The SBL subscription offers a huge amount more than Talking Bass. There are lots of other teachers across a wide range of styles on SBL including my personal favourite Ariane Cap who I find excellent and challenging. And even Scott is to the point on his lessons.
I don’t think the SBL master classes offer anything more than you get with a standard SBL subscription other than a schedule to work along with.
I agree that there are lots of other teachers on SBL including Ari Cap who I also love. I guess it all boils down to individual taste and who you enjoy learning from.
The thing that bugged me the most about SBL (and what drove me away), is that you have to keep paying and paying and paying. Once you stop paying, you no longer have access to any of the courses, even if you want to review what you already took.
What I love about TalkingBass is, once you have purchased a course, you own it forever. That includes HUGE volumes of PDF materials and workbooks, as well as backing tracks. The PDF’s alone are worth the price of the courses.
I have purchased Ari Cap’s book, “Music Theory for the Bass Player”, which gave me access to the accompanying lessons. She also has additional courses available for individual sale, so there is no need for me to go through SBL to get them.
Mark Smith and Ari Cap are my favorite online instructors, along with @JoshFossgreen here at the Buzz. I tried Scott Devine during my trial with SBL but just couldn’t connect with him.
Bottom line, it’s just who you are comfortable with teaching you.
exactly. while everybody teaches basically the same thing the formats, the emphasis on certain things, the teaching styles are all different so it does make a difference. B2B is very much a general overview that is easy to follow and gets you up and playing quickly, which is very important. but it is a million miles different from say the chord tones class i am currently taking at talkingbass which is much harder to follow, much narrower in scope but much more in depth on a specific topic. as a matter of fact, the chord tones class feels like i would imagine an entry level course at a music college would be like, which mark graduated from. mark stated lately that his dream is for his biggest course, the sight reading one, would someday be used in music colleges.
as a comparison, it pays to shop:
if i’m reading this correctly you learn 5 beginner techniques, 14 videos plus a few extras for $240.
https://scotts-bass-lessons.teachable.com/p/26-week-technique-third-enrollment
26 videos on technique, beginner to advanced for $197.
Is the $240 for Luke’s course a one time lifetime fee, or is that annual like SBL?
I have no idea. But I like his videos, he’s kind of the forgotten one of bass teachers. But I gotta say this looks like a ripoff.
I like Luke too, he has some great videos. He deserves to make some money, but I’m not of a mind to spend any more on courses after all I’ve spent on BassBuzz and TalkingBass, not to mention my private bass coach.
Yes, I am taking this course now, concurrent with the Cord Tone Essentials. I have already completed the Scales Essentials course, (although, I will continue to go back to certain lessons and go back for certain exercises), and I really like Mark and his teaching style.
He did mention at the beginning of his sight reading course that he teaches a special format, that his teacher taught him. He does not take credit for creating it, but does teach it this way because it is a different approach then many other ways (which I can only assume he is speaking the truth, I have not tried any others, but I doubt he would lie), and I did not know this was his dream, but it would be cool if it happened for him.
I think a lot of them actually look like a rip off. I will not lie, I thought B2B looked like a rip off too. It took me a while to get it, after I finally decided that randomly watching YouTube videos was not going to work for me and get me where I wanted to go.
I was very skeptical, and after looking them all over (Marcelo the bass wiz, Mark at Talking Bass, Becoming a Bassist, SBL, Fender, and multiple books from amazon) I finally decided to get B2B.
The Deciding FACTOR
MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
I figured if it WAS a rip off, I would just get my money back.
Turns out it was the best thing I could have EVER dong in my bass life.
IDK if his if a rip off, I like him, but the only way I would even consider that would be if there was a money back guarantee.
If fact, if Marcelo would have had a money back guarantee for his lessons, I may have gone with him, who knows. but I am glad he did not, and @JoshFossgreen did, because it got me here and I could not be more pleased with my decision to buy the course.
