manol

Had a complete joke of an experience today with The Bass Gallery. I've sold 3 basses through them on consignment, never again, and never setting foot in that shop ever again. - long story short - I had 2 basses I took in on consignment, a Fender Flea Signature, and a Vintera 50's P-Bass, I had to call to get the consignment sheet sent to me because nothing got sent through., this was in late June and early July 2024. I had been checking the website though and saw that both the P-Bass had been marked as sold for a while, and the Jazz bass had dropped off at some point, as there was another one there with a different serial number to mine. So, I had assumed they had sold. I hadn't heard anything from them since, emailed 3 days ago, no response. Had this same issue about 2 years ago when I sold an Aria 70's P-Bass copy through them, just poor, poor, poor communication. Decided to go pay a visit in store to chase it up and express my dissatisfaction at the poor communication between the store and myself. I'm not going to bore you with the intricacies of the situation, but turns out the Jazz Bass hadn't sold, there was a customer the day before that came in to make an offer on it, but no one called me because "it was the end of the day". There was a lot of conversation and questions before this point, but, I lost my patience and trust with the shop because of the demeanour and the answers of this employee and so I asked for my bass so I can just take it away and sell it somewhere else.... The employee's face dropped and mumbled that he would be back in a few minutes. After a while he came back and said "I don't have the bass here", I said "what do you mean, you don't have the bass?". The explanation I was given, was that, they gave the customer who made the offer the bass to take home to 'try' because they're a regular and good customer that they trust. I couldn't believe that they would give a bass that is on consignment to another customer to take home and 'try', I don't know how long they had the bass or when they took it. I asked to speak to the manager (Martin) and had an 'assertive' conversation with him and essentially said, "if you had just called me and asked for permission, or for my OK, we would be having a very different conversation than we're having right now". I also asked how long this customer had the bass for, and he said "a couple of days", contradicting his employee's statement that it was yesterday and close of business. Frankly, Martin's attitude on the phone was awful, he apologised but it was just excuse after excuse about the poor communication from his staff, he sounded like he couldn't care less. His response to my concerns about the bass being taken home by the customer was "well, if it was damaged or lost, we would be taking the risk on it". I had enough at that point and wrapped up the conversation, at 6:15pm tonight I received the money for both the basses into my bank account. I don't have any faith or trust that the customer only had it for a couple of days, I don't trust a single word that comes out of Martin's mouth, or his employees, or anyone else that works in that establishment. Never again.

Hello all, first time poster but I thought that this was something worth sharing, not just because I'm proud and happy with the bass, I've "recently" moved to the UK so wanted to be more part of the community but also because I want to plug the builder as well. I've been a massive Pearl Jam/Jeff Ament fan since I started playing bass and I've always, always, always had an infatuation with his Silvertone 1443 replica that he used to play in the early 2000's/very late 90s. I always thought that it would be possible to get one built, but - Living in Australia meant there was a very limited amount of luthiers, and a lot wouldn't attempt something like this. If I do something, I do it right, and part of building a bass like this means finding a Modulus neck with the Fender shape headstock on it and they're HARD to find. One day while browsing Reverb, I found a 'bitsa' parts bass from Japan that had the Modulus graphite neck on it with the original Fender shape headstock, I paid a ludicrous amount of money for it, but I didn't question it, it was never going to come up again for potentially years. Keep in mind, Modulus Jazz Basses come up all the time, but not with the Fender headstock shapes. It was in Japan, so I had to pay to get it shipped all the way from there to the UK. Secondly, I had to find the period correct Bartolini pickups from that time, I assumed the bridge and neck pickup was a Bartolini 9S set, as it was the original model that Bartolini released, but the neck humbucker was the mystery. I already have another Jeff Ament style bass that Mike Lull built for me about 10+ years ago, that had that humbucker in the same neck position. I emailed Spencer and asked about the model, unfortunately they lost a whole heap of data years ago due to some cyberattack, which meant they didn't have my build sheet for my bass anymore, so he didn't know the model. He suggested I take the pickup out and check for any markings, no luck. Absolutely nothing on the bottom of the pickup. Next step was emailing Bartolini - I emailed Bartolini who at first were a little dismissive at just suggested that the pickup was just a 1CB/1CBC model, I responded with dimensions and said I was confident that it wasn't a 1CB/1CBC model, there was some other email back and forth between me and them, and them also going back to Spencer at Mike Lull and eventually came back to me with this - I'm not going to say how much it was, but it was a bit. but I got 2 out of it, so I have a spare/option to put one into another bass. Once I had the pickup in my hands, I purchased all the hardware and bits and pieces for the build, and the next stop was trying to find a builder in the UK/Europe who could custom CAD/CNC machine design. I did some Googling and digging and emailing, and for the most part there was a lot of builders that weren't interested, didn't get back to me, or only wanted to sell their designs (which is fair enough). I fortunately came across Neil Haynes from Guitar & Bass Build/Haynes Guitars in (https://guitarandbassbuilds.com / Haynes Guitars) in Shenington. Neil was extremely helpful right from the start, he was open to working on the project, he was up front about pricing and more importantly showed interest and was keen in the project. Communication was a little bit slow/tedious at times over email, and I had to send a few follow ups to make sure my message was received and acknowledged but overall it was good, considering he's essentially a solo operator. I was travelling for work, and when I got back I actually went to visit him and we both sat down in front of his computer and painstakingly went through all the measurements and was very tolerant of my "1mm here, 1mm there, actually no back again". It was a great process and it meant it was EXACTLY what I wanted, and if it wasn't, I only had myself to blame. Neil was an absolute pleasure, and I feel for him only being a solo operator. Final result is attached at the bottom, it's pretty spot on, unfortunately the red sunburst head stock I couldn't do, and the dimensions of how the body comes up around the neck are a tiny little bit off, but its' damn close. For some reason, the phone has made the colour seem less 'red' and more 'sunburst', but it's definitely more 'red' in person. I love it, I'm so happy with it, and it's a good addition to the existing stock. Sorry for the essay, but I thought some people and fellow Pearl Jam/Jeff Ament fans might find it interesting.