Beedster

That is not only true but astounding, not sure I want to use mine any more!

I was referring to me, so yes

A singer I worked with certainly thought so, and pretty much tried to ban me from playing my Ric 4003 in a 3-piece indie/post-punk outfit in which both myself and the guitarist agreed the Ric worked way better than my Precision which the singer favoured. Playing Graceland tracks on a Fretless Ric feels wrong, playing on a Fretless Precision or Jazz feels right. Playing RHCP tracks on a Precision feels wrong, playing them on a Jazz, Ray or Modulus feels right. Playing Motown on a Modulus feels wrong, playing it on a Precision feels right. But in each case it has nothing at all to do with the sound the bass is making, because to the punters, and most of the musicians, the differences are insignificant. But wow the differences are important to the bassist

Fair point mate

If you don’t trust the buyer, courier is your only option. However I’ve done this loads of times without problem, because I generally trust bassists! On one occasion I had cold feet so I took photos of the buyer in my house and of his car parked outside, but there was no problem. I also had messages via eBay indicating time of collection, and I sent one just after he left asking him to confirm collection and he did. You could ask your buyer to do this before he leaves perhaps? Also, PayPal are not above the law, if you have proof in the form of a receipt and/or photo, if things turned sour the threat of legal action would likely release your funds.

Very good point

Frankly I'd open a PayPal claim then, it's probably the path of least resistance. They protect the buyer first, so you will likely get an automatic refund after the seller has been given a reasonable time to respond, unless either the seller is able to prove where it is or it's delivered in the meantime. Good luck

There are, shall we say, some cultural differences at play here All joking aside, if the shop's feedback is good, I'm sure all is OK. If you know the French courier, check out who their UK partner is, and then run the same tracking number on that UK courier's website, it often resolves things nicely.

Often tracking numbers don't register. Reverb are VERY good at this stuff, you will get your money back if there's any problem, and Paypal gives you even more protection (doesn't matter that it went to Reverb then to the shop, that's no different to eBay). It'll work out one way or another

UK Customs is running around 2-months behind at present, not a problem if your item hasn't been flagged for inspection, but a major one if it has. Quite a few folks assume if it's from the EU it won't get stopped, but it can; I had a box from Thomann stopped a couple of years ago and it added several weeks to delivery time. Check out the below, two months between leaving Russia and being processed as having arrived in the UK. It'll be a few more weeks before I get the letter and and then a couple more still before I get the item.

The thing with RS isn't getting the speed and the notes right, it's the feel; the flow and phrasing of NWR's playing are superb. There's the risk in what you're doing that the end result, even if at speed and note perfect, might sound a little mechanical. Along with what you're doing, perhaps try playing along with short sections - perhaps 2-4 bars - of the track in real time, it won't improve your speed and stamina per se as well as the exercises you're using, it will however improve the musicality of the part.

Absolutely, bass is a crude vehicle for studying/learning compression, or perhaps more correctly a difficult one. The fact that the brain is so attuned to nuances in the human voice allows us to hear compression effects so much more clearly than on nearly any other source. I'm very interested at present into the payoff between compression making a track easier to listen to (and therefore more likely to sustain a listener to the end of the piece) and compression inhibiting/accentuating the non-verbal component of speech, and it's fun to record a vocal and play around with this question in mind (and I recently bought a very nice Avalon VT-737 to do the playing around on, which makes it even more fun)!

I hadn't noticed that Al joking aside, your 'banging on' has been extremely helpful to me as a musician over the years, and even more so now that I have tentatively taken a step into (a form of) professional production. Please keep banging on mate.

Which is why these threads run and run

Ouch! I suspect that if you speak to the people who came of age in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's, most would agree that many of the the then current musicians looked like drug dealers! What do you think dealers looked like in the 60's, or more to the point, what did people then think that drug dealers looked like, Laurence Olivier or the Grateful Dead

Totally agree, although 'grind' sounds a bit negative! I remember the 90's as a decade of huge energy in music, of live bands playing live (I saw a few in the 80's who certainly weren't), and of bands pushing boundaries, as opposed to extending cliches (80's hair metal being the best example; where did the genre end and the parody begin?). I was living in LA in the early 90's, albums such as BSSM, Nevermind, Shake Your Money Maker seemed to herald a revival of all that I had seen as important in music, but which IMO HAD been largely lacking in the 80's. There was some dross in the 90's for sure, but that's true of each decade, but IMO the high points of the 90's were as high as any other decade, something not true of the 80's by a long shot

Seems reasonable

Funny how my immediate response was to agree. But sitting with the family having a BBQ this evening, with phone playing random tunes, I realised that with Nirvana (Teen Spirit), Chilis (Under the Bridge, Californication), Prodigy (Firestarter, Breathe), as well as loads by Pearl Jam, Oasis (I know....), Lenny Kravitz, Faith No More, Supergrass, it perhaps wasn't such a bad decade, especially when you also factor in the great hip hop that was coming from Dr Dre etc?

I think 80’s and I think REM, RHCP, and U2, two of whom I like

Absolutely. It saved me a lot of money doing it that way a while back. Many businesses don't intend to sell via Reverb (or eBay), but to get the casual browser - and there are a lot of those on Reverb and eBay - to visit and ideally buy from the shop's website, which is why they often list them at higher prices on Reverb/eBay. And of course, many of the shops price their goods high on eBay and Reverb because they don't like either site's buyer-friendly T&Cs

Why I won't be buying internationally again for a while, UK Customs evidently a bit behind, this was only a small/cheap item also

Agreed, if you have only one item to sell, I'd guess BC is your place, fees here are VERY low by comparison

Did the same for me earlier this year, a BC legend