SimonK

Actually from the sound of this thread so far it seems most of us like one or two things (for me the Trace Elliot stuff), but dislike the majority of what they do. This feels different from other brands (certainly for me) as while I am not interested in a lot of things, I don't "dislike" products from other brands in perhaps the same way I do with Peavey.

I honestly just googled "AI song lyrics" and I think it was https://boredhumans.com/lyrics_generator.php that popped up first, and then once I had the lyrics I googled "Free ai song generator" and https://aisonggenerator.io/ seemed to work best. It wouldn't let me download a higher quality version of the song so I then paid a one month subscription just to keep fiddling round with it a bit more. I can't vouch for these being the best/worst or anything in between. They just seemed to work!

Perhaps the ELF line is their most successful and highly rated product(s) at the moment?

Yes I watched it yesterday and thought no wonder I've never liked Peavey... and then realised they currently have the ownership of my favourite amp brand, and while it's all the pre-Peavey kit I love the most, a bit of me hopes that the new kit can keep the history going... although after watching that maybe not...

I went to one free online programme and asked it to write some lyrics on the subject of death in the style of Def Leppard (I thought this was appropriately rock & roll!), and then fed the lyrics into another free programme to write the music, specifying the instruments and a male vocal. I have to admit I am quite impressed, although my immediate thought would be to re-record this playing all the instrument live (or at least for real!), and possibly tweak the lyrics a bit. The upshot is that it has potentially produced a very playable song, and I could see myself generating tens of songs using this method, then cherry picking the best to re-record and even play live.

Let me try posting my AI song here - no one else seems to be appreciating how brilliant it is - mostly because it took only two programmes and about twenty minutes to produce!! Dancing With Shadows.mp3

Out of interest do you use the "boost" switch for anything? I've always kind of viewed this as a more guitar orientated function.

It sounds to me from reading this there are two types of buyers: 1) I want something with the original spec but second hand 2) I want an instrument and don't mind if it has a history Possibly the market for 1)'s is more lucrative than 2)'s, but I'd wager the 2)'s often play better! What we all seem to agree on is that a potential 3) "I've upgraded so pay me more" is a non-starter!

Losing tuning stability is almost always a tuner, nut or bridge problem. Sweat in bridges also causes them to corrode and isn't the easiest thing to get out without taking them apart. Tuners can seize up as well, and can get knocked if the bass gets knocked off its stand (no matter how careful it happens sooner or later!) although I should add these things all happen on my gigging basses - I have a couple stay at home guitars and nothing has gone wrong with these!

Blimey - after scratchy pots, failing jack sockets and broken battery wires, tuners and bridges are generally the next things that cause me problems!

Of course despite writing the above I do now recall changing the pickups in a Stratocaster for a set of Texas specials, and then putting the originals on a different strat that I wanted a more vintage sound for, and switching two from that strat into a Tele, and then generally losing track of which pickup started in which guitar - again not thinking about selling but can at least guaraantee Fender made US pickups in all three guitars but wouldn't be marketing any as "upgraded"! Incidentally I've seen a few people try something similar with bass cabs, "upgrading" a speaker without perhaps realising the importance of cabs with ports being tuned for specific speakers...

This makes total sense to me - upgrade/replace as needed for playing reasons, but keep the original parts and if/when things get sold on say why you did it. But don't be the person who tries to mark up a prce because they added some more expensive pickups just "because"!

I think there is a level of honesty to all this. For instance I drove up to Liverpool fifteen years ago to pick up a Stingray via eBay, and when I got to it the case reeked of cigarette smoke and there was a crack in the neck plate where someone had overtightened a screw (neither of which were mentioned in the eBay ad). It played fine, I got £200 off the price, and sourced a new Stingray neck plate although now the serial number on the new neck plate doesn't match the actual bass (to this day I don't know how the luthier who did the fix, clean & set-up came across it). I also got a new, branded, musicman case which fixed the smell. I've been playing that bass for 15 years now with no problems at all, albeit might need a refret fairly soon. I have no intention to sell it at the moment, but when I do I will include the old neck plate with the crack and tell the story - hopefully any potential buyer will like the fact the instrument has a backstory and many hundreds of gigs (and potentially a refret). But I'm guessing it won't interest collectors.

