molan

Tricky period to value - some early '80's basses are excellent. Others are dogs You could certainly get a decent mid/late 70's P for £1,500 at the moment. Simply being '70's rather than '80's tends to add value so I'd say it's a bit 'optimistic'. However a dealer price will be a bit higher and they will have built in some costs for negotiation, credit card sales and the dreaded VAT as well.

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1355160852' post='1894837'] My mum and dad were friends of Billy Bremner ( seriously ) . Or at least that's what they thought until now ... [/quote] Lol Unfortunately I get the same thing for Lembit Opik! This is, of course, mostly annoying. Only time it's been of any use was at the Ace Cafe where the owner insisted I was Lembit (who use to champion bikers' rights) and gave me a beer on the house. I insisted I wasn't him and he said he 'understood' and thought I was examining the biker lifestyle 'under cover'. He said he'd respect my privacy and leave me alone but pointed me out to a few, fairly heavy, bikers who all gave me a little nod, lol.

A Marcus Sig should add some value to a Marcus Sig series bass. However, he seems to have signed a lot of basses in his time so they a)won't be all that rare and b)may have questionable authenticity. The one that always gets me is the Noel Redding Signature bass - I've never seen one without his 'original' sig on! Funnily enough my Dad used to look a lot like Billy Bremner (footballer not guitarist) and was often pestered for his autograph. He got bored saying no and/or being insulted so he simply decided to sign as Billy and then say he didn't want to talk about football. No idea how many of his autographs are out there

I've played a couple of vintage Fender P's recently with J necks fitted. This combination worked really well for me as I often struggle with chunkier P neck profiles. However, blocks don't seem to look 'right' to me on a classic 4 string bass Even odder is that I think they are fine on a 5 string P!

I used to be in a big 13 piece band with horns (always on my side of the stage) and singers. I was sometimes rammed really close to the kit and, being right handed and on the right hand side of the drummer my headstock had very little room to move without getting close to clattering a cymbal. Got the MD to move me and the horns to the left hand side so if I swung around too far I wouldn't hit the kit - got the, flash git, also sax player on the back of the head a couple of times though

[quote name='crez5150' timestamp='1355157559' post='1894755'] I like spending 45 minutes at the end of each gig untangling mic cables...... [/quote] I used to work with a friend who owned a soun an lights business an often used to help engineering. I've had a dodgy back for years so never did any post gig heavy lifting and was always assigned to cable gathering and storage. Somewhat perversely I still enjoy doing this! I sometimes got to see a friend's band and often end up sorting all their cables for them, lol. As far as the OP is concerned - I also really like that, everything on stage ready to go moment

[quote name='gelfin' timestamp='1355088146' post='1893934'] Ok I'm a complete fan of vinyl and prefer it over CD. However the turntable has to be very good as does the CD player to get satisfying results. But how about digital streaming players? I don't mean cheapies, ipods etc or mp3. Get a listen to a good streamer from Linn or Naim playing flac or wav or studio master recordings. In a decent system these will blow away any CD player. For everyone's info the top spec turntable from Linn the LP12 now costs in the region of £20k [/quote] Wow - that's insane money, hav they really improved the technology of the LP12 that much? I'd love to compare a new one with my old '80's one

[quote name='flyfisher' timestamp='1355061788' post='1893476'] So is vinyl. Have you never heard of the RIAA curve? [/quote] Strangely no - I've never even heard of the RIAA, let alone any curve they've been on! Given that I have no idea about how CD compression then it should be fairly obvious that I'm no technical acronym expert Maybe if I rephrase - to my ears a lot of CD's sound harsher and less natural than their vinyl counterparts. Some CD's seem to 'jump' out at you when you first hear them but, to me, can become wearing with repeated listening. Just felt to me like this could be a 'compression thing' as that's what I thought a typical side-effect of a compressed mix was

I've played the 4 - sounds just great!

CD's are compressed and limited (I really don't understand the technology behind this!) and never seem to sound as open and natural as vinyl to me. However, your signal chain is really important. Without a quality turntable, arm and cartridge you may find vinyl doesn't sound as good as a mid level CD player. CD's can sound a lot more 'immediate' though and possibly more appealing to begin with. Vinyl should let you listen to more music for longer without tiring your ears Mind you, a really good CD master and a high end transport can sound pretty damn good too!

