BigRedX

The reason to go FRFR (or as close to that as current economical designs allow) is so that you are EQ'ing just for your sound and not partly to compensate for the shortcomings of your traditional bass cabs. Unless you have no PA support for the bass, then the contribution your cabs make to what the audience hears will be close to zero - after all when was the last time you saw a bass cab on stage mic'd up and knew 100% that the microphone was the only source of bass guitar in the PA? If you give the PA a post-EQ DI feed from your amp in order to have some benefit from the tone of the amp (or valve drive etc.) then much of the FoH EQ being applied will be a mixture of trying to replicate the sound of the cans on stage against fighting the amp's EQ setting to deliver a decent bass guitar sound FoH. If you DI pre-EQ or even before the amp itself then all your expensive bass rig is doing as acting as a personal monitor.

The problem with Q is that it has always been too mainstream. You have to be more niche than that these days.

No, It was about £350 including shipping, VAT and import duty. Cheap because it was an ex-demo instrument from a music show, that had been bought by a dealer and then languished unsold until they stuck it on eBay.

Exactly! Which is why IMO the size and number of the drivers on their own is fairly meaningless.

Boschma do a similar design in a range of colours.

It was a Lace Helix. Mine was an ex-NAMM pre-production model so it may not have been like that on all of them.

The only time I have come across something like this, is for The Pretty Things album "Emotions" where the record company had apparently insisted on extra strings and horns being added to the band recordings. The band had always instead that it had been done without their permission and that they hated it. The original was released in 1967, I first heard the album in the late 70s, and by the time the original recordings without the additional instruments were released in 1998, I was so used to hearing them that without those strings and horns that without them recordings just sounded wrong. Also to me the embellishments were less extensive then than implied in the band interviews about the album. For me some of the tracks sound better with the extra instruments and a few don't but on the whole I could have quite happily carried on listening to the record company version of the album.

Yes there are some basses made like that. Normally the cheaper models/brands where it is easier not to have to reposition the side dots for the fretless versions. Personally I can't get on with this method. The only bass I have with an unlined board but dots between the frets I found almost impossible to play in tune and moved it on fairly quickly, but in the end it's down to what you are used to.

I've used the time while I've not been able to rehearse and gig with my two current bands to go through my archive of recorded material to see if any of it is still worth releasing. The upshot of this is that there will be a couple of new albums by previous bands coming out later this year, some new (remote collaboration) recordings from another old band as well as 3 new singles from Hurtsfall - which we recorded just before this all started. On top of that there has been In Isolation's second album and two new videos. Here in the UK performance royalties for songwriters still work out pretty well. I make a steady (if small) income from my various record and CD releases from the past 40 years, mostly from broadcast radio play.

As a composer/songwriter, my opinion is that the version I have spent time crafting in the rehearsal room and studio is the only one I want the public to hear. Occasionally I might revisit a song a year or so later and rework it, but in those cases the result is so different to the original that they could almost be considered to be two different songs but with similar chord progressions and lyrics. While I've been unable to gig, I've been working on a few projects from previous bands, either putting together complications of un-released recordings, or remote collaborating on new versions of old songs. With the unreleased recordings I have been thinking very carefully about the validity of doing this, and also considering whether or not to include multiple versions of songs or older versions of previously released songs and in almost every case have decided against it. In every other case I have picked what I consider to be the best version of the song only for inclusion.

That would be interesting. My experience with bass rigs, is that there is as little similarity in sound between cabs with the same speaker configuration as there is those with different configurations.

IMO you could stick almost any Fluke track in this thread. I'm a sucker for any of the mixes of "Electric Guitar".

He does make guitars. This is my dream instrument: I have to say I'm not 100% sold on the basses, mostly because my OCD can't cope with the slightly angled pickups. Considering that they are his own design and made especially for Ritter bases, I can't se why they couldn't be mounted at an angle inside non-angled covers.

There's normally a very good reason why all those alternative versions and other songs weren't on the album in the first place.

I'd agree with this sentiment. I've had one reasonably old bass that I acquired second hand completely refurbished and refinished, because I loved the instrument but couldn't stand how it looked with the wear. And I agree with this sentiment too. In fact when I've investigated the music produced by all the people whose signature basses I've owned or lusted after, I didn't really like any of it. Their basses were still fantastic through!

Where one of my bands was doing our last round of recording (pre-lockdown). The results of which will be available soon...

IMO Ableton probably isn't the right DAW for you. Although most DAWs can be made to do most things, not all of them do everything as well as others. Ableton can probably be made to work like a conventional multitrack recorder, but that's not it's main strength. I'd suggest that you investigate Reaper instead.

When a cab is described as 2x12 all it tells you is that the cab contains two speakers each with a cone diameter of 12". Nothing else. There is no given sound, power-rating, frequency response, sensitivity, cab size, weight etc. implied by a 2x12 configuration. These are dependant on the construction of the speakers and the cab. So essentially 2x12 tells you very little. If I was still interested in bass cabs the important criteria would be: 1. Is it loud enough for what I need when coupled with my amp? 2. Is it easily transportable by me (assuming that I'm not in a band with its own transport and crew)? 3. If the bass isn't also going into the PA does it sound right when coupled with my amp? And possibly 4. Does it look right for the band on stage? None of these questions are answered by the number and cone size of the speakers. In the past I've owned cabs with the same number and size of speakers but have been wildly different in sound, size and weight.

How does you audience here this fantastic bass sound? From your rig or from the PA? If it's from the PA are they mic'ing up both cabs?

The thing is I don't consider it as a "luxury". I'm essentially a "weekend warrior" too. It's just that I play in originals bands and having full in-house PA support is very much the norm at the venues we play. Apart for a some very small venues in the early 80s when we had to hire in the PA out of our fee and often all we could afford was a vocal only one, this has always been the way for the bands I've played in.

For modern bass cabs the cone size of the speaker(s) is probably the least important specification.

My experience is that the benefits of going pre-amp/modeller with an FRFR depend on the number of gigs you do where the bass is in the PA and how energetic you are on stage. I got rid of my rig because having played almost 400 gigs over the last 10 years I can think of less than 10 where my bass didn't go into the PA, and because given enough space I'm a fairly energetic/mobile performer, I found that I couldn't hear my rig most of the time unless I was stood directly in front of it. This was either because I'd been asked to turn down so far, so as not to mess up the FoH sound or because the stage was too big for even my 1kW rig to give a balanced coverage where ever I was stood. With the FRFR I usually aim it sideways across the stage so that the rest of the band can hear me without needing to have too much additional bass in the foldback. Also this means that am able to use parts of the stage (or even off-stage) for my speakers that normally wouldn't be used or would look wrong with a conventional bass rig. Nowadays for the bigger gigs, I don't even bother bringing the FRFR as the foldback will be more than adequate for me and the rest of my band to hear the bass. It helps that I'm not precious about having to have the perfect bass tone on stage. So long as I can hear what I'm playing and it sounds good FoH, that will do for me.

Fantastic! Is that the original mute mechanism on the MkII?

Without looking at the previous answers I'd have got 9 - players and their instruments. However I'd only have got 5 if the photos had shown just the instruments and nothing else.

Because I'm first and foremost a composer my bass playing always serves the song. If I'm writing on the bass, the first version will be busy and full (lots of two note chords and 2/3 string patterns/arpeggios) this will simplify down once I present it to the rest of the band to give them some space. If I'm writing on another instrument or coming up with a bass line to fit a song written by one of the other band members, it will start off simple (probably root notes only), develop to get fairly complex, and then simplify down to somewhere between the first and second versions once all the other instruments have found their space.