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The Combo Club
- Thread starter ChefKen
- Start date
Solid state stuff no problem. I’ve left mine on overnight more than once. Just a waste of electricity.
Especially the Class-D stuff. Cool as a cucumber. I suppose you make an argument that you lost some life from the circuits, but I certainly wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Now a full-blown tube amp left on and not on standby? Yeah, I’d be depressed.
Yup this would be a 2021 Hartke 300. My phone charger puts out as much heat.
Swoon!Happy Family
Uncertain if it's possible to have three more vastly different basses. Yeah, probably is.
So yes, recovering enough from The Thing That's Going Around to install new GHS Brite Flats on the 'Ray. That makes it as close to factory spec as its been since it came off the showroom floor 42.5 years ago. The frets are dressed. The mojo crud is gone for new mojo with new EBMM bridge saddle assemblies, new mutes, and a new preamp.
.... I could have kept this vintage bass vintage vintage. A dead preamp makes it pretty difficult to hear.
Plugged right into my PJB combo and it sounds glorious
As we shut the lights off and lock the clubhouse door for the weekend, I just wanted to wish each one of you a happy and healthy week ahead. Get some bass playing in when ya can and fun while doing it!
I’ll leave you with a question that conked me on the head earlier today, and I’m prepared to be embarrassed if I’m the last one finding out, but when did Fender raise their prices on Rumbles?
Dang, the R100 is now $350 and the Stage 800 is now somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 million, or at least it seems like it!
I suppose it could be the shipping snafu currently taking place, but why increase the cost for the same unit you sold six months ago without even making the slightest improvements? Unless these will be the prices for a new line when it comes out?
Feel free to pontificate on the subject if interested. I’ll try and catch the feedback sometime this week.
Talk to ya soon, CC!
I’ll leave you with a question that conked me on the head earlier today, and I’m prepared to be embarrassed if I’m the last one finding out, but when did Fender raise their prices on Rumbles?
Dang, the R100 is now $350 and the Stage 800 is now somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 million, or at least it seems like it!
I suppose it could be the shipping snafu currently taking place, but why increase the cost for the same unit you sold six months ago without even making the slightest improvements? Unless these will be the prices for a new line when it comes out?
Feel free to pontificate on the subject if interested. I’ll try and catch the feedback sometime this week.
Talk to ya soon, CC!
Not so much supply chain, but more corporate greed...
Prices are going up across the board. I received a letter last week from an electronics supplier informing clients to expect price increases and shortages throughout 2022. They cited higher transportation costs as one of the factors. Some suppliers are not accepting new orders because of their backlog.
I don't know if this will be offset by Black Friday reductions but the higher prices will stick. My bakery raised the price of a loaf by 50 cents, rolls went up 25% this weekend. It's a good indicator for costs in general.
If you are planning a purchase, act now.
I don't know if this will be offset by Black Friday reductions but the higher prices will stick. My bakery raised the price of a loaf by 50 cents, rolls went up 25% this weekend. It's a good indicator for costs in general.
If you are planning a purchase, act now.
Makes me 'happy' I have all the gear I need and then some. Actually, I need to get rid of some gear. Unfortunately, it's all older gear no one seems to want.As we shut the lights off and lock the clubhouse door for the weekend, I just wanted to wish each one of you a happy and healthy week ahead. Get some bass playing in when ya can and fun while doing it!
I’ll leave you with a question that conked me on the head earlier today, and I’m prepared to be embarrassed if I’m the last one finding out, but when did Fender raise their prices on Rumbles?
Dang, the R100 is now $350 and the Stage 800 is now somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 million, or at least it seems like it!
I suppose it could be the shipping snafu currently taking place, but why increase the cost for the same unit you sold six months ago without even making the slightest improvements? Unless these will be the prices for a new line when it comes out?
Feel free to pontificate on the subject if interested. I’ll try and catch the feedback sometime this week.
Talk to ya soon, CC!
Where's my official "El Kabong¡" guitar? I gotta conk this guy on the head! Cheesy Pete, FL! Where were you last year when the store shelves started emptying out ('specially TP)? Mrs. Dog noticed store prices going up then! This year, even moreso, along with obvious gasoline and diesel increases. 
Fender has always been very market sensitive. I got my then newly-announced Rumble 500 for just $1/watt in 2014. A year or so thereafter, due to its popularity, it went up, along with its new matching 210 cab. Can you say "hotcakes?" A few years later the Rumble 112 cab was quietly discontinued, then the 200 head, due to (relatively) poor sales. The market giveth, and it taketh away.
FL, if you check other brands and other items, you'll find a similar trend.
Fender has always been very market sensitive. I got my then newly-announced Rumble 500 for just $1/watt in 2014. A year or so thereafter, due to its popularity, it went up, along with its new matching 210 cab. Can you say "hotcakes?" A few years later the Rumble 112 cab was quietly discontinued, then the 200 head, due to (relatively) poor sales. The market giveth, and it taketh away.