I feel the same, but I also see future potential. I have not bought the courses at TalkingBass, I have only used the courses via my all access pass, and for $16 a month, it is a NO BRAINER.
The problem, like Pam pointed out is, when I stop paying, I am no longer going to have access to the content.
I hesitated to start the Sight Reading courses, because it is kind of necessary to have access to the downloaded material so you can print it out and use the sheet while you are watching the videos, AND because for many of the lessons, you get a whole page of clef, and he only does the first four bars, so you need the pdf to get the rest.
But I have a work around. the whole page of clef is on the screen, in the lesson, but it is under the video screen, so you can not watch the video and see the clef at the same time.
But, I just take a screen clipping, and save it as a .pdf.
So I am actually getting all the printed material.
I don’t have a printer, but I open the window and put it side by side on my 24" screen. And then I do the exercises with a metronome app that I have.
True I don’t get the backing tracks to download and keep to use, but I can use them for the exercises NOW. if i came across any that I really liked, i could always record them in GB, or figure something out.
All I am saying is, I can get by without having access to the downloaded material just fine.
NOW, the other point, when I am done with all the courses that I am interested in taking at Talking Bass, I may decide that I want more, and I COULD SEE MYSELF going to SBL at some point and taking more courses that are there, and / or any master classes that were going on at a time.
One thing that IS great about SBL, is the effort to continually grow the material library they offer.
For instance, if I got to a point where I think I could learn from the amazing bassists on that sight, and because they keep adding, I could see having a lifetime membership.
At Talking Bass, IDK if he will come out with more material and at some point, I will stop paying for the all access pass.
Of course @JoshFossgreen (this point is worthy of a double tag 
). I would pay for ANY additional content that BassBuzz ever puts out, and any all access or lifetime passes that would ever become available, Iwould be first in line, frothing at the mouth, to buy or sign up.
i should have prefaced that a little. it just seems from looking at the course material that it’s not really offering that much for the money. 5 techniques? beginner techniques? and one of them is posture, which sure fine. but then 4 actual techniques. for $200. as a comparison, josh has a video with 5 beginner techniques to work on with exercises FOR FREE. i like Luke too, i like his teaching style. but i think he needs to rethink that course and put in a LOT more context.
No, I fully agree it looks like way too much for way too little
That’s probably about what it would cost to get that in actual lessons, figuring a couple techniques per lesson. So maybe that’s what he was thinking?
Agree that for online it’s too much.
@T_dub since you have completed the scales course, I’ll share with you an easy way to remember the order of the modes of the major scale. Mark doesn’t teach this, a friend of mine gave it to me:
I Don’t Play Loud Music After Lunch
Ionian
Dorian
Phrygian
Lydian
Mixilydian
Aeolian
Locrian
Gonna change that up a little bit.
I DO Play Loud Music After Lunch
way louder! 
Whatever works for ya 
Pam,
I’m doing Players Path (almost ready to advance past level two) and it seems pretty good so far. Much more focused, organized and achievable then the other content on SBL.
Hey So would you recommend doing that course after completing B2B?
No
It’s what I did and after a few weeks of utter frustration I hardly go back there. I’ve learnt nothing I didn’t already cover in the B2B course and found the lessons hard to keep up with. The music you follow doesn’t come up on screen anywhere near fast enough at the end of each bar and it’s very jazz based.
To be honest I might as well have burned the money I spent on it, at least I would have been warm for a few seconds
Not sure. I wouldn’t recommend the full web site because there’s too much information and because of that, it’s somewhat inaccessible. But I like the Players Path program. You should sample Talking Bass with Mark (he’s great but his programs are expensive), Become A Bassist with Luke, Ariane Cap, and other bass teachers on YouTube. Fender also has online classes though I’ve never tried any of those. You may also want to consider signing up for live Zoom lessons. I’ve done three Zoom courses with Yonit Spiegelman of Lessonface and Luke of Become A Bassist and find it great to be part of a group class, to interact live with a teacher, and to get immediate feedback from instructor and classmates.