BigRedX

It might be worth visiting your local [url=http://www.epiphone.com/Support/Dealers.aspx?mappath=/Support/Dealers/Europe/United-Kingdom]Epiphone dealer[/url] and asking them or at least getting a contact for the UK distributor.

[quote name='Bridgehouse' timestamp='1487791798' post='3243017'] This was another option I did think about - but I know nothing about them really.... [/quote] Which is exactly why you need to get out there and try a load more basses before making a decision. If I had that kind of money to spend I'd want to explore every option first, and not just rush out and buy the first shiny thing that I have coveted for a while.

[quote name='spectoremg' timestamp='1487785626' post='3242916'] This. I can't think of many proggers back in the day who used Fenders bar John Paul Jones and occasionally Geezer. [/quote] There were plenty. It's just that they weren't as visually or sonically noticeable as those who were using Rickenbackers and other more interesting basses.

I don't think that any band I've been a member of has lasted more than a couple of years without a line-up change.

[quote name='geoffbyrne' timestamp='1487781534' post='3242845'] Up until quite recently I thought Daft Punk was a genre.... G. [/quote] Apparently it was a description of their previous band's debut single.

Do they have a keyboard player? If so, I hope his rig consists of (at least) a Hammond C3 plus Leslie, an original Fender Rhodes, a couple of Mini Moogs and a huge wall of Moog modules.

Image is important. And I find it hilarious that "Progressive" rock band should be so boringly conservative. I'd have understood it if they had deemed you Yamaha to be too conventional. If this was me, and I really liked the music I'd be tempted to turn up to the next rehearsal with either a Fender in exactly the same colour as the Yamaha, or something really weird looking, but in a nice safe sunburst finish.

[quote name='Jakester' timestamp='1487774662' post='3242710'] I believe that if you list something on eBay for sale you are obliged to use PayPal as a payment method, even if you've put cash on collection in the listing - so your buyer can still pay by PP even if you don't want them to. Of course, there's nothing to stop you agreeing cash on collection , but you can't insist. [/quote] You are obliged to offer PayPal, but you aren't obliged to accept it. II rarely offer collection in person as an option on the items I sell, so if someone wants to do that they have to contact me to see if it is OK, at which point I always tell them that it will be cash payment if they want to collect - and I point out that eBay themselves recommend this approach. Anyone who quibbles with this, gets their bids removed and is blocked from the auction.

On a slightly more serious note... Shoegaze tends to be fuzz-laden and drone-based with post-punk influences. For actual examples try My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. OtOH Alternative Rock is now most definitely modern mainstream rock. It was only really alternative for a few minutes in the early 90s. HTH

[quote name='Svend' timestamp='1487706500' post='3242067'] Hi there may a stupid question. What kind of music will a Hollow body bass acommodate Best regards [/quote] Just about anything really. My MiK Warwick StarBass is on the tracks from my band's mini album [url=https://terrortones.bandcamp.com/album/the-monsterpussy-sessions]The MonsterPussy Sessions[/url] And for a complete contrast remember that Peter Hook of New Order and Simon Gallup of The Cure both use Eccleshall hollow-bodied basses.

I think you need to try a lot more basses first before spending any money. Given the sums being mentioned you could have pretty much anything you want so long as it isn't a super-rare vintage bass or something that's once been owned by someone famous (or some of Jens Ritter's more "out there" creations). So take a few days out and go and visit Bass Direct in Warwick and The gallery and Andy Baxter in London (for starters) and go and play as many different basses as you can get hands on.

[quote name='fleabag' timestamp='1487754425' post='3242375'] Yes, but then i wouldn't have the responsibility of potential damage if someone else booked the courier. Thats the whole point. If you're willing to pack & post, then you reach more buyers. [/quote] But it seems from your OP that although you are willing to pack you are not willing to post (or at least organise the posting). IME organising the courier is the easy bit. You go on the Interparcel website and book their standard delivery via UPS with the appropriate insurance. Print out the shipping labels. Job done in about 5 minutes. Its properly packing up the instrument so that it won't get damaged on the way is the tricky bit. As a buyer I won't deal with people who insist on me organising the courier, because from my perspective if they can't do that then how can I trust them to get the packing right. As I said before if you don't want the responsibility of organising the courier, then don't offer shipping as an option.

