Beer of the Bass

The Gumtree bass looks like potentially a nice deal, though it's very unlikely to be Italian - I'd suggest German or Czech. But it looks to be coming from a player and has decent strings already, so would probably get you going without needing much. If you can find a bass playing friend to come and look at it with you, it would certainly be worth checking out.

It's hard to see how that would work for balance, so I'd be impressed if someone pulled it off. (Probably wouldn't loan them my bass though!)

I feel like if a cello was to come my way, I'd rather keep it tuned in fifths and enjoy getting to grips with the different possibilities that presents. Though I'm fairly used to thinking in fifths tuning from mandolin family instruments, so that probably shapes my thinking a little.

I think if I needed a lot of cab cheaply and stumbled across these, I'd go for two 1x15s rather than the 6x10, for about the same price. It just seems like there would be fewer potential pitfalls.

I'm not used to hearing Joe Gore speak, he's always silent in his own demo videos! And the crossover seems a little gimmicky - a horn level switch can be useful, but surely the crossover frequency and midrange phase would have one optimum setting that most designers would just have hardwired.

The 1x15“ looks like a reasonable deal, I might point those out to a friend who was looking out for a smallish cab for home studio use.

One of the Retrovibe pickups (the HiGain neck or Toaster) might fit without too much bodging, the dimensions seem very close. https://retrovibe.co.uk/product-category/parts/pickups/

I have an irrational dislike of blue LED lighting, it just makes me think of tacky 2000s nightclub decor and the like. So I'd cheerfully have one with the LEDs dead!

On valve amps, external bias adjustment and monitoring LEDs is a nice feature to have, and I'd prefer that to more complex arrangements that automatically set the bias.

Yeah, a 100 watt valve amp may be only a touch more than a 50 watt (and certainly not double in percieved volume), but in a situation where we're probably routinely running the power amp a little way into clipping, it can still be significant.

The PF-50T is working OK for me - I think a lot will depend on your drummer. Ours has some subtlety, the guitarist is usually using a Fender Blues Junior, and we have brass and flute that benefit from keeping the stage volume reasonable. Though if I need to, it balances well enough with the unamplified drums and guitar amp if I use both my cabs. If things were a little more straight ahead rock, I might want a 100 watt valve amp and bigger cabs though.

I'm sure you'll get it there - it's fairly normal to need some troubleshooting. And if you do find it saggier than you wanted at the lower B+ voltage, trying a silicone rectifier could be an option to increase it a little.

Getting the output transformer secondary leads reversed is a fun one - you end up with positive feedback around the power amp (instead of negative), and a loud howl that made my dog hide under the sofa the time it happened to me.

The cosmetics are lovely, proper old British valve amp looking. Though I haven't watched the videos yet. The tube/Fet preamp arrangement looks a little like on the Nexus amps from a few years ago.

While it's possible, the first fuzz pedal (the Maestro FZ-1) didn't hit the market until a couple years after Herbie's bass was made. So the concept of a "fuzz" effect is unlikely to be something Fender were even aware of at the time.

I bet those aren't real coffee stains on the note!

What's your amp, and are you using a preamp? I used to gig regularly at one particularly tricky venue using the house 4x10“ cab, and the thing that helped most was having a high-pass filter to take out the low rumbly stuff that can often start feedback. Mine is a Schalltechnik Vong pedal. Making foam f-hole plugs helped too.

In my first band, mid 90s, I had a Zoom 506 that I mostly used for compression and EQ, maybe a little chorus on one tune. I left it at home one week, and the drummer asked me what I'd changed as he thought I sounded much better that day. Nowadays I just bring a fuzz and an envelope filter, which are used sparingly but unsubtly.

There definitely seems to be a rough correlation of less gapped/smoother to being darker and thumpier. I guess the gaps allow for a little more flexibility.

I used to take my bass around Edinburgh on foot a lot, and found a simple bass wheel worked well for me. Mine is the inflatable tyre type, and I would keep it fairly soft to cushion the ride somewhat. The only time that's not great is if you're getting on and off public transport with it.

Since low key diatonics have come up a few times in this thread, I thought I'd mention that I picked up a low C Lee Oskar to play around with. The nice thing about it is that LO price them the same as their standard keys. It sounds fine and plays easily - the bends on hole 2 and three are taking a little adjustment of my technique but I gather that's normal with low keys. So they seem like a good option if you're curious about low keys.

Yeah, it's a useful site. Last time I checked it out I realised that I probably wouldn't like anything else better than my Spirocores, so it's definitely saved me some money!

Yeah, I wouldn't replace them in an older amp unless they were dead and a replacement was cheaper than a re-wind. They're such a fundamental component that it seems a bit Ship of Theseus!

I have one, a Schalltechnik Vong. TBH I've yet to find that it adds anything useful to my bass guitar setup, but it makes a massive difference playing double bass on a loud stage.

I never used it in the MAG combo I had - I preferred to use my Boss OC2 as the low octave from that was much more punchy and characterful. I don't think my combo had footswitch capability either (it was a while ago), which seems silly for an effect like that.