously they're shipping the pedals singularly in 1st class Virgin Atlantic and serving them caviar.

£599?!! So now Rocky Road surpasses Westside Distibution for the title of "biggest price gouger ever." They seem to have stuck with the formula of: 1. Take price in dollars. 2. Change Dollar sign to pound sign. 3. Add £100 or more more if niche item. There is no way that pedal is worth that. People (including myself) have criticised Darkglass pricing. This is a whole new level to that. You could get one of the midi controllable Darkglass pedals (ADAM, Photon) for that price. When we had the fun of the Dug Pinnick amp being sold for $1800 stateside and £2500 here, the Tech21 bods said on here that they didn't have any control over UK pricing. That's fine. What they do have control over is choosing to work with middlemen companies ramping up the price by £200. $499 = £395. Surprisingly not £599.

Oh, no. Please don't get him to do anything except hand over money. The time for patience and being nice is long gone. Even at that, I feel you'll be screaming "Gimme the money!!" a la Gary Sinese in Ransom with very possibly no result. You won't get any joy from this if you try and get him to build something because it'll never happen. Surely, can you not just get the bailiffs to take his car, TV, phones, camera (since he's making Youtube videos), PC's and anything else of value? Or does it not work like that? Are court mandated payment orders not enforceable by asset seizure?

Ah, Chewin' The Fat. I remember that sketch.

That is true. I have done exactly as you say on some occasions. To give you an example. A couple of years ago my brother passed away. After arranging the sale of his flat, the people downstairs land grabbed half of the garden which belonged to his flat fencing it off and put a set of French doors in a supporting wall without planning permission. Now, the offer gets pulled, they've caused structural damage and I'm easily going to win taking them to court. Obviously they're not going to pay, so what's the point? Now, I had to sell the flat for almost a loss because of these idiots and we are talking way more than the value of a bass here. Even if it were a series 2 Alembic. Ironically, I was just executor. I wouldn't have got anything anyway. I wasn't advocating physical harm on Mr Letts. Just thought it might be the case that at some point he's going to get someone who might try to get a refund in a less polite way. Though for £1600, I don't think I'd bother going that way as it wouldn't be worth it. He's not going to cough up. However, that being said. His reputation is shot to those who know and he may or may not be an incredibly sad, pitiful figure.

That's grim. Whilst I appreciate that clearly the guy has dug himself into a hole, he's been incredibly duplicitous about it. This isn't waiting almost 2 years for a Wal as I did or 3 years for a Grainger (which I should get in a few weeks). Quite a lot of the latter was due to covid and their resulting backlog before anyone asks, this Letts bloke is just taking your money and trying to run. Or hoping you'll give up. Were it me, I think a few of my friends in Edinburgh would be called. The fact that he's now saying he can't afford 50 quid a month. Nah, I'm not buying that at all. That's the problem with this idiocy. You can easily take someone to court and win, but then they'll just turn round say they can't pay and thumb their nose at you. Sod that.

In truth, there are so many hilarious things about that film and so many awful ones. All of them (Newsted excepted) come across as awful people. Kirk especially comes over as a passive aggressive tosser. Plus, he can't write lyrics either. Frankly, they're an awful band. They've had some great material, but in every case it's mainly been ruined by crap production decisions and ludicrous egotism. I run a book with some fellow producers as to "How will Metallica ruin their next album." I won for Death Magnetic as since they're generally 8-10 years behind trends (plus they got Rick Rubin in) it was always going to be brickwalled and digitally distorted. The best one was Lulu when one of my fellow producers said, "it'll just be awful." He won that one. 72 seasons has the whole "stupidly attacky drum samples." Nobody needs that amount of 10kHz on a kick drum. It's so obviously samples. How very 2011. They're so far behind the times.

Funnily enough, I'm actually from Falkirk myself. I can't say I'd be up for doing that amount of travelling.

The title did say RAY4HH hence my slight confusion. I guess that's a bit better then if it's only 500 quid? Still not acceptable in any way though.

The bridge isn't just off centre, it's squint as well. Look at the top of the bridge next to the scratchplate. It's not straight. Now, I'm sorry, but that bass would cost more than a grand new. That's utter crap. People rightly complain about fit and finish. How is it so difficult? On the other hand, does this not prove that the Sterling series is overpriced by a factor of 2? It really gives me the fear when manufacturers are so stupid to use pickups with exposed pole pieces but don't actually think this might show up the fact the bridge isn't aligned properly. See Gibson Les Paul's as well. What sort of mugs do they think we are to accept this?

