Beedster

Thanks mate, there's only one in Kent listed there and his link no longer works, so I'm keen to hear if anyone has a decent tech down here in Kent also, I know of a few but I've not had sufficiently good experience with them to list them as decent I'm afraid!

Love that vid

Mudbuckers are difficult beasts to tame, and whilst I’m happy to be proved wrong, I’m pretty sure not many reggae bassists use them. An active circuit might be a better bet?

Absolutely, and some neck sound great on pretty much all bodies. I've got two Warmoth necks that have made every bass they've been on sound a whole lot better.

And you can always try one of these, unbelievably light

How my DB gets to gigs

Harry, take a look at Alexander Technique and even yoga. Posture and pain is a big problem for bass players, human bodies weren't designed to stand pretty still for hours on end with a boat anchor around our necks. One or other - and sometimes simple weight training (squats and deadlifts) - have done the trick for a few musos I know. Good luck mate. C

So it’s better to think too little than too much?

Which has largely been my point all along. Plenty of guys are the full ticket, and still rip people off deliberately. He is not, and I doubt he does. So on this point I completely agree.

I know, but there might be very good reasons why he's unable to take advice (check out my earlier post). There's been far worse examples of dodgy dealings in this space; luthiers who've taken huge amounts of money for instruments that never materialised or were entirely substandard (and I'm talking 4-figure sums), guys who've deliberately sold fakes, eBay and BC sellers who've done a runner with the money etc. OK, some of them got caught, some of them didn't, and forums like this helped the buyers. fair enough. So, if the genuine intention of this thread is to stop him doing what he does, I would agree. But given how many previous similar threads there have been, it's pretty clearly not going to work. And if that isn't the genuine intention, I just don't see the point, unless it's an expression of some of the less attractive aspects of human nature, hence my post about bullying. As a human being, he might be any of a number of things; a misguided oddity or a cynical exploiter of other people's naivety. I have my suspicions hence my posting to object to the thread. I might be wrong, but a false positive in this context does no harm really.

I think an impartial look at this thread would suggest I have a point. I'm not defending his work, just his right to do what he does until a legitimate complaint to eBay or TS helps him see the error of his ways, prompts him to take a luthiery course, and become a leading if somewhat unexpected light of the UK guitar building industry. Until then, this thread feels like a feeding frenzy to me. If it was the first, I'd have commented and let it go, but there have been too many about this guy over the years, and I don't think it's the right way to do things on a community forum like this.

Perhaps this thread should be directed at eBay then?

One man's guardian of consumer rights is another man's bully

There's been a lot of that in this thread, or put another way, folks starting to clutch at straws as they realise that yes, to all intents and despite their sense of injustice, this is just another example of internet bullying, albeit by a bunch of middle-aged blokes with not much else to do apparently (I'm assuming they're all middle-aged with nothing else to do using the same logic by which they assumed age and inexperience of the buyers). If they are that angry with this guy, why don't they they contact eBay, or trading standards, or the guy himself. Given they're all so knowledgable, they could perhaps offer him some friendly advice?

Anything that's boring, borish, repetitive and predictable makes me yawn I'm afraid

Yawn

I live far from it, but there nothing wrong with aspiring to perfection

I'd assumed it was for charity, is that not the case?

You lot got nothing better to do than pick on this guy? There's more than one of you posted on BC re mental health problems in the past, need I go further? Go play your basses or find someone else to gang up on, this is just boring and sad, and really does not reflect well on BC as a community.

I've played mostly fretless for about 10 years. However, although competent, I've always considered myself a better player when using a fretted. I was pretty shocked on Friday to find that I was really struggling to play parts on a fretted that I can play without any issue at all on fretless. In fact, on a couple of tracks I was kicking myself that I hadn't taken a fretless to the session. And before you ask it wasn't the action, or the width/depth of neck (I'm lucky enough to have a matched pair of Warmoth fretted/fretless Precision necks), it was the frets. Anyone else had this?

Put a Barefaced Super Twin underneath an SVT-II the other night and it was glorious; tone, definition, headroom and heft on demand, totally filled the room without ever being boomy or overload. An absolutely amazing cab.

Guitar and bass sound great, as do BVs, and overall it's really tight. On the first track (HLTW) I can't help thinking shifting the key up a bit would help the vocalist cut through, she gets though much better in the second track on that basis. Great stuff though, well done. C