Technically the buyer is responsible if they have arranged the courier. However if you you don't want the hassle of potential damage to the instrument by posting, then simply don't offer it as an option, or even mention it in your listing. State cash on collection only. If potential buyers can't accept this you don't have to sell it to them. If necessary remove any bids they have made and block them on eBay.

Personally I wouldn't bother with either reverb or delay as an effect for the bass, because IME in the majority of cases they simply make the bass less distinct especially in a band mix. The only time I've been able to make delay work effectively was alongside a sequencer synchronised gate which chopped the notes short enough so that each note could be distinctly heard as a separate entity. And it would need to have a tap tempo function to keep it in time - something a lot of individual delay pedals don't have.

[quote name='Low End Bee' timestamp='1487696091' post='3241933'] If they were to dip into their past I'd quite fancy a bass version of the Moderne tin opener. [/quote] A guitar that apparently only ever existed on paper in it's original version!

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1487692557' post='3241890'] No. Learn the verse, chorus and midsection and listen to the vocals! [/quote] In my case the alternative versions were by the same band but the album versions that they played had whole extra sections with completely different chords that never appeared anywhere in the single version that I had learnt.

One of the problems when comparing and multi effects unit against single pedals is that people are rarely comparing like for like. A budget unit like the Zoom which does lots of things well - maybe some of them very well, isn't really going to be able to compete sonically with pedals that only do a single thing yet are each still more expensive than the multi effects unit. What you really need to do is to add up the total cost of all the individual pedals that you would like, and compare them against a multi effects unit of equivalent value. What you will find then is that the multi-effects will do some things better than some pedals and some things not as well and what is good what is not will depend on the manufacturer of the multi-effects unit. For me multi effects win out every time in a live situation for one thing - PROGRAMMABILITY. I know when I hit the button for a particular preset on my multi effects unit it's going to sound exactly the same as it did the last time I selected that combination of sounds. I'm not going to have to worry that the knobs might have got nudged in transit or by an over-enthusiastic member of the band or stage-invading audience member. There's no point in having a fantastic sounding pedal if it's all to easy to turn that killer sound into the worlds nastiest tone by a slight mis-setting of a control or two. And want a slightly different distortion on the next song? No need for multiple effects pedals or scrabbling on the floor trying to remember which setting to change. Simply pick the preset for the song and I'm ready to go. Finally my "pedal board" is at biggest, half the size it would need to be if I was going to do it all with dedicated effects pedals. In the studio, I'll use whatever I need to get the perfect sound for the track. Live I'll settle for a maybe slightly less good sound, safe in the knowledge that it will always be the same overtime I select it, and that if I need slight variations for different songs (or even different parts of the same song) they are all just a single footswitch press away.

[quote name='neepheid' timestamp='1487680678' post='3241735'] I don't think I could be trusted not to knock some peoples' heads together if they flew me over to Nashville [/quote] It might do the company some good though. Every time I get the hankering to buy something from Gibson or one of their sub-brands I just need to remind myself what they did to Opcode and the feeling goes away.

IIRC the original production run of the Rockbass version of the StarBass 5-string doesn't have the arched top and back of the full Warwick version. If that is important to you check which version it is before you buy.

[quote name='dand666' timestamp='1487674957' post='3241668'] MONO cases. /thread [/quote] Unfortunately not. I find my Mono M80 case very uncomfortable to wear on my back for any significant distance, and I know I'm not the only one with that problem. Also while it was the lightest of the new breed of semi-rigid cases when I bought it, it's very bulky compared with a standard £40 padded gig bag.

