molan

[quote name='pete.young' timestamp='1496588231' post='3312490'] You shouldn't need to contact the distributor - your contract is with the retailer, they should do this on your behalf. [/quote] Yep - first contact should come from the retailer who will, in turn, contact MLS. If the retailer point blank refuse to help then you can go to MLS and say that the retailer is not being very helpful.

I think a lot of people bought one just to have a go and see what they were like. Initial scarcity and desirability meant that potential loss was never going to be much and some even moved at a profit. Every now & then something like this pops up that you can be pretty sure if not taking a loss on so it's just a short term cash flow thing. Plus you can't really damage one if you take it out on a gig, lol.

[quote name='MarshallBTB' timestamp='1496515279' post='3312055'] Was wondering if anyone else has had any issues with the little mark heads and the plastic front plates cracking and bits breaking off ? I bought a little mark tube last October, along with the mark bass case for it to live in. It's had light use, (don't use an amp on 80% of my gigs) yet I have an increasingly scratchy gain and volume pot, and the corners of the front plate are breaking off. Contacted the shop I bought it from (new) and have been told it's not covered by the warranty, and that I might be able to get a new front plate sent to me and to spray the pot with contact cleaner. Am I being silly or is this a bit naff ? I shouldn't have to spray it this soon, and change the plate myself? I would have thought I'd be able to return the amp...at least exchange it. Any one else had a similar experience? [/quote] Having sold a lot of MarkBass gear I can definitely say they are generally very reliable and not prone to failing or even simple faults (unless customers aren't telling us for some strange reason). Warranty claims can be tricky on some things as you have to prove that anything that's gone wrong is a manufacturing fault rather than just through usage. E.g. If a case front cracks because it's been bolted into a rack too tightly then it's not covered by warranty. Similarly if controls start to stick or crackle because they've been left in a dusty environment and not used then that's a tricky warranty claim. I'm not saying this is morally right or anything, just how some people will interpret warranty claims. Our policy on something like you've experienced would be to get the amp in and see if there are things that are quickly and easily fixable by our tech before making a full warranty claim. Scratchy pots is really common, especially if an amp hasn't been regularly used. Happens to lots of them from really cheap to the most expensive ones. First 'trick' is to simply keep rotating the pots back and forth over & over and then do it again the next day etc. You'd be amazed how often this can cure a scratchy pot The retailer can submit a warranty claim to the UK distributor once they've assessed the faults. Under a year old and you're covered by manufacturer warranty rather than sales of goods type stuff (although you get that cover too). MLS are the UK distributor and they are super helpful and really nice guys.

[quote name='Elfrasho' timestamp='1496471110' post='3311650'] I don't think I'd write off a full company due to this. From memory, I've had Hartke, ashdown, ampeg and behringer amps all fail on me so I think amps in general can be a bit temperamental. [/quote] That was the only failure at a gig. We had numerous problems from them that people discovered whilst playinnat home or at rehearsals. We dropped Hartke very quickly for exactly the same reason. Even less reliable with several amps showing problems from new. We had a policy of testing every single amp before shipping to a customer so a lot of things were spotted early but Carvin & Hartke tended to fail within the first few weeks of being used rather than straight from the box. Hartke in particular were very sensitive to location and power supplies. Often worked fine in the store but had problems at rehearsal rooms or customers' houses

[quote name='Mykesbass' timestamp='1496428986' post='3311426'] Wow, that surprises me. The head I bought from you guys hasn't missed a beat. Must be 4 years by now, and although not massive amounts of use, it has been gigged at least once a month and rehearsed every week since then. Absolutely love it, so such a shame they aren't all as good [/quote] That's exactly what I mean - the good ones are great and go on for years. The dodgy ones generally go wrong within a few weeks of use (and we had a few of the newer 'red' BX heads that turned up with faults from new). Carvin are generally a 'no quibble' warranty company and send replacement parts quickly but for a postal UK return we'd have to cover some additional costs and always had to pay our local repair guy to fit the new parts. Some costs were recoverable but it was a bit of a headache. As a retailer we became paranoid that some poor customer would be out on a gig when the failure happened and we just didn't feel it was right for us to be subjecting customers to that sort of risk. To the best of my recollection we only ever heard about one failure at a gig and that was 'only' the DI out but that was enough for me

[quote name='walbassist' timestamp='1496320685' post='3310474'] How about [url="http://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Mark_Bass_121_Alain_Caron_Lite_combo.html"]this[/url]? [/quote] I love mine - and I've tried a LOT of supposedly gig-worthy combos I can lift it easily with one hand (and I'm a weakling, lol) and have my bass on the other shoulder and pedal board in the other hand. This means I can always do the trip from my car to a gig in one go. It's easily loud enough with either passive or active basses, plenty of tone options (that I hardly touch), sounds good as a stage monitor and seems to punch out pretty well into the audience. It's a fairly dull addition but the mute switch is really handy - many MB amps don't have these. The separate power amps for the main driver and the horn do seem to help with overall volume and projection. It goes a fair bit louder than the 121H which in itself is a decent jump in quality from the 121P because of the horn vs cheap piezo in P. I don't always gig my AC combo but it gets a fair bit of use and always goes to rehearsals. In fact it pretty much lives in the boot of my car because it fits so neatly My favourite single piece of kit that MB have ever made!

