DGBass

I've been down this road experimenting on a one cab solution with a 4 ohm and 8 ohm version of the same driver, in the same cab, with the same (class AB) amp and the same bass plugged in. It did in my experience make a noticeable difference running at 4 ohms and the amplifier sounded more dynamic and more responsive at high volume. Whether the full power of the amp was ever achieved at any point I'll never know. I was able to back off the master yet still achieve the same percieved loudness with the 4 ohm as I did with the 8 ohm speaker and amp working a bit harder. At 8 ohms it was plenty loud, at 4 ohms it sounded like there was just more headroom to help get a cleaner and deeper tone, especially down on an open e-string.

I did the same thing with a class D amp I have to compare and in that situation there was negligble difference. At 4 ohms and up loud, the class-d amp sounded compressed and actually seemed happier working with an 8 ohm cab. Both amps were rated around 500 watts @ 4 ohms by their manufacturers, both also quite capable of gig volume easily with a single 8 ohm cab. As has also been mentioned, finding good high power 4 ohm drivers is a very expensive option. So, basically there is no simple or cheap way to utilise a potential gain running a single 4 ohm cab with your amp.  A second cab is probably the cheapest option tbh.      

I think your pickup is a late 70s active EMG as I see the red battery wire on the CAC bar. These typically had the black epoxy resin backing. I have an early 80s one gathering dust in my parts bucket, it has the tan coloured epoxy backing. I know it was early 80s as I bought it in 1981 and it lived in a 1981 Ibanez Blazer 800 BS bass for twenty years until I sold the Ibanez with its original pickup. My EMG was always punchy, crisp and very clean. Always intended to refit it to a P-bass but my current USA Standard stock pickup does the job. I have most of the pickup parts except the original CTS pots. They were quite an unusual size at 25K if I recall.

Seeing Red is always a good warm up tune for finger playing or with a medium flexible plectrum if plectrums are your thing.

I've had a couple of instruments, guitars and basses with laurel and pao ferro fingerboards. I must admit I like the Laurel boards very much, the grain and colour is mostly very consistent and a darker shade than pao ferro. Saying that I had a Jazz with a really striking striped pao ferro grain which was quite fetching. My ears arent good enough to detect any tonal difference between them, perhaps pao ferro is a little brighter? The look of a board would swing whether I purchased an instrument or not. Thats the old chestnut of how it looks being almost as important as how it sounds.

Pao Ferro board on a Player

Laurel board on a Squire CV - this was a really nice example and as dark as my USA Fenders.  The board below is from a stratocaster. Can you tell by looking at it whether its rosewood, pao ferro or laurel?

I played a gig years ago (1999) where i'd badly hurt my right ankle to the point of not being able to stand. We had a gig booked to support swedish metal band Psycore ( who went on to become Swedens Finest ) at a well known Glagow rock / indie venue. Rather than cancel and/or miss the chance to meet them and get our copies of I'm not one of Us signed, my band mates collected me, lifted me into a car and drove me to the gig. Just before positioning me on stage they filled me up with pain killers, anti inflamatory's and fixed a splint to my right leg. I played an hour set rooted to the spot while swaying dangerously to the left on occasion and don't remember a great deal about it at all. I did meet Hansi Baumgartner in the backstage dressing rooms as ours and Psycore's were next door to each other. He let me use his rig which consisted of two Marshall DBS heads through a DBS 4x12 and a DBS 2x15. This the only photo I have of the gig that night and I don't look deleriously in pain or about to fall over, but I was.

Just back from a gig at a fairly local working men's club where the band were scheduled to play mid way through the evening between two other bands. Some short notice personnel issues meant we had to call in a dep drummer who I'd played with once before and knew was a solid player. That wasn't so bad. The vocalist was also a dep and none of us had jammed with him before or even met him. Totally unrehearsed and a set list exchanged by email was basically the only prep we did. The gig went well and all backline and PA was provided. I just showed with my Jazz, a strap, a clip on tuner and a lead. The provided backline was a Genz Benz Contour 500 2x10 with the matching Contour 1x15 extension cab. It was fairly loud but a bit dry sounding and I could hear it struggling ( the class-d cough I call it ) a little with the range of 60s, 70s and 80s rock and blues covers we played which need a lot of big heavy low end of the type my ABM can do with ease. The PA was fairly substantial and covered the out front bass well.

Someone came up to us at the end of the show and said they enjoyed the bands set and asked how long we'd all been together. Our dep singer piped up that he'd only just met us 15 mins before the show in the car park. Which was correct. Sandwiches and pork pies were supplied in abundance on the night for all courtesy of the working mens club. All in, a very enjoyable old school club gig considering half the usual band were deps, barely knew the set list and we all played with no previous rehearsal.

