Cato

I think all the interesting Kramer bass stuff got killed off after the company went bankrupt and Gibson bought the brand some time in the 90s. I'm not sure if Gibson still own it, but these days the only new Kramer branded instruments I've seen seem to be entry level to mid range super strat type guitars.

A few years ago I decided to try a new brand of strings every month. Amongst others I went through GHS boomers, Fender nickels, Dunlop Superbrights (should be banned under trades descriptions - they're average bright at best) and various others, both nickel and steel. When I got to stainless steel DR Hi Beams the search was over. I just prefer the feel and zing of steel roundwounds.

That's disappointing. I'd expect a company as big and as iconic as Fender to do a lot better in terms of customer service.

I've been considering starting a thread on Brexit vs Rickenbackers vs Robotuners just to see if it can provoke a bit more activity, but I think the bottom line is that there's a kind of vicious circle going on where people don't hang around there much because it's so quiet.

Same here. The Stadium Arcadium album and the subsequent gig I went to at the Coventry Ricoh ended my love affair with the Chillies which began back with the Mother's Milk album. It was especially gutting because I'd seen them at the Slaine Castle gig a few years before and they were brilliant. At Coventry they were barely going through the motions. I heard later that John Frusciante was only still playing in the band at that point to fulfil contractual obligations.

I've got a first generation V7 fretless which on the whole I like a lot. My fretless intonation is so bad that I'm not really sure how well the tuners keep tune although they don't feel particularly smooth. I've never been keen on the bridge, there's nothing wrong with it as such, it just feels very flimsy compared to my other basses. I'd certainly expect a much higher standard of hardware on a 1k+ instrument

It's not unusual for bass players to go through multiple preamps in their signal chain. For example if I put my active Precision deluxe through a B1on or Stomp multi effects the signal is already running through two preamps before it gets to the amp which also has a preamp stage. There's also an argument that every effects pedal in the chain could technically be described as a preamp in it's own right in as far as it's changing the nature of the signal before it reaches the amplification stage, in which case some people are actually going through maybe 5 or more preamps. I think the general rule is that if the amp and cab don't sound like they're struggling with the input signal then it's probably fine.

I will give a 5 or 6 a proper try one day. I keep putting it off because I have a few bad habits which I know will cause me problems on a wider neck. Not only do I play with my thumb over the neck, that thumb is also an intrinsic part of my muting technique. Still I'll get round to it one day.

Fücking Meercats, up to their usual tricks.

That looks like it comes with it's own emergency Frey Bentos pie.

I'm not sure I understand what's being inferred here. Are there people on here who are fanboys for certain brands? Absolutely, this is a site frequented by people who are more than averagely interested in bass gear. Are there people on here who are somehow gaining something financially or otherwise by trying to influence others to purchase specific brands of gear? I seriously doubt it and I doubt anyone would be successful if they did try it.

The Mickey Shitenbacker thread was quite entertaining.

I might be wrong but I think they might have misjudged their market. the V7s are popular because they punch well above their weight at the bottom of the midrange price band. I'm not sure people see the Sire brand as £1000+ instruments.

I can't really remember but it would have been something by the Ramones maybe 'Sheena is Punk Rocker' or 'Cretin Hop'? I pretty much learnt to play bass by playing along to the 'Rocket to Russia' album.

I spent a good few hours last night just playing with chaining together various reverb effects. I'm not sure the resulting almost choral effect is of any practical use but it was a lot of fun.

Andertons definitely seem to err on the side of caution when it comes to packing. My Helix Stomp, which comes in box about the size of a shoe box, was shipped by Andertons inside another box which can't have been much under a cubic meter in volume packed in with what must have been a couple of trees worth of scrunched up paper. They did the same thing with the Boss RC30 I ordered a while back. It is a bit baffling, but ,when it comes to gear , I reckon absurd levels of over packaging are preferable to the alternative.

Just makes it that much sweeter when they finally arrive...

Coming on for $100000 of orders in about an hour? It's surely got to be one of Music Man's best days ever.

There's a lot of love for ToP on Basschat. I'd never heard of them before I joined up here, now I have pretty much their whole back catalogue on one of my favourite playlists.

Seems similar to G&L Kiloton in terms of it being a passive Stingray. The Kiloton is a lot prettier to my eyes though.

I think there's going to be a fair few of us waiting for your thoughts on the Mono Bass. The demo videos sound fantastic but they're obviously not going to mention any problems with tracking or latency.

I did read somewhere online that the tracking issue with the synths can be improved to some extent by introducing some compression into the effects chain, but I've not tried it yet. I sort of thought the Helix would be the last pedal I ever bought but I'm seriously considering getting something like a Future Impact. Weirdly the reverbs on the Helix, which I absolutely love, have also got me thinking about the Strymon Big Sky as well.

The only disappointing thing on the Stomp is the synths. The tracking is so bad on most of them that for all intents and purposes they're completely unusable. One of the synth effects (I forget which one) can't even be relied on to reproduce the correct note, which has the interesting but not particularly useful effect of changing everything you play into a semi random series of unrelated notes. In every other area the effects and amp sims are absolutely first class.

If that's a genuine "all original" '54 P bass then not only has it never been played, it's spent the last 60 odd years locked up in a darkened climate controlled vault. It looks like it's just come out of the factory. It's surely got to be a fake.