BigRedX

All personal preference. I've not come across a single brand of coated strings that I liked the feel of. Others may have different opinions. Keeping basses on stands means that they get played more. I'm far more likely to pick up an instrument and play if it's easily accessible. Keeping them in their cases is generally safer for the instruments although I did have one guitar whose finish was attacked by something in the lining of the case after it had been kept there without opening the case for over two years. Depends entirely on your situation, If I lived somewhere with large pets or small children running wild I probably wouldn't leave my basses out of their cases ever.

Any progress on this?

I haven't played any Mayones basses so I can't comment on those, but IMO every Warwick I've ever tried except for the MiK Pro Series Star Bass was horrible, in both looks and playability. Of course this is just a personal opinion (just like all the other comments in this thread). Edit: I liked the Jack Bruce Cream Reunion Signature bass too, but that was in the serious custom bass price range, so really it ought to have been good.

Latest update for the Eastwood is now 3rd week in July - so about a month's time.

If you have Cubase installed and it's doing what you want without crashing, and comes with an expanded set of plug-ins; then I wouldn't bother with Reaper. IMO life is too short to messing about with trying out different DAWs. Apart from the enhanced MIDI capabilities of some of them, they all do pretty much the same thing. So pick one, and stick with it learning how to get the best out of it.

Looking at the product comparison on the Steinberg web site, Cubase LE is a very (the lowest spec) cut down version of Cubase. Personally I wouldn't abandon Reaper for anything other than the full version of another DAW.

What is causing it to crash? Reaper may be cheap/free but it's a properly supported program, and if you are having issues, you should looking first of all at what/why they are happening rather than blaming a "cheap" DAW. One thing to check is using lots of instance of the same plug-in each on a separate track, all with the same or similar settings, when you would be better off running a single instance on a bus being fed by all the tracks you want to process. It's at time like this that those of us who started recording with hardware when it was complicated and expensive have an advantage in working methods.

That's fair enough... But a load of those songs were released in 1979 (8 of them for sure and probably more if I could be bothered to check), plus Green Onions and a couple of others are even older, and some are covers of songs written way before the 80s.

In over 20 years of buying items form outside of the EU, I have only once avoided VAT and Import duty and was on something that was delivered to my work address by FedEx. It turns out that the company had bought from abroad before using FedEx as the courier, and they (at the time) had a system where once you were a registered customer, FedEx would bill the import charges retrospectively for large companies with a good rating. I made some attempt to enquire about paying the charges when they were billed, but nothing ever came of it. Everything else was pay in advance plus the handling fee before the goods were released. There are plenty of threads about import charges on here so it should never come as surprise to anyone. As I have said before allow an extra 25% of the combined item and shipping cost plus £15 for anything under £100 to cover the handling fee and you won't get a shock.

Selecting a DAW is a very personal choice, and no-one else can tell you what is going the right one for you. My choice was based entirely on the fact that when I bought it I was collaborating with another songwriter and it made sense for us to both have the same program. Other than that this down to having features that you need and presenting them to you in a way that is intuitive. All I will say is that on the whole the more expensive DAWs come with more bundled plug-ins, and that Cubase, Logic and Performer have better MIDI functions than the more recent competition (IMO Reaper is comparatively weak in this respect) as they all have their roots in MIDI sequencing rather than digital tape recorders. If detailed control of MIDI parameters is important to you for controlling instruments (VST or actual MIDI hardware) then I'm look at one of the above. If you are more likely to use it just as a digital multi-track recorder then anything that suits your work flow will be fine.

My experience has been that if you are buying something that is already available through an authorised dealer/distributor in the UK, but are hoping to save some money, it is never worth it, unless the item in question is second-hand at a bargain price. Everything I've bought from the US (or any other country outside the EU) have been items that are not available in the UK by any other method. That way I can evaluate the price simply on whether I'm prepared to pay it (plus all the shipping and import costs) rather than attempting to work out if I'm going to save a few £s.

I'd seen the price increase for sending to the US, but didn't know the reason. It will probably make selling bands CDs and Vinyl to them far too expensive to be worth while.

