BigRedX

From my recollection sh!t brown stopped being a fashionable 70s colour by 1977 at the very latest, so these Fenders didn't even have dodgy 70s fashion going for them.

Thanks for updating us. When the cab was mic'd, did anyone take the time to listen to each driver in turn to find out which one was closest to delivering the "sound of the cab", and if so did you ensure that this was the driver that was mic'd each time?

The OP needs to check their particular combo. Not all of them have a spare speaker socket for an extension cab.

Yes but there worse it is, the more the "vintage" tag will be pushed as essentially that is all it has going for it. Back in the late 70s I had a part-time job working for my local musical instrument retailer which was in the process of moving on from being somewhere that sold home organs and cheap beginners violins as well a few budget Japanese copy guitars and basses (think Columbus and Grant) to a shop that catered for the "rock roll" instrument market, and to this end had become dealers for Fender, Ibanez and Aria guitars. When the Fender guitars and basses arrived pretty much every single one had serious build problems, as well as the fact that many of them were finished in seriously unattractive colours - predominantly sh!t brown and a unfinished looking see-through white. If it had been up to me the whole lot would have gone straight back to Fender with a demand that they send us some properly made and attractively finished instruments by immediate return. Unfortunately that wasn't the case, and the only person who was happy was the free-lance guitar tech who saw lots of additional income from trying to make them playable.

When you are trying to sell some otherwise terribly put together piece of crap.

Thanks for the correction Bill. I ran a bi-amped system in the 90s with a 1x15 bass cab and a home made 2x8 cab based on the speaker housing from my favourite guitar combo, but that was mainly so I could have extreme chorus, flange and delay effects on my bass without sacrificing any of the bottom end clarity. It worked very well and wasn't any real hassle apart from having to educate every PA engineer that they shouldn't run both channels of bass DI at the same volume to get the correct bass sound. Eventually we got our own sound engineer and even that problem went away. Because of this I'd always assumed that putting the crossover for anything other than tweeters before the power amps was a more efficient way of doing things.

As someone who runs their own one-person business, I simply don't get this. No matter how busy I am with actual work, every new enquiry gets an answer with 24 hours, even if I have to apologise that I am too busy to take on any new work at the moment. An unanswered request will most likely result in my potential customer never bothering to get in touch again, whereas those I let know I can't accommodate them right now may well come back with a new request at a time when I need the work.

And the amount of power that you'll lose as heat in the process.

I have to admit that the old Schaller design required the correct tools to be able to tighten them up properly - a pair of mole grips to hold the locking part of the mechanism in the correct orientation while using the correct fixed size spanner to turn the nut. Hoping to get everything tight enough by gripping the lock part in your hand and using an adjustable wrench on the nut would never result in a suitably secure fit. You did also need to enlarge the holes in the strap where the locks went or the strap material would exert extra outwards pressure on the nut making it difficult to do up tight enough. It's quite a bit of faff and IME most people don't bother, with the result that eventually (and normally at the worst possible moment) their strap locks come away from the strap. However if you have the correct tools and know what to do then your locks will stay attached to the strap without loosening forever - I have straps whose Schaller locks are still securely in place from when they were originally fitted 35+ years ago.

For a 1kW+ system you'll need to run your crossover for the bass and mid-range drivers before the power amps.

But that only matters if you, your band and most importantly of all the audience can hear it. What I'm saying is that most of the time only the bass player can, and only if they stand in front of the rig, never move away from that spot and aren't using IEMs. What everyone else will hear, at best, is the sound of the pre-amp valves being delivered by the Class D amps of the FoH and monitors.

The thing is that these big impressive looking rigs are doing pretty much nothing on stage other than looking big and impressive. From personal experience with my own big impressive rig, is that the moment I stepped away from being directly in front of it I could hear more bass guitar from the PA foldback than I could from my own rig. The PA feed at best was taken from the line out/DI on the amp so it gets no benefit of the power amp valves or the "sound" of the cab(s) and that's where all the big heavy components are needed. I sold mine, upgraded my effects to a Line6 Helix and bought an FRFR powered cab to use at rehearsals and the smaller gigs where the foldback might struggle to give a decent bass sound (although TBH so long as I can hear I'm in time and tune with the rest of the band I don't care what it sounds like on stage and I'll trust the FoH engineer to deliver an appropriate bass sound to the audience). The result is that my bands don't have a huge bass rig taking up valuable space on stage, in the van and in the rehearsal room. By all means if your band image calls for it have a big impressive backline, although if I was going to be in a band like that I'd have a "prop rig" that was empty. lightweight and folded up for transit.

The guitar version great. I have an Eggle-era custom model. I've also tried the original bass version which IIRC had an EB3-style pickup arrangement. That was ridiculously large and horribly unbalanced. It didn't sound brilliant either.

When I was in the first year at secondary school (in the early 70s), we were asked if anyone would like to learn a musical instrument, and if so what? For some reason I decided I'd like to learn the trombone. I had a single "try-out" lesson where the teacher tested to see if I could get a note out of the mouth piece (after a bit a trial and error, I could) and then to see if I could reach the full extension of the slide. I couldn't. That was that. I was told I was too small to play the trombone. Nothing else was suggested like a different instrument that I would be able to play, or a suggestion to come back in a year's time and try again.

What exactly do you want to do? Use the external cab instead of the built-in speaker? If so why? Use the combo with an additional cab? In which case you need a cab with the same size and number (and ideally type) of speakers as in the combo for the best results. However, you'll need to look on the back of your actual amp as there are several different versions of the GP7 combo and by looking at photos available not all of them have additional speaker outputs. If they do the impedance information for the extension cab should be marked next to the socket.

For me with a lined fretless it would depend on how "visible" the lines are under stage playing conditions. If they can be easily seen (or as easily as actual frets) then the markers will be fine between the lines as they are on a fretted bass. If the lines are going to be subtle then it would be worth moving the dots to be where the lines are.

Everything I hate about "boutique" electronics. No proper case to protect the valves and transformer (that'll be why it's lighter than the competition). Un-ergonomic layout of the controls, borderline illegibility of the legends and no markings for the knobs. If this was a one-off a home-brew for the maker to use himself it's probably OK but to expect people to part with large amounts of money for something that looks like a half-finished prototype...

Get Newtone to make you a set.

You only need to do this with strings that have a round rather than hexagonal core.

Newtone will make you strings of whatever length you want. However what is the problem of just cutting the strings to the correct length?

Do your neighbours live close enough for a device in their residence to be causing the problems. Remember wireless technology is no respecter of legal boundaries. Any reason why you can't use a wired connection? It would be much more reliable.

Just get two identical cabs. Mixing different cabs is of no benefit to anyone other than the person standing in the "sweet spot". Everyone else will experience a different (probably worse) sound to varying degrees. If you are relying on your rig to provide bass guitar sound for the whole venue, that means the sound and volume of the bass will be different depending on where in the audience you are stood. If the bass goes through the PA then your cabs make zero contribution to what the audience hears.

I would agree with @barkin about the qualifier need for left/right as opposed to clockwise/anticlockwise. I always thought this was a side effect of the fact that I am slightly dyslexic, but I think that it might be more to do with the fact that often I need to be adjusting screws at weird angles. I've found the simplest way is to use a ratchet screwdriver with the direction correctly set so that turning in the wrong direction does nothing.

I haven't worn trousers with enough spare material to flap since 1977...

Mine has a Made In Korea sticker on the back of the headstock.