I've been eyeing these all in one pedals up for a while, and for me it's between the Trace Elliot and the Fishman Platinum Pro EQ. The EBS and Tech21 have similar features but do not seem to be designed quite so well. There's plenty of other preamp pedals around, but these in particular are designed for being "all in one" solutions without quite getting into digital multi-effects. As a general TE fan I will probably end up with the Transit-B sooner or later as a grab and go option to put in the pocket of a gig bag.

It's a sweet rig and similar to mine. I really like the GP12 head, probably my favourite TE head, and if it was closer would put in an offer - the heads go for a max of £300 on their own, although I'm holding out for something around the £200 mark closer to me.

So just seen this in the market place as the seller just dropped his price. The connundrum is I think it is still over-priced by a fair bit, but the gentlemanly side of me thinks I shouldn't say anything unless giving an offer myself, and thus he should be free to get the best price he can... I stuck a picture from the facebook listing underneath.

Which is why my main focus is making sure it sounds good where I am standing as I simply can't be everywhere at once so can adjust the one thing I have control over. Of course if the person mixing FoH asks for adjustments I will generally make them unless it stops me being able to hear myself. But providing a nice DI signal with a bit of compression to stop any big peaks, and using a HPF set at about 40, seems to keep engineers happy. Years back I used to do the FoH sound and play at the same time, and yes that requires a slightly different philosophy, but at the moment I am lucky enough always to have someone else handle the PA.

Yes I agree on this - I always make sure my cabs are at least a foot away from a wall, but better yet is something absorbent like a curtain behind the cabs. I did once leave an open bass case behind the cabs in a particularly bad room but not entirely sure it made a huge difference. The other thing is coupling or decoupling the cab from the ground using casters/beer crates etc. Certainly hollow stages are a real problem if the cab sits directly on the floor. Mind you I would still say playing technique followed by EQ make the biggest difference.

I'm not haggling, and I'm not going anywhere near that sale thread - thing is I don't actually think that pedal is much good, or worth more than about £50 max, so if he can get three times that price good on him, although I suspect he will illustrate the OP's post. Thus said I'm not convinced the second hand market is any different from how it has always been - priced right anything will sell, priced wrong it won't. Mind you as time goes on I do think more and more music kit is becoming available second hand simply because more has been made over time. Thirty years ago it was all about Boss pedals and Fender guitars, now the options seem endless!

...apart from if you don't think you sound good you don't play as well so that overall the sound ends up being worse. My number one worry is to sound good to me (and yes in the context of all the other instruments) as there is someone else (sound guy) to worry about how it sounds in the room...

It does generally seem to be a great time to be a buyer, however I'm sitting on all sorts of things that I can't be bothered to sell because conversly the money isn't really worth the effort. It feels a real waste in a way because I think someone could be using the kit (mostly pedals, amps and cabs) but for the odd £20, £50 or even £100 the effort to sell is greater than my desire for the money - but maybe I'm just a spoiled brat... Thus said I saw this on here yesterday - https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/508714-black-big-muff-russian-circa-20034ish-£140-posted/ - I didn't want to piss on the guys sale so haven't posted anything, but I picked up exactly the same pedal for £20 fully working a few years back!

The other thing is people pricing something at what they value it for, rather than what the market will give. I'm kicking myself for not getting a screenshot last week to illustrate this, but there were two identical Trace Elliot 2x10 cabs on Facebook Marketplace, one priced at £40 and the other at £260. Needless to say I jumped in the car and bought the £40 cab, and the other is still languishing on market place. As a bit of a Trace Elliot collector it does amuse (and slightly sadden) me how much some people list things for, especially when I know I have the exact same item that I picked up for often a hundreth of some asking prices:

There's been a bunch of news stories today about fake bailifs - my plan would be to give them a Trace Elliot cab to guarantee they never came back following whatever back injury they give themselves... 😮 !

It's an interesting thought - at the end of the day a performance is, well, a performance of which the live sound is only one aspect. So if miming live is part of the bands image the question is simply whether that is something you want, or enjoy doing, or whether you would prefer to be in a band that actually plays live. To me it sounds like a personal choice as to how you want to spend your evening!