kodiakblair

Became the proud owner of @pajhartley's Passion III yesterday. To say I'm over the moon is an understatement.

As a young fella reading Guitarist mag 2 basses stood out for me. 1 was a fretless Tune Bass Maniac and the other was a Vigier. It was the Arpege model but over time I preferred the look of the Passion. Took me 32 or 34 years to track down the Tune fretless and with the big "Five O" fast approaching thought I better start looking for a Passion. Since they rarely come up for sale in the UK I was looking at Europe. Exchange rates and insured shipping add a fair chunk to the cost. Cost was a factor as apart from the house and a works van I've never spent more than £800 on anything. Luckily for me our very own @ped was there to offer advice and links to ones for sale. Cheers Chris A breakdown in communication last week saw me miss out on one in Germany,even though I'd offered the seller 200 euro more than he got on eBay I was still gutted Wednesday saw one appear in the classified and it only took 2 Msgs to sort out the purchase. @pajhartley lives the other end of the country but suggested we meet halfway in Stoke on Trent. Saturday we both set off on our 500 odd mile round trips,. Glad he suggested Saturday as it's a year today since my last bass buying trip to England and that ended badly,car crash A1/write off/broken knee cap/4 month off work And here it is. Well worth the wait

Had the pleasure of meeting up with Pete today. The man's an absolute star. With me up in Scotland and him down in Brighton Pete suggested we met in Stoke,between us must have covered near 1000 miles today Great fella.

Don't think I'll ever tire of playing my Harley Benton PB-50. £70 odd when I bought it 4 year back,now £96. Still a stupidly small amount of money.

Gifts over £39 are liable for VAT, if the Gift is valued over £135 then you also have the Import duty to pay. HMRC get you every time.

Between $109 to $129. That's been my experience with USPS on 20 basses imported over last 3 year.

@ambient I'd be more concerned with the seller packing it. I had one ask for $40 extra for the cardboard box, another said he was shipping with the neck off to save packing space. That time he'd forgot he'd sold the bass with a case.

Should also keep in mind currency exchange rates. Today it's £1 = $1.43 but you wont get that, Paypal will probably be £1 = $1.36. Bank transfer is no better. There's a transfer fee to go with the crappy rate they'll give you. @Damonjames You can arrange postage via the USPS website easy enough but then you need to rely on the seller boxing it up properly.

Is there a regional element to this topic ? When I worked in Bishops Stortford our place was just outside Hatfield Heath. Could say I'm pratically one of you

CH Guitars up in South Shields sells Dual Action and Double truss rods 630mm long for £11 odds inc delivery. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hotrod-Dual-Type-Bass-Truss-Rod-630mm-TR10b/132435855469?hash=item1ed5cac86d:g:7ZAAAOSwGwlaNAZh http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TR8b-Double-Type-bass-guitar-Truss-Rod-600-630mm/141280081367?hash=item20e4f2f5d7:m:miB_YSAXbvidXlYSX1-SY5g

Great wee things. I had the fretted model but found I was fretting too hard and causing the notes to go sharp,easy done when there's a small fret/mega thick string combo Bought a deko fretless model as well. Not really the right tool for me but plenty of fun Didn't plan on selling them but after leaving a favourable comment on somebody's for sale ad, 6 folk got in touch asking for 1st dibs should I decide to sell. Don't know if they still make them but D'Addario sold bass uke strings too, Nylatec I think they were called. @JPJ That's £127 well spent

@Bigwan That solves a lot of worries. I'll just sit tight until the new version, Cheers for letting me know.

I don't really bother my shirt, it's just music. A friend of mine otoh likes to find out as much as he can about whatever writer,director,musician he's in to. Upshot is he always ends up denouncing as complete ????? then can't enjoy their work any longer

Not cynical at all,it's called being realistic. Makes no odds if 95% of folk are great,compared to the hassle the normally very vocal 5% can cause it's not worth it.

Started off all I needed was one quiet corner in the wife's workshop (spare room). Now she's gone I've managed to fill the living room,spare room and the cupboard over the stairs. It's all good as the moggie only needs about 16" so he can curl up in front of the oil heater.

I'd never heard of them until I saw this post. Since I'm needing a daft cable for the wireless transmitter I thought I'd email them before ordering from Thomann. The fella Aleks was quic kwith his replies.Sadly they didn't have what I needed but at least he had a look and offered some suggestions. Makes a change from GG,standard response I get there is " Sorry mate if it's not on the racks we don't stock it ". I'll be keeping them in mind for the future.

They do a nifty line of underpants and pencil cases.

Cheers @bobbass4k. Those were very valid reasons and I know exactly what you mean. Long packed in doing any work for friends and family due to unrealistic expectations.

Not a fan of Hip Hop or Rap or most forms of modern music but I have no problem with those folks using samples. It's an economical way to record,apart from the royalties part, and it engages the audience straight away. Lots of times they already know the tunes the sample came from as their folks played the original.

I've a set of La Bella flats on a T40 converted to 5 string. Plays great but I like this talk of using a lighter gauge,it's a 40 year old neck that wasn't designed for 5 strings.

As a youngster I bought a double album of Buddy's drum solos. what was I thinking ? I hate bloody drum solos

Got a set last week. Lovely strings,very smooth . Remind me of TIs.

I'm going with " Yes, very addictive " Thought I'd give the Curbow some attention this afternoon. Cupboard revealed several sets of TIs,La Bella,Chromes,Cobalts,GHS,Olympia,Optima and Fender I went with the Sadowsky Blue Label for a change

I had 2 dream basses, 1 fretless & 1 fretted. As a young fella I bought Guitarist magazine and both caught me at an early age. Fretless was the Tune Bass Maniac with the extended fingerboard and piezo only design. It was £899 and I was on the £16 YTS, Dream became reality 30 odd year later The fretted dream is for a Vigier Passion or Arpege. They're pretty pricey,more than I've spent on anything bar the house,and I've never even held one so I might just keep that one as a dream.