Might be worth sticking a meter across the pins at both ends on the the tank to make sure you get a reading from the springs/coils. Just in case the tank is actually broken and that is why the wires were disconnected in the first place. Those small IDC plugs ( usually made by Molex or AMP) are used commonly in tanks and can normally only be fitted one way around as they have a locking tab on the fitting. That being the case its usually possible to work out which wire goes where and solder them on. On one side green is the tip( signal) and black is the ground. On the other end red is the tip( signal ) and black is the ground.  The tip wires on tanks I've repaired or restored are usually at the top tag, screens on the bottom tag. Its only two wires, if you solder them on backwards, the reverb will hum like mad when is use. Easy enough to reverse them and retest. 

The other thing you could do is just replace the tank, most new ones are as good as the old ones for general use and Orange type 3-springs ones are available online at around £40-60 depending on what model. you need.  Look on the can chassis for a reverb identifier code( see photo) and that will tell you what model you need to match the way the amp reverb circuit is configured. I'm sure if you contacted Orange they would be able to help you, I hear they are really good with post sales tech support.

IDC connectors showing tip wires from the locking side of the connecter. ( this example is from a fender amp )

Tank identifier 8EB2C1B in this example will tell you the type of tank you need and what the spring impeadance is to match your amp.

I used a Fender Bandmaster VM cab for a while a few years back with a 72 Fender Bassman 50 and a Musicman HD150(on half power setting). The cab had Celestion 70/80 speakers when I bought it used and I replaced them with Vintage 30s. The cab looked great and actually paired well with the Bassman 50 and the Musicman. The cab wasn't braced anywhere internally and I always had the feeling around 50-75 watts was about as much as it could handle from a bass guitar before it began to resonate. The baffle on the VM cab is pretty lightweight as well so does vibrate a bit as the power increases. It actually sounded great at low to medium volume but was never really brilliant at loud volumes unless you like very overdriven Fender Bassman 50 tones and not much low end. I lined the VM with 3/4 inch Dacron foam which did help damp vibrations a bit. I did a show with it but it got lost in the mix with a loud drummer and one guitarist. The Musicman HD150 was better because it stayed clean right up to near max on half power setting and had a more flexible pre-amp. The amp did make a difference but at the end of the day The BM VM cab was great for low volume rehearshal and studio sound but not brilliant at a loud rock gig with bass. The reason I chose Vintage 30s for the BM VM was that I'd had very good results using them in an old Marshall Chequerboard 4x12 ( 240W @ 16ohms ) with the Marshall Superbass I used to use a long time ago. Very efficient and loud in the 4x12, and still efficient and reasonably loud in the Bandmaster VM.

Looked great on stage with the Fender badge swapped with an MM one as well. Sounded a lot better with the HD150 as well. 

A custom shop Ashdown ABM was my first thought for best music purchase of 2022 but there was something else I bought that just pipped it to the post for sheer value and because of how stunned I was at the variety of tones available and how good it sounds. It's also superbly built and £70 seemed to good to be true but I can't fault it in anyway so far.

One of these. The tree was more kind of sitting on top of it rather than the item being under it. Early 80's MK2 GP11 1110 100watt 4x10 combo. Thank you Santa🎄My back hates you! Oh and a Boss TR2.

On 22/12/2022 at 19:14, nilorius said:

If you know your guitarist tune and your tune - no problem.

I would agree that knowing how your guitarist colleague was tuning makes for an easier time. Saying that, I was in a band where our guitarist would tune down to a specific detuned chord for some songs, then need to tune back up a bit to play other songs and then have a standard guitar at concert pitch for other tunes. This was achievable in a rehearshal room or studio with three or four differently tuned guitars but not at a gig. As I only ever used one bass at a time, tuning up and down like this to match the guitar played havoc with my bass tuning and playability. String gauge was also a major factor in maintaining playability and staying in a de-tuned state. At the end of the day I decided to tune to standard concert pitch and play up and down the neck a bit more to make the required key changes. It made for some interesting bass sounds and playing to match what was happening on guitar and kept my gig setup standard and my bass in perfect tune. Judicious use of a bass distortion pedal and tweaked EQ kept the bass sounding like a bass even though a lot of the time I was playing up near or above the 7th fret most of the time in that band.

I have a set of Ironstone Jazz pickups in my American Standard and they are plenty beefy in use with stainless flats. They are an Alnico design based on a 70s jazz tone and have way more output than the standard Fender CS60s my bass came with as new. You can get them in singles as well as pairs and for me they seemed very reasonably priced. I would even go as far as to say they transformed my Jazz in both tone and output. Definetly worth a look imho.

