Ed_S

Just my opinion, and I'd never try to frame any of it as fact, but...

I'd say you're on the right track with a good 2x10 and 500W head for the vast majority of gigs - I've arrived at the same rig myself after 24 years of swapping and changing. However, the cab needs to be good and the budget you've got right now will only buy the head (I'm talking new with warranty as I personally don't see second hand gear as being worth the risk) so for now I'd use the combo as a cab, spend the budget on a new head and start putting some cash aside for the right cab later on.

With the amp section out of the combo, it might be easier to send it off further afield and see if it can be fixed relatively cheaply. If so then great, but only slot it back together and sell it as a worker to finish off the new cab fund, as there's no point selling it half way through and scuppering your plan by forcing yourself to buy 'something that will do' with what you have in the pot at that moment. If it's still broken by the time you have the cab funds anyway, then either put the combo back together and see what you can get for it as-is, or part it out and flog it on in bits.

My current rig along the same lines is a Markbass head (pretty much bang-on £500) and a Barefaced Two10 (about £700, but really does the job) so of course I'd recommend that as I play rock/metal (on a 5er, with a pick) with it and I know it works.

A Precision with new stainless rounds and everything on '10', into either the original Orange Terror Bass 500 or the Ashdown ABM1000, through a Barefaced Super 12. Two of my favourite combinations to date as they were not only brutally powerful, but had a kind of 'bounce' to them. Like a boxer on their toes, punching hard but moving fast.

Sadly my original Terror died, but I keep thinking that maybe I should get one of the new ones and see if it's got the same attitude. To music, that is. The same attitude to spontaneously incinerating power amp components would be rather unhelpful.

More generally, Markbass heads into Barefaced 10CR based cabs seem to be a really good match.

35 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

I think this is one of the reasons I didn't used to bother taking a backup for years.  "Who does this jumped up twit think he is?" etc.  Nowadays I do, but the backup is waiting in the wings, still in its bag/case.

Patrons being as they are, you still can't win - I was at a gig where a guitarist had a malfunction and quickly changed to a backup that was in its bag at the back of the stage. The whole process was very quick and unflustered, but a friend of a friend commented afterwards that "he should have just played one from the start that he knew would be alright - he clearly knew that one was going to stop working or why would he have had the other ready?!"

Never had the 3500, but had HA2000 and HA5500 heads, and I thought that they were good... apart from the fan noise when playing at home and the weight when playing anywhere else. Never mind the 5500, even the 2000 was massively louder and more pleasing than my very short-tenured ABM500 evo3 through the same Ashdown cabs. I keep considering picking up a HA3500 while they're still somewhat available and putting it away for a theoretical future date when I fancy a retro trip, but then I think about my laziness compared to the size and weight, and the fact that they were good amps but not exceptional, and that's where the idea has always stopped thus far. Even so, I remember them fondly and still can't see them as the junk that some people do ...but then a lot of people like ABM500 evo3s! 🙂

I take a backup whenever possible, but only take one bass on stage with me because (as others have asserted) my gear is well maintained and on balance of probability will be fine.

Or to put it another way, I don't need load balancing or high availability for the kinds of gigs I play, so in the event of an issue that exceeds any fault tolerance the instrument might have, my recovery point is to be operational with the same number of strings in the same tuning as before, but not necessarily looking, feeling or sounding identical - just familiar and appropriate. My time objective is probably about a minute, so the backup needs to be ready in its bag at the back or side of the stage. Got to admit, I've not performed a test restore in some time.

I currently have a pair of One10s and an LM800 that live at the rehearsal studio, and I found myself enjoying rehearsals with them so much that a Two10 for gigging purposes arrived just a couple of days ago. The 10CR cabs really do seem to go well with MB heads.

Edit: I'll most likely keep gigging with the Nano II and my older Nano 300 as backup since the Two10 is meant to replace a Rumble 500 combo which was 350W/2x10, but I also have my LM2 and F1 heads up the cupboard if the mood takes me or more power is required. I like MB heads so I can't see why I'd dislike the LM4, though I haven't had the opportunity to try one just yet.

1 hour ago, kwmlondon said:

I’ve got the head and cab- is there any difference?

I used the NY121 with a LM3 head a few times while I had it, and it seemed very similar to me. Slightly different in that you can turn the tweeter down or off on the cab, and I guess on a technicality it maybe has a bit more internal volume as there's no amp head cut-out, but for all practical purposes, with the tweeter on and the same amp head plugged in, it seemed to do the same job.

