When I got back into playing after a 10 year hiatus, I bought a Trace Elliot SM715 combo which sounded great but was humungus and felt like it was made of solid concrete. I replaced that with an Ashdown stack of MAG300 amp with 2x10 & 1x15 cabs. This was better. It still sounded great and was easier to carry individually, but was still hassle as the cabs were bulky & heavy and required multiple trips to the car for load in/out. I got lazy & tended to just take one cab to gigs. I got rid of that & my final upgrade was a Markbass LMII & Schroeder 1212L cab - This is much more convenient. It can get blummin' loud and still sounds great. The most important thing though is that I can now carry my entire rig, plus bass & accessories in one trip from the car. I guess the moral of the story is to work out how lazy you are & whether you'd prefer a compact lightweight rig - it costs more, but I wouldn't want to go back to the back-breaking combo. Saying that I'd still quite like a smaller single speaker neo cab for 'acoustic' gigs