Thanks. I won't be getting one of those as based on those measurements it has the closest string spacing at both the nut and bridge of all the Bass VIs I've come across. Just have to wait it out for the Eastwood. Should be only a few more weeks... If you want flat-wound strings apparently Picato do a set as well as LaBella.

So who has it now?

Thanks for the update. Can I ask a favour? Could you supply the following measurements: Width of the nut. Distance from E to E at the nut Distance from E to E at the bridge Thanks! BTW if you want a decent set of Bass VI strings have a look at the Axion Bass VI set from Newtone.

IME with 8 string basses (I've owned two) the difference in saddle position between the main and octave strings is such that if you only have a single saddle for all the strings in a course it will never sound in tune above the 5th fret, and no amount of compromise between the ideal positions for each string gives anything workable. With decent strings you could get away with a single saddle for both the octave strings in each course on this, but the main string is always going to need it's own separate saddle for intonation.

When it comes to processors you also have to check the number of cores and whether or not your software can make use of multiple cores. Some music software doesn't.

I've bought basses (and guitars) plenty of times from the US, but never from TalkBass, as none of the sellers of basses I was interested in were prepared to go to the trouble of shipping outside of the States. If you do find someone who is prepared to ship it to you be prepared to pay an extra 25% (as a rough rule of thumb) in VAT, import duty, and handling fees on top of the DECLARED value of the bass combined with the shipping/insurance cost. So if the bass costs £1000, the shipping and insurance £300 expect to pay another 25% on top of £1300 which works out at £1625. Don't ask the seller to under-declare the value of the bass, should anything go wrong in transit it won't be insured for enough, similarly don't let them over-declare either, because this is the value that the VAT and import duty will be calculated on. Also when working out the exchange rates use the worst rate that you can find, so that you don't have any nasty surprises.

If you mean is Catalina the latest version of Mac OS, then yes. However unlike Windows, Apple make few concessions to backwards compatibility - it's one of the strengths of Mac OS but it's also one of it's weaknesses. For music in particular it is usually recommended to be one major OS version behind the latest - therefore IMO at the moment Mojave is the version to be running. You'll find that many of the smaller software developers - often those doing freeware - are slow to update their offerings to be compatible, and music software (VSTs and and software instruments) are often a long way behind. As others have said the RAM is woefully under-spec'd in that Mac. I couldn't recommend less than 8GB at the VERY minimum, and ideally for music you will want 16GB or more. The OS on it's own will take up nearly all of 8GB so on an 8GB Mac you're into swap disc usage as soon as you open you first program. The SSD size IMO isn't so critical. Ideally you would be using an external drive for saving all your music projects and save the internal SSD for the OS and applications.

Unless you are sold on the small form factor of the Mac Mini look at a second had MacPro. My current system is a (2010) 5,1: 6 core 3.46Ghz processor and 64GB RAM which cost me £600. Will run Mojave (so long as the graphics card supports "Metal") and is plenty speedy enough for my musical and graphical needs. Also easily upgradable - holds 4 SATA drives and has 3 spare PCI slots for extras such as audio interfaces and RAM drives etc. Also has digital I/O on light pipe connectors. If you can get away with an older Mac OS, then look at the 3,1 version which supports up to El Capitan, that'll be about £350.

TBH the only way you will really find out is the try both with your bass, ideally playing with your band.

At the moment bad news IMO. I've had an issue with my Burns Barracuda which resulted in an intonation screw and spring disappearing (it pinged across the room and no matter how carefully I have looked there is no sign of it) the last time I changed strings. Numerous emails, at least one sent before the Cover-19 situation, have gone unanswered. I'm perfectly happy to pay for a new screw and spring, or at the very least get a specification for a replacement so I can source them myself. Currently the saddle is held in place by a piece of twisted wire, but the proper part would be far more useful.

If it was me I'd go for a more traditional bouzouki shape - more a D and less and rounded corner triangle.

No. Both bands had a load of really fantastic gigs line up for 2020, and now nearly all have been cancelled or postponed until next year.

Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be running at the moment due to the Covid-19 situation.