[quote name='Harryburke14' timestamp='1487672008' post='3241618'] I want a thunderbird but after playing an epi one at PMT yesterday I found it hard to get on with given the neck being so long. Is there a company that do Thunderbirds on the cheap that address this? [/quote] Where was the neck strap button on the Thunderbird that you tried? IME you just need to go and try them all. Although they look basically the same, every version and model is different and will sit/hang in a different way when playing.

Firstly in my very limited experience of playing covers, I think that bands whose key members have been playing the songs for many years together don't realise how difficult it can be for new band members to find their place musically. Also without them realising it the songs may have evolved away from the original recorded versions over time. When I joined my covers band I was given a list of songs to learn, and duly went out and bought to CDs with them on so I could get on with working out the bass parts. It was just as well this band rehearsed because at our very first practice I discovered: 1. On a couple of songs the drummer played a very slightly different rhythm to that on the recorded version (probably without even realising it anymore), which meant that my carefully learnt bass lines no longer fitted the groove properly and it was very noticeable in places that they didn't. That took more than a couple of run throughs to nail. 2. Although their excellent singer had no problem doing all the songs in their original keys, the guitarists had kept the songs that had been originally done down-tuned a semi-tone in standard tuning. It wasn't helped by the fact that of those songs, the two I'd learnt were both perfectly playable on the bass kept in standard tuning - in fact one of them was actually easier with the bass tuned to standard and the guitars in Eb! Needless to say those were a complete train wreck the first time we played them in rehearsal. 3. Unless the band has exactly the same instrumentation match all the overdubs of the original, some fiddling of the arrangement - usually to the rhythm section is inevitable. Especially on songs recorded in the 60s and early 70s where the "bass part" is an amalgamation of the bass guitar, keyboards and extra rhythm guitar, and simply playing the recorded bass guitar part on its own lacks sufficient drive to propel the song along. I found in those cases that bass line I ended up playing owed far more to the left hand of the keyboards than to the original bass guitar part. 4. Song length and version. It's all very well asking beforehand which version the band has based their cover on, but sometimes they are not even aware that alternative versions and edits of the songs exist. Several times I found myself still playing one part of the song while the rest of the band had moved on to another, because they played a different version, to the one they thought they'd told me to learn. And that's before we get into endings the band have written for songs that fade out (and intros for songs that fade in). Just about all those changes meant that playing along to the recorded versions in many cases was pretty much pointless, and the only way I was going to get my bass lines tight with the rest of the band was to practice playing with them. For the seasoned covers bands veteran, I'm sure all of the above is completely obvious, but for me whose previous experience of playing covers was to break the song down to the lyrics and vocal melody and then rewrite everything to suit the band and their instrumentation, it was an eye-opener and not always in good way.

IIRC the first batch of Thunderbird Pro Vs were fitted with 4 string pickups (either by mistake or because Epiphone thought they could get away with it), which is why the B string sounds really weedy. Later in the production run this was sorted out, so it might be worth getting in touch with Epiphone, explaining your problem and seeing if they will be able to supply the correct replacement pickups.

[quote name='prowla' timestamp='1487624322' post='3241352'] The V is another classic Gibson, showing imagination. [/quote] Which is why MS is playing a Dean!

It all depends on a number of factors. What are the extra basses needed for? Spares in case of string breakage etc? Different tunings? Fretted/fretless? How important is it for you to maintain the flow of the band's set? Could you get away with one bass for all the songs if you really had to? If you broke a string would you rather be able to grab another bass ready to go, or would you have time to fit a replacement string? How much room is there on stage for extra instruments? How easy is it to transport the extra basses to the gig? The answers to those questions will vary from bassist to bassist, and will probably change with a change of band as well. I've taken four basses to a gig in the past - fretted and fretless and a backup for each, and have also lived dangerously and only taken one, when space in the band transport (for a different band) has been at a premium.