Happy Jack

I remain unconvinced. I wasn't actually recommending that someone should sell 10 cheap basses a year, certainly not you in particular. As you say, you very rarely buy/sell basses. That puts you at one end of the curve, the end where signing up to the Market to sell a single affordable bass makes very little sense. I wouldn't try to argue it any other way. Me, I'm at the other end of the curve. I'm forever buying & selling basses, amps, pedals, whatever. That's not some sort of 'value statement', merely an observation. For me, the Market fee is therefore negligible, maybe 50p per item. Your final point just doesn't work for me. A small, almost nominal, fee will very probably cause a narrow range of affordable basses to become marginal propositions, or at least more marginal than they were before. It certainly will NOT cause the withdrawal of £300 basses in favour of £5000 instruments. I think a lot of Basschatters are under the impression that Basschat is now a huge concern, with thousands of enthusiastic members who are potential buyers of their basses. The various statistics in the public domain do tend to give that impression. BUT Actually spending time on Basschat, seeing who is posting what and where, gives a very different flavour as far as I'm concerned. I suspect that there are no more than a few hundred truly [i][b]active [/b][/i]Members and a helluva lot of dormant user names. If you think you're reaching a potential market of many thousands of active bass players with money in their pocket, then prepare to be disappointed.

[quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1446228393' post='2897989'] And I do feel ever-so-slightly uncomfortable that I'd be expected to pay the same fee as a dealer with a ten grand bass for sale. [/quote] Depends on where you're starting from, I guess. If you were considering signing up to the Market specifically to sell a £150 bass, then the flat fee for both you and Foderas Are Us seems out of kilter. But if you're already signed up with that flat fee paid, it hardly makes a difference whether you list a £5k Fodera that probably won't sell anyway, or you list 10 cheap basses that people might actually buy. Marginal cost, old boy, marginal cost.

http://youtu.be/ZMw5jzO_lv0

Old enough? Yup. Remember it? Vaguely. Fondness? Give me Pinky & Perky any day ...

You can't possibly expect to achieve anything in life using basic tools. A real craftsman will always gravitate towards the best and most refined instrument for the job, true aids to the highest forms of self-expression. How is one to define "the best and most refined"? By using that yardstick which is most recognised by all around you, that of money. It follows that, penny for penny, the more one spends on a musical instrument, the finer a musician one will become. Surely this much must be self-evident to you all? Bwahahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahahahaaa!!!

If you're talking to the manager of a busy pub then being able to say (and show) that you have your own website is definitely a step up from "we're on Facebook". You may never get any business direct from that website (Facebook and Lemonrock will probably generate more) but it certainly helps with the spiel. So long as it's free, then it's probably time well spent. As to live photos that include a dartboard, again it helps if the manager you're pitching to can see what you look like in a pub like HIS. Even better is to include the sign for the Gents toilet seeing as that's where you'll be playing. In similar vein, IME any trip to a studio to record demo songs is a waste of money. That's not how you sound live in a pub, and the guy you're pitching to will know that. For much less than the price of a bunch of mastered studio recordings, you can buy a Zoom H2 and get some genuine live recordings at real gigs.

What do you use for the extraction? I've got no great desire to buy a copy of WinRAR.

I'm guessing that you've already asked Phil Jones?

My Dad had one of those when I was a teenager. As a 17-year-old (summer of 1974) I used to drive it at silly speeds around Guernsey. I don't know which is the more miraculous ... that I didn't kill myself, or that I didn't kill anyone else.

[URL=http://s1128.photobucket.com/user/h4ppyjack/media/Just%20Stuff/Music%20and%20Musicians/cc.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/h4ppyjack/Just%20Stuff/Music%20and%20Musicians/cc.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Cool as f*** though.

Never seen that live clip ... absolutely glorious.

Despite starting this thread myself, I've only just twigged what that bass reminded me of all along: [URL=http://s1128.photobucket.com/user/h4ppyjack/media/Basses%20SOLD/Ned%20Callan%201970s%20SOLD/CIMG0355.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/h4ppyjack/Basses%20SOLD/Ned%20Callan%201970s%20SOLD/CIMG0355.jpg[/IMG][/URL] That's a much-buggered-about Ned Callan that I owned briefly a few years back.

[quote name='Roger2611' timestamp='1445196789' post='2889563'] I would be put off owning one due to perceived weight issues ... [/quote] [URL=http://s1128.photobucket.com/user/h4ppyjack/media/Just%20Stuff/Music%20and%20Musicians/JuniorBrown4_zps419fc188.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/h4ppyjack/Just%20Stuff/Music%20and%20Musicians/JuniorBrown4_zps419fc188.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

[quote name='DavidMcKay' timestamp='1445254815' post='2889929'] Guys - let's not have a falling out over an argument that very few us of understand (making a big assumption here I know). [/quote] Bloody hell! Talk about a poacher turned gamekeeper ...

I am so out of my depth here that it's not even funny, but I am genuinely enjoying trying to follow all this.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VINTAGE-BOZO-THROUGH-NECK-BASS-GUITAR-/400997105541?hash=item5d5d4a3f85:g:IiYAAOSwsB9V-7-p

In fact, if the signal's good enough you could come along to Nantwich instead ...

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1445079207' post='2888628'] For flats on a Rickenbacker [b][color=#ff0000]with simply oodles of studio processing[/color][/b] listen to middle to late period Beatles. [/quote]

[quote name='peteb' timestamp='1444981054' post='2887754'] But he didn't! I'm sure that this would have had something to do with money and legal commitments to Aussie promoters, but also because they knew that a dep drummer (who was better than the original) could cover the gig well enough for them to fulfil their obligations without any major difficulties... [/quote] Not sure why you think he was better than Ringo, but it doesn't really matter. By even this early stage in their mega-stardom The Beatles already knew that the audience wouldn't be able to hear them on stage anyway ...

Those are the Aquila strings, right?

Was he standing by the door to the Gents?

That is a very good price, but surely the luthier could give you the best answers to your questions? Meanwhile, I don't see how tuning the u-bass ADGC actually makes your life easier. Keeping it in standard bass tuning while playing at and above the 5th fret would be a simpler, cheaper option.

But undeniably a splendid way of getting right up the nose of any guitarist, and therefore to be praised.

Given the amount of activity at Happy Jack's Junkyard Studio since 2011, I am truly delighted that I didn't contribute to this thread four years ago ...