jonno1981

Agreed!! Very curious!!!! I've been keeping an eye on this thread hoping for a review before pulling the trigger!

Thank you for the responses and apologies for hijacking the original thread. I'm seriously looking into the VT500, my concern is that as it's such a new product it might be a while before I get my hands on one. I'm not so keen to buy another ashdown, for reasons I wont go into details here. Anyone have any experience of the TC stuff or GK digital amps?

I've really valued reading through this thread as I'm in a similar boat. My Ashdown RC500 evo ii has died a death and is beyond economical repair (needs new PSU and it's cooked half the transistors on the board). I have a Sansamp Bass VT and use a trex bass fuzz and tend to have a slightly overdriven sound pretty much all the time onto a full on fuzz through a schroeder 410l. I need to get a new head but don't have a huge budget to play with. I've been looking at a lightweight heads but have been a bit disappointed with the overall heft of some of the amps I've tried before. They just haven't had the same big chunky natural low end of the Ashdown which I really loved. However I don't want to get anything as heavy and I don't want a hifi esque tone. I've been eyeing up the new sansamp VT 500. It's appealing as I'm used to the tone of the pre-amp pedal that's been in my chain for years. If I get one I can also sell the pre-amp pedal too for £100ish. Are there any other contenders for less than £500? Am I asking too much for this budget? I play in a really loud 3 piece with a big hitting drummer which doesn't help! Any advice is much appreciated.

Was the the MIM with the new pickups in it? That was a very decent bass!

I know someone who had a firearms license (he used to keep shotguns) and he would keep all his music gear locked up in the secure cupboard he had. His excuse was that legally he was the only person who was allowed entry into the room! He had loads of stuff! He would also only buy guitars in certain colours and rotate the 1 or 2 he had in the house. Genius! His wife never looked at them closely enough to realise he had different ones out every other week as they were all the same colour!

A special piece of music written and performed by the guitarist and drummer in my band :-)

Are they really going to be selling Sandbergs at £800-£850? That's going to screw over the UK distributor who has worked really hard to build the brand over here.

I know the feeling. I play in a band called 'Heights', a year after our first gig another band appear with the same name! Rubbish! Annoying but we are VERY different sounding so we move in different circles. Not been in issue for a while really.

As an update to my friends order I posted about earlier, it has arrived! After threatening legal action for the umpteenth time a crushed, poorly packaged and protected box turned up. Inside was an amp cover, for the wrong size!!!! It's about 5cm too big all the way round. He has given up trying to deal with them and has decided to try and make some use of it. You can just about grab the handle through the cutaway on the top but still not ideal. It does prove that there is someone working away at the company at the present time though which might be useful for folks here chasing orders.

If you are willing to trek to Wokingham then a good pal of mine Jay runs a place called www.therhoom.co.uk just outside of Hurst/Twyford. It is busy in the evenings but you can check the calenders for each of the 4 studios on the website to save you the hassle of calling in. Studio's 2 and 3 are the best sounding I think. We originally built studio 1 as we got fed up with the quality and price of the local competition then Jay took it on as a business for other bands and has built it up over the years since. A lot of the more successful/high profile Reading area bands use it regularly, worth a shot!

My sole bass is an all parts build that sounds and plays great. I bought it secondhand so didn't assemble it myself but have played around with different pickups and string choices. The quality is great overall, body grain looks good, neck and fret work excellent. The guitarist in my band has just put together a tele based around warmoth parts and the quality and workmanship is incredible. I think there is a lot to be said in putting something together yourself from sourced parts.

I've had this before with a Jap P bass I had a while ago. After 10 minutes or so of playing (without digging in hard) it just kept going out of tune. I spent some time with a tech who determined that the neck wasn't flexing when tuning up, the strings weren't slipping at the tuners, the tuners themselves were stable, turned out it was the nuts slots which were trapping the windings of the strings. This can really be a problem if you do a lot of vibrato/string bending. If the string is bent and the windings lodge in the nut then when you bend back down the string stays trapped because of the winding which has been caught and doesn't return to pitch. This is one of those annoying things that can really only be down to a number of potential causes. Best to try and systematically eliminate them one by one till you find what's causing the problem. Best of luck!

The seller does state it is a consignment instrument with price on request. I'm guessing there is a more reasonable price he has in mind and is trying to encourage an off ebay purchase once he engages in a dialogue with someone. I played one of these once and didn't think much of it either!

Instrumental prog rock! I find the TI Jazz flats have plenty of bite and can cut through as well as rounds, at least in my musical context.

This was my first experience of this show and I had a fun day out! The masterclasses were excellent. Guy Pratt was typically hilarious, Wojtek was terrifying, the surprise for me was Andy Irvine. His videos for Warwick irritate the hell out of me but he gave a really engaging, passionate lesson. I think I took more away from that 40 minute session than anyone else I saw. The main hall was a mixed bag throughout the day. There were plenty of moments when I really had to whack the earplugs in but it really wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. One frustrating bit was seeing Yolanda Charles on the elixir stand properly grooving away with a live drummer but her vocals were completely inaudible. I got to meet/catch up with the guys at Simms, John East (in his english professor brown coat again), the two Daves from Aguilar, folks from Yamaha, ashdown, goto, westside, lots of guys who I haven't seen for ages which was cool. Yamaha had a great stand with pretty much the whole bass range on display. Everything from the RBX's to the signature Jap made stuff. The Fender stand wasn't great. The colossus in the bass world had very few instruments on show for such a big company, I usually see more choice in the bigger dealers which was a shame. They had a decent array of some of their valve amps which is something you dont typically see but I would have expected a good 20-25 basses at least. The Warwick stand had some great stuff and it was laid out really well. Plenty of space to move between the instruments. Just a shame that they have priced themselves out of the market for the most part in the UK. The quality of the German made stuff was fantastic but then you see the 3-4-5k + price tags. Didn't think much of the WA300/600 but then again it's near impossible to try stuff out in an environment like that. The Andy Baxter stand had some amazing looking instruments but the overall display was very rough and ready. He was just hanging the basses from the stand using wire round the headstocks with plenty overlapping/touching each other. That sort of thing annoys the hell out of me. He had more vintage gear in one place than I think I have ever seen but it would really put me off seriously buying one. Great to see the guys at bassgear being so busy over the day too. Having a stand outside of the main hall was a very good call. It did feel a lot more relaxed and the headphones only rule made it possible to have a conversation right on the stand even with 3-4 guys tying stuff out. Overall I would say the show was a real success, it's not every day you get into a lift and a beaming Nathan Watts walks in :-)

G&L have always been regarded as the superior brand to Fender in terms of consistency, build quality etc but the second-hand value is a pittance. Fender is just the brand most people aspire to. If you decide to go with G&L it's really worth looking around as you can pick up ridiculous secondhand bargains. If you buy new, don't expect to get back much more than half of what you paid for it! At least with Fender you have a solid second-hand price if you decide to move it on.

I think it's capped at £75 for private sellers, so you don't pay more if your item sells for anything over £750. For business sellers it's 10% of the total regardless which is a right pain in the backside!

Should be 10% of the final value. If the buyer uses paypal then a further 3.4%. If you log into ebay, go to my ebay select the listing, then edit the listing at the very bottom it should show you the final value fee.