molan

you might be better off using a courier that's happy to insure something of higher value - splitting insurance and shipping could be an issue if one company has to claim against the other

[quote name='cocco' timestamp='1385985975' post='2294277'] Depends what you like, if you're a classic looks sort of guy in a pub band you,re gonna be scared to gig the fodera. However if you're a session player a fodra might be the way to go, thing is a fodera has very little in common with anything in option 2. [/quote] I've played a Fodera in a pub band many times. Most people wouldn't know one if it upped and slapped them in the face. Even a lot of everyday bass players wouldn't notice one from my experience. I'm currently gigging a, very, expensive Ritter. Apart from one guitarist asking what it was no-one has mentioned it so far. I used to gig a £3.5K MTD - at one gig a nice guy came up at the interval and told me what great basses the US Standard Fenders were but that I I couldn't afford one then the Mexican ones were pretty good. Not sure what he thought the MTD was but he obviously assumed it was worth less than a Mex Fender

[ [ [quote name='6v6' timestamp='1385992653' post='2294372'] Having a quick play with one of the online duty calculators yields a cost of at least £3750 including shipping, insurance, import duty and VAT, so ~£400 markup which isn't too bad IMO, and is probably in the ballpark of haggling-room on a £4k bass anyway. Also there is obviously value associated with being able to try the instrument in a shop rather than buy unseen. [/quote] Current price of a Monarch Standard from the states is $4,750. Shipping is flat rate of $240 (you have to use fodera's specified courier) and there's a US govt export tax of $110 (this came into force earlier this year on anything with an obvious use of abalone and other protected shell products - seems crazy but it's non-negotiable!). That makes a total price direct from Fodera of $5,100. Based on current exchange rates that comes in at £3,200 (that's the quote from my bank for actually purchasing $US and transferring to a US supplier). UK Vat and duties will add 23% on top of this taking the total to pretty much bang on £4,000. Depending on the shipper there may be additional UK admin charges to sort the paperwork. These shouldn't be more than £25 though. The £190 difference between that and the current UK list price is simply exchange rate fluctuations. The £ is looking very strong against the $ at the moment and was a lot lower when the current UK instruments were purchased. It's really tough to legislate for stuff like this on higher end instruments The available dealer margins on Fodera are pretty low, certainly a lot less than something like a Fender or Musicman. Plus you get UK dealer backup on any warranty claim should anything happen (which is incredibly rare but not unheard of).

The Monarch Standard is a great bass with a lot of tonal variation (the dual coils are relatively neutral sounding and easy to tweak). There's a very good review on Bass Player. I think it's maybe featured on Foderas site as well. The Monarch Yin Yang Standard has more of a defined sound from the EMG PJ configuration (EMG's are much more 'voiced' than the Duncan derived DC's). You're also in used Monarch territory in this price bracket. Could get a Deluxe (dovetail neck joint) or an Elite (neck through) if you're not a fan of bolt-on necks. However, I'd definitely try and find one to play before committing to buy. If you're in the UK then the place I help out at has a decent stock of Foderas in most of the time and they are happy for people to play away for hours My personal view is that there's nothing quite like a Fodera but I've had the benefit if owning a few different ones and each has been a little different from the others. They all play really well (given my limited ability) but they certainly sound different from each other. As an example the current YY Standard the shop has is much more aggressive sounding than previous ones. Again, from a personal viewpoint, I love this tone and it's my favourite of the ones I've tried but I can imagine other people not liking it at all. They do tend to hold value really well. There's generally an initial hit in depreciation but after that they settle down and don't move much.

[quote name='molan' timestamp='1385895671' post='2293190'] Could just be a blip but at the shop where I help out we've seen a lot more younger players coming in and it's not a market we really cater for. Sales continually increasing as well, October was our best ever month Probably a different marketplace we're operating in though. [/quote] I should add that it's Fenders all the way for young players, very little interest in anything else. Very biased towards Jazz rather than Precision as well.

[quote name='spongebob' timestamp='1385916953' post='2293585'] I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't know who MK is or plays bass - normally followed by an air-bass impression! [/quote] The only non-bass player I've ever met who knew who Mark King is was a drummer

I used a little peavey all valve guitar head for a while. As mentions above, it was fine at low volume but ran out of steam very quickly

Could just be a blip but at the shop where I help out we've seen a lot more younger players coming in and it's not a market we really cater for. Sales continually increasing as well, October was our best ever month Probably a different marketplace we're operating in though.

Quick update - Thomann is definitely the place to go for Protec. Current UK dealer price through their distributor is about the same as Thomann are selling them for! My guess is Thomann are buying large quantities direct from the States and passing savings on to the customer. Bit short-sighted by Protec but so long as Thomann are giving good service their price should undercut anyone over here.

I'm credited on a friend's album just for being a 'nice bloke' - I was paid in beer for being their roadie for a while. Theoretically not a great gig but I also got to roadie for U2 and Eurthmics at one point as part of the deal (neither of them gave me a credit though, lol).

My Bergantino AE210 will fit snugly under a pool table, push it back a little and the pedal board disappears too

I've played a couple of these. Felt really nice to play, much nicer than a lot of other budget basses out there.