FL, if you check other brands and other items, you'll find a similar trend.
And then the new Ampeg Rocket Bass amps appeared earlier this year priced from $30 to $100 more than their comparable Fender Rumble models! Fender obligingly narrowed the gaps to $20 to $50. Only fair, since Ampeg is charging more for less wattage and more weight.
Well, besides the other shipping difficulties there are now the aforementioned fuel price increases, and other inflationary costs too, being passed on to all customers, private and commercial. Luckily, our generous Uncle Sam is giving retirees next year the biggest raise in nearly 40 years, which will ease almost half of it! Or, more likely, just barely pay for the increased Medicare rates. 
It's actually just normal free enterprise market dynamics. Businesses cannot long survive by absorbing their own rising costs just so they can look like nice guys. If the most essential food, clothing, shelter & fuel markets increase prices, as is happening now, then it must surely affect all other markets. And I'm not calling anyone Shirley. 
Why, even the venerable [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] coupled with delayed deliveries! But just for the holiday season, you understand. Come January we can expect their prices to drop back to previous levels with faster deliveries again. 
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USPS? Yeah, riiiight!Where's my official "El Kabong¡" guitar? I gotta conk this guy on the head! Cheesy Pete, FL! Where were you last year when the store shelves started emptying out ('specially TP)? Mrs. Dog noticed store prices going up then! This year, even moreso, along with obvious gasoline and diesel increases.
Fender has always been very market sensitive. I got my then newly-announced Rumble 500 for just $1/watt in 2014. A year or so thereafter, due to its popularity, it went up, along with its new matching 210 cab. Can you say "hotcakes?" A few years later the Rumble 112 cab was quietly discontinued, then the 200 head, due to (relatively) poor sales. The market giveth, and it taketh away.
FL, if you check other brands and other items, you'll find a similar trend.
And then the new Ampeg Rocket Bass amps appeared earlier this year priced from $30 to $100 more than their comparable Fender Rumble models! Fender obligingly narrowed the gaps to $20 to $50. Only fair, since Ampeg is charging more for less wattage and more weight.
Well, besides the other shipping difficulties there are now the aforementioned fuel price increases, and other inflationary costs too, being passed on to all customers, private and commercial. Luckily, our generous Uncle Sam is giving retirees next year the biggest raise in nearly 40 years, which will ease almost half of it! Or, more likely, just barely pay for the increased Medicare rates.
It's actually just normal free enterprise market dynamics. Businesses cannot long survive by absorbing their own rising costs just so they can look like nice guys. If the most essential food, clothing, shelter & fuel markets increase prices, as is happening now, then it must surely affect all other markets. And I'm not calling anyone Shirley.
Why, even the venerable [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] coupled with delayed deliveries! But just for the holiday season, you understand. Come January we can expect their prices to drop back to previous levels with faster deliveries again.
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It's very simple; just because the design doesn't change, doesn't mean the materials costs to build that design don't change. This little thing called COVID has thrown wrench after wrench into the "just-in-time" global supply chain that's been utilized for decades to minimize costly inventory warehousing. Even for things manufactured in the US (or at least North America, where NAFTA/USMCA and physical location make it easier to move stuff across the international borders), the PCBs and various small electrical parts are commonly made in China, simply because factories in the Western Hemisphere don't want to deal with the regulatory overhead to make resistors and capacitors for pennies apiece. The pandemic first shut those factories down (recall Wuhan, where the pandemic originated, is a major manufacturing center), and then imposed egregious restrictions on the movement of people from place to place, including the crews of the cargo ships and the stevedores and other dockworkers that work at the port facilities.
Even if we were keeping up with unloading the cargo ships, and we're not, the cost of shipping a cargo container from China to the US has almost quadrupled since the beginning of the year, from about $4000 per container to over $15,000. So, whatever the per-unit shipping overhead was on pretty much anything Fender needs from China, quadruple it, and that adds up when you look at how many of these individual components are used in any one unit. Fender isn't just going to eat those costs.
That of course assumes you can get the parts at all. As stated earlier, we're not keeping up with the influx of cargo ships at the two main US west-coast ports. There's a roughly six-month backlog of full ships riding at anchor off the California coast, waiting to dock at LA or Long Beach. So all the little pieces Fender needs to build these amps are sitting out on a ship the FMIC staff can probably see from the roof of their building in Corona with a decent pair of binoculars, but that won't even enter the port to start being unloaded for months. Meanwhile, work-in-progress inventory is stacking up in Corona and Tecate, with cabinets waiting for Tolex or amp circuit trays waiting for bright caps or tube sockets. Just like the cars sitting out in manufacturer parking lots, physically built but waiting for any one or two of dozens of microcontrollers to run the emissions system, on-board entertainment, etc.
