BigRedX

Sometimes you need a middleman as many Japanese shops are simply not prepared to deal with foreign sales. The two instruments I bought in person came from shops that would never have considered selling to me had I not been there in person with a native Japanese speaker to help out. As others have said Ishibashi are great, but they have people specifically there to deal with enquiries and sales outside of Japan. The only disadvantage is that as a foreign buyer you will need to deal with them through email and due to time differences and the fact that the instruments are also be on display in one of their shops, you can sometimes lose out to a local sale that occurs between receiving and replying to your enquiry.

I've bought 6 instruments from Japan, and sold one of them back to someone living there when I no longer needed it, but all these transactions were prior to international shipping getting a lot more complicated. I did 4 shop sales, all buying second hand from Ishibashi. All went smoothly and I even got a discount on one bass which had sticker residue on the body that hadn't been noticeable in the original sale photos but was picked up by Ishibashi when they did their quality check before shipping. Shipping costs were very good, I wasn't able to match the price when shipping in the opposite direction as a private seller, and VAT and Import Duties were close to my guesstimates so no nasty surprises there. I also brought back a new guitar on each of the two occasions that I visited Japan. The instruments I bought were all ones that were almost impossible to find for sale outside of Japan - Atlansia Solitaire Bass, Fernades Pie-zo Bass Gothic Hello Kitty Edition, Tokai Talbo Bass, Tokai Talbo Jr Guitar, Yamaha BJ-5B (a limited edition of 50 models) and a Yamaha EZ-EG. I certainly wouldn't use it just to try and save a few pounds on something that could be imported for you by a UK distributor. Some Japanese shops are simply not set up to deal with foreign sales and even now in the 21st Century you'll get no reply when they realise that you are not in Japan. However if it's an eBay sale that is visible to potential buyers outside of Japan, then the seller should be set up to deal with enquiries in other languages - in this respect we have a massive advantage being English speakers - and international shipping. As has been said there's a whole extra level of protection if you buy through eBay, so check the seller feedback and bid away. Edit to say Japan is VERY service focused, and if anything does go wrong you can guarantee that it happen here in the UK where it is completely out of the control of the Japanese seller.

Do you have a multi-meter and do you understand what your present wiring and all the controls are supposed to do if functioning correctly?

I'm not on my phone. IMO phones a terrible for doing anything on this site other than basic passive browsing. I have already turned off Push Notifications. What I want is a way of banishing forever the pleading for me to turn them on.

How do I turn off the Push Notification reminder? Every time a reply is made in one of the threads I have asked for notifications, I get a red circle with a number in it next to the bell icon at the top of the screen. However when I go to see which thread it is I also get a massive note pleading with me to turn on Push Notifications. Is there any way of banishing this so that I never see it again? I don't need Push Notifications. The notifications within the Basschat forum are more than sufficient as I am here every day. And any day I'm not here it's because I'm doing something more important and wouldn't want to be bombard with Push Notifications. Just want some way of saying "Thanks, but no thanks". about Push Notifications once and then never be asked about them again.

IME the whole point of amps that can drive 4Ω loads is not that swapping your 8Ω cab for a 4Ω one will make it louder but the fact that you can run two 8Ω cabs which if done properly will give you twice the driver area which will be noticeably louder,

I've been using keyboard shortcuts to open and switch between programs since having multiple programs open simultaneously became possible with the introduction of System 7 (I could never get MultiFinder in System 6 to work reliably enough) so the commands required have become ingrained over the last 35 years.

An excellent idea, but I have no pockets in my on-stage clothes and I am sure I'm not the only person in this situation.

I've worn rings on my right hand for over 30 years now, and so long as what I wear on my thumb isn't too fancy they don't get in the way of my playing. I've recently been experimenting with the feasibility of wearing rings on my left hand, and again so long as they are fairly plain, not too wide and reasonably tight fitting I think I'll be alright. I have never worn a watch on stage. They just don't look right IMO and are not consistent with my on-stage persona. I've currently got a hand-me down Apple Watch and it goes in my clothes bag along with my non-stage wear while I'm playing. I do enough real steps during loading, setting up and breaking down at a normal gig to not need 35-40 minutes of fakes steps while I'm actually playing.

All the important stuff is on the first page of that thread so you don't need to scroll too far.

Sorry if it came across as a criticism, it was an observation, and TBH yours isn't too bad. I regularly see people with Mac laptops with the dock at the bottom of the screen much larger than that. I come from a graphic design background where every vertical pixel is at a premium and the dock takes up way too much space for very little interface benefit. For me having the dock shifted to the right hand side of my tertiary screen allows me get two more tracks on the arrange page in Logic without the need for scrolling. Out of interest have you ever given any thought to the placement of the dock or have you just left it in the default position as set by Apple?

Another dock taking up valuable screen real estate on the bottom of the main display. And really big too! IMO dock icons should be no bigger than desktop icons. If that was my set up I'd have it stacked vertically on the right hand side of the upper secondary display.

It's not listed on any of the various DX7 presets and cartridge sounds including those from 3rd party vendors so it's probably something someone at your college created.

In my home studio putting the finishing touches to the drum programming for another new song. We now have 5 new songs to work on for when we are next back in the rehearsal room.

For me programming patches is the best bit. It's the whole point of having a synth. IME most pre-programmed synth patches have been designed o show off all the features of the synth and usually aren't actually much use in real world situations. And those that are any good tend to have been over-used by other owners of the same device. Whenever I get a new synth I'll spend an hour or so going through the pre-sets normally being totally underwhelmed, before diving in to program something that is actually useful to me. However agreed with FM programming. Back in 1983 the other synth player in my band bought one of the first batch that arrived in the UK. He would spend hours tinkering with it and eventually come up with some fantastic sounds. I couldn't get anything I liked out of it and I wasn't massively impressed by the ones supplied. Nothing since then has changed my mind.