[quote name='eude' timestamp='1496410014' post='3311215'] Thank you! They're going to email me costs on the MB12, MB210 and MB15. They have the MB15 in stock, although that's the one that least appeals to me for some reason even though it's the toast of Talkbass... Eude [/quote] The Carvin combos deliver a lot of bang for the buck (as our American friends would say). However, build quality can be a bit patchy. Combos tend to be better than the heads but they aren't without issues. It's all a bit random as to what might go wrong with them. Some are great and never miss a beat, others get niggling faults that sometimes come back. In the end we discontinued them because we didn't feel we could reliably offer them for sale to regular gigging players. Shame really because the ones without faults were great value for money

[quote name='Al Krow' timestamp='1496419368' post='3311317'] I'm in danger of becoming a stuck record (for those of us who can remember life before CDs and streaming), but just wrote this on another thread and seems to also be relevant to your Q: http://basschat.co.uk/topic/306621-affordable-full-range-combo/ [/quote] I've yet to find a combo that can beat the AC Combo as a single standalone unit for gigging. Full 500w into the main driver and a further 300 into the compression horn plus loads of tone shaping if you need it and you can carry it easily in one hand and dump it in the boot of most cars too. I wish the newer one hadn't been quite so heavy, I love the idea of adding the mid driver as well but the extra weight knocks it out of my 'easy one handed lift' category.

I'll own up to being slight disingenuous when asking about Superstition and White Boy. My reason for asking was that I recently saw one of the best soul / funk / groove players in the country get on stage to play with the house band in a small pub for two numbers and these were the two he played. He had a huge smile on his face throughout and the audience loved them - really crowd pleasers 😁

One thing to think about in the pairing you're suggesting is the porting. The HR 4x10 is rear ported whilst your HF210 is front. This tends to mean that the 210 is going to be a bit more dominant in the stage sound than the 410. I've tried this with Bergantino cabs and the newer front ported ones were significantly louder up close than the rear ported ones. There is an HF410 that might match the 210 a bit better - depends on the tone and stage sound you're after of course. It could be that the 210 will be the clarity for onstage monitoring whilst the 410 will be the 'big thumper' to spread around the stage and out into the audience

I've never seen a vintage Kustom tuck & roll head with matching cab for sale here. Some them look so cool - especially in blue sparkle 😁

I once had to strip to my underwear behind a curtain with about 5 people the other side but that's as close as I've got. It was a charity show based on a Stars in Their Eyes theme. I had to walk on stage wearing Emma Bunton's clothes and say I was going to perform as her. I then had to go behind the curtain to get ready for my performance. Emma was waiting for me there wearing some of my clothes and we both had to strip quickly and swap clothes. She was lovely and great fun to work with - plus she got to see me in my boxers which I'm sure was a great thrill for her . . . 😂

Sounds like that's generated by a browser 'helper' toolbar rather than anything to do with BC. Maybe check your plugins to see if there's anything strange in there.

That should keep you busy for a few hours 😉

How about Superstition and Play That Funky Music White Boy? Are these on the BC massive blacklist?

[quote name='KevB' timestamp='1495795022' post='3306646'] Yes, alright. It was me. A girl got up to do some singing, had a nice soulful kind of voice and had called out Chain Of Fools. To me it was a natural progression to move on to Mustang. In my defence, it was the ONLY time the whole night that any of the few punters present got up to dance. I've always said that on the rare occasions i play it I always enjoy doing it and last night was no exeption. Rather that than another rendition of Stormy Monday etc. The day I'm ashamed of trying to get a bit of atmos going and entertain folks is probaby the day I hang up the bass for good. [/quote] Sounds like a good choice. It always kills me when people here on BC complain about songs that people in an everyday audience actually like enough to sing along to and get up and dance. Maybe we should all play really obscure jazz that people hate so we can go off and smirk at how much cleverer and musically hip we are. Of course, our audience would end up being just us playing to/with ourselves . . . 😂

Grosvenor House, Park Lane. Paid lots of money but we had to be there stupidly early, they treated us like sh*t, the house sound man barely spoke to us and had no interest in how we were hearing us on stage (we were the only band so it's not like we were support), the 'food' provided consisted of tiny stale sandwiches even though there were loads of uneaten main courses from the event, the pre-show ran over massively, the post show disco went on for ages and then we had to wait for the very last person to stagger out before we could start breaking down any of our gear. It really, really wasn't worth the money and we all said we wouldn't do another Park Lane hotel

Quite a lot of Lakland basses seem to have the John East Pre fitted. It's not my personal favourite but it does seem a popular mod for these.

Have to be very careful with heavily chambered bodies. Especially on 5's. they can be really neck heavy and dive the floor as soon as you strap them on

We never had a 212 in the shop but sold a few 112 and 210 versions. I really liked them personally but the weight was too much for my poor old back Lots of low end and punchier than the new versions whilst still retaining that great Bergantino tone Build quality is, of course, exemplary!

Be sure to check warranties are valid on all the sale stuff. Especially the heads. . .

I gigged with an AE210 for quite a while. They really are so well built and survive knocks without a mark (unlike a lot of other brands out there). How they achieve this level of build quality but at such light weights is beyond me! That rear porting can cause some issues in tight spaces but I found a Gramma pad often helped on a wooden floor. I only sold mine to get a CN series which is another 25% lighter. Doesn't quite have the same depth as the AE but the lighter weight, and front porting, made the difference worthwhile for me. Pairs really well with a nice valve pre like my Jule and Demeter heads.

Which Berg did you get Mark? Have you gigged it yet? I always find Bergs to be one of those manufacturers that really come alive in a gigging band situation (as opposed to sounding great solo'd in a shop or at home). Some of the older ones can be a bit picky on stage positioning - mostly the rear ported ones. Jim Bergantino listened to user opinions and moved ports to the front on most of the newer models. This doesn't mean the rear ported ones are bad, you just have to think about more about where you angle them to any rear walls. Sorry to anyone else reading this - I know it's off topic to the main thread here.