Russ

Why couldn't they, at the very least, make the curve of the lettering match the curve of the headstock? Looks ridiculously tacky and cheap. Call me shallow, but that's almost a dealbreaker on its own for me. I won't buy a Sire on principle because I think the headstock is ugly, and these new MetroExpresses are no better with the tacky, misaligned decal.

While we're talking about moody prog metal, if you've never heard them, check out Kauan - a Russian band who sing in Finnish! Wonderfully atmospheric stuff and fantastic use of strings.

Yep, they have a big hefty dollop of 80s influence. Danny's voice is straight from the Simon Le Bon school of singing, for a start - that whole earnest baritone thing. Alex never misses an opportunity to play some slap. And Jan Hammer would wholeheartedly approve of the keytar. There's footage on Youtube of a festival set they did, with Alestorm also on the bill - a keytar battle ensued.... that's something I'd never seen before and am unlikely to ever see again!

Maybe fellow Perth proggers Voyager? They're fantastic. They also nearly represented Australia in Eurovision last year! They have a brilliant bass player in Alex Canion too. Gets awesome tones out of his Mayones basses.

They're standard 40DC size, so yep, EMGs (or anything in that size) should drop right in. Remember that EMGs are active pickups and will need power, so if you're planning on retaining the stock Ibanez circuit, you'll have to wire them up properly.

Is anyone aware of companies who make anodised coloured hardware (tuners, bridges, strap buttons, etc) for bass? I was looking at Per Nilsson's new Strandberg guitars, with their coloured hardware, and was hoping something similar might be available for bass! Any ideas?

I don't know the guy's name, but the singer who was on their Queen medley video was phenomenal - if you closed your eyes, you'd swear it was actually Freddie. Benni Jud is fantastic too - he's also a really good singer. And I love his Marleaux Votan bass.

It's Tom Jenkinson's band - of course, he's better known as Squarepusher. I have two Bongos - fretted and fretless 5-string HH models. The fretted one is candy apple red, older, heavier and has the older design hardware. The fretless is purple, a couple of years old, weighs practically nothing and mwahhhs like there's no tomorrow. Absolutely love 'em.

Spaffer and his cronies have absolutely no interest in the performing arts or in doing anything to help. Just look at the whole Fatima ad campaign from a couple of months back.

The biggest competition for these basses is the likes of Sire (who are also burdened with the issue of an ugly headstock), so I'd imagine that's what Roger has benchmarked these against. He's not exactly going out of his way to promote them though. There is not a single mention of them on sadowsky.com and there seems to be very little talk about them elsewhere - there's no hype, basically. The Sire stuff was very well hyped before it came out, and were sold out and backordered from day 1 due to their popularity.

I'm sure Roger is noting that people don't like the headstock logo and will do something about it. Warwick also have form for this - people hated the huge Rockbass headstock logo when they first used it, and it's now been relegated to the truss rod cover. G&L did the same with their Tribute instruments, replacing the ugly, single-colour Tribute logo with the proper G&L one. It wouldn't be half as bad if the Metro Express logo actually lined up with the line of the bottom of the headstock!

On another note, can you believe dUg is 70? That's one well-preserved bloke.

Congrats! I have some personal issues with Bernie regarding his politics and will not be putting any business his way in future, but, as a former GB owner, there's no denying he makes some beautiful instruments. The Merlin is a stunning design. I prefer his older headstock design though, with the notch in the corner - the new one is more like his old Lowden/Goodfellow instruments.

Whatever happened to Toasted? Back in the day, he had a lovely Celinder J-Update just like that one. Maybe he sold it to The Gallery?

Yep, the website's pretty much 20 years old and hasn't really been updated in all that time. I'd love a graphite neck on my Bongos, but the Status ones are too short - Bongos have two-octave necks. Moses used to do a drop-in replacement Bongo graphite neck, but they've gone out of business now.

At this point, Trujillo has been in Metallica longer than Newsted was (he's been in Metallica for 17 years now, Newsted was in the band for 14 years). I guess he just hasn't made his presence known in the music - there's very little in the way of exposed bass parts in the albums they've put out since he joined, and he didn't play at all on St. Anger. Which is a shame, as you rightly say, Trujillo is an absolute monster bass player - check out his work with Infectious Grooves, Suicidal Tendencies and Mass Mental for some absolutely immense playing.

It is an active bass, and it has a 5-position switch with a bunch of presets, rather than being passive with just volume and tone. That might be cool if you had a way to edit the presets via an app or something, like the Game Changer guitar they came out with a while back, but I don't think it does.

If they want to sell any to anyone except (rich) bass-playing Dream Theater fanboys and fangirls, they are going to have to do something to impress beyond sticking Myung's name on the back of the headstock. The two-tone fingerboard thing, in this design, is dull - there's so much more they could have done with that idea. Look at some of the 'melted' designs that the likes of Conklin and Fodera have done over the years. It's not like Ernie Ball don't have the woodworking skills to do stuff like this, especially for an exclusive instrument such as a Myung signature.

I have two Bongo 5s - the 17.5mm string spacing is tight enough to begin with, I can't imagine what it'd be like to have to stick another string in that amount of space. Maybe he's got really little fingers or something. A Bongo with 19mm string spacing would pretty much be my dream instrument. Also, the whole EQ thing - one of the defining features of the Bongo is its massively versatile 4-band EQ. Without that, it's lost a big chunk of its character. I'll reserve final judgement until I've tried one, but colour me unimpressed so far.

More or less. I'm sure he has a perfectly respectable covers, blues or jazz band somewhere.

Didn't he used to write for Bassist magazine back in the day? I vaguely recall meeting him at The Gallery at one point. Not unpleasant, but not the friendliest of chaps.

The DBS range was very well regarded, despite being huge and heavy. I think Chris from Muse still uses his DBS rig. The MB stuff they put out later was decent but apparently quite unreliable. And, of course, the VBS and Lemmy stuff was great, but incredibly expensive and very niche. I guess the problem was that bass stuff was always secondary for them. In some ways it's better that they have the Eden marque to use for bass gear, although a 'Marshall Edition' amp, with distortion, etc, like the Blackstar one, would be very cool.

There's actually some great Class D stuff coming out of the UK. Ashdown's Rootmaster series are excellent, and Laney's Nexus range are fantastic. Not sure Trace counts as a British company anymore, but there's also the Elf. Just need Marshall to put something out now. I know they have Eden for all their bass stuff these days, but I would pay through the nose for the old DBS preamp section coupled with a big-powered Class D amp.

The combos sound great, nice to see they've done what they should have done in the first place and released a head. Looking forward to giving it a try. They've missed a trick with the cabs though - a single, smaller, full-range cab might have been a better fit, like a 2x12" or 1x15"+1x10" or something.

I bought one of those Brandoni/Eko bodies back in the 90s, took it up to The Gallery, and they transformed it into a rather nice Sei-alike for me. It's a great starting point for customisation. I wasn't much of a fan of that pine-esque finish though, so my one got refinished in transparent black and got to wear some Bartolini electronics and a Kahler. I still miss that bass.