molan

I've owned five Sei basses, Original, Flamboyant, Jazz, Custom and back to Original again. The Flamboyant has always looked the prettiest to me but I struggled a little with the body shape and could never quite get it to sit comfortably on a strap. The Original I now have is probably my favourite in terms of playability but I'm afraid it's on its way out soon. I developed a nasty shoulder problem last year and hoped this bass would really help as It weighs next to nothing, about 6.5lbs only. However the design of the body throws the neck out to the left on a strap (because of where the upper horn strap button sits) and my shoulder problem is as more about stretching than carrying weight and the reach to first three frets is uncomfortable after even quite short periods. Such a shame as it's a cracking bass Sei is definitely one of those brands that I keep buying because I love the looks of them (Ziggy now has my old Flamboyant and it's a thing of great beauty) but then selling and looking back wistfully. . .

[quote name='cocco' timestamp='1407963746' post='2525918'] I missed that. It's a good price. Although the more I look at them the better looking my Lakland gets. [/quote] Sorry, I didn't mean it to sound like I was pointing out that you'd missed the earlier post. Just that the price was only an estimate before but it's definitely confirmed now

How about a Moolon? Great basses and hand made in Korea. Tim Lefevbre plays one and it sounds great in his hands!

Wish I'd been able to fit those marrows into the speaker box

[quote name='cocco' timestamp='1407956187' post='2525785'] As a big fan of the Skylines I'm pretty excited about these. Hope they come to the UK and don't cost the earth when they do [/quote] As per post above, the price for the 4 string basses range from £1,100 for the standard models to £1,250 with blocks and binding.

I bought a Spector fretless for £40 in one in Palmers Green once. It needed some TLC but didn't need money spending on it to make it a lot nicer and playable

The Jazz Cafe in London has a MarkBass 6x10 as the house cab and it always sounds great. I've seen all sorts of people using it and it seems really adaptable as well.

We've got a WT1205 in the shop at only £599 and it's not selling. Eden gear really has plummeted in value over the last couple of years

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1407593923' post='2522145'] There are plenty of awesome women bass players who are as good as the best male players - MeShell , Carole Kaye , Esperanza [i]et al- [/i]but if Marta was a fat spotty ginger lad from Scotland do you think he would have a similar amount of attention and apparent acclaim ? Never underestimate the power of novelty. Like I have said before, Marta is a fine player with a great future ahead of her and I wish her well , but she is not a sensation or anything truly exceptional. She is very competent, but here is nothing remotely original or unique about her bass playing . [/quote] I saw an example of exactly this the other day. I was hunting around on YouTube for a bass cover version of something and top of the most viewed list was an attractive female player. She was out of time in places & played some obviously bum notes. The comments underneath the vid were exclusively from guys, universally positive and full of 'absolutely nailed it' type comments. Meanwhile the next one on the list had a tenth of the number of views and very few comments. However the guy playing it seemd to be note perfect and bang on time throughout.

[quote name='Bolo' timestamp='1407482083' post='2520886'] Didn't she tour with Jamiroqai or whatever after these vids? [/quote] No she most definitely didn't! Was invited to play at one soundcheck (basically a publicity stunt) and that was it. I know someone who was at the soundcheck (such as it was), it wasn't a pretty sight apparently. There's a lot of 'misinformation' out there about how this happened and her playing ability. It certainly hadn't hurt her public profile though. . .

I saw Streetwalkers a couple of times in the mid 70's. Always a great live show. I think it was John Peel who got me into them and he played them quite a lot. Used to love the Red Card album. http://youtu.be/otB8qVbYyxE Many years later my secretary told me that her boyfriend was a guitarist but that he wasn't very well known and that I wouldn't have heard of him. Turned out to be Charlie Whitney! She said I was the first person she'd ever worked with who knew anything about Family and/or Streetwalkers. Never got to meet him though

Julian Mullen is our resident tech at BassGear. Really nice guy (despite hailing from Manchester) and an excellent tech. He does loads of work for us and is in the shop every week

[quote name='casapete' timestamp='1407579016' post='2521921'] What I don't get is that for the most part there are often great quality professionally recorded clips available of stuff (either on sale or free on the web) that you can watch whenever, and just enjoy the moment of the live gig. [/quote] This is what always amazes me as well. There is so much freely available, good quality, video content out there that I can't understand why someone would want to ignore the actual gig in front of them just to get a crappy video that they'll probably watch once, stick on YT, and then ignore. I once saw Vic Wooten stop someone recording him with a phone by saying more or less exactly this. He told the person that they could get many of his clinic performances online already and that simply recording another just to try and score some points for having he most up to date version on YT was a pointless exercise - not least because he had another clinic coming up so the guy's vid would be out of date in days. Of course, being Vic, he did this in a nice friendly and non-confrontational way. Those of us whose view was being obscured by the arse holding his camera up with two hands gave a big cheer when he put it back in his pocket and slunk out of the room

I've never really found a comfortable leather strap Some of the Harvest ones are beautifully made from super-soft leather but the one I had was a little slippy. Any instrument that wasn't perfectly balanced would tend to dip towars the headstock. I've used various neoprene straps for years and found the amount of 'give' in the better designs works really well to relieve weight and strain on my left shoulder. Recently I moved over to Mono Betty straps and find they offer a nice balance of flexibility, grip & comfort. Not the prettiest straps on the block but hey work really well for me.