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1385307474' post='2286645'] Pubs seem to be closing and the pubs aren't thinking of new ways to compete with Dr Who, Strictly, Jungle and X-Factor. They seem to have a fixed mindset of quiz nights, kareoke and Sky football as the way to get people in. They're missing a trick somewhere. [/quote] The previous gig we played had footy on before the band and was rammed. About half of the footy fans left at the end of the game but the rest stayed for at least the first set and, partly because they'd already been drinking for 90 minutes, were a good crowd. The place last night offered food and a separate dining area but the only person I saw eat was the landlord so that wasn't exactly very succesful either

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1385304067' post='2286591'] Fair enough. IMO you should never assume that anyone else is going to do any promotional work even if they say they will. Always do as much as you possibly can and then the blame for low turnout can never be levelled at the band's efforts. [/quote] I must admit I would normally have done a bit more to cajole people along had I not been told it was likely to be really full. The pub was quite a distance from my house and I didn't scope it out beforehand. The last similar venue I played at was one where I got lots I people to come along - that one was packed and lots of my friends ended up stuck round a corner and able to hear us but couldn't see anything. On the basis if that one I didn't want to repeat the experience when we have 2 more local gigs that I can get friends along to. I guess it's 'sod's law' in a way I'll know better if we play there again!

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1385298121' post='2286498'] How much promotion did the band do? [/quote] Website promo, band email to subscribers, FaceBook page, Twitter feed. In all honesty we didn't really push it because the person who booked us told us not to bring that many friends because he said it's always rammed. Quite how he got this impression I don't know but we'll certainly ask!

I know one dealer that's not going to be stocking Mesa Boogie now because of the pricing on this

Played at a nice pub last night. Decent sized venue, good beer, nice people - problem is there were hardly any of them there! We'd been told it was busy venue and probably not worth dragging lots of friends and family along because it's always so busy and gets very crowded. We couldn't believe how quiet it was. At one point there couldn't have been more than 20 people in Chatted with the landlord afterwards and he said it's always quiet for him this time of year. He gets a big summer crowd and end of December is busy but November is always a bit dead. One of the locals told us that he does absolutely zero promotion for his live music - there's a blackboard outside with the name of the band on and that's about it. It's a country pub so very little walk-in traffic and most passing vehicles won't see the flimsy blackboard. The odd thing was that the landlord said he was really pleased, sang along all evening, smiled when he paid us £200 and said he'd happily have us back in the New Year! All seems very odd to me - why not do a bit of local promotion to drum up trade? If he'd even told us to drag some people along we'd probably have doubled the audience size. In the end it was like a paid rehearsal, useful for us as a 2nd gig but I felt a bit of a fraud taking his money

The new PJB Double Four is an amazing piece of kit. It's tiny, sounds huge, weighs nothing and has an aux in for MP3 and headphone out if you want to practice quietly. Needs to be positioned near a rear wall for maximum bass output and would certainly fit on a study shelf because of the low weight and narrow depth. They're around £350 but really impressive. I can't think of anything that really compares to them

[quote name='lazybones' timestamp='1385247158' post='2286170'] i cant understand the reason to but a guitar that looks like a fender but aint,,, [/quote] Usually because it might be better made, sound different, feel nicer to play etc. etc. Fender make some fine instruments but a lot of the classier specialists can add things that people want that a mass market brand like Fender can't really handle. Something like a Modern body version of a Sadowsky (surely the leading 'super-jazz' brand in terms of volumes sold and reputation) feels very different and sounds quite unlike any Fender I've ever played. It still looks essentially like a Fender but it's a very different beast. I don't think there's a really accurate car analogy for this because there isn't a generic car in the same way that there's a Fender-bass.

Budget or 'diffusion' lines can often really hurt values of the original brand. In general Fender seem to have escape the worst of this but Warwick and Musicman used values have plummeted in recent years. Of course, for new buyers this is a good thing. You can pick up a decent far eastern version at a 'budget' price or an original German / US made used one for a lot less than they once were. However, for owners of those original basses it's not such a good thing. Maybe more importantly for the brand itself a poorly received offshore product can have long term brand perception issues and could even, theoretically kill the parent company completely. Imagine what would happen to US Ric sales if you could buy a great official version made in the Far East for £800. New sales could be badly hurt, used values of US models would drop, perceived value of new ones would be lower because they depreciate by so much, couple of years down the line and the company could fall over completely. Love 'em or loathe 'em the world would be a sadder place without the iconic Ric brand

[quote name='Lowender' timestamp='1385157262' post='2285265'] I'm picking fights? That's very funny. And I did answer his question. You just weren't paying attention. Oh, I know why people are ganging up. Because there's strength in numbers. If its okay for a bunch of other people to do it, it's easy to join in and be one of the crowd. Hell, read your own post. You don't even know what occurred and you're parroting the accusations. It's fascinating actually. [/quote] It must be a difficult world where you're always right, everyone else is always wrong and those wrong people start ganging up on you to tell you you're not right after all. . .

There's some Lulls out there with this configuration. I also have the reverse - P body & J neck

[quote name='Lowender' timestamp='1385092308' post='2284431'] " I get message boards.. It's a mob mentality. No one is going to speak up for the guy who's getting piled on. And no one likes to be proven wrong. I was just being straightforward. If someone helped me and was a little gruff I'd say THANK YOU. [/quote] If the "guy who's getting piled on" didn't keep trying to pick fights with people then the "mob" wouldn't be telling him he's continually out of order. Sounds like a. Bit of paranoia creeping in here. I still think you simply didn't answer a very straightforward question and seemed to try and go out of your way to basically tell the OP that he didn't even know how to ask the question in the first place. That's quite simply rude and the "mob" are quite right to say it's not really very nice. To then continually say you deserved to be thanked for telling the OP he didn't know how to ask a question, and without ever actually even answering it, beggars belief It's not like this is an isolated event either, seems to be happening again and again. I find it hard to believe that you genuinely think the people here are somehow ganging up on you for some obscure reason known only to them. . .