I must admit I noticed that the lpf and hpf were labelled wrongly as well. However, the thing that stuck out to me was that you can only (admittedly it may not be final) take the drive channel up to 750Hz. It would have been nice if it could have went up to 2kHz with more of an overlap from the clean channel. Admittedly, that's in no way a deal breaker. Just a thought. The X7 ultra goes a lot higher in terms of how much low end you can cut from the distortion. Also, the dUg amp had a filter you could push round towards almost 3kHz if I remember right. Whilst I don't doubt that the major points are taken care of, it's always cool to have settings that are a bit less safe than you think is acceptable. Applying tons of distortion to just the upper edge of the harmonics can quite often sound brilliant. It's probably too much to hope for really.

Thanks squire, youre too kind. I'm actually working on a 2nd album just now. It's really just fitting it in between family, 2 bands and whatnot. Hopefully by the summer.

I actually still have a massive rack mount setup with the Rolls and a Digitech 2120 amongst many other things, which is insane. The Hamer through the Dug sounds brilliant. Just add a sliver of chorus above 700Hz and it's monstrous.

Personally, I'd say £450. That would put it up with the studio strip eq pedal they did a few years ago. What this looks like to me is that you can run both in parallel or combined depending on whether the crossover is selected or not. That suggests to me that (without seeing a manual yet) that it can do parallel dual channel (Orange Bass Butler), bi-amp (Dug Pinnick) as well as lpf and hpf a la (Darkglass X7). It seems like a winner to me espeically with parametric mids. Pity there wasn't an option to run it with stereo bass. Can't have everything though. As for Tech 21 "just cranking out new pedals because they can," obviously all pedal development should have ceased after the fuzz face in the 1960s.

So now Ernie Ball are charging 2 grand for a short scale bass made out of a reclaimed 1970's kitchen worktop which has had the tapioca paint sanded off and a p bass pickup shoved in by someone on work experience. I bet a MIM precision would torch this overpriced pile of "semi ironic" pseudo steampunk crap.

Quite frankly the Epiphone executives appear to have the same supplier in Colombia now that the Ernie Ball execs have. £1300 for this? Really?!! It's laughable.

At the risk of sounding a bit off. I saw Oasis and The Who in 2000. Both tickets were £30. They might not have been "doing a Madonna" in terms of getting in early on the ticket price gouging, but make no mistake, they were market price for the time. So I don't necessarily believe that's completely true. Unless you're referring to earlier than that? Were one being cynical, I would say that's just Gallagher crap to enhance their "men of the people" mythos. How much was Noel's tour a few months ago? Less than a hundred quid a pop?

4 trillion streams. Just think, Spotify might have paid out 9p for that and I'm sure Daniel Ek resents every bit of that wasted profit.

With the greatest respect, that's not true. I'm 44 and in the 2 best originals bands I've ever been in at the same time!! Admittedly, I did help out a band I produced for about 2 years because they couldn't get anyone permanent and recently the singer said I was too old. It's fair to say that I probably look 5-10 years younger than I really am. In actuality, the singer realised he had no control over what I played (he wanted an 8th note plodder - which I'll never be) and I don't take being told what to do. Suggestions, okay. Anyway, no big deal. One can't control other people's insecurity. It was his band so the fact nobody agreed with him was irrelevant and I got politely thanked and asked to not play live for a band I wasn't even officially in. In my other bands, nobody tells anyone what to do. Even if you didn't write the songs, nobody is going to tell you what to play. Also, I recorded a thrash metal band a month ago. Both the guitarists were in their early/mid 20s. The bass player was 41. They didn't care. Why? Because he was excellent. Only people with delusions will discount you just for your age. It'll never be a talent thing and always an image thing. Those bands that are concerned with image over musical talent aren't worth entertaining as they always without fail are the vanity project of one or more of the members who think they're going to "make it big" or want to satisfy their own rampant ego.

About 15 years ago, Fender did a "classic 70s reissue" which was Olympic white body (or sunburst), black scratchplate with black blocks, binding and a maple neck. They started off as Japanese models then production got switched to Mexico.

Get some DR Droptunes. I use the 105-45 set on mine which is in C# standard.

Someone probably said the same thing about removing the lifeboats from the Titanic.

Thanks. I do try squire!

It's difficult. Whilst it could have just been innocent, life has taught me to chase the rats in my head to the worst possible outcome. That way, nobody can ever disappoint you or (more importantly), they can never blindside you. From a personal perspective, as I never play in covers bands, there is no way someone else is playing bass in a band I'm in. They would have 3 seconds to make up their mind and after that point I'd quit. Maybe I take things too seriously. Maybe the lady in question is very nice, but just a bit self unaware. Maybe it's all a ruse to force you out of the band through a series of petty humilations waiting for the day when you snap, quit in disgust leaving them with one less band member to split the cash with and them laughing sinisterly with lightning flashing in the background. Sorry, that's just my weird thought process. The keyboard player is probably just an eager div who didn't realise the implications of the suggestion. Or maybe this is a subtle way to start a tempestuous affair with you by taking an interest in your playing and requesting "tuition"...... Sorry, couldn't resist that one.