Beer of the Bass

Which couriers have you used? If I can feel reasonably confident that it's properly insured, and the buyer is fine with the costs, perhaps it wouldn't be too bad.

I have an instrument advertised (not a bass, hence it's on another site) which someone is asking if I would ship to the USA. None of the woods used are covered by CITES as far as I'm aware - it's cedar, mahogany and ebony. But it does have some MOP inlay which I've read might be flagged under the Lacey act. It does have a hard case, but obviously I'd still need to gather packing materials and deal with the customs paperwork and live with the risk involved. I'm somewhat on the fence about whether to consider it, as it seems like a lot of additional work and I don't know if any carriers really have worthwhile insurance. The instrument is advertised at about £500, so it would not be a small loss if it all went pear shaped. I know a fair few of you have shipped instruments around, so I'd be curious to see what people think.

I'm not sure if people will be aghast at this idea, but for low volume home use with a low powered amp, a small closed-back guitar cab might well do the job just fine.

Some suggest that the double bass may have some heritage from the viol family, which are usually tuned in fourths. The differently shaped shoulders compared to the violin family, and the frequent use of canted flat backs would also support this idea. And with the string making techniques of the time, a low E or low C would be likely to be fairly unsatisfactory, hence the higher tuning of the old 3 string double bass. When the fourth string was added, continuing the existing pattern of fourths tuning would seem logical.

Likewise, I had a 100 watt Carlsbro valve PA that I genuinely can't imagine me needing more than. And with my current Ampeg PF-50T, we've had one gig where I felt I might have liked a touch more headroom, but it was also a decent size room with limited PA, and I'd only brought one cab due to limited vehicle space. The second cab would probably have got it where I wanted it

If you set the 2x10 to 12 ohms and ran the two cabs in parallel, you would have a 3 ohm nominal load, and the 2x10 would get 1/3 of the total power (which would mean equal power distribution to each 10"). Most valve amps are unlikely to have any problem with a 3 ohm load on the 4 ohm tap but you could always check in with the maker to see what they think of the idea.

Usually the uke only came out for that song and the rest was on the whole kit, but sadly I can't find a clip. Later he changed to a cajon as the kick, and a little miniature snare that packed a bit smaller and wasn't so loud.

A friend I played with for years did something similar, though theirs was a plastic Samsonite type job.

It's hard to gauge the exact shade from the photo, but possibly Thomastik Superflexible. Do they have barrel shaped aluminium ball ends with an O on one side and a Roman numeral on the other? It that's them, they're not bad strings, quite high tension steels similar to Spirocores but a little less bright, though that set looks old.

I don't really try out instruments in shops unless I'm genuinely in the market for something, and that's not often. So it's not something I've had to deal with so far.

The reverse sweep is a big chunk of what I like about my Mutron work-alike (a Madbean Naughty Fish), so leaving it out would take away the fun for me.

Where does the standby switch come in relation to the first filter cap? I've seen some articles suggesting placing it after the first cap, so that it charges slowly as the rectifier warms up. That's meant to be less taxing on the rectifier too. http://valvewizard.co.uk/standby.html

Older Rotosounds didn't have the coloured balls, though the smaller ball end on this one does look like my Thomastiks.

I've done it with two or three nuts to move back a tapered string where the thinned section was overly long. But that was less that 1“ of adjustment - if you needed to make up the difference between long and medium scale that would seem a bit ungainly.

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.