markbunney

9 minutes ago, SumOne said:

 

Guilford neck of the woods? 

Nope 

6 hours ago, miles'tone said:

Did you get it at discount already? They're listed around £1300 everywhere from what I can see.

Maybe it was a shop demo bass?

If you can exchange it for a new one at the same price then do so. 

If it was discounted for the couple of imperfections stated then rock on with it imho. 

Do whatever your gut is telling you though. 

Beautiful basses these btw...

It first went up for sale at £1,099 and then a few days later went up to £1,299. I contacted them and they agreed to see it for the original lower price.

The colour and finish on it was beautiful

48 minutes ago, TimR said:

I'd have been waiting a long time then. Must have read Bassassin's post. 

I would think if you asked PMT to sell you one at £1,099 they would 👀

it has been on sale there this week at three different prices, £1,099, £1,299 and £1,499

1 minute ago, TimR said:

I'm watching gear4music for when it gets re-listed. I'll have it. 👍😎

Lol it wasn’t from there 

They offered me a £30 gift card or a return, so I opted for the return.

They said that as it had £400 off it already there was nothing else they could do. I think this was £400 off the list price though, as i had bought it at the advertised online price which was £1,099.

it had been delivered directly from the distributor and it looked like some of the Ibanez tape on the box had already been opened and resealed whether this was for a final QC inspection or a return I don’t know.

It’s being collected next week for a refund.  
 

thanks all for the replies, it’s interesting to see other people’s perspectives on the issue. It would have been the most expensive bass I had ever bought, and I needed to be 100% happy with it.

I have noticed that QC across all consumer goods is terrible these days.

The amount of things (not just bass related) that I have to return due to poor manufacturing or damage on delivery  is terrible.

NBD today for something I’d been looking at for over 3 years, but for various reasons wasn’t able to get.

This was an Ibanez SR1600B in Caribbean Shoreline finish.

It arrived today and had a scratch on the fretboard and a ding in the back of the neck.

The shop said they were just minor imperfections, which I guess they are, but after spending £1100 on something I expect it to be perfect, so they agreed to take it back as faulty.

Just wondering if I was being overly picky, or right to expect a new instrument to arrive in perfect condition.

Useful rehearsal last night ahead of our NYE gig, it was the first one we’d had for a few months and we brushed up on some songs we hadn’t played for ages and also added in a couple of new ones.

I realised that my strap had worn out, and my bass almost fell off. Luckily I realised and I have a spare. Annoying as it was a Mono one and really expensive, but the material that goes around the strap button has just disintegrated.

8 hours ago, dand666 said:

Never heard of these Lekatos, any good? Seem reasonable for £80

I’ve used the XLR one for about 6 gigs now and it’s been reliable (apart from the distortion mentioned in the above post which I think is due to the mixer)

it’s just a bit bulky when plugged into the P2

24 minutes ago, mrtcat said:

Played under Concord last Friday for a Xmas bash.. Not all companies are struggling. £250k budget for the staff party.

Wow!

There look to be quite a few unsold tickets to London on Monday, I wonder if they will get reduced on the day to shift them 

26 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

It's still likely to be a morning or a day for the whole band. 

The photographer was going to come to our gig and just take pictures there

On 09/12/2023 at 20:20, SteveXFR said:

Whats the one song would you really like to cover but just know it won't fit your band?

My band has a no cover policy but I'd love to play this

 

 

 

Therapy? are a great band and deserved to be bigger than they are. I won tickets to see them at Blondies dive bar in London a few years ago, the place was tiny and I was about six foot away from the band, stood in my suit as Id had to go straight from work! It was great being so close, but also unnerving having Andy Cairns looking me straight in the eye from a short distance. 

They only did a couple of songs, as it was a new album promo thing for Kerrang magazine, and they were en route to Europe, they had a transit van parked outside and were loading up all the gear afterwards.

I had also seen them at an Ozzfest (I think!) 20 odd years ago, and in London more recently.

I wanted to cover Screamager in my band, but the rest of them didn't fancy it, as they didn't think it was well know enough

I also got to see them

8 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Maybe the pro pics will infuse him with a bit more enthusiasm. Might even have a positive effect when his partner sees how good he looks on stage.

Worth a shot. Shouldn't cost an awful lot of money for a photographer for a few hrs.  Split between band members £50 a head or thereabouts.

Dave

The photographer has offered to do it for £70 as its local to her (she has shot some pro bands, and one of the guys has used her in an old band, so her work is good), so we are not talking a huge amount of money between 4 of us, its more the principle.

I told them I would compromise on agreeing to the photographer if we booked in another gig in the first couple of months of next year!

9 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

Whereabouts are you guys based? If some of you want to do (a lot) more than 10 gigs, could you consider getting a dep in to cover?

