Jellyfish

Hi everyone, I've been trying to look around for a nice second-hand drum kit, but am trying to find place where people are selling them. My budget is about £450 and I've looked on ebay and Gumtree, but there isn't much choice really. I'm either getting something pretty awful or something way above my budget. There is one kit on Gumtree in the West Midlands at the moment, a Pearl Export EXR for £470, which is pretty much perfect, but I've not heard amazing things about them so I'm hoping to find an alternative. So where should I be looking? Local classifieds? Or are there any drum forums with UK sellers? Thanks!

[quote name='risingson' timestamp='1364415619' post='2026261'] My vote goes to the Lull looks wise... [/quote] Yeah it's not bad if you want a bass that looks pretty much the same as every other Fender-alike.

The thing I enjoy about my Dingwall isn't necessarily the "really tight" B string, but the consistency in tension between it and the other 4 strings. Even on a really well made 5-string, the B string isn't going to feel as nice as on a Dingwall, or at least that's what I've found. I love my Combustion, and can't really recommend any other brand as I don't play P basses, but they're mostly about the sound so of course, listening to one is going to be a big factor.

Sent a gig bag to Hutton, was received well despite the courier leaving it outside his door without even knocking! Would happily buy from/sell to/trade with again!

It pays to be connected to our Facebook. "Did you notice intermittent issues with Basschat this afternoon? Cloudflare, who provide Basschats primary defence against hacking, were themselves subject to an attack this afternoon. Everything is back to normal however. [url="https://www.cloudflare.com/system-status"]https://www.cloudflare.com/system-status[/url] cheers Kiwi" That was a couple of days ago, and it seems that it is the same thing happening when you saw the message earlier.

To be honest, the equivalent OBBM cable (6 metres in length) would cost £24. It would be well worth it of course, I own one of them myself. However I think you're right about it not being worth it. They tend to be recommended by professional bassists who have a lot of stage space and more than a couple of basses!

The shop I work at is selling some Snap Jack cables off cheap (£10 for a 20ft/6m length cable). They're obviously very good as I've seen a lot of reputable artists use them, but I can't find much feedback on them from bassists. I was just wondering if anyone used them regularly and can attest to their quality and longevity.

This is perhaps both unrelated and unhelpful, but until I watched a video of Billy Sheehan explaining that his crazy playing used to shift the necks in their pockets on normal bass guitars, I had no idea it happened! So perhaps it's quite a normal thing and nothing to worry about, but maybe I'm wrong.

I've already posted this in another thread, but this is well and truly 'My bass'. I've only ever purchased one other bass brand new until I bought this one. It was one of those ones that wasn't even in the forefront of my mind until I picked it up and played it (and enjoyed it immensely). I spent the extra money on the higher end Dingwall pickups and of course, getting a lovely pick guard for it. It plays amazingly well and sounds even better, I couldn't be happier.

A bit overdue... My new Dingwall Combustion with FD-3 pickup upgrade. A tidy little neck joint...

I can only recommend the Ibanez SR series of basses for weight, as they're the ones that stood out to me as not being too heavy. I briefly owned a G&L Tribute 5-string and that (if I remember correctly) wasn't heavy either.

Unfortunately, MiltyG565 is right to a degree. To put it into perspective, we've probably sell about 1 bass to every 10 or more guitars. Although I'd argue that if you're a guitar shop, you need to be stocking bass guitars as well. The ratio of bassists to guitarists is small, but there is a demand for the instrument itself from all sorts of musicians such as drummers who think they might be good at bass or professional guitarists who want a bass for recording purposes. I do find it a shame when shops don't stock a good range of 'staple' basses, and I'm trying to change that in my shop.

Junkyard Pugs...

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1363538182' post='2013771'] That's excellent, but what about brands that you probably don't stock or maybe even have arrangements with the distributors. For instance LaBella, SIT and TI strings, or Herco Picks? These are all things I would like to be able to pop in and buy from my local shop, but doing so has turned out to be massively problematical, and in the end it's been easier to get them on-line and often from outside the UK. I can understand that there will be issues if it's from a company you haven't previously dealt with, and there may well be minimum order quantities that can hold things up, which is why I said it might be worth finding out what your regular customers aren't buying from you, and if you find enough of them are after the same things it could be an opportunity. [/quote] You're pretty much spot-on. For example, I could get you a pack of LaBella strings in next day as that specific company has a small minimum order. However, if you wanted D'Addario strings, we don't actually have a supplier for them yet (they left their UK supplier and went independent a while back and, despite our best efforts, they won't get back to us even though we want to stock their stuff) and couldn't even get you something simple like Chromes. And if you wanted a pack of Ernie Ball Cobalts, I'd have to say "not yet" as the minimum order for that company is quite high! I'm quite lucky really in that I can decide what stock to get into the shop and will (unfortunately for our shorter-scale string shredding cousins) usually prioritise bass over guitar. That sounds quite selfish, I know, but there seems to be a smaller range of things that guitarists want when compared to bassists. Most guitarists I've talked to are happy with anything that really does the job. And most bassists are always sourcing down their perfect sound/feel. And I would absolutely [i][b]love[/b][/i] to deal in second hand gear, but it is a bit of a natural process when it comes to building up stock. I'm a bit of a gear geek and often get funny looks from older gentlemen when they find out I know what a Wal is! Or something like that...

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1363519417' post='2013510'] I'm not sure how valuable specially ordering in stuff is. I've pretty much given up asking music shops to get me things they don't have in stock because is way to much hassle for both me and them. On the other hand it would probably be worth finding out what items your regular customers buy that they don't get from you and making an effort to keep those in stock. [/quote] It's actually extremely easy for most things. If you came into my shop and asked for a Yamaha BB2024x, you'd have it for Wednesday (today being Sunday). But our major bass brands only include Yamaha so I can't really speak for the other big middle-of-the-range brands like Fender, Ibanez etc. And for those curious, our shop is in Sutton Coldfield. I'll be posting it in the affiliates section soon as there will be discounts available for bass-related purchases if you're a member here so "watch [i]that [/i]space".

I teach at a school and they've recently got one of [url="http://www.visionguitars.co.uk/Stagg-BC410-300w-4x10-Bass-Cabinet"]these.[/url] Not great, but better than the practice amp I did have as I also play along to an acoustic drum kit that the practice amp couldn't really handle. I don't really know much about cheap amplifiers, as I thought my BH250 was rather cheap for what it was, but I'm looking to buy used and not to spend too much at all. Thanks!