Sean

All this has been very useful. Thank you, folks. Going to the "what", and taking @Phil Starr's advice Lighting to make the band look good - yes. Lighting to allow the band to see what they are doing - yes, definitely. Lighting to improve the audience experience - yes. Plus Ease of use for total noewbie. Ease of set-up. Expandable for the future. Easily transportable. The band I've just come out of had a t-bar with, I think, 6 PARs and they pointed in different directions, some flashing colour to sound changes, others just lighting the band. It’s amazing how little notice I took and now with the new band, I need to know all about it. Here's a link to some video from Saturday night. It's a very typical venue layout, the stage area was generous for a 4-piece. How would you go about lighting that if it was your band?

£300-500.

For context, last night I went to see my new band play their last gig with the outgoing bassist. No lights, no back drop. It's rock/pop/indie covers playing pubs/clubs/functions. I'm going to grab this as an opportunity but have no real experience, it's always been other people in all the other bands I've been in that do lights. So, where do I start? Plug and play, portability compact being the priorities, I guess.

Which ones are these, Phil? Do you have any photos or videos of them in action?

I got excited about a new Gallien-Krueger in-ear amp for a moment 😀

Everyone's experience is different but my solution to this problem is to walk away and let them get on with it. You don't need that level of cr4p in your life.

The Germans have a green one B Stock for £619 https://www.thomann.co.uk/cort_artisan_space_5_sdg_b_stock.htm They also have "A Stock" at £675 but you'll have to wait a week or so. Free shipping! Great deal. I got labelled as "entitled" and unreasonable when I expected free shipping on a £700 spend earlier in the year. If I hadn't just landed a "rescue" bass, I'd buy one just to see. I played one and thought it was a lot of bass for the money.

Breathe. You'll work it out. They're excellent basses. My tastes are so broad with colours, finishes, neck carves, etc that if my #1 priority was low price, colour wouldn't matter. It's not like any of the colours of the Space basses are horrible. I'd be happy with any of them.

Gorgeous, that.

My tip of the day is... Keep the truss covers removed. I'm always adjusting truss rods, 1/8th of a turn here, tiny tweak there.

Those Freeway switches are fantastic too. Modern P neck, great looks, loads of switching/wiring options including traditional J options. I can’t believe I didn’t play it at a Bash! Too busy talking!

Hi Matt - Stunning. Does the Triad have a P profile neck?

The FBA is good, very detailed and well presented like most of the SBL material. Good workbooks and play-along tracks and the course is huge. Like a lot of the Accelerator courses it's like an expanded and more detailed version of some of Phil Mann's (and others') courses that are already in SBL. I like Phil Mann's approach to teaching and get a lot of what he's done. His theory courses are very engaging. There's nothing that I've seen in FBA Accelerator that's not available elsewhere, and we can say that about most courses, but it is well presented, has loads of material etc and that's what makes it what it is. Like all this, you need to put in what I call "boot camp time", you need to sit and pump out the exercises and not skip bits. Trust the process. I was watching one of Phil M's videos and he was talking about studying with Jeff Berlin and learning all the patterns all over the neck and it seems that's the concept the FBA is based on.

A super sweet transaction, just 5 star all round, delivery, packaging, comms etc. Thank you very much for another great BassChat deal

It arrived today. It’s the lightest bass I’ve ever played, it's like a toy. It’s got the same Gotoh Resolite tuners as Gary's CST that I played recently and it’s got no neck dive. It's really well-balanced, which I wasn't expecting at all. On the lap, it stays put and on a strap with a shiny textured internal surface it sits well, so that's all good. Neck carve is standard Euro LX shape. The finish is ultra thin matt, it feels like my oiled Euro5LX to the touch. I know a couple of folk have found this finish to be a bit fragile, so we'll see. This will be gigged. I've been playing it through the HX Stomp with GK800/Ampeg810 rig settings with the DarkGlass Legacy pre-amp dimed and it's exactly what you'd expect. My ebony board peacock one is just 22 lower on the serial numbers indicating that the two were made during the same short period. Another comparison is that the RST resonates differently acoustically to the gloss finished ebony board one and they've both got new EXL170s on. I'm not going into tonewoods and all that wizardry, I'll just bring a few along to the next Bash and let people see/hear for themselves 😉 The build quality of it is as we've come to expect from the Czech factory, it's absolute top notch all round.