nilebodgers

It’s such a nice bit of playing with the perfect tone for the song. Also - Lots of guitarists can play the guitar part, but I’ve not heard one yet that can do a convincing Kossoff vibrato.

No, that would be nuts. Basses are for playing.

Yes, isn’t that what you said your 0.3mm was, “first fret clearance”?

That would be buzz city for me. I’ve got 0.5mm - 0.6mm on all my basses. (first fret clearance)

Has the cable got a semiconducting layer? It’s usually a black layer in between the core and the shield and it can be easy to let it touch the core if you aren’t careful. You can end up with a high resistance short between hot and earth and a much increased cable capacitance that can make the cable sound very strange. (look at Van Damme Pro Grade Classic XKE Instrument Cable for an example)

(retired) Engineer here too - I have to measure it, it's a compulsion.

Things like the Stewmac neck jig pull the neck straight to level frets even though the truss rod is left at normal tension. I don’t have a jig, but I used a fret rocker to prove to myself that the problem was only there if the neck was curved, the truss rod tension wasn’t a factor. A plek machine should be able to level with the truss rod at full tension and the neck curved though, that would be the best result. I’d have bought a new neck for my cheap mim bass though if I wanted to keep it, it’s value didn’t warrant a pro luthier or machine attention.

https://fendercustomersupport.microsoftcrmportals.com/en-us/knowledgebase/article/KA-02007

That’s very interesting. I thought I was going nuts when I was chasing the problem. I did a full level, crown and polish with the neck dead straight and the fretwork was spot-on, but as soon as I put the neck back on the bass and strung it up the upper frets were buzzing. I’d read about the ski slope problem and this was in the same place, but the fact that it was a dynamic effect under tension and not static like a simple rise in the fretboard made it something different that I’d not seen mentioned before. I improved it, but couldn’t completely fix it. Maybe a tool that could level frets under full tension like the Katana system might have sorted it, but I suspect that neck wouldn’t have been stable long-term with a lower action.

0.3mm / 12thou is a typical relief spec. so not unusual at all. 2.5mm at 17th fret should be easy if the fretwork is ok unless played very hard. Hellzero makes a good point, my mim p-bass needed the upper frets dressing slightly to get the best action and that didn't have the ski-slope problem. I also had a mim j-bass that had a ski-slope that only showed up when the neck was under full string tension, so conventional levelling wouldn't fix it. I did my best to cure that by spot-levelling under tension and I made it acceptable at the Fender factory spec (6/64in), but the action would never go lower on that bass and it wasn't worth a pro luthier looking at it so I moved it on.

I think the Ashdown 2x10 is sealed rather than ported. That would suggest that it is more likely to be mid-bass punchy than have lots of LF content. I’ve found that lots of LF can be a problem in smaller venues though as it tends to sound boomy, so a more extended response cab could need dialling back quite a bit.

Lol - if I ever play in a band again I’m playing bass, nothing else. I’m keeping my old career in event production and audio engineering a deep dark secret, nothing to see here.

2.2mm at 17th fret across all strings.

Hard to answer without knowing the size of venues you play and where you locate the power amps etc. Having said that, I would have thought that a couple of 10m and a couple of 5m would give you enough options for most smaller venues provided you can chain the cables. I'd also advise marking the cables or connectors in some highly visible way to prevent them being mistaken for XLR mic cables. You would know the difference, but helpers might not be as clued up. *** Ignore this re. marking - active speakers, so normal signal cables not speaker cables.

When you say adding extra 2-5-1s do you mean while other chordal instruments are sticking to the unmodified chord? Eg. In 4 bars of Cmaj7 you could treat it as a bar each of Cmaj7, Dmin7, G7 and Cmaj7?