Cato

Whatever the wrongs or rights of the situation I'm cynical enough to think that Mr Sapko probably isn't too upset at the significant boost to his own account is likely to get from exposing a more famous 'influencer'. Social media is just as grubby and cut throat as any other part of the entertainment industry, probably more so because of the number of competitors all trying to grab the limited attention span of an easily bored audience.

That last Bax sale was in my targeted advertising a lot and the low prices on items like the Tom Delong strat, the EVH guitars and others set off my alarm bells because no one else had those items on sale with £500 off. I actually wondered if scammers had cloned their website, if it's too good to be true and all that.. Guess it was just a desperate fire sale to get in some revenue to stave off the creditors a bit longer

My understanding is that US companies who manufacture outside the US are one of the main targets. I was reading somwthing earlier about US running shoe manufacturers, who dominate the global market but who almost exclusively manufacture in Asia, being amongst those at the very sharp end of the tariffs in the US market. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/us-tariffs-vietnam-would-be-blow-nike-other-sportswear-brands-2025-04-01/ But it's early days & I'm not sure anyone, posibly including those in the Whitehouse, really knows how this is going to work yet

Not sure about that. I think it may depend on whether the basses are imported into the US before they are exported to British buyers. There's not a lot of detail yet on exactly how the tariffs will be implemented or whether there will be an exemption for foreign buyers in the above scenario. Might be a while before we find out.

I've never played one but I've been interested in PJD's skinny string offerings for a while. They're manufactured in the UK. They only seem to offer 1 bass model at the moment but there's a few pickup options available. https://www.pjdguitars.com/product-page/st-john-bass Just under the £1500

If it wasn't for the £200 shipping I'd be very tempted to get a JD1 and maybe see if I could get a preamp fitted at somepoint down the road. At £393 they look like a bargain. At closer to £600 not so much.

Bass £393 Shipping to UK £182 In case anyone was wondering.

It's a fine line. One of my favourite bands in the 90s was Carter USM who I saw a few times as a duo. Their set up was live guitars and vocals everything else was pre recorded backing tracks, but they still had a great live energy in their performances. At the other end of the spectrum I saw Kiss live on the Unholy tour, which to be fair, seemed to be mostly live but when they played 'God gave Rock n Roll to you' not only were there backing tracks but I'm pretty sure there was also some miming along to perfect vocal harmonies and the whole performance had a sort of 'Top of the Pops' feel to it which stuck out like a sore thumb in the rest of the set. I couldn't really say why the Carter thing worked for me while the Kiss thing didn't.

Wouldn't be a huge shock if true Just annecdotally from recent posts on BC from disgruntled customers something hasn't seemed right with Bax for a while. Their recent Trustpilot reviews make interesting reading too, it's all either glowing 5 star or angry 1 star reviews

I really like the look of the unfortunately named single pickup 4 string.

I know Cort does stuff for Ibanez and probably others in a similar price bracket , but, perhaps unfairly, I think a lot of people will be reluctant to part with £2k for an Indonesian Tobias branded Cort made bass. Assuming it is Cort of coursr?

Given the curren vogue for headless instruments, with several companies launching new lines in he last few years, it will be interesting to see if it has any effect on the prices of the original wave of headless instruments. In some ways Steinbergers, for example, have gone from being a bit of a historical curiosity that had a fairly brief moment in the 80s to being the grand daddies of a whole new lineage.

Broadly speaking more expensive basses 'feel' nicer to play, although obviously 'nicer' is subjective. I wouldn't necessarily expect a £1500 P or Jazz bass to sound radically different than a P or J costing half as much. One thing I have learnt over the years is that the answer to 'is a £2000 bass four times better than a £500 bass?' is generally 'no' but I would expect it to be more pleasant to play in multiple small ways such the feel of the controls, the finish on the neck, how smooth the tuners are etc. All those small details can add up to noticeably more pleasant playing experience over all Finally it's always worth considering buying used. £1500 should get you a lot of bass on the 2nd hand market

Unless something we don't know about has happened to his personal fortune then he surely doesn't need the money, he must just really enjoy thinking up new ways of taking cash off his fans.

When I started going to Glastonbury in the 90s there was a real, dangerous dark underbelly to the festival. Muggings were rife, especially later on at night when people who had over indulged were easy prey. There was no real attempt to stop people getting in over or under the fences and no bag checks on people entering with tickets so zero barriers to contraband, territorial fights between rival drug dealers happened every year. It was only in '94 when 4 people got shot that the organisers accepted there was a problem and began to make efforts to crack down on the issues. Don't get me wrong I went every year it was on in the 90s and greatly enjoyed it but the idea that it used to be some kind of peace and love fluffy hippy paradise before they sold out to corporate interests is a myth, or at least if it was ever true that era was before my time. You can argue about the line up but in terms of basic safety I reckon it's much improved today from what it was back in my day

Not sure about Franz Ferdinand but I think Snow Patrol, Scissor Sisters and Supergrass are all only fairly recently reformed after calling it a day several years ago.

I suppose the Gallup bass isn't to awful once you get used to the 'not quite a Thunderbird' aesthetic. But I'll take some convincing on the Smith guitar. To me it looks like a cartoon guitar that's been squashed and is midway through popping back into shape.

When I think of Schecter I tend to think of slightly dated black spikey guitars and basses and various 'super strat' models that are unambiguously aimed at the metal players. I do know that they've diversified somewhat in recent years into more vanilla Fender based designs but I still tend to think of them in the same bracket as ESP or Jackson in that their products aren't really aimed at me. Even The Cure endorsement hasn't really shifted that perception although it would probably help if the Smith guitar and Gallup bass weren't so odd looking.

I'm not sure why Fender get singled out for lack of innovation. I don't think there have been any major innovations in bass design that have actually stuck from anyone since the late 70s/80s when active electronics and headless instruments entered mainstream production. Since then everything seems to be tweaking the same , often Fender inspired, designs. The only other major change in the landscape of electric guitars and basses I can think of in the last 50 or so years has been the dramatic improvement in the quality of budget instruments over the last decade or two.

This interesting, it's skinny stringers again, but even Andertons are sayng that Squier Classic Vibe is superior to the Fender Standard.

As I understand it Generative AI works by scanning a source ( usually the internet but it can be a specific database) for information/ images that fit the keywords in the description it's provided and combining information from those sources to create a new image. At no point does it actually understand any of that information itself. ie. It doesn't know what a bass guitar is, let alone how it's components work, hence the obvious innacuracies in many of the images.

Just a heads up that this is doing the rounds on social media again. It look like a competition where a well known guitar shop ( the one I saw was PMT) is holding a competition to win the chance to buy a Marshall bluetooth speaker for £9.99. I'd already seen warnings about this exact scam last summer but today on Instagram was the first time I've seen it in the flesh and at first glance it looks like a genuine post from PMT, so I thought I'd spread the warning here on BC, just in case. Why social media companies are still allowing a known scam ad format to run on their platform is another matter...

Gibson went through a period of innovation fairly recently that included the infamous robo tuners and the Firebird X 'smart guitar'. It wasn't exactly a roaring success for them. I suspect it will be a long time before they stray from the tried and tested path again.

Total unfounded speculation but without the big volume wheel the Go looks less like the Fender Mustang headphone amp. I wonder if there was a 'cease and desist' involved in the sudden halting of the original run? Great to see it back anyway, mine is still my go to practice set up.

Give it 40 years and people will be talking about early Indonesian Fenders the same way they talk about Japanese Squiers.....