lemmywinks

I love that guy, he just always seems so excited to be playing bass. or even being in the same room as a bass. I'm pretty sure you could send him an email that just said "bass" and he'd squeal with laughter. He's got another Chinese Fauxdera too, I think he's quite handy at fettling basses though (he did a restoration of an old KS) so he can do any work himself.

Ssshhhh, it's the secret Fodera woodland timber fairies which hand select every piece of wood when it is a mere sapling, then play their magic flute as it grows so it produces the correct timbre when it becomes a body blank. But don't tell anybody, they'll all be doing it then. Besides, Shuker hasn't even got the frets and pickups in straight on that bass, the nitwit.

To be honest I don't care what a Fodera costs new, if they want to charge that and people are prepared to pay it then good on them. People pay many times more for inanimate objects to decorate their homes, at least a Fodera is a functional instrument albeit a bit naff looking (so is that Maruszczyk Sputnik thing IMO). Just don't try and justify it with silly excuses like astronomical rent prices, super secret wood selection processes by magical forest fairies or amazing expertise that no other luthier can offer. They are just one boutique brand turning out high end instruments among many others, with the high profile comes a high price and that's totally fine. If you want one then by all means get the cheque book out, you only live once.

One free with every purchase!

Here's a Shuker which with all the fancy options will likely set you back over £4k, a higher spec and more striking instrument than the £15k Fodera for me:

They aren't doing anything different from basically every other custom builder, all of them have some exceptional wood to choose from and select nice pieces for each individual build. I think you're giving them far too much credit for doing what boutique builders are supposed to do - they get nice blanks of wood from their chosen supplier, there's no special mystic selection process.

I don't think there is any debate that brexit has already had a tremendously negative effect on our economy and it's going to get worse - much worse. Sorry to hear about your job tauzero.

That's not how any of that works.

Warwick > Spector though.........

Hahaha I never noticed that! There's some superficially nice looking basses on AliExpress but you don't know what horrors await when you try and play the thing. Check out this Warwick Infinette knockoff, one F-hole appears to have been lined with newspaper and the other has had loads of old wiring shoved in it:

Yeah I have no doubt it would be awful, they will copy anything though. There's Alembic, Ken Smith, Mayones - even Lemmy's custom Rick with all the engraving!

Yeah sure! https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Top-Quality-Natural-Wood-Color-5-Strings-Bass-Guitar-Golden-Hardware-Guitar-Maple-Fretboard-Free-Shipping/32953570895.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.82.73402147RxgfBl&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_4_10065_10068_10130_10547_319_317_10548_10696_10192_10190_453_10084_454_10083_10618_431_10307_10820_10301_10821_10303_537_536_10059_10884_10887_100031_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_53,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=97731b41-449d-4014-8517-e69771d8e847-13&algo_pvid=97731b41-449d-4014-8517-e69771d8e847

They cost that much because people will pay it, even though they look a bit gash.

With the shop I went it it sounded like they didn't have much choice - either display non-competitive prices and risk customers walking out to buy online or don't display any and risk customers walking out anyway. The manager of this store basically said they had an enforced minimum price to sell items at, it's a very good shop with extremely nice staff too.

Does it say in the manual? Alternatively a spectrum analyser phone app will probably be sufficient.

I had a conversation in a music shop a few years ago where the policy was also "ask at the till", the manager said it was because of enforced price fixing which he wasn't too happy with.

The tailpiece/string anchor is going to mercilessly destroy any gigbag you put the bass in:

Just the one which involves not spending a small fortune to replace already extremely nice equipment! Only bad news is the enhance LED no longer works on mine, should be easy enough to replace and the effect is still audible.

Thinking about potential preamps made me remember I had an old Joe Meek VC3 knocking around which for some reason I haven't thought about in ages, anyway plugged it into the QSC and it sounds absolutely killer. Very clear and lively with beautiful compression so I think I might take that to our next gig. It's only small (about the size of a big DI box) so won't take up much space. I have no idea when that circuit was designed but it still does the trick.

Thanks, the main interest for me is being able to try different preamps which would be an improvement on what I have now without the associated astronomical costs, hopefully in a package that is convenient to gig with - ie a smallish floor unit. For years now I've basically left the amp controls alone and used instrument specific preamps as my favourite sounds have always been bass straight to the desk and I wanted to recreate that. Just a little bit of eq and compression is all I use. I've never used any modelling units before (aside from early Line 6 guitar stuff which I didn't like) so I have no idea how they actually work. I assumed you'd be able to download/share profiles or is it a bit more regulated than that? Obviously I'm not expecting a Helix to be able to model them directly itself, I just thought there would be a plethora of preamp and compressor profiles to go through and pick what I liked.

Does it have profiles modelling specific high end studio preamps though? Because the profiling ability of the Kemper sounds great (basically nicking the capability of expensive hardware and keeping it on flash storage!) but that's not very practical for me. The new Helix Stomp is a much more affordable and practical option but the attraction for me is the capability to try a ton of high end preamps. EDIT- That was replying to Bridgehouse about the Helix btw.

I'm still using the Fishman Platinum Pro EQ which is a do everything pedal, can't fault it really. I did briefly look at the GK Plex and came close to buying it but the controls look a little convoluted for me, on the Fishman everything has its own knob and it doesn't have any extraneous features for me. I go bass - Fishman - QSC. Dead easy! I think if I was to look for anything else then something like EBS suggested above which can model different studio preamps would be the way to go. Does the Helix have these profiles available or is it just mainly guitar/bass amp modelling?

A few on eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142787292402 If any BB2 owners fancy getting the hacksaw out now is your chance!

Apparently 30% off as they're being discontinued, wonder how much they are or what Alex will replace them with. Would be interesting to see someone retrofit one into a BB2!

Incidentally what is the power amp used in the FR800, is this it? https://www.hypex.nl/product/psc2-400d/67