Dan Dare

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.

Dead right. My Phil Jones cabs go plenty low with 5" drivers.

Interesting, that Barefaced cutaway pic. Looks quite similar to the B&W Nautilus cab design.

The bass/pickups/strings are only part of the picture. If you want a clear fundamental with a low B, you are pretty close to the lower limit of what most drivers and cabs are capable of reproducing, certainly at any volume. Low B is around 31 hz. Have a look at the spec sheets. Most cab designers get round it with clever porting and rely on harmonics and overtones that fool us into thinking we hear low B, but there are limits to this. You need power and enough drive unit surface area, too. You won't get a clean, powerful low B from a 200w combo. It's the laws of physics, Jim.

What did you sit on?

How about building the FearFul 115? It was designed for the driver you have. Plans:

I used to remove the passenger seat in my MGB so I could get a 1x15 bass cab in. Only a couple of bolts to undo.

Bill's right (as usual). I always find the amount of low end my PA subs produce out in the room can be surprising and I find myself cutting them, sometimes considerably. You need a high quality sub for clean bass, too. A budget boom box just won't cut it. I did experiment recently with using one of my Fohhn PA subs with one of my Phil Jones bass cabs and it sounded good once I'd got the relative levels right, but it took a bit of fiddling about (and of course, you ideally need an active sub or separate power amp/crossover if using a passive sub so you can balance things properly). I decided the improvement wasn't worth the aggravation of carrying the extra stuff around.

Horses for courses. Seems to me there is a big difference between a bass that gets the job done and one that appeals on a personal level. Much of what we like/lust over in exotic instruments is superfluous (imho, natch) to the job at hand. Beautiful timbers, active p/us with endless tone shaping options, etc, etc may appeal to us as bass nerds, but they don't make a lot of difference out in the so-called 'real world', where providing a foundation to the music is the name of the game. Nowt wrong with wanting instruments made from those beautiful timbers, of course, but the difference in practical terms between them and something like a P bass is largely in our heads.

Not the violin family. The tops are carved and strutted differently inside. Although you can fit a bridge/strings left handed, you would really need to remove the top and swap the bass bar and soundpost for it to work properly.

Well, it is in Snodland, after all...

I wondered about that. Seems it would be more true for the listing to say "There is nothing in the way of positive remarks about Reeve guitars on the b/c forum"...

Thank God for that. Loars are the Strads of the mandolin world. Less than 200 were built. If (and it's a big if) one comes up for sale, prices are stratospheric. I would absolutely love one. A chap I used to know had one and it was the best mandolin I've ever played by a large margin.