Might be worth listening to Beverley Knight's 'In Your Shoes' as well. It's basically a different vocal over the Orange Juice backing track but there's a few live versions kicking around which may give you some slightly different sound options (I can't check this properly as I'm on holiday with just an iPhone for company!). From what I remember there's little of the core tone coming through, a lowish deep bass (octaved?) and then a squelchy top end. Could probably get very close to this with my Mutron but might be difficult with a lot of envelope pedals on their own as a lot of them lose that really low bass and/or won't 'squelch' properly I you play them really down low. Mind you - any sort of squelchy sound should do for gigging, especially if it's just for one song

If you do go for the Status then make sure you play one as close to the spec you'd like first. They are quite 'different' in feel and tone to something like a classic P so you want to make sure you can get on with one before committing your hard earned pension funds

Slightly off topic but I will never forget seeing Hillage at Reading festival. Sham 69 were on stage with Jimmy Pursey in his usual rabble rousing phase and getting various skins etc up on stage to join in on 'If the Kids are United'. Then, in the corner of the stage a mysterious long haired, mostly orange clad, figure hits the stage, plugs in his guitar and begins to solo over the top of the cacophony going on all around him. Skins look frightened and unable to make out what's happening and give him a wide berth - Hillage continues to solo away seeming quite happy and serene

I think Talkbass has a 'lifetime' membership that allows open access to the classifieds indefinitely. I'd be happy to consider a single one-off donation of an amount greater than £20 to save the hassle of annual renewal. Let's face it, £20 = just £1.67 a month for the potential to a huge, an knowledgeable, base of potential customers for any sale. I can't think of anything that costs so little yet delivers such a wide, and directly relevant, target audience. I'd gladly pay a bit more to get things up and running with a solid base for future development

I picked up a fairly mint Ray here a couple of years ago for about £600. Sold it for whatever I actually paid and it was sold again a while later for more or less the same price. I think it's been fairly easy to pick up recent'ish Rays for around the £600 mark for a while really.

I would definitely be happy to pay an annual sub of £20 and have been doing this on Talkbass for several years. If people are really concerned about the cost of this vs a bass or cab then surely they could just pass some of the cost on by increasing the asking price by a tenner? Obviously this would be slightly inflationary but it's not really like BC is that ultra price sensitive in the first place. Also, prices here are often so good that the extra £10 - £20 is not exactly going to make much difference? I'd bet that if you took a 'typical' for sale bass like a US Fender J or P then you'd see a fluctuation in asking prices of more than this over any 3-6 month period. I can see how this would be a problem for someone who only wants to sell a set of used strings but would think there can't be that many people whose only sale in a 12 month period would be one set of strings? Obviously it's really difficult to be specific about such values but setting a fixed percentage of sales value (as per EBay) would require some sort of, much more complicated/expensive, software I'd think. I must admit that I much preferred the chatty environment of the original for sale section - not least, as others have said, because you can often get a feel for a seller very quickly by the way he/she lists items and then responds to questions. The fixed fee may also put off some of the less 'serious' sellers that have appeared in recent months as well and, to my mind, that can only be a good thing I don't have an issue with bumping so long as it doesn't happen loads of times in a single day. Again, Talkbass seems to have a decent handle on this.

I should also say that, after working in web design and digital marketing agencies for many years, there's a 'golden rule' that should always be used. . . Never, ever, launch a new site or feature until it's been thoroughly bench tested by both tech people and a sample of users. All that happens is that people either leave (and often never come back) or there's endless debate about why things aren't working properly. . .

I'd have no issues paying some sort of annual amount to post stuff for sale. I already do this on Talkbass and it works really well. In fact, as someone who almost exclusively access the site via mobile, I have to say the Talkbass app works really well on many levels. Automatically saves threads I'm taken part in, easy to use search function direct from forum area etc. I'm definitely using it more and more these days

Took my '63J out to rehearsals last night and so enjoyed playing it. I'm not really worried about damaging it but I'd hate to 'lose' it at a gig. I've wondered about trying to replicate it as a CS (probably in a different colour) but not sure it would have the same feel / sound. Might be fun trying though It's the one on the left of these four (the LPB '65 is mine as well but I prefer the '63)

It's just an aggregator thing from what I can see. I agree that it's not a lot different from Thomann although at least some of the revenue goes to GAK in the UK.

Met up with Greg today in a, surprisingly sunny, service station on the M4 to hand over a bass from a friend of mine. As ever Greg was good company & all the arrangements were expertly handled. Top bloke all round