molan

I can never really understand why anyone [i]wouldn't [/i]want an exotic or boutique bass if they could afford one without having to think about the cost I have no arguments that there are a zillion lower cost basses out there that sound, look or feel great but the OP's quote was "if i had £5000 to spend on only bass" - with that in mind I'd really want to spend the money on a £5K bass rather than, say 5 x £1K basses. Not least because you can only play one at a time, lol In fact I spent all of last weekend on a stand at the London Bass Show watching people try out basses worth between £4K and £8K and at least two people came up to me openly saying they wanted to try one simply because they were sure they weren't worth the money. After 5 minutes one of them was discussing how much I thought he could sell his 5 basses for in order to pay for the £8K bass he'd just been playing Pretty much every person that played one of these beauties walked away muttering how amazing they were to play and saying "one day". . .

[quote name='bubinga5' post='1167587' date='Mar 18 2011, 08:13 PM']if i had £5000 to spend on only bass...[/quote] I'd use it to put towards an even more expensive boutique bass, £5K would just about cover the deposit of what I'd really like to buy, lol. Horses for courses eh

[quote name='TomKent' post='1165929' date='Mar 17 2011, 04:02 PM']Bloomin' eck! Just seen the price of them - right out of reach. haha [/quote] What I meant was that you could borrow one of mine I may have a hard case somewhere as well - my loft is full of cases!

How about one of those Sadowsky style hard/soft cases? Great protection without weighing a ton I've got a few kicking around somewhere. Also have some other really tough gig bags that would survive a flight OK

There's one for sale on EBay already : [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290545468384&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:GB:1123#ht_500wt_1079"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...3#ht_500wt_1079[/url] Looks like the blue one in the pics above?

I'm pretty local too - technically in Oxfordshire but only by about a mile over the river from Berkshire border

[quote name='jamesbass116' post='1162277' date='Mar 14 2011, 08:08 PM']Ahh that was you!! I was the person you let play the bass through the little korg mini effects unit. I wanted to thank you personally but you were in the middle of helping someone else out so I'll thank you on here...Thank you SO much for letting me play on your fantastic bass! If I had the money I'd have bought it on the spot I don't remember being too rough with it I hope [/quote] Ah, sorry about the Korg / headphones combo - it didn't really work very well. I'm afraid it was an afterthought after the din of the first day. That Korg is ok for playing around at home but it's a bit of a 'toy' and I think it masks the true tone of a bass. Nice to meet you and sorry I didn't say a proper goodbye

[quote name='jamesbass116' post='1161916' date='Mar 14 2011, 03:43 PM']Being able to play on the Fodera YinYang bass, what a fantastic piece of wood Seeing and hearing a guy bashing the hell out of a Fodera Imperial and getting worried whether it was on the verge of breaking.[/quote] I checked out the Foderas before they were packed away and they all survived without a scratch - which was lucky given the Yin Yang was my personal bass I did have a couple of nervous moments though, lol

Another big +1 for Steve R. He cured a problem on my SVT II that two other repairers failed to find

Although the bargains may not be there (at least not compared to 'shop' prices) it's still a really good day out. For a lot of people just getting to try and feel some of the stuff there is worth the trip. I'm not just talking about rare exotica here too. One person I spoke to had just tried out a Vintage fretless and was raving about it, something he'd probably have walked straight past in a shop.

[quote name='OzMike' post='1161692' date='Mar 14 2011, 01:06 PM']And different pickup + tone settings, but ... yeah [/quote] I know what you mean - I guess I was just trying to say that you can get a great tone out of many a bass if you a) have the fingers, and are prepared to play with the tone controls a little. Maybe the P just works because it only has two tones - treble open or wound right off, none of that pickup switching, active mid boost malarky to fiddle around with, lol.

