Russ

The best Ashdown cab I ever had was the BP1510, with 2 10"s and a 15" in a tall-ish enclosure. They haven't made it in quite some time now though. I've been running mine into a Barefaced BT2 and I have no complaints. I did get to try Ashdown's Rootmaster 2x12" cab from a few years back, and it sounded good, but couldn't handle all that much power on its own. I'd quite like to try a pair of them and see what that sounds like. I've just got hold of a RM800 Evo III, and, sadly, it's the first piece of Ashdown gear I've had a problem with - something's up with the input gain (not sure if it's the knob or something else), so that's going to have to go back. I've had the original and Evo II versions (the Evo II is my workhorse) and never had any issues, so it's a bit disappointing. Their stuff is usually absolutely bulletproof in my experience. Should have held out for the new UK-produced version, really.

It's pretty, but whoever decided to use a cloth grille obviously doesn't have cats and are unaware that speaker cabs with cloth grilles are excellent scratching posts. I wish they offered a metal grille as an option, especially if they're making them in-house now. I recently bought a new RM800 EVO III - the input gain control is borked and I'm going to have to send it off to get replaced. First time I've ever had a piece of Ashdown gear be unreliable, and I've been using them on and off (mostly on) for 24 years now. I should have held out for the new UK-made one!

Ooo. Just watched Erik Arko's video about it and I'm impressed, although he was using it with a bunch of other pedals. I'd want a standalone unit and just use what's in it, probably with an expression pedal. QC users - are there any good models of the MXR DynaComp and Bass DI+ out there? Those are kinda the two essential pieces of my effects chain, and if I can get them in the QC, I'm all in for it. They're not in the list of built-in effects, so where might one look for them?

I think their Jazz/FSO-type basses come in a bit cheaper, £3k or so, but an Original or Flamboyant will be £3.5k upwards.

I think a basic Sei starts at about £3500 these days, and upwards from there. It's still only a £400 deposit though - he's kept that price the same since the 90s! And you'll have 18-ish months to save up the rest. The two 6-strings I had been planning on ordering would have ended up costing about £5k a piece, so I've had to shelve that idea for the time being.

Not an ex-user - still have, and love, my BT2. I have found myself in a slightly weird place lately though - I've rediscovered my love of 15" cabs thanks to a huge Peavey 2x15" at our rehearsal room. Nothing shakes a room like 15"s. Barefaced have something for almost everyone, but I do wish they still built a variant of the original "Big One". That was the first BF cab I ever played through and I loved it. Maybe Alex will have a brainwave about something new and cool he can do with a 15".

Other manufacturers do basses with 3+1 headstocks. Although, I suppose, most of them don't look (or sound) quite as much like the original as the Sire Z-series does...

Loving the new offset F-series. Would be nice if they offered them in more than one finish though, lovely as it is. Curious as to how much they weigh, and whether they'll be available in fretless. No Z-series updates? Would have been nice to see some more colours, and maybe the original headstock design (the 3+1 that was on the original prototypes) instead of the (still fugly) standard Sire one.

It started off as me trying to find a sound something between Tony Levin (circa Thrak-era King Crimson) and Justin Chancellor, which gradually morphed into its own thing to accommodate my tastes and playing technique. I used to be a fairly heavy-handed player, but I'm playing with a far lighter touch these days but I still want things to sound big, so I'm using two compressors in series, Levin-style, to control the dynamics, then, in terms of EQ, notching out that boxy-sounding 800Hz frequency range and gently boosting low and high mids. I also mostly play a 6-string these days, so I've had to adjust the EQ and compression to accommodate the high C so it doesn't sound brittle compared to the others. I also have an alternate version of this sound for fretless where I don't dial out the 800Hz range, since that's where a lot of the "mwah" lives in the frequency spectrum. I'm currently using a Headrush Flex Prime for effects - not a popular choice for bass (it doesn't have many bass-specific effects, amps or IRs), but it's small, powerful, easy to use and does everything I need it to do. It also came with the ReValver amp modelling software, which I used to model my previous Zoom B3n-based tone, directly from the pedal, so I had a good starting point to go from there.

