NancyJohnson

I love all my gear but for different reasons, but I'm down to six basses now and hope to reduce that further. I suppose the question here should be rephrased as you're bound to get people going, 'Oh, my Ritter,' or 'Oh, my Fodera,' comments of which are primarily made out of how much the instrument actually cost or how old it is, not because they're best. As Gary put it, personal choice has to come down to looks, feel etc. and we all know that tastes shift with time. Right now, and it really hurts me to say this given the money spent elsewhere, but my go to bass and the one I love the most is the mashed up ratty old Aria Pro II Primary bass. It cost me next to nothing, it owes me about £120 for a new pickup, bridge and pots. It plays dreamily and sounds gnarly. On the last gig I did with the old band I threw it across the stage and it just went, 'Is that the best you got?' The new recordings I've been doing are all on it. The only downside is that it's Precision-shaped and I'm really not a fan of Fenders.

I've got some nice gear, but have always had this nagging thing about getting something really decent on the guitar front, maybe an old DC Les Paul Junior (or a Hamer Special), an Explorer (four-digit Hamer Standard or a Gibson), a Yamaha SG**** or maybe even one of Frank Diemel's Firestars (although these have pretty much doubled in price over the last couple of years). I trawl eBay, Gumtree and Reverb regularly and it seems pretty clear to me that there's always been guitars and basses on sale that are either have dubious provenance or are clearly not what they pertain to be. I just look at stuff and think, 'Oooooh, that just doesn't look right at all.' Unless you're an authority on a particular instrument or are able to do your diligence, there doesn't seem to be any go to source for verification of what an instrument actually is and the constant rejigging of designs (all the maker So what would you do? Buy new from an authorised dealer? Take a risk? Buy through a vintage dealer and accept the price hike for something genuine?

BEAD?

It's a long shot at being able to buy everything in one combines transaction, but I'm assuming that you don't want to switch from a StingRay 5? If it was me, I'd experiment a bit rather than buying another S5 and breaking it up. I'd check the profile of a Status MM5 neck first to ensure I was 100% happy with that, then probably try and create something Frankensteinesquely unique. If money is a consideration, I'd go the route of buying a Tony Levin OLP or a Sterling and getting the chambering done on that; any luthier worth his salt should be able to rip the body down (from behind) to your desired depth, chamber from the underside and then glue in a new laminate on the back so the aesthetics aren't changed visually from the front and refinish. I suppose then, the hurdles you're going to have to get over thereafter would be body balance, what it would sound like tonally, whether it would resonate, whether the control cavitiy would be deep enough to contain the electronics, and so on. Alternatively, just dispense with the low-B and buy a Thunderbird. Seems that's what everyone is doing nowadays!

I'm somewhat of a @Tech21NYC slut. Pretty much any if their stomps or racked gear will do the trick. Racked RBI and GED2112 have been great, but I didn't get on with the VTBASS one (tonally just didn't work for me). Of the stomps, BDDI (which is essentially an RBI in different clothes) and the recent dUg. Even the Sansamp GT2 worked. If Tech21 would do the dUg in a 19" rack version my life woukd be complete. Interestingly, the old Bass POD I ran for a while was fantastic. I know it picked up flack from these purists who would say it sounds nothing like the amps it's supposed to be modelling from, but it was a very versatile piece of kit, great for live and recording.

Wife gone to bed, screwdrivers close to hand. I just did mods on both jumpers...easy peasy. Unit functions fine (each channel operates independently, but it outputs in mono) and as the function button now operates as a bypass, I can plug my dUg in permanently. Just needed to do the ground lift on the GED and I'm set. I'm unsure which order at this juncture. dUg>GED or GED>dUg. I might want to throw a BDDI in as well...

@Tech21NYC You know the one thing I'd have loved with the GED would have been a bypass button. It's not a gripe! I can live with that hack of using a patch cable and the 50/50 button to run it in mono, but am wondering, does flipping the internal jumper do exactly the same thing?