I know it's been said about a zillion times before but, after my experiences on a stand at the bass show this weekend, I firmly believe the sound is in the fingers. There were two basses on our stand that I heard people play again and again. Whilst a few of them had a bought out what I'd call the signature tone of each, they pretty much sounded different in the hands of every player. Funnily enough about the only thing that sounded the same from all of them was when they launched into the beloved slap fest - near impossible to differentiate between people (apart from the whole 1 guy that actually started playing a nice groove whilst throwing in some slapping stuff!). The other thing that was surprisig was how differently everyone set the inboard bass tone controls. I kept setting them flat and every time a bass came back they were all over the place. Hardly anyone touched the tone on the amp though. Just to finish on this - one guy picked up a Matt Garrison 6 string Fodera, soloed the neck Seymour Funcan dual coil pickup, rolled back the treble, boosted the bass a little and dug into a nice funky little groove, all played up around the first 5 frets, sounded just like a P Bass. The next guy went almost the reverse, bridge pickup, cut back some bass an started playing chordal patterns high up the neck - totally, totally different sound and tone - same bass, same amp, different fingers. . .

I think the days of shows being places to go for bargains have been changed by the combination of the Internet and, to a lesser extent, a recessionary economy. It used to be that retailers put everything up for sale at full list price and then might chuck in a strap, case, strings etc or a small discount to sweeten any potential sale. Nowadays a lot of potential buyers have thoroughly checked the lowest possible price across the web (often from overseas or people who don't actually have any stock) and walk through the door of a retailer with a fixed price in mind. Consequently those retailer margins are squeezed and it's much easier to get a discount in store (or online) by being well prepared. Retailers may still put list prices on ads but everyone knows they will deal on a lot of stock unless it's very rare or they have an exclusive distribution deal. When you look at a show then the dealers have got anywhere from £500 to £1,500 extra costs to run a stand (not sure how many people noticed how dark some of the stands were? Reason being you'd have to pay about £400 to hire the house supplied spot lights for 2 days!). The dealers will all try to re-coup as much of this as possible by knockin out low ticket items like strings, tuners, shirts etc but there's not a huge amount to be gained from selling their core stock of basses at below their regular shop discount prices. Some people will be happier to haggle more towards the end of the last day just because it saves a bit of loading etc and there's always the odd 'show' bass kicking around with the odd ding or scratch but, again, if you came across one of those in a store you'd get an ex demo discount on it. In fact one guy told me he was going to buy serving at the show because it was 20% off (kind of a 'we pay the VAT deal) and i'd actually seen exactly the same bass for less, including delivery, online However - what you do get is a massive room full of different basses so you can touch and feel them and be able to compare prices of many more instruments than you'd ever get in a day's worth of shopping around. Unfortunately the noise levels mean you can't really here them properly but you can get a really good feel for playability. So - my, long winded, summary is - go because you can get to see a huge variety of basses but not because you think you'll get a huge bargain

Had a long couple of days working on the Bass gear stand with Phil, Keith &, on Saturday, Tom as well (all fellow BC'er's) but had a great time despite losing my voice pretty much completely and now sounding like Barry White (if only I had the energy to try out my new-found huskiness by crooning walrus of love songs to the wife!). Didn't get to see any of the artists but met so many great people from BC and had a good old natter about all things bass which more than made up for this Also met loads of other super friendly bass players on our stand as well - it never ceases to amaze me what a nice bunch of people most bass people are. As ever I was blown away by the quality of playing by most of the people who took the time to try out some of our basses. The ones that always get me are the younger kids who sheepishly ask if they can try something out & when I say yes they immediately head for the Fodera Matt Garrison 6 string & promptly slay me with the quality of their playing There were a couple who couldn't have been more than 14/15 who really had technical skills but also had a nice groove to their playing as well. One of them asked if he could try the Yin Yang and when I said 'of course' his jaw nearly hit the floor. He played some nice stuff for 5 minutes or so and then carefully put the bass back on its stand and, very formally, shook my hand and said thank you very much for letting him play (his dad quietly whispered that this would have made his day which was also really nice of him). Just goes to show that there's plenty of young talented players coming up that aren't all snotty, arsey brats and makes me feel happier about the future of our chosen instrument. Looking forward to next year (and more stands with those wonderful headphone set-ups!). . .