We are based in Kent. He sings & plays guitar so its tricky to get someone to dep for that. We are hoping his personal situation calms down a bit and we can get some more stuff booked in next year

He is having issues with his partner and the time taken up by playing in the band.

We have 10 gigs booked next year and he doesn't want to take on any more, unless they are last minute cancellations. We have got to the point where I think we could get a booking every weekend, so there is a big gap in what we could do, vs what we are able to do.

We are currently only playing once a month anyway and barely having any rehearsals so IMO it is not taking up a great deal of time. But as the months are rolling on, the gigs & practices are having to start later, and are becoming more infrequent, but when we do have a gig, they are generally really good.

The 4 of us get on well, and the band is otherwise pretty stress-free, its just a frustration that we are having to deal with.

Nice, I have got my eye on one of the V7's

My bands suggestion yesterday was to hire a photographer for our theatre gig in January to get some good pictures for social media and for promotion etc etc

A member who was championing this also doesn't want to book any more gigs next year

Whilst I can see it would be nice to have some pro photos, it seems pointless to me as they won't be really used for anything, and it would be a big chunk of our gig fee gone paying for it 😕

9 minutes ago, Muzz said:

I have exactly the same setup and experienced exactly the same thing (and did the same thing with the XLR subbing): turned out the BL/mixer owner had farted around with the aux channels. Output down on the mixer, volume up on the P2. Sorted.

Thats great, hopefully this will save me from having to buy something else. Although the Lekato + P2 combination is a bit bulky, it does seem to work pretty well with no drop outs etc

4 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

I'm not a fan of these types who assume everyone in the vicinity is on board with their antics, good natured though it may be.

Agreed, I was having to keep one on the PA speaker on my side to make sure no-one crashed into it.

I am constantly tempted at buying a Helix, but then things like this happen and it puts me off as I wouldn't want it to get stamped on, or a beer spilled on it

We had a rugby team in on Saturday, and whilst they were good natured, some of their behaviour was bordering on dangerous. Examples include spinning each other round and then shoving them - one guy nearly smashed his head on a steel beam! And also sitting on each others shoulders, one guy started to topple over and I was convinced he was going to break his neck!

58 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

You’re overloading the transmitter - lower the aux output.

Thanks, I will give that a try at our next gig

I have been using a lekato 5.8ghz xlr wireless mic system with a Behringer p2 as a DIY wireless IEM setup.

I had been noticing that my mix had been a bit distorted and at Saturdays gig we narrowed it down to coming from the Lekato.
 

I swapped out to a xlr cable for our first set but kept tripping over it, and so for second set I swapped back to the Lekato. I decided that I preferred the distortion over tripping over a cable.

the lekato doesn’t have any settings, so need to have a look at the settings on our digital mixer and try and see what’s going on, as when I test the lekato at home on my preamp and amp, it sounded fine.

some others in the band are using a gear4music wireless set, so another option is to get an extra pack for that 

Yes, a couple of kids, and he’s just got a puppy which isn’t helping his situation

26 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

I don't understand why he can do cancellation gig cover but not gigs arranged well in advance. Normally its the other way around. 

 

I think he is getting grief from his other half about the time spent playing in the band. And his reasoning for taking cancellations at short notice is that he can gauge his partners mood on the day, and whether or not he would be “allowed” to play that night. It’s very frustrating for the rest of us.

The 4 of us own the PA speakers and lighting jointly, but he bought a digital mixer and is the only one who knows how to run it, and use the IEMs with it. He is rhythm guitar and vox and we have another lead guitarist.

The frustrating thing is that he was the one who put the band together and was instrumental in wanting to invest in the PA, IEMs etc but now we have “taken off” so to speak, it is causing him problems on the domestic front. I am sympathetic as I have been in the position before in another bands when I couldn’t do the amount of gigs everyone else wanted.

It is only a hobby ultimately, and we are playing pubs at the minute, but we have managed to get a theatre and a wedding booking for next year.

Everyone gets on well, it is fun etc so my plan is to accept the situation in this band for now and look for something else in parallel.

Am struggling a bit in my current band at the minute.

we’ve been going for about a year, and have had around 14 gigs which I’ve all gone very well.

I am surprised at how well we are doing, from a band that started from scratch.

The problem we are having is that our singer has now started having availability issues and only wants to commit to one gig a month, and is rarely available for rehearsal, and when he is he can’t start until really late.

The rest of us are getting frustrated as we would like to do more, and we are turning down countless gig opportunities. He has said he doesn’t want to book any more gigs, but would be available to cover any cancellations that came up. Realistically it is unlikely that 4 people would be available at short notice on a Fri/Sat night.

We can’t really get a dep either as he sings and plays guitar, and owns the mixer so we are a bit stuck.

I have been looking for another band to join, or dep opportunities for several months now but nothing is coming up. I naively thought that there would be more demand for bass players in our area, as there are loads of bands playing every weekend.

Next year I am going to get out to some more jam nights and see what comes up.