I had the original rubber-handled combo and the extension cab, used them together once or twice before realising the cab wasn't needed, sold that and proceeded to gig the combo on its own for quite a while. Then I bought a Nano 300 head and realised I could get away with borrowing any old cab on the kinds of gigs we were doing, so got used to travelling even lighter and sold the combo. I soon realised I missed having it around, so I ended up buying a new leather-handled one just before everything went to you-know-what with lockdowns. I've not had chance to use it properly yet, but I'm sure it'll come in handy. Sound techs at venues used to love it as it was "enough, but not too much", as one put it.

I've had basses that didn't seem to like the changes in temperature and/or humidity that come with gigging, but were perfectly stable at home. If I enjoyed playing them sufficiently, I'd keep them with no expectation of being able to gig them. Not sure I've ever had any that really did the job live but not at home, though. That said, I do have a main live bass that rarely gets played at home, as at any given time it's cleaned and fettled from that last outing and ready to go for the next one.

As far as expensive basses which don't go out is concerned, if you want to own something purely for your own enjoyment and not put it at unnecessary risk of theft or damage, that makes sense to me. If you can just crack on and accept that stuff happens, that's probably a much better philosophy for maintaining healthy blood pressure, but I've never been able to operate that way.

A couple of mine unintentionally ended up with food-related nicknames. A white/white/maple Jake with white headstock face was known as 'the ice-cream bass', and a fiesta red CV 60s P became 'the tomato soup bass'. They're both gone, though, so all I have right now which fits the brief is one with a brown neck and roasted maple board that reminds me of millionaires shortbread.

I've tried various sets of flats and eventually worked out that every time I put a set on, I 'enjoy' the novelty of something different for a while but soon have very little use for the bass in question. I then end up leaving it in its case for months on end and ultimately sell it "because I don't seem to play that one any more".

53 minutes ago, la bam said:

I think they're a good basic product. I think they're suffering a bit as lots of people are using the term 'upgrading with.....' and with 'superb Wilkinson etc etc'.

 

They're good. They do a job. But they're not a significant upgrade compared to other brands renowned for being an upgrade.

Agreed. Their BBOT bridges were a meaningful step up from the ones on my Fender Aerodyne Jazz and Harley Benton PJ-5 because both had my least favourite combination of small diameter saddles and very long grub screws with threads that defy finding appropriate length replacements. Subjectively I prefer the look of chunky brass saddles, but the fact that the threads in the Wilkinson bridges are just M3 (or whatever it was..) meant they could be easily loaded with readily available grub screws that don’t stick out at all, making them an objective upgrade for my purposes. Had there been no functional issue with the stock bridges, the Wilkinsons would have been cosmetic at very best, and probably no upgrade at all.

I've used a few of their BBOT (WBBC) bridges with the brass saddles, a set of their F style (WJBL) tuners, their 'm-series' (WOPB) and their 'premium' (WPB) P pickups. No complaints with any of those bits as yet.

1 hour ago, chris_b said:

Your 200 watt Elf is only 100 watts into 1 8 ohm cab, when it is flat out, and flat out probably won't sound too good. So you're realistically looking at using 50-80 watts. Is that loud enough? I'd say probably not. 

I bought an Elf on a whim during one of the lockdowns but only actually got round to trying it last night at rehearsal. Flat out through a pair of BF One10s the tone was decent, but the power was disappointing - it wasn't even nearly loud enough. I know many on here have said they can gig with theirs, but sadly I certainly couldn't and it wouldn't even be a viable backup in an emergency.

I couldn't comfortably move or house an 8x10, so I'd sadly have to judge its value to me as zero.. or possibly less given that I'd expect to have to pay somebody to take it away even if you gave it to me for free. I recently sold what used to be considered a very lightweight 4x10 (MB 104HR) for about £500 less than I paid for it new, 10ish years ago - it was clear that I wasn't going to get any more for it so my choices were either keep it or just stand to the loss.

Having given the recent IEM/FRFR/modelling threads some genuine thought I don't really see myself moving away from my downsized amps and cabs any time soon, but anything that I can't comfortably pick up with one hand has already gone and won't be returning.

I'm generally most comfy with the bridge at about conventional jeans-pocket height when the bass is slightly angled-up in playing position. I've had to shorten my straps a bit since losing some weight, as it's taking less seatbelt to achieve the same position these days.

The idea of either practicing standing up or setting the strap to maintain the position when seated makes complete sense, but I've never done it. I practice and record sitting down, but rehearse and gig standing up. Having just given the seated-height strap adjustment a quick try, I can't honestly see it ever working for me either ergonomically or aesthetically.

Markbass Little Mark 2 was my first lightweight amp head, and it's still what my bandmates say they think 'sounds like me'. A serious contender for favourite allrounder.

GK MB200 was my first tiny amp head for when even the LM2 was impractical. With all the dials at noon I think it sounds utterly brilliant - possibly my favourite basic tone.

