Doctor J

Dreadful. Utterly dreadful, but at least they can tour for another couple of years before anyone notices.

It's a bit of a gamble, for sure, getting the good stuff. When it comes to... ehhh... mint Streetwood, you've got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” I hear they're good for punk.

A taut string is basically a straight line. Hold the E string down at the first fret and last fret and observe the gap between the bottom of the string and the tops of the frets along the neck. Repeat the process on the treble side with the G string. Do you notice any difference between the two sides?

You don't need a 5-string to try a longer scale, the Yamaha TRBii is a 35" scale 4 string and would be well under your budget. I can't say a noticed a huge difference when I had one and am back using a 34" scale ESP jazz tuned ADGC. edit -> bear in mind the patron saint of low tuning (and many of his flock) uses a 33.25" scale Rickenbacker

"Dear Customer" If your name isn't specified, stick it in the bin. Edit -> Now that I've read the rest of it, tell them to keep the money and spend it on English lessons.

Nice 🤘

No. Like any large scale manufacturer they have diversified production locations to accommodate different budgets. There are plenty of Japanese models still, their high-end offerings like Prestige and J-Custom and are, generally, exceptionally well conceived and designed instruments.

I love the colour but the pickup move is an abomination. Aside from the fugly black rectangle, the pickup positioning is the great thing about the Passion.

Thoughts and prayers for any of the young people whose life this is the soundtrack to.

Interesting. Loose Lips were from California too, according to this, and their singer was in another band called The Rip-Offs 🤷🏻‍♂️ http://grunnenrocks.nl/bands/l/looselips.htm

It should be on the neck plate.

Isn't it clear?

Not quite the complete picture. Add shipping and then calculate the VAT and import duty on that figure. Bottom line is anything bought in the EU from the UK is now 25% more expensive than market value and vice-versa.

It's not pay-to-play, it's pay-to-possibly-be-put-on-a-list-to-be-considered-maybe-for-a-support-slot

One they hopefully never have the money to record.

It's country music, the artist is supposed to be broke and miserable.

Embrace the tragedy. Put a sticker with a spelling mistake on.

They continually refine what they do and don't allow themselves to get stuck in a rut, like most Japanaese companies, a very different business model to the regurgitators.

Japanese Ibanez have been consistently superb. The old basses are very different to what they offer now but in no way better... or worse, for that matter.

It'll be full of Gibson branded tat, it's not about selling guitars at all, anymore. They're trying to position themselves as a "lifestyle brand" like Hard Rock Cafe, Harley Davidson or any other business you see dopes paying crazy money for the privilege of advertising and associating themselves with the logo. It'll be clothes, umbrellas, stools, fridges, ashtrays and any other overpriced crap you can stencil a label on. Bleed authentic, as that creepy guy said in the video. Coming soon, for all your overpriced merch needs, the Warwick Wigwam, the Orange Outhouse, the Marshall Mausoleum and the Fender Fold-up Bed. Buy, buy, buy!

To show the needless silliness of it all, there was a very nice ACG (is there any other kind?) for sale in Greece and advertised here, shortly after it all came into effect. I was very interested in it, but beaten to having the cash to buy it by a few days. A few months later, it showed up here again in an ad placed by the buyer who was in the UK. He was selling at a very fair price, given what he had paid plus shipping and had paid import duty and VAT too, but the prospect of paying tax and import duty again on top of all that, to get it back out of the UK, on a bass which hadn't changed a bit in the few months, brought a nicely priced instrument into the realms of completely uncompetitively priced, and it was all just in additional taxes.

I bet it'll have big windows.

Each player's finger gunk would result in a different composition of bio-crud which, surely, would result in different tonal characteristics?

It has killed the FS section, for me, to the extent that I rarely bother looking anymore. Aside from adding 25% to the price of everything, I think often sellers are less inclined to go through the paperwork hassle, too, and ship outside the UK. I think there's validity in a section in FS for EU-based ads but perhaps not an appetite to create another sub-section in there?