Al Krow

I don't mind the 16.5mm at all per se (in fact it's very comfortable); it's more the transition from 18mm on the most of my herd to my Ibbys. The GWB is a very different animal and also what I am using it for. For a start it's a 6 string and secondly the string spacing does not taper in the same way as a normal bass from bridge to nut; there is a much gentler taper. This makes it ideal for my intended use which is as a Bass VI for chordal playing and classical pieces.

You've summarised the position very well Paul, although it's more a left hand issue for me. In my case I've an 1825 which I will be tentatively looking to move on / trade up to the EHB 1505. Short clip from AMS; reason for sharing is that although it on has about 15 seconds of bass playing on it you can immediately hear the Nord growl which reflects what I get on my 1825 and is very much the Ibanez "sound" I'm after. @Woodinblack are you mainly just playing Ibanez SRs?

+1 ^^ I'm particularly attracted to having a consistent string 18mm spacing across all my 5 string basses, in an Ibanez that also has Nord pups. Whilst I undoubtedly find 16.5mm very comfortable to play (but I appreciate that's not true for everyone); from a muscle memory perspective, for me, having a more uniform string spacing will be welcome.

Excellent news. And once again you and other Sandberg owners are being singularly unhelpful on this thread 😁

Blimey @FinnDave that honeymoon period didn't last long at all did it? 😁

Dua Lipa - definitely getting a lot of thumbs up on this thread. I'm a fan of CP's Attention (I love the bass tone on that track) and actually suggested to my bandmates this morning! We've had Wrecking Ball in the set for quite a while now, probs cos it's a 2013 track 😉 Not surprisingly Sheeran and George Ezra coming up in band discussion too.

I think 'word on the street' is that the typical modern pop star is a solo artist with a social media presence. It's now much more about the individual than the band. Which completely ties in with what you're finding and the paucity of stand-out covers tracks from the past 5 years.

That's a great version! But would you agree that's clearly not a live version with the instruments they have? There's a LOT of sound engineering going on there and a keys player lurking in the background probably some spotty geek who would have spoiled the video 😁 We don't have a keys player in the main band but could be about to get one for one of my other projects. But could be an interesting version for @bassfan's crew.

Ahhh lovely - I now understand why you fell to temptation then! The Panther Special is a particularly gorgeous design and also very nearly had me 'snared' a couple of years back when one came up used in the FS section.

We should maybe have "two strikes and your out" sub group for folk who have only slipped once, although yours is about as spectacular, this side of getting a Wal, as it gets! 😂 Lots of discussion about Bergs in the bass forum as I'm sure you'll have seen. The Delano pups and 2 band pre-amp being 'hi fi' is probably the single most opinion dividing issue - so agree with you about the J East pre and if you have Delanos in your Berg be interesting to see how you get on with them if you are moving from Nords in your Ibbys (less so, I guess, if you had Barts in your Ibbys). Which model Berg did you go for?

Yeah - Bad Guy was probably last year's iconic track. Could work if we stop at 02.45 in I think our drummer is balking a little at including that one 😁 ...although could be the excuse to get him to invest in a hand clap. Agreed re Dua Lipa, she's had a few decent tracks for sure. Are you doing either in your sets?

Slightly scary that the recommendations for great new material to cover, other than Juice, relates to seasoned old hands, given that part of the goal here is to try to keep our set lists relevant to younger audiences. Coldplay (been around 25 years), Iggy Pop (around 50 years!) and even young master Bieber has been around a decade. I'm hoping that Ariana Grande might have a couple up her sleeve (and tbf we've just added her version of 'Santa Baby' to our Christmas numbers) No other new artists taking the world by storm in your sets?

Have to fess that I had mini wobble this morning with news that Amazon were selling Bugera hybrid amps for £180 (25% off) which would have made for an amazingly good value back-up amp head, but I managed to persuade myself that if my amp ever failed and none of my amps have ever done so, touch wood, albeit over only 7 years, and that if they ever did it would be just as easy to DI through the PA. Phew... Out of interest, were you thinking about getting a Sandberg for a while or was this a completely unexpected impulse buy?! I'm still reeling in shock at the loss of one of our brethren departing so soon and with such bright prospects ahead of him for lasting until, well into February.

New year, new band, new amp. Great result! At that price and 30 day return it's looking like a no brainer! The Tube versions seem to have all now been snapped up at the reduced price, although there are few of the Mosfets still available.

That's much more like it! No amp is going to be even close to 100% effecient in converting power consumed to power output.

Not that I have £2,700 to blow on this model(!) but, for anyone who does @gobasserk(?!), here's a nice little clip setting out the features of the BB2024MA:

I thought the MA editions had reverse Ps? Was that not the case with all the MA models then?

Classic case of one in one out?! And then there were 21 (again) 😁

And then there were 20...😄 Well if you're going to fail, do it in style eh?! So you've gone from Ibanez to Sandberg (I headed in exactly the opposite direction!). But we're still both using BF SCs and avoiding compressors like unnecessary plague, so all is not lost. Haha! Anyway congrats - and thanks for being first to drop on this challenge, it's very gracious of you to save the rest of us our blushes!

I should have added that the black headstock works a treat on that burst finish in a way that doesn't quite on the midnight blue...

+1 ^^ Totally agree! Having a bit of variety seems to keep things tonally fresh for me.

Yeah an equivalent quality 212 is going to beat a 112 every time in a band mix, IMO, and even in a quieter venue setting you can just turn the volume down! That Berg 212 is a superb cab and completely deserves to be gigged, which it will now be getting, rather than just being there for home use. The Fearless F112 will, however, be perfect for home use for me and will also much more likely get gigged as there will be space for it and a RCF sub in the back of my car (boot already full with the rest of the PA!) So win win with this particular trade!

I've tried to ban our band doing any Justin Timberlake tracks on principle(!) but perhaps time to relent...

+1 ^^ There was a wanted ad up for a P35 recently. I posted a link to it on this thread about 4 pages back.

We try to 'refresh' our set lists from time to time and have just included a few new tracks that seem to be going down really well with our audiences. But these were all from 1988 to 2014. I had a start-of-the-year look at our set lists and noticed we've only got two tracks from the last five years (Jan 2015 to Dec 2019): Fonsi - Despacito (our lead vocals is bilingually Spanish which really helps!) and Portugal.The Man - Feel it Still. Had a listen to the top 20 best selling singles from 2019 this morning (believe me, it's the sort of productive / useful cra*p you get upto when you've signed up to a 2020 gear abstinence thread) but nothing jumped out at me as being an obviously good track to include in our sets! Be really interested to hear what modern tracks you have in your set lists from the past 5 years that are fun to play as a band and go down well with your audiences. Please feel free to post links of the tracks themselves or your bands playing them. Cheers AK