Ashdown ABM1000 doesn't sound much like any other Ashdown I've had (ABM500/Mi550/RM800/ABM600) and that's probably why I like it so much. It's clean, clear and really powerful, and it's my favourite for 'that feeling when each note kicks you right in the trousers'.

And what do I actually gig with? A Markbass Nano II with my older Nano 300 as its backup. For now they're the best balance of cost, size, weight and power that I can find, plus they sound 'like me' to my band. They seem to be well built, but they're also relatively cheap so I can easily justify one and a backup. They're my current favourite for practicality and compromise, and that's what wins most of the time.

20 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

@Ed_S Do you have a lot of equipment failures?

 

I think in over 40 years of gigging I've only had a handful that were more serious than breaking a string and all of them were fixable in a way that allowed the gig to carry on; and just one of those fixes was noticeable to the audience.

 

One of the many reasons I've ditched my backline is that it cuts down on the number of spares I need to consider whether or not to bother with. 

Far from it - barely any in fact. It's just that part of me being able to get up on stage and enjoy my time there comes from knowing that I've done what I can to ensure all goes well, and am generally at peace with my strategy for everything else. I'm not against any of this in principle - I'm just figuring out whether I could be happy using it, irrespective of how good it sounds.

40 minutes ago, Jack said:

Chances are that anything mission critical is going to put a 'dent in your performance'. Can't have your amp fail without losing sound as well. I don't even use IEMs but just off the top of my head I would put my bass in my singer's monitor wedge, which could be done whilst playing, and then sort it out at a set break.

Completely get what you're saying - I just like to know that I've given myself the best chance of a stress-free time when I'm on stage. Like for example my amp failing on a gig where there are also wedges wouldn't be too bad since my DI doesn't come from my amp, and my pedalboard has a true bypass path to my DI, which itself can take phantom power from the mixer. My board losing power would take my wireless out and need me to switch to an emergency cable, but I could plug back into an otherwise dead board and still get signal to FoH, monitors and my amp. Dropping out of the FoH and/or monitors due to my DI failing would still leave my amp, which is better than nothing. It'd just take a little bit of re-thinking to feel comfortable that I'd got everything similarly sussed.

40 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

You do what you do for all "mission-critical" equipment - carry a spare. It doesn't have to be another pair of expensive custom moulds, a set of ZS10s (£45 from Amazon - even cheaper if you want to take a chance with AliExpress) will get you to the end of the gig. Cheaper than a spare amp or wedge and more than small enough to live permanently in your bag of gig essentials and unlikely to be left out because your couldn't be bothered to load them in or didn't have room in the band transport for a particular gig.

I guess you'd want them on a cable in case it was your wireless that was the cause of the problem, which again is cheap, but also on a different aux from the mixer in case that was the cause of the problem, which is perhaps less so if you need the next model up to have enough outs. But fair play, that's kinda what I expected - it's going to put a dent in your performance that just moving closer to another wedge or back towards your amp wouldn't, but you just accept that as part of the deal.

Genuine question - what's your backup when your IEMs go down on a silent stage and you've suddenly got nothing at all? I play by ear, so hearing myself in context is a necessity rather than a luxury and IEMs as a way of doing that better certainly appeal in concept, but they seem much more risky than amps and/or wedges.

Just looking at my local shop it'd be a Squier Affinity Jazz V as it's the only 5 in stock and under budget. With fresh strings, a strap and a cable, I'd finish up at £299.97. Guess I'd have to see if they'd throw in the cheapest possible bag that should be a tenner and a clip-on tuner that should be a fiver, but if so I'd be self sufficient and have the factory strings as spares. A pair of foam earplugs from behind the bar and I could manage.

Nice colour choice! My very first bass back in 1999 was a BBN4ii in yellow natural satin, and although I sold it years ago, it always brings back good memories when I see one.

3 minutes ago, Waddo Soqable said:

The snag with one bass likely arises when you want a couple (or more) very different sounds for whatever pieces, genres or styles you're playing

Or setups. I prefer wider string spacing and lower action with slightly more compliant strings for playing mellow tunes with my fingers, and narrower spacing with a bit higher action and tension for digging in on the rock and metal material with a pick, so I'd find it limiting rather than liberating to just use one. If I knew that going forward I only had access to one then I guess I'd have to make it work, but if I knew it was just for a while then I'd keep the Ibanez SR out as I need it for band stuff, and just neglect my fingerstyle playing until I could have my Jazz back. Then have sore fingers for a while.

1 hour ago, SteveXFR said:

 

I'm sure they could but would it sell any more basses and make more money?

I reckon people who like the classic designs would see it as unnecessary and not buy one, and people who didn’t like the designs and/or the company before still wouldn’t, and they wouldn’t buy one either.