Dan Dare

Retired Whitehall policy advisor. Now work part-time at the Olympic velodrome in Stratford, East London (always been a bikie - used to ride competitively when I were a lad).

Let's send him to the Lego factory (it's further away): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billund,_Denmark

Elf and Safety, of course. Surprised you needed to ask...

This. Why should others buy you a bass (especially a ridiculously expensive one)? Go out and work and earn the money and pay for it yourself. It took me over 20 years to get a Jazz Bass. Like Nancy, I played El Cheapos until I could afford the one I wanted. Makes you appreciate it more when you finally get it.

It may not need re-finishing. The first thing to do is to clean the board with alcohol. Unless you have worn through the lacquer, that will remove the grease/dead skin,, etc and with it, the dirt. Then you can see whether it actually needs re-finishing.

Cheapskates

This is a good suggestion. If you buy a dedicated practice amp, you will usually have to buy something else to gig with.

Plenty of good ones around, but they won't turn out for nowt.

This is exactly what I've found. Since becoming a PJB user, I've acquired a couple of 4B and a couple of C4 cabs. Same drivers - 4 (ceramic, not Neo) 5" units - in each, but the 4Bs, which are quite a bit larger, definitely have more warmth/low end and produce more sound at a given volume setting. I prefer them at low to medium levels, but you can't push them as hard as the C4s.

Whenever I hear someone playing through a Markbass, I'm always impressed by the sound. They just seem to fill the space and also do warm/vintage tones very well. Up close/in the showroom, they don't audition any better than many others (no worse, I hasten to add), but they do have a certain something when used in anger. I have a Carvin B1000 which I really like tonally (nice preamp with 6 band eq). My meat and potatoes head is an AG700. I must A/B it against a Markbass one day (which will probably cost me money...).

Every cloud has a silver lining...

Thanks Bill. Interestingly, low bass is often removed from modern recordings for exactly the same reason - to make it sound right on car systems. We've come a long way...

In that case, why not remove the castors and invest in a trolley to move the cabs?

Exactly. People were exhausted and malnourished following the Great War and hospitals were over-loaded dealing with casualties. Housing was poor and over-crowded for all but the wealthy. It was not surprising that the outbreak was so deadly.

The truth in a nutshell. You get what you pay for, as always. Given that so many use plastic box FoH speakers (which aren't exactly the last word), they really cheap out when it comes to monitors.

If people are daft enough to buy all that tripe (artist endorsed instruments that are mass produced in a factory, used strings, soiled bedlinen, etc), they deserve to be fleeced.

Wasn't the bass recorded direct in the Motown studios, Bill? I'm sure Ive read that the Ampeg was only used for in-room monitoring. The reason for the lack of low bass was that it was removed at the mastering stage to prevent the vinyl records of the day causing the stylus to jump because the modulations were too great.

My old Bassman cab' had castors which could be removed. The wheel itself was on a rotating shaft which pulled out of the sleeve that was bolted to the cab. Worth changing yours for that type?

"you don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle". I like that a lot, Bill. I've always wondered whether spade connectors are actually better. They may not be as swish as spring-loaded ones, but a decent solder joint is a pretty reliable thing.

One man's cheese is another's caviar, of course.

Do you want full-range monitors for large, loud stages or smaller vocal only monitors? If the latter, look at the TC Helicon FX150 or Mackie SRM150 (both around £200). For larger, high volume situations, many of the compact powered wedge shaped PA cabs will work (I have 4 HK Premium Pro 10s that do a good job for me). Anything decent won't be cheap, though. You get what you pay for as always.

Means little. At the age of the band members quoted (40-60), people come and go all the time. If anything, it's a good sign - probably decent players who have other options.

That's the starting bid, not a buy it now, price. I'd expect it to be bid up considerably. We see quite a few "Bargain on eBay" threads for starting bid prices. They never sell for that in the end.

I agree with Stevie and Bill. Could the answer be that these cabs can handle the output of a typical "800W" amp, because that amp is only actually capable of delivering a burst of that wattage at a narrowly defined frequency range and over a few milliseconds? An amplifier that could deliver 800W RMS continuously over a wide range of frequencies would smoke them, but that doesn't happen in the real world because such a beast probably doesn't exist. As stated above, watts alone are pretty meaningless. Some manufacturers, such as Naim Audio (before you say it, I appreciate that they don't design kit for musicians), rate amplifiers on their ability to deliver current, rather than wattage. Would that be a more realistic measure?