That's what I was reading too. Fred and some of the other guys from Peavey are regulars over there and actually did quite a bit of Q&A with Trace enthusiasts while they were developing the TE-1200. I think an 800W version of the head is the sweet spot - sell it for under a grand, then make some cabs that you don't need an enormous car and roadies to move around, and they'll shift a lot more of them. Assuming they can sort their distribution out, obviously...

Yep - that’s been one of my bugbears with it. I tried to do a 4-cable effects setup, and having to plug in and use the footswitch to switch it in and out just adds to that copious amount of floor spaghetti. As well as the input gain thing, the tacky rack ears with the squished text, and the non-padded gig bag with no shoulder strap!

Possibly. Peavey are marketing it as a pro amp (complete with extremely expensive speaker cabs with built-in “road cases”), with the much less powerful Elf as the consumer-level version. They need something in between, but I’m not sure they’re selling the numbers of the TE-1200 to make the business case for it. Also, Peavey’s distribution in the UK is pretty bad these days. It used to be that literally every music shop in the UK had a big pile of Peavey gear, and every rehearsal room had a TKO or TNT combo in the corner next to the drums. Not any more. They’re not nearly as ubiquitous as they used to be. Peavey has never been cool, but it’s always been solid, reliable (if a bit vanilla-sounding) gear that will still be in full working order for the cockroaches to play through after a nuclear war! I love mine - it’s got a “weight” to it that most Class D heads don’t have. It doesn’t sound like a Class D, it sounds much closer to a proper old Trace with a big toroidal transformer. I have a few small-ish issues with it, but it’s never given me any problems and I hope Peavey continue to do good things with the brand - it’s got a legacy that it needs to live up to.

Maybe give the Ampeg Venture a go? They can nail the SVT sound (and the B-15 sound) and they go all the way from a little 300W version up to a 1200W beast. Personally, as a former Ampeg user, I'm wary, just because Ampeg's last range of Class D heads had some major reliability issues, but the Ventures are supposed to be much better. But, once bitten and all that. Failing that, Ashdown. Maybe Aguilar. I've been using an Ashdown RM800 for years and it's been reliable, sounds great and, if I want to go down that slightly fuzzy road, it can do that, although its character is a bit different to an SVT-3.

Standard 80s-style P-bass tone, to my ears. Amp mostly clean, compression, bit of a midrange boost, hint of chorus. The guy is obviously miming in the video (nothing is plugged in!) and I concur with BassAdder60 that the recording sounds like a pick is being used.

It's been an interesting year. Productive in terms of songwriting and recording. Got four new tracks down and ready to release (we've put two out already). Looking into making a video for one of them. We haven't gigged this year though, although we have one lined up in January. There's been various health issues in the band (drummer injured himself more than once, guitarist diagnosed with (benign) tumour in his intestine and has been receiving treatment) so that's meant having to take a few months of the year off. Hopefully 2026 will be a bit more productive, both in terms of gigging and getting some new material out there. In terms of personal music goals, I'm taking some time to learn how to do some fully-fledged composition and scoring stuff, kinda inspired by the fact that Hans Zimmer is a self-taught composer who has risen to the top of his profession. Early days, but it's fun. I've also been working a bit on my acoustic guitar playing and songwriting, although I've just got rid of two of my acoustic instruments - my employment with a well-known acoustic guitar manufacturer recently came to an end as a result of the f**king tariffs and them having to downsize significantly, and I'm a bit bitter about it - ended up removing any trace of them from my house, including the two instruments I got at employee prices, and even down to T-shirts and picks. So I've gone back to my nice old Lag and Ovation acoustics. My hopes for 2026 are relatively high, but I'm cautious.