Am I out of budget?

I just bought a bass. The missing link. What separates the boys from the men. A good bass line can save a bad song. OK maybe not any of mines, but bass is an important part of any band because it is the link between melody and rythm. The glue.

I had been looking online for a couple of weeks when I saw this metallic blue 4-string Peavey Grind BXP (passive) bass. For the price ($130) I thought it was a nice bargain compared to the rest of what I saw around those prices. I tried it clean and throught my Line6 POD and I love the sound of it. It will need tuning and messing around since the fret harmonics are not in line with the 12th fret notes, but I'll take care of it later. Right now I'm enjoying that fat rich sound :-)

Budget wise, I'm left with $20. I'll sit on those for now even though I'm still eyeing Valhalla Room. I did somehwat learn how to use the epicVerb plugin I have now (sidenote: whenever I'd bring this guy in, the sound would just immediately disappear in the depths of the abyss; only after several tries have I noticed that the wet pot was all the way up :-) Bringing it back to more standard levels breathed life back into the verbed track. Weird default setting if you ask me), but I'm not totally convinced: when I turn it up, it makes me cringe. Not good. Maybe Valhalla Room as some demo mode I need to check out. But Valhalla Room is $50 so I'd go over budget. We'll see :-)

On another note, I have decided to enter the GearFest PureMix contest. 620 entries right now :-( What I have listened to so far makes me think I have a chance: overuse of bad reverb, lots of FX on pretty much everything... Yuck. Not on a rock song recorded on a stage by Fab Dupont. We'll see. I'll post my mix on recordingreview.com for critique (this forum).