basexperience

I live about an hour outside London, so there's stuff there, but even so, when I found out a local guitar place in swindon was closing, I was sad about it: In terms of bass-centric places, when the bass cellar closed in Tin Pan Alley, I was really sad about that: magical little place, I've bought 2 Warwicks there over the decades. I've been toying with popping up to bass direct, I've been to the bass gallery. Relating back to the OP, central London wouldn't be local from here: it's a very similar kind of trip to the 100km you're describing, so I tend to visit if I'm in London for some other reason, although... I do have some holiday days to take... 😄

This is a moral question which applies to any asset someone buys, then sells. They're buying with the express motive of making a little money. That's what some people find offensive - now, that's the interesting thing to dig into. Personally, I think any transaction is atomic - it's what happened, right there, right then. The seller agreed to sell. The fact they might find out they could have sold it for more when they see it listed and sell for more is actually irrelevant - and feeling aggrieved on their part as a third party seems pointless. We know some platforms will get more - basschat, reverb - and some less - (maybe) eBay (depending on who listed it - again, the person listing it has listed it at whatever for their own reasons!), Facebook, etc. People sell stuff for varying reasons - could be a distressed sale (can't make the rent, bills to pay, etc). All those are valid reasons why someone gets a bargain. That they decide to flip it, is entirely their business - they bought the bass, it's theirs to do with as they will. What makes more sense is to educate. Give people the confidence to research what a bass is worth - even if it's as trivial as knowing how to filter on eBay for sold items (I always do this before I sell anything) - you can get ideas of what you should be paying for something (or indeed, selling it for). Caveat.... everything, I guess! I know it sounds terribly dispassionate, detached, etc - but you're not going to alter the sociopaths by pointing at them and saying "but it's wrong" - better to starve them of their exploitable population. Which goes for a lot of stuff outside buying and selling at the moment.

You're selling basses through fbook? You're braver than I thought. Surely you just get a constant stream of DMs and comments which make no sense, all in caps with no punctuation, and endless halfwit tyre kickers asking if you'll take £10?

Oh wow, me too! I've exchanged some DMs with Harry in the past and have a spec in mind... very keen to see it in the flesh, also only heard good things.

True that. My wife has had so much stuff go missing with Evri. Anything I ship now, I just use Royal Mail.

I’ve got a spare Scarlett 2i2 I work on with headphones, but I’ve bought one of the really cheap little M-Vave blackbox FX units, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what it can do for £50.

Bloody excellent idea. Thanks mate. Literally exactly what I did at that gig before using the LWA500 as a backup.

Here's a weird little habit of my RM 500 I've just discovered. I haven't used the amp in over a year because it "stopped working" at a gig (I had a backup amp with me) - and I placed it aside after being unable to figure out what was wrong with it at home. Symptoms were the amp had no volume and just a quiet, distorted tone from the speaker cab (8 ohm Markbass traveler 2x10, good cab). Left the amp aside for months and months, yesterday I looked at it again thinking I'd get it fixed and wanted to recreate the failure condition (which it did). Then I thought - is there anything I haven't looked at, like the back panel? Headphone switch engaged. Turn it off, and the amp is absolutely fine. So: with the headphone mode engaged and no headphones plugged in, this amp will seem like it's broken. If there was no audio at all, I think I'd have checked the mute, then looked elsewhere, but it was the fact it actually sounded like it was "broken" (tiny highly distorted sound was made). Silver lining, the amp works! I thought I'd share here - no doubt others have seen this and will have a good laugh 🙂

Ooooo a streamer Stage 2. Is that the P-pickup one?!

OK, I may just bring a bass or three which have curiosity value 🙂

As a n00b, what's the process here? Do we bring as much gear as possible?! How does that work?!

My Warwick thumb rocks 26 frets, and I do love it. I took a solo on it a few weeks back and was astonished by how easy it was 😄

I've got a Trace V4 Mk 2 which I love, and it's got a lot of history behind it. I don't think I'll ever part with it. Itused to be a 15" combo, but the band who were using it (who I spent a season with in Andorra at the Aspen Bar in Soldeu) finally wrecked the cab so badly - and the drummer partially dismantled it before asking for help as it was languishing in a leaky shed. No joke. Miraculously, the amp survived completely intact - after supplying dimensions to Zilla Cabs, they constructed a gorgeous head case for it, to my specs (with the V4 and V8 carry handle arrangements on it - which is so useful), and now it lives at home in the studio, although I do take it on gigs occasionally. The amp has some surprising features which make it ideal for studio use, including the ability to turn off the entire power amp section and use the all-tube preamp for recording. Aces.

Speaking with my real name hat on - Andy Watt - I’d suggest I might have to get one of these. 😁

I misremembered my story. I did exactly what you did - there was no custom in there. Squier, standard and American. Thanks for reminding me!

I've got a theory that because you can play just off the end of the board, through the string, a little further up the string (towards the head), then it's the equivalent of plucking over the bridge pickup vs the neck pickup, as it were - with a 24 fret neck, on the same scale bass, the 21 fret bass would have a little more room to play through further up the string towards the head of the bass. Scott from SBL says he prefers 21/22 fret basses for slap and it got me thinking why.

Bought a Kiwami from @Lunoxx - thanks again mate, superb pedal - which needed some TLC and a pot replacement. I’m no electronics engineer, but I know enough to replace parts like for like, and I’ve fixed a few circuit boards in my time. I jumped on the chance to get one of these mad filter pedals, and the repair was interesting. I detailed some of the job on here: https://www.basexperience.co.uk/new-frontiers-pedal-repair/ anyone else repair their own electronics? I learned a lot on this job, particularly about desoldering.

I used to have a prejudice against basses that weren't 24 frets when I was younger (like 20 years ago...) - now I can see the utility, particularly for slap and getting more bottom end into that tone when playing double-thumb. These days the thing that makes me 🙄 is stuff like Facebook groups where people humblebrag about using Squiers. I do actually have a slight prejudice against Fender, over a decade ago I popped into a bass shop on Denmark st in London and tried a back-to-back comparison of 3 jazz basses - a squire, a fender standard, and a high end custom shop, and TBH through an identical amp, with identical EQ, I really couldn't hear enough difference between them to warrant the price of even the standard. Mind you, I wasn't spending a lot of time with each bass, so it's not like I was assessing the really quality points like hardware, finish etc. Just tone. I guess I've played long enough that my irrational prejudices are all around irrational prejudices, which probably means I've lost my edge 😄

I’m another very satisfied customer of Luke’s - I got one of his own designed Aotearoa Intermodulators too. Great little pedal, well described, the little handwritten instruction sheet with it is ideal. Well packaged and well made, and extremely competitive compared to a prunes and custard(!!). Thanks Luke!

Super easy transaction with Lunoxx, great pedal and a good honest description of a fixer upper which needed a little TLC to get it back to 100%. Super fast delivery, really well packed, seamless stuff. Thanks dude!

Sometimes those are the best gigs. If nobody is really responding, you can enjoy a little time to really key in with the band. Like a paid rehearsal - almost.

Anyone else plotting to bring an Ibanez Ashula SRAS7 with? It's a weird one...

Just discovered my Wordpress website has moved to new faster servers. Damn, it's now usable so I should start posting on it again! I done a gig round-up post, innit https://www.basexperience.co.uk/gig-round-up-time-ladies-and-gentlmen/