Dan Dare

It's worth checking how the bass sounds from out front (use a long lead or wireless). It can be surprising how different what you hear standing next to the rig is from what those out in the room hear, especially when the whole band is playing. I often find I need a stage sound that is too mid-prominent and even growly/honky for it to sit right in the room. This assumes, of course, that you are relying on your back line for the room sound, rather than putting the bass in the PA and using your rig as an onstage monitor.

By "bottlenecking" your amp, do you mean restricting? I wouldn't worry about that with any good quality cab. Solid state amps don't mind higher impedances (yours is solid state. The tube is only a small preamp tube). Just ensure that you don't present the amp with a total impedance of less than 4 ohms. Running into too low an impedance is more likely to damage an amp than a cab, especially at higher volumes. If you are able to obtain Markbass where you live, their cabs work well with their amps (as you would expect). A friend uses the MB 210 combo, which is excellent and produces a surprisingly fat sound with plenty of weight for something so small and light. You don't need to worry about overdriving any decent cab with your LM800. The difference between the 500 watts of the LM3 and yours is not great, despite the apparent difference in power output. It will be obvious from the sound if a cab is struggling, so just turn down in that event. One thing I would suggest is that, if you wish to use low tunings, you may need multiple drive units to produce very low frequencies at any volume, as you need to shift plenty of air.

This is appealing at first glance - FRFR (full range, flat response) suggests accuracy, clean, uncoloured sound, etc. However, unless you spend a great deal and use a lot of so-called FRFR cabs, I don't think it's practical for bass in the so-called "real world". I have high quality PA cabs (HK and Fohhn). I've tried them with my bass. Close up and at modest volumes, they sound impressive, albeit a little bland. Perhaps that's because I'm too accustomed to "coloured" bass speakers, although I do use PJB cabs, which are at the clean end of the bass cab spectrum. However, my PA cabs just don't cut it in a live situation, apart from when I use them purely as stage monitors and rely on the PA to route the bass to the hall/room. Even then, I find they lack that good old "heft". The specs of cabs that are claimed to be FRFR need to be examined. How is "FRFR" defined and between which frequencies? Where are the -3db or -6db points? At what volume levels and distance will they deliver true FRFR? An extreme comparison would be with headphones. Yes, they will do FRFR at miniscule volumes an inch or so from your eardrum, but they won't fill even a tiny room and especially not with bass frequencies. Many great sounding bass cabs are anything but FRFR. However, they work in a live context, where they have to compete with other instruments, drums/percussion, room acoustics and so on. Sometimes, coloured is your friend.

Don't buy on the basis of recommendation, reviews, etc. It's a sure route to disappointment. Take your amp to a shop and try it with some cabs. I think you may be confusing amplifier outputs with cabs - you say "the cab outputs 800W at 8 ohm impedance" and "the cab outputs 500W at 8 ohm". Cabs don't deliver watts (which are an imprecise measure, anyway). Amplifiers do. The only thing you need to worry about with your amp is to avoid using cabs with a total impedance of less than 4 ohms.

Exactly. I'm a bit mystified by this. Unless I'm reading it wrongly, the piece is going to be played in E. Most things are easier to play in E rather than Eb. The root becomes available in E. It would be far more challenging to learn something in E and then be required to transpose down a semitone to Eb.

It depends. I have my GPS set to the female voice with an Irish accent. My missus was Irish. When the GPS tells me what to do, I reply "Yes dear" 🙂. Can't help myself.

Good shout. I had an Epifani 3x10 that I really liked. I moved it on because it was wide and quite deep - almost the same size as a 4x10 - and difficult to fit in the car or get up the narrow stairs to the flat I lived in. Couldn't argue with the performance, though. Many amps will work happily into 2.6 ohms these days, so three 8 ohm drivers would not present an issue to them.

Novatone Switchboards, anyone? They were around in the 1970s. There were issues - the amount of wood that had to be removed from the neck to fit them made the neck potentially weak and they were attached via magnets that lost adhesion after a while and made them prone to slipping out of position, for example.

A click is what I heard, too. Happens on the attack of the note. One would tend to assume something mechanical - strings hitting frets, etc, but it may not be. Was the bass heavily compressed on the recording? I've heard similar noises when recording from badly set attack and release on a compressor. Are you able to check by listening to the bass part in isolation with no fx?

I'd have said thanks but no thanks. He'll be lucky to get 100k miles out of a new Merc. They're not built like the old ones were.

Without knowing what car you have or its dimensions, nobody can really offer meaningful advice. There are 15s and 15s and large family saloons and large family saloons. Fwiw, I can get a 15 in the boot of my Camry with ease, but it has a huge, deep boot with an opening that is quite close to floor level, so no surprise there.

They look like J bass covers, which are larger than those made for P basses. The one over the bridge looks ridiculous, too.

Of course, the only people who care about who is the "number one bassist" (assuming such a creature exists) are bass players...

He'd probably be off his face, more like.

The reason it "hasn't been tuned in about a year" is likely due to the fact that he knows those headstock cracks will let go if the strings are taken up to tension.

Mine was the mosfet version, too and I picked it up at a silly price in a sale. I only sold it - for almost what I paid for it - because having three heads seemed a bit excessive.

It's actually a pretty decent budget head. The claimed output is a bit of a fairy story, but it works well, especially for the money. Used to have one as a backup amp and it did the job very competently.

Rather partial to this one.

Exactly. We oldies aren't supposed to like it. Even if I do, I tend to keep quiet about it. Don't want to be seen as a groovy grandad trying to get dahn wiv der kidz.

"Modern music" is not some discrete entity. It is, as music and art has always been, enormous and diverse. You aren't going to find interesting or original music or art on any mainstream media, which chases ratings/viewing figures and therefore adjusts its output to appeal to mass taste and opinion. Don't go looking for gold in a tin mine.

Given that this pertains to legal protections for purchasers, which vary according to where in the world you live, there is not very much point in asking on here if you live outside the UK, where BC is based. We will try, as Dad and others point out, to offer helpful suggestions, but we cannot give you a definitive answer. BC has some members who live outside the UK who may be able to offer useful advice, although there are not a great number of them. If that is not satisfactory to you, I'm afraid there is little more we can do. You need to seek legal advice that applies where you live - Latvia in your case.

I used to hanker after a Ric' in my prog days. Whenever I've tried one, I've always felt the string spacing tight. They definitely feel to me to be a pick player's instrument. They do some things very well and you can't argue with the looks. It's a classic design that just works visually. Being a confirmed fan of the big F, they're not for me, but to each his own.

"Signature" instruments are just another wheeze to relieve punters of their hard-earned.

It's a Jackson. It's brown. Nuff said.