Reeeeeeead all abaht it! Reeeeeeead all abaht it! Rush in another 40th Anniversary reissue fever! etc. I can't believe (it's not butter) it's actually 40 years since this came out. Man alive, I had my whole freaking life ahead of me. Needless to say, many versions coming from the Super Deluxe (CD/Vinyl/Bluray 5.1) to a stripped back digital version. I would have chewed your arm off for the additional content back then, but I'll admit my interest was already really starting to wane at that point and I wasn't even out of my teens then. [subtle edit: I'd recently discovered Japan...there was more than enough in those first two albums to turn my head from Canadian Progressive to Catford punkyfunk.] Now? I'll just have a cursory listen on Spotify as and when it drops. https://www.bassplayer.com/artists/rush-celebrates-the-40th-anniversary-of-hemispheres-with-reissue

It's detailed elsewhere, but I started a band about eight years ago, we bought in a singer three years ago who pretty much took over and now that band is out there gigging without an original member still (I understand) playing material I wrote. Life's too short. Just leave. A band with a toxic environment is not a band to be in.

Life sucks, doesn't it? I've rolled out processes and project/finance models for the last 20+ years. (Currently out of contract folks, if anyone needs someone!) The work I do just gets done and I get paid for it; any contract of employment will generally include a clause that the intellectual rights for anything I create for the betterment of the business will be waived. Assume that I worked for Microsoft and I wrote a bit of code that made Windows work better, am I supposed to lay claim to this code and expect compensation in perpetuity? I'm sorry, but no. Look at the case of Carolyn Davidson, the woman who designed the Nike swoosh logo. She was paid about $40 for the design, a design that is used as the logo for a business that's now worth about a billion times more than that fee. She waived her intellectual rights as soon as she took their money. That Nike went out of their way some 30 years later to recompense in shares is another matter entirely.

I see your point, however the emphasis of my comment was about being rewarded for product you delivered potentially decades before, not about licensing a song for use elsewhere. At the same time, if I create a piece of fantastic finance modelling software for my employer, then sadly that belongs to my employer and not me. If they chose to resurrect that at some future date, I won't get paid for it.

Sorry, something else here to support the whole not giving a rats bottom about these artistes bemoaning the meagre payouts from all these digital platforms. In the real world, how many people actually get paid for something they did years ago? Think just how weird that is. No Miss Swift, in the real world you do your hours and you get paid; you don't get paid again and again for that hole you dug seven years ago.

Spotify, Deezer, iTunes, Google, all a means to an end really. I've paid through the teeth for albums with two decent tracks and ten of fill for longer than I can recall, haemorrhaging money on vinyl, CDs, cassettes, gigs, merchandise, DVDs and Blurays and honestly I don't give a rats donkey that I'm only forking over a tenner a month for music now rather than hundreds. I still buy music in a tangible format...there'll always be shelf space for a few bands, but beyond that, nah. All these services are offering amaxing content in every genre; it's a brilliant thing. The world has moved on and its not about a musical landscape any more; it's not about ownership of content (unless you're from Shoreditch). The big money is in touring and merchandise. There's very little to be had from music itself now.

Aside from one issue where I got charged £999.00 for a Dominos pizza (sorted inside 24 hours, free pizza followed), I had money go twice on Paypal, yonks ago, but got it back on both times. I think the irritation was the not knowing how it happened and how easily it did considering how much account security is supposed to be in place.

If I see something with a long future publication date like this, I'll always just buy it. You know for certain that Amazon don't have a confirmed price and you can always cancel pre-release date. No brainer really. It happens loads.

When I placed my order for this on Amazon back in February, I bagged it for £18.59. Weeeeee! Go me.

Just revisited this thread to work out how to externally wire the Ged2112 after I pulled everything out to flip my rack. Have to say that since the dUg arrived, the Geddy unit has become fairly redundant. I've recently purchased a pair of Aguilars and tonally they're very hi-fi; smooth/refined, and suit the dUg way more than the Ged (I've yet to get anything usable out of it at this point). I'm not planning in moving any gear on at this juncture, but feel the Ged is more suited to a brighter cabinet configuration (ie the Barefaced). It's good to have a choice.

This is how he's able to buy all the basses.

OMG. How did you find out about the pomegranates?

Blame my mother. English teacher. Demonstrate, punctuate, abbreviate, elucidate. I think I knew these four words from the time before I even started walking.

Nope, nothing strange about me.

Because I'm a grammar Nazi, can I ask a little favour? Italics should be used for emphasis only. It's very distracting scrolling through a thread and seeing an entire reply italicized.

But does it djent?

One of my old bands used to rehearse in John Mayo's basement on St Margaret's Road in Twickenham for a while. Our singer lived next door. I remember her saying, "I think the bloke next door is in a band. You can hear a lot of music coming through the basement walls.'