Dan Dare

Is all your gigging stuff massive? If you have a small head/cab, you could get a small head/cab to use with it. I use my AG700 (which is only the size of a couple of books stacked on top of each other) with a single 4x5 PJB cab at home. Works well at low volumes.

Me too. I have a number of small cabs and can use one for home practice or multiples for gigs - the number depending on how loud I need to be.

If you have money to spend, the Phil Jones Double Four is nice.

I'd look at music theory more generally, rather than music theory just for the bass. It's all part of a greater whole.

Agreed. They're more likely to say "Hey look. A corpse". Some of the Botox/fillers techniques have their roots in the mortician's trade, where cadavers are prettied up to look good in the casket for the wake/funeral.

This is great advice from Bill. The contribution of a sub should be such that you don't notice it of itself, but you would miss it if it wasn't there. I'd suggest that, in average sized venues - pubs/bars, clubs, etc - quality 10 plus horn top boxes, augmented by a suitable sub (singular in most cases), are all you need. I learned this some years ago, when my band was playing a wedding. The venue was a large hotel banqueting room, holding several hundred guests. The DJ showed up with a little Nexo system - two 10+horn tops and a compact sub in a bandpass type enclosure. He was driving it with some fairly serious amplification and a Nexo DSP. It blew our much larger (and cheaper) system out of the water, not just in terms of power, but also clarity and dispersion. It sounded like a giant h-fi in comparison to our gear and it all fitted in the back of a small hatchback. Smaller tops have less visual impact and are smaller, lighter and easier to carry/lift onto poles and if the worst comes to the worst and one gets knocked one over (I've seen it happen), it's less likely to kill whoever it lands on, which is a bonus.

I change them when they won't intonate accurately. I find they lose it and become indistinct when they get really worn. I find longevity depends on the brand. La Bellas do seem to last well. I prefer Chromes on my J bass. I got 5 years of constant playing - using them virtually every day - out of my last set. I've just changed them and now have to contend with weeks of clank until they bed in.

Much truth in this. I no longer like much of the music I listened to when I was an introverted teenager. It was of its time and suited me and what I was then. We change as we age and so do our tastes.

Hilarious, especially your closing sentence. If a venue has acoustic anomalies, we have to adjust to suit them. We can control the sound we are producing. We cannot control the construction/shape/size/acoustics of the venue. Unless we believe that "I am the main attraction. Everything else is just my supporting act", of course.

Mic'ing the bass rig in any manner is not the best way to go, imho. DI is better. Before anyone starts talking about "my tone/sound", it needs to be realised that the sound that works onstage often doesn't work in the mix out in the room - different acoustics, different rig, etc, etc. It's better for the sound man/woman to have a clean slate to work with.

Pretty well every band. I don't expect to like everything any artist produces.

Everyone knows that. The clue is in the name. 40 tons.

I used to have a BBE bass pre' that I sold. Was decent. They turn up used occasionally.

This, but name and shame anyway (assuming he's operating under his right name, which is doubtful) in the hope someone else may be spared being scammed. And never pay by bank transfer. Ever. Who doesn't have PayPal these days?

I never disembarked. Record playing as I type. I'm not a flat earther, but I have a lot of nice stuff on vinyl that I still enjoy listening to.

My Aguilar AG700 has the same button (or rather a button that does the same thing). It seems to me to be more a device intended to impress in the showroom. At working volumes, it's too much and OTT. I almost always cut, rather than boost eq, but using the bass control to boost allows you to add the desired amount of extra low end subtly, rather than the all or nothing you get with the button. Trust me when I say you wouldn't want to use both at the same time.

Yep. It's also a great electrical conductor. You have to be careful, especially out in the countryside, where high voltage lines can be quite close to the ground. You don't even need to touch one. Get it close enough and it can arc.

Double post

If you have a decent folding trolley, your cabs don't need to be the lightest possible. Don't go for cheapies from the likes of Rolson. If you're in the UK, have a look on the Parrs Workplace Equipment website. They do several trollies that fold flat. The one I bought will carry 100kg+, folds to 30"x19"x3" and cost just over £100 delivered. A lot cheaper than a set of GR carbon cabs, albeit not as funky looking (I do love that shiny black woven carbon fibre look). Carbon fibre is fantastic stuff in the right applications. It has great tensile strength, recovers very quickly from flexing/bending and is light and rigid. I'm a golfer and an angler, so I'm a fan and have some nice carbon toys. It's disadvantage is that it doesn't like impacts very much, especially ones concentrated in a small area (such as you might get if you knock your carbon cab into a door handle). You can get around this by adding glass and kevlar to the weave and using specialised resins to bind it, but that adds weight. It's also quite resonant, especially higher modulus carbons. The sections of my Daiwa Tournament fishing pole ring like a bell if you tap them with a finger. That's not a good thing in a speaker cab. Again, varying the mix of fibres and resins, together with bracing can alleviate this, but that will increase weight and negate the main advantage of lightness. You pays yer money and takes yer choice.

Had a surprising experience last weekend playing through a MB 1x12 combo and add-on 1x12 cab. No matter what I tried, I couldn't escape mud city. I've always had good results from MB gear previously. I wonder whether it was faulty.

Strictly speaking, two. However, I went modular years back, so have six cabs and two heads. I can use them in any combination/permutation, depending on how much noise I need to make.

The song was recorded in 1966, when Motown was still in Detroit, so almost certain to have been Jamerson. It could have been Bob Babbitt (the "other" Motown bassist, but it sounds like a Jamerson part). Carol Kaye played on some Motown records after the company relocated to California, but not whilst they were in Detroit afaik. It doesn't sound like pick playing to me. The pick sound is probably due to the fact that Jamerson used dead strings (with foam under the bridge), a high action and damped with his right hand.

Dave N explains that his motivation is primarily pragmatic. If a channel on an analogue console goes down, you can pull it and slot in a fresh one. You can't do that with digital. I agree that those of a certain age - me included - tend to prefer a physical control layer or device. It isn't "phobia". It's just that we are comfortable with the familiar. Although I could spend time learning to use a digital desk (as I have with my simple laptop-based home recording set-up), I don't see the point when I already have something that works well for me.

Very helpful conversation about live sound mixing with FoH engineer Dave Natale on Rick Beato's channel. His observations about global eq towards the end are particularly interesting.