Meanwhile, the US consumer population is eager to get back to normal, many of us fairly flush with newly-printed government stimulus money that we didn't have to spend because we could do our day jobs from home. Lots of people wanting a limited supply of things and willing to pay higher prices to get theirs is the shorthand definition of inflation. Fender's management are no fools; when buyers are saying "shut up and take my money", they increase the prices on their reduced inventory of completed amplifiers, both to regulate supply thus preventing a shortage, and to make all the money they can off the product they have. We're seeing inflation across the entire market, but especially in durable goods (because they tend to be complex machines with more types of parts that can run out and become dependent on yet another cargo ship in the queue) and particularly goods that need electronic parts.
So yeah, the increase in the Rumble amp series is just one of thousands of case studies in how COVID's still ****ing up the world economy in new and exciting ways.
Easy to blame that, but the reality is there's a huge global backlog. Part of it's capacity, part of it's distribution. Semiconductors in particular are behind.
Makes me 'happy' I have all the gear I need and then some. Actually, I need to get rid of some gear. Unfortunately, it's all older gear no one seems to want.
Gotta throw in personal, free delivery. I might be interested in the Kustom or that old bird of yours. I'll even put you up here for free! 8^)
- Oct 22, 2015
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Seven months in the queue for the replacement Stingray preamp with the original 4250 chip and reverse audio 1M pot.
I am not discounting supply chain difficulties in Fenders price increases. I do wonder why they increased prices on current stock. In addition, unless they have to prepay, if they can't get the parts, they do not know what they will cost until someone makes and delivers them. Maybe its like when someone sneezes at an oil refinery and the local gas stations increase their prices the same day? Anyway, the horse is dead and I am happy I got my rumbles at the old price .
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Got a surgery on my 'trigger (ring) finger' 
so no combo / bass playing this week.
so no combo / bass playing this week.
Was it free market enterprise when the bailout of big business occurred in 2008? There is no free market enterprise anymore. It’s the haves and the have nots. The market is filled with quasi monopolies who get bailed out with our tax dollars if they screw up or their business model doesn’t work anymore.
(And I am NOT referencing small business) Also there’s the whole rich people getting richer dynamic. All the money has never in the history of this nation been more concentrated in the hands of so few.
The same people that cry/threaten “I will have to pass on any increase in my cost to the consumer! So take your soup and like it!” (Or should that be let em’ eat cake?) are the same people taking government bailouts and then complaining about paying their record low taxes. I think they could absorb some cost and do with a little less profit no?
But the world is turned upside down where corporations have the same rights as people (Citizens vs United) and corporate boards are obligated to maximize profit and not required/concerned with giving back to the community or paying their fair share to maintain the infrastructure.
Nope. Their just concerned with the bottom line and if you don’t do what I say I’ll take my ball and go home (or take it to another tax sheltered nation or state) Maybe just maybe they could take a more modest cut. Their houses just keep getting bigger and bigger @G-Dog.
Now all of that said. I don’t begrudge people who have done well in life. Good for them. This is supposed to be a land of opportunity right. I just think their needs to be a balance or it’s all gonna come crumbling down. The infrastructure will collapse and their will be revolution in the street. There has to be a better balance.
All of that said I think paying the $650 I did recently for my Rumble 500 was a great value! This is not a pizza and an order of wings (which btw are outrageous these days) this is a piece of hardware that I love, does everything I want and will last for years. So I’m not gonna bicker over a few extra dollars to have it. I think the Rumbles and the Rocketbass if that’s your cup of tea or whatever combo are great values for what we get from them.
That’s just my 2 cents.
Good luck with the finger @BrusselsBass ! On the rare occasion I find I can’t play, maybe a trip out of town no room for the bass, when I get home it seems I’m fresher. Does that make sense? Like I needed that forced break. I didn’t forget everything lol. Maybe even playing a little better than when I left off.
In fact a few weeks ago the thought occurred to me I had not picked up my tele in over a year. Maybe longer. Only bass. I panicked! I spent over 45 years learning how to play the guitar as bad as I do I hope I didn’t forget! Did I forget all the chords?! Could I still play and am7 or a D6?!? A bm7! Lol. All the first position chords were still there in my hands. Bar chords all there. Now mind you I still suck on six strings but I didn’t forget anything or regress.
Let the hands and finger heal. Get some rest. Good luck in recovery!
In fact a few weeks ago the thought occurred to me I had not picked up my tele in over a year. Maybe longer. Only bass. I panicked! I spent over 45 years learning how to play the guitar as bad as I do I hope I didn’t forget! Did I forget all the chords?! Could I still play and am7 or a D6?!? A bm7! Lol. All the first position chords were still there in my hands. Bar chords all there. Now mind you I still suck on six strings but I didn’t forget anything or regress.
Let the hands and finger heal. Get some rest. Good luck in recovery!
