Misdee

I take your point entirely, and yes, Fender will proliferate no matter what. I just mean that there is no real reason why Fender can't make basses like they used to, just better . And Fender players mostly prefer their basses how they used to be at some point in the past. I am perfectly happy to have a new one, but they could incorporate the better things about the old basses with the best things about the new basses. Then I would be even more of a Fender fan.

I will reserve judgement until I have played one, but it seems to me that Fender consistently shoot themselves in the foot by offering a "standard" range of American-made basses that, more often than not, are not particularly appealing both sonically and aesthetically. Part of the problem is that they don't want to compete with their own Custom Shop, part of the problem is that they are not very in touch with what discerning players crave from a Fender. All of this is compounded by their inconsistent quality control. The American Standard range was a lot more appealing than the subsequent American Professional range, IMO. The Am Pro are perfectly ok, but just not very exiting. They should have stuck with CS pickups , for my taste anyway. .

Yes , back in the day ,cheap basses used to be a waste of money. Now it seems you can get something very worthwhile for not a lot of dough. Just another example of where the snowflake generation really don't know how well-off they are .😄

I'm a big fan of Yamaha BB basses, in fact I would say they are just about my favourite. The sub-£200 Yamaha basses are not that attractive to me, but I take your point.

Sounds fixable. Look for a specialist hifi dealer in your area ( if you have one) and ask if they have someone they can recommend who does repairs on audio equipment. As you have already found out, if you have a CD63KI they will understand why you want to get it fixed. There are loads of old machines out there to provide cannibalised parts if Marantz can't provide the.

As far as HB are concerned, I really fancy both the PJ-74 and the Shorty.

I am finding it a bit hard to get my head round the idea that you can get a decent instrument in the sub-£200 range ( let alone sub-£100!). I came up in a time when cheap basses were truly awful. Funnily enough( ironically enough...) , the last bass I bought that cost less than £200 was a Squier JV Series Jazz Bass, which cost me the princely sum of £185 in 1983. Should have kept it, I know, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. 🙁 No one ever suspected at the time that they would become so sought-after. "

I've had a look , but they re a bit on the heavy side, apparently.

Cheers, I'm having a look right now!

Yes, it does seem to tick a lot of the right boxes ie Fender style, decent materials ect. Can basses this kind of price be acceptable quality, that is the question I keep asking myself. I've looked at some YT vids and it seems that yes, they can .

Cheers, very good to know that. It looks like a strong contender.

I want to buy a relatively inexpensive but decent new bass as a gift for someone and I want to make the right choice. I am a bit out of touch with that end of the market nowadays . On my shortlist so far are an Ibanez Talman and a Harley Benton PJ-74. Any other suggestions very gratefully received.

For me, Jon Andersons far-out lyrics are offset by his down-to-earth strong Lancashire accent. Listening back to those classic Yes albums now, it really strikes me how, contrary to their reputation as overblown prog dinosaurs, the band sounds edgy and raw , especially compared to equivalent acts nowadays. They may do a lot of extended tracks, but as musicians they know how to be concise and to-the-point. And Chris Squire's bass sounds epic. '

Back when I was a youngster in the late 1970's and just starting out on the bass, Yes epitomised overblown pretentious prog rock. Or so we were told. Listening now without the fashionable prejudices of those days ( which still proliferate), at their best, Yes were super- hip. Tracks like Heart Of the Sunrise, Close To The Edge, Roundabout ect still sound fresh and fearlessly experimental. I would venture that if a new young band with a contemporary image came on the scene today and made those tracks they would be lauded as creative geniuses. Modern bands like Muse or Radiohead cannot get close to the virtuosity and invention of Yes in their prime, and back in the early 1970's Yes were their cultural equivalent. Jon Andersons' lyrics are definitely a bit strange though, I must admit.

I'd like to see a preamp pedal that actually sounds like an Ampeg SVT, with some semblance of the variable midrange frequency control.

As I understand it , the pickups on the 2024/5 are made in Japan, the pickups on the 1024/5 are the same schematic made elsewhere, probably Indonesia or China.

Some people have just got something special about them . Teddy Pendergrass was one of those people, it seems to me.

Teddy was a magnificent soul singer, right up there with the all-time greats like Marvin Gaye , Otis Redding ect. It's a shame he doesn't get quite the same recognition, because during his own lifetime he was an icon in America . Such a stylish man, too. If you watch live footage of him at his peak both he and his band were off-the-scale in terms of tightness. A class act.

The CD63KI is indeed a true classic. It's still a great-sounding piece of kit twenty-odd years after it came out . If the deck in question has started skipping when you are trying to play a disc, there is a good chance that what has happened is that the lubricant in the transport has dried out. It can usually be re-lubricated by an hifi repairer. The particular Phillips transport the the CD63KI used was very prone to that fault developing as the years pass.

I'm not that keen on this bass, but Cliff Willliams is a much underrated bass player, for sure. A couple of years go I had to learn a couple of AC/DC songs exactly as they are on the record, and they were far from simple and straight forward. They play some really clever turnarounds , and make them slightly different each time. Check out the bassline on tracks like Riff Raff- quite unusual and really busy. Cliff makes it sound easy, but there is a lot going on . The timing is pretty tricky too, especially if you want to make it swing like AC/DC do. The whole band are really clever. Superb musicians who feel no need to draw unnecessary attention their chops. Big respect from me.

Definitely the best Lizzy album, along with Live And Dangerous IMO. I remember buying the LP when it came out back in 1979. They were always a special band, and Black Rose was them at their best. Great playing and, above all, superb song writing. Phil Lynott was a superstar. Great memories.

I remember these basses in the shops when they were new , around the time I started playing . They were pretty exotic at the time, probably the most expensive bass in the shop. Fashion always comes full circle , and these would be pretty trendy nowadays if they were a new design, blending as it does a novel technological approach and retro Seventies styling. Conventional wisdom at the time was that these basses were flawed by the aforementioned temperature- sensitivity of the aluminium neck. I have no idea how true that was/is. I never got to play one. What I do know is that a few years ago I picked up a Kramer aluminium-necked six string guitar from this era off a stand in a music shop and it was shockingly heavy, like it was made of lead.

The old Boss BF-2 was great, but nowadays I have the EBS Unichorus and it's so versatile and useful, with chorus and pitch modulation on offer in addition to some excellent flanging, easily as good as my early 1980s Japanese-made BF-2.

I've got the Tech21 BDDI V2 and it's great, but I find I have to keep the Presence and Treble controls rolled back a fair bit or it's a bit toppy for my taste. I using it with headphones for home recording , and it may well be that I need to add a bit of compression to my Focusrite interface to take the edge off. Contrary to Tech21's assertion that the BDDI shouldn't necessarily be used in conjunction with a separate compressor because there is already some natural tube compression factored into the sound , in my setup when I combine the V2 with my Diamond BC1 the sound is much more to my taste. But then again , I am a middle -aged bloke with middle-aged taste in bass tone. The BDDI , even the V2 with a midrange control, seems to naturally favour the more aggressive scooped and distorted modern kind of tones that angry kids in board shorts with tattoos and multiple piercings seem to like . That is fair enough, because the present( and probably the future) belongs to them .