NancyJohnson

I bought the Darkglass head about three years ago, pretty much as soon as it came out. I'll admit it was the headroom that appealed more than anything else and I was more in love with plugging a Sansamp into the effects return and I'd never really bonded with it. Had a session yesterday and left the Sansamps at home; 100% determination to get this amp to resolve the one box solution I've been looking for for years and spent a bit of time trying to dial in a gnarly tone earlier in the week. Ran the head through a pair of Darkglass 1x12s and took the Spector X. Man alive. I honestly can't get over how awesome this set up sounded; the amp was pretty much as I'd set it at home other than notching up the output volume and then tweaking the Spector Tonepump a little. Whumpy, dirty, gnarly. Beautiful.

Wouldn't that be a thing? I'm supposed to be keeping it quiet. Lol 😂

My band seem to have been in with a shout for Rebellion but it's gone very quiet. Two of our number are fairly well connected with the people behind it.

It honestly shouldn't be too much effort to build a scratch setup from BC classifieds. There's enough kit on there. My only observation with the basses for sale is the distinct lack of sub-£250 stuff (IE Sterling Subs) I'm playing some dives in the next few months and would prefer to use something I wouldn't miss if it got lifted.

It's funny seeing this thread resurrected...some seven years after my reply, I still advocate Dunlop Straploks and as and when I buy something new, I'll order a new set for immediate installation before I'll even put a strap on it. They're on all my basses and guitars. Just don't get the, 'Oh, they're too fiddly,' argument. I nearly spat my coffee out while I was reading the @Bolo comment that they get 'noisy after a while'. Whaaaat? Dunlops take a couple of minutes to install on the bass/guitar and same again to attach to other fixings to the strap; in 20+ years of using them I've never had a single failure or heard a mouse while I'm playing. Unless you're installing the flush mount ones, any strap should go over the body-lugs (and probably more securely than the standard lugs too).

I'm listening to Stampax, the live album by Rachel Stamp. Honestly, why these guys weren't massive is beyond me.

Just thought I'd share this. New band - Eddie Roxy & The Adjacent Kings. This drops to all streaming platforms in a couple of weeks.

Here you go pop-pickers.

Oh, we do, my friend. We do.

I worked with the wife of the drummer. When word got around that I played bass, suggestion went that I should have a word with her as her husband played drums. All in all, that went very well.

It's a matter of semantics. In my case I didn't want a direct sale, but I still had to list my item as being for sale (with a price). I don't really know how the sub-forums get set up, but honestly feel an I Got Swapsies area would see more activity than the backdoor selling in the what's it worth area.

A few years back I wanted to swap a Fender maple neck for a rosewood boarded one. It did seem somewhat counterproductive to have to list it for sale (and add a price) when I didn't really want to sell it, just change it. I'd say yes to a swap area, most definitely.

It's like Top Trumps here. I've looked at small amps, currently running a Darkglass AO900 (into a pair of DG112s). To be honest, I could probably have gotten away with just buying the Microtubes 900v2, as it's a little less aggressive (anyone fancy a swap? lol). It's smallish, not much bigger than a Stephen King novel. Honourable mentions? GSS Baby Sumo or the Demeter Mini 800D.

I know this is going a little off track, but I do find the attitude of many members of the Hamer Fan Club a tad abhorrent. While it's all reasonably civil, you have a group of people who are just, 'USA! USA!' and fairly derisive of anyone who bought non-USA Hamer models. It's a crying shame Hamer got shut down and in truth their core models were probably infringing on Gibson rather than Fender. Hamer and Fender could quite easily have co-existed. As an aside, one of the ex-Hamer employees, Mike Shishkov, has set up shop and is making instruments...his first ones were essentially Hamer Standards with Shishkov (in a fairly familiar font) on the headstock.

Remember that they had Hamer as well; a team of luthiers that were brimming over with invention, creative ideas and innovation. And we all know what they did there. In truth, Hamer are better off where they are now (cough, dead, cough) rather than Fender nicking all their ideas and diluting them.

I thank you for recognising my knowledge and experience. I used a Precision bass in a studio session at the weekend. Sadly the Sansamp BDDI I had to my disposal - not mine, I should hasten to add - wouldn't fire up (I think it was something more to do with the XLR cable than the unit), so I had to resort to plugging straight into the desk. I mean, it played beautifully (well it would, I set it up), but man alive it did one thing and one thing only. Ponk. Actually it did two things, ponk and woolly ponk. A bit of a first for me; I complained mid-session and said I just couldn't do the second half of the session until tone was resolved. I just think a single pickup bass just lacks something. It's probably just me, but a twin pickup instrument is a country mile better. A twin pickup instrument into a BDDI is better still.

Where are you at?

Julien was my go-to guy for a while...fixed smallish issues on my first couple of Thunderbirds, a pickup swap on my Lull and a sizeable amount of investigation on a muddy NR Thunderbird about ten years ago. Top bloke. I remember when he was the tech guy at (whatever that guitar shop was) in Market Place, Reading.

Disappointingly, Tourtech have rebranded as Ordo and Andertons aren't carrying them anymore.

On first view at the link, I did a little gasp thinking that Fender had ceased production of the post-50s Precision bass, only to see it relegated to the 'other models in this range' status. Oh, tee-hee. Silly me. I've always had a soft spot for the early Precision bass, but not enough to pull the trigger and lose £2.4K from my bank account for that one trick pony.

Can you imagine the backlash if Ford were still making these:

It's an old Aria...a 1978. Got it in a Gumtree job lot, £50. It needed new everything aside from the Schaller machine heads. I adore it. It's really battered and gnarly. I vowed to put a new ding in it every time it left the house. I'll continue this tradition on Sunday!

I've only ever had one washer go and it seemed nigh on impossible to get a replacement. I eventually fashioned something out of one of those things that bread makers used to close the packaging. Drilled a suitably sized hole, nipped off the excess and popped it on the shaft. Worked fine.