Dan Dare

K&M do a stand bracket to take iPads. They also do one to take a pint glass. Sensible chaps, these Germans.

This. K&M sell all spares, so you can always fix them. I have 8. The oldest one - my Trigger's Broom K&M - has been going strong for 40 odd years. Studiospares are decent budget stands, but not in the same class as K&M. K&M make for the likes of Beyer (and are cheaper), too. Buy nice or buy twice.

Spot on, Jack. If I play bass in the house band at a jam, I take a cheap instrument to lend to those who turn up without one (one bloke recently turned his nose up at it and demanded to use my proper bass. I politely declined his request). I second your comments about gear, too. You especially need to watch out for 5 string players cranking the low end and sending your speaker cones flying across the room...

I hope you spent it wisely

So right, George. I have a friend who is a highly rated violin maker (people in some of the big London orchestras play his instruments). He has to "antique" them when he makes them, because nobody will be seen playing a new instrument.

At £200-£600, you're going to struggle to buy a decent complete system (especially new) that is any good. Personally, I'd steer clear of used PA speakers unless you know their provenance. They can be abused (usually by people trying to put kick drum, etc through them and often driving them into clipping with inadequate amplification). Used mixers and power amps are usually fine if you buy sensibly. At £200-£600, active speakers are probably out of the question. I note you refer to starting from scratch. Do you have some stuff already? If so, what is it? Might be that you can augment it.

Nice. My 72 was originally a very battered sunburst, but I stripped and oiled it in the 80s well before 'relic' was the thing to have. Wish I hadn't now, but there it is. Fortunately, the body has a reasonable grain, so it doesn't look too bad. Plays wonderfully, as I've no doubt yours does.

I like La Bella on my P bass and Chromes on my Jazz. Tomastik flats are lovely sounding with one caveat. The A string is too thin (.070). It was too slack and I ran out of adjustment on the bridge saddle to get the intonation right. I changed it to a Chrome .075 and it was much better.

Another vote for Babicz on a Fender style instrument. Have one on my Jazz. Gotoh are decent and well priced.

Behringer DIs are fine for the money, but there are better. At the budget end of things, I like the passive Palmers. If you want active, Orchid (made in sunny Devon) are excellent, well-priced and get good reviews. If you want to go mad/treat yourself, Radial are as good as any.

I bought one for that purpose, too and ended up getting two more and selling my old heavy cabs. Go for it. They sound wonderful in multiples. You'll need juicy amplification, though. They take a bit of driving.

If I had £3k to improve my bass life, I'd put it towards better amplification and some lessons from someone good.

Afraid it is pretty well all to do with the amp/speakers. As someone else points out, even Barefaced only claim a lower frequency extreme of 37 hz, whilst low B comes out at 31. It may sound good on headphones or at practice levels, but reproducing those kinds of frequencies at any kind of volume is a big ask.

I know you did. But quite a few started pitching in, suggesting buying this or that bass, strings, etc, so I thought it would do no harm to re-iterate it.

Quite a few classic country hits in the 60s and 70s featured a 6 string bass lead. Apart from that, lead bass is something of a crime against nature (ducks and runs for cover 😁)

Nowt out of the ordinary. Life continues on its merry way.

Just keep the input gain right down on the small combo if you're running a line level signal into it. As Jack says above, an extra 25w isn't going to make a lot of (if any) difference.

In addition to Yamaha and Mackie, have a look at RCF, EV and JBL. All make decent mid-price stuff. Performance is pretty comparable between them all.

The point made by Bill and others about putting too much low frequency energy into a room reminds me of a wedding I played last year. It was in an old stately home, in a large oak panelled banqueting hall. The room was pretty live as a result and I kept the PA subs well down. When Mr Disco took over after we'd finished, it was like being beaten with wooden clubs. Horrendous. He had a large Bose rig and he cranked the subs. All the guests were complaining and most deserted the dance floor. I suggested (politely) to him that he might cut the bass a little, but he didn't want to know. We packed as quickly as possible, collected our money and left him to it.

I like: 1. The fact that the listing has ended. 2 I didn't buy it.

This thread sums up the difference between what we, as bass nerds (oh, all right, aficionados), hear and like and what actually does the job in the 'real world'. As Nathan says, out in the room on the night, in a band context, everyone sounded good. I've done my share of playing about with gear in shops and spending considerable sums in search of 'that' sound, but in reality, the stuff I own and use (which I do enjoy playing through) is most likely satisfying only to me. Granted, someone who spends their entire time in a studio environment could make a stronger case for having the latest/best (if such a thing exists), but the rest of us would probably be just as well off with that old TE combo Nathan refers to. Schlepping it would be less easy, of course.

I use two or three. Two is fine for smaller venues. Sometimes the drummer even asks me to turn down 😁. Three is mighty. One is fine for rehearsals at sensible levels. The beauty of them is that each weighs less than 30lb, which is a lot for such small boxes (each is about a one ft cube), but they are very solidly made. Having reached pensionable age, I would rather carry several small loads separately from/to the car than one large one. The thing I have noticed, when listening to others playing through my rig, is how well they project into the room, even when they don't sound that loud on stage. Tonally, I find them excellent. I don't like tweeters in bass cabs - find them too clicky/clanky. The PJBs give sufficient brightness and clarity without sounding harsh. I'm pretty happy with them. Haven't felt the urge to change for several years.

Four 5" drivers in each (I have three PJB C4s), so 12 in total. Each cab weighs 29lb. Cabs are claimed to take 400w apiece, but I think that's a bit fanciful. 300 seems about the practical maximum. Stated freq. response is 35-15000 - again, maybe a touch optimistic, but a clean bottom E at respectable volume is no problem. I run an AG700 with them and that gives plenty of poke for any reasonably sized venue. Anything larger than that and I DI to the PA.

Given that it's one of a pair of which the other broke and that both will have had similar use/wear, hardly a sensible purchase. I suspect it will have been made by Gotoh. They probably offer a similar or identical model, minus Ibanez branding and you could buy dozens for the price he's asking.