CameronJ

A thing of beauty. What was the build time?

So, in “the flesh” this is what charcoal burst looks like: ...and the same for black burst (albeit on flamed maple):

I think this statement sums up the entire debate. Fender aren’t trying to trick musicians into thinking this unit is a Kemper or a Helix. Or a Zoom multi. They sit in a totally different portion of the market.

For the record, if these effects were stellar then I’m sure people would go out of their way to adapt their pedalboard setups for them. The issue I have is that so far we have no sound demos - so all we have to go by is images of the pedals and specs available online. Neither the specs nor the images are enticing anyone to go out and buy these pedals without hearing them first...

I know...the insistence on 18v power is something which will only alienate more people. Would have been much smarter to have them run at 9v as standard but with the option to power them at 18v for increased headroom. There are pedals out there which offer this and it appeases the 9v masses whilst offering a little “boost” to those who have the ability to power pedals at 18v. There may well be people out there who are interested in these Ashdown pedals but decide it isn’t worthwhile since they’ll have to get a whole new power supply for their board, or run adapters to get them to work properly.

I was following the Talkbass thread a like while back and the pricing of the “affordable” range took some heat from members. It is indeed a vague word!

Like a phoenix from the ashes, B Social is back!

Ah, you may have hit the nail on the head there.

Janek has said there is very little money in having a signature bass. But even if there was, surely Fodera would have the bigger wallet than Mattisson! I think he just fell in love with the company after spending quite a bit of time hanging around with Henrik Linder and after getting to know the man behind Mattisson decided that was the direction he wanted to go in. I think Janek still loves his Foderas but has just decided to move on.

I agree with all of this, however anyone showcasing their products at NAMM should have the ability to do their product justice on camera, regardless of how $hite the interviewer may be. For me, Mark @ Ashdown was just as responsible for the poor interview. Also a tad baffled to see the B-Social amp on display at around 8:30 in the video. I thought they were axed? Or is that my imagination?

Not tried one but both Henrik Linder and Janek Gwizdala are Mattison players...which is a serious endorsement! I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on the used market though - where are you looking??

Drivel indeed. Grim.

I just think the curved end plate of the Vintage would complement the BBs body shape. The Kickass is rather agricultural looking but I’m sure will look great on some basses.

Yeah I hear you, I actually specced the charcoal first. Discovered the black accidentally! I do keep looking at the charcoal and going “hmmmmm...”

Hipshot Vintage!

Thanks gents, I think you’re right. I *want* to like the charcoal one more but in reality I prefer the black one. Looks cleaner. @Wilco I’m just playing around for now but I think the above photos are the best basses I’ve created on the configurator so far. 34” scale (though I was toying with 32” or even 30”), 19mm spacing, Hipshot hardware, abalone “M” logo, Delano Xtender pickup, passive, with a coil tap switch for series/parallel/single coil. A Tonestyler was a tempting option but I decided against it in the end. Comes in at ~£1500!

Tasty! Charcoal burst or black burst?

Well the DBird 5 just won best bass in show from MusicRadar at NAMM!

I’d love to see some of the Revstar colours make their way onto the basses. My absolute favourite colour in the range being “Steel Rust” And yes, that is an anodised aluminium pickguard.

+1 for OBBM. He can make pretty much anything you can think of. Fantastic quality too.

Outrageous prices for these basses!

Truth. Menu diving can be an incredibly uninspiring (and confusing) process at the best of times, let alone for a newbie. If I have the option of a unit with a “what you see is what you get” knob-per-function top panel, I’ll take it every time. There’s a reason why my pedal collection Has a very heavy bias toward set and forget analogue pedals - the Line 6 HX Stomp being a glaring exception but hats off to Line 6 for making great sounding products with a well designed UI which isn’t a pain in the balls to use. To Fender’s credit, they’re making sensible design decisions with their range of pedals. Features like the position indicators on each knob being backlit is very useful if playing on dark stages - and if you don’t like the backlit knobs, you can switch the lights off from the back panel! Everybody’s happy. Add to that selectable signal routing for the DI out and all top-mounted jacks (always welcome, especially on larger pedals) and it’s actually a pretty well thought out pedal. There are no glaring “mistakes” as far as I can tell. Obviously the quality of the drive and compressor sections remain to be seen...

Give it time, keep switching back and forth regularly at home. Before long it won’t be a problem. But if you’re certain you can only keep one, make sure it’s the BB

As long as it used 6 blocks or less...yes. And provided those 6 or less blocks didn’t exceed the DSP limit of the Stomp...yes!