Most i've paid for a new bass ever was £1299. If I was in the market for something new, proabably around £1500 would be the limit for new one, maybe half that for a used item. Any new or used bass would be getting gigged for sure so having something wonderfully unique and minted that i'd be terrified to do pub gigs with would be no use.

With a lot of the now 'vintage' TE stuff, if you are in the market for repairing them or restoring a broken item, one solution is to seek out a similar or same unit and cannibalise it for spares. One good one from maybe two bad ones if you like. Electronic component parts are still source-able as a lot of the components like resistors, diodes and capacitors are still made by some vendors. Things like speakers, complete PCB's and consumables like sitel knobs, push button caps, bulbs and sliders are harder to find if at all for some TE's now. Mosfet power transistors for AH amps (TO3 type) are no longer made from this year and going up in price as stock runs out. It will get harder to keep the power sections on old amps running. Cabs are a bit easier as there will be a speaker somewhere that will fit or fit reasonably well to replace an older unit. TE used Fane a lot around the time of the bright boxes and Fane still do a 5 inch high performance driver that might be an option to get your bright box working at around £45.

https://www.fane-international.com/view-product/STUDIO-5FRK

A common issue I’ve seen on older TE cabs on speakers is the two little flexible braided wires that go from the tags to the speaker coil former get corroded or go high resistance with time. Old Celestion 10’s are particularly prone to this after about 30 years of use.  Thats fixable usually with a bit of careful soldering. If someones poked a finger through the cone thats a different story!

I managed to get in some studio rehearsal time today and took along the ABM Mini stack I posted a pic of recently. I was very impressed with the sound from the Mini 4x8 and the Mini 1x15, and as a full rig its very giggable. Both cabs and the head also fit easily into the boot of my small hatchback which is nice. Can't help think that Ashdown have missed a trick with updated Neo versions of these Mini cabs. The 4x8 is quite weighty but managable due to its compact size. The MIni 15 is light even with a standard Sica Blue line driver. The old EVO 500 just growls like old EVO 500's do when pushed and its not an unpleasant sound at all. I'd almost forgotten how good the smell of hot ABM smells after a giving one a good thrashing. I also have to agree with BC user @Sibob who suggested the cabs sounded better used as a pair in a rig. Used seperately I found them a bit thin sounding but probably usable for a small gig that didn't need lots of oomph. 

In the ABM not so mini department, I also dragged along a recent new purchase thats not been gigged yet, in fact barely even switched on. It's an ABM 600RC custom shop and possibly one of the last made by Ashdown. The option to buy one dissapeared from their custom shop web page the day after I ordered one 🤔 It was purchased with the proceeds of selling on all my old TE kit, a nice synergy I thought at the time.  It sounds like umm...an ABM. Seems cleaner and fatter than the old school ABMs i've been used too. Plenty oomph as well and this one has the silient fan thing happening until it warms up which could be very useful for studio work. The 8x10 was borrowed from the studio and was easily capable of making the studio wall and celing rattle. For gigging i'll be using a 1x15 cab as thats more my thing. Not worked out what to do with the two extra sliders yet but i'm working on it.

If you wanted to get the full benefit of a Tube 800, the New York 122 2x12 4 ohm cab would be a good match. It's a step up in size, weight and price but still relatively light weight. The only downside is Markbass have now discontinued the New York 122 but you might find some stock still available somewhere. Using a Tube 800 with a single 8 ohm Traveller 102p would I think work fine, the amp will run at around 400 watts at 8 ohms if you turned it up full which not many people do these days. Although the traveller 102p will be rocking at that power level, it should cope. I've used a traveller 102p 8 ohm with a 500 watt Markbass head and to be honest, its plenty loud for most pub/club gigs, especially if you park it near a solid wall. A tube 800 and a traveller 102p 8ohm would be plenty powerful and reasonably safe to use power level wise.

If its still under warranty might be worth speaking to Orange, I hear they are quite approachable. There's a simple test you could do to see if the issue is from the pre-amp section which has a valve in it or the class-d power amp. Plug a bass directly into the return jack, if it still sounds bad or cuts out, then the class-d power section sounds suspect and could be a warranty issue. If it cleans up and sounds ok, the front end of the amp could have an issue. Could be something as simple as a failed valve in the pre-amp as well but difficult to say. It's also worth checking the obvious if you haven't already done so. Try one speaker at a time on the 8 ohm setting with your speaker leads assuming both your cabs are  8ohms each that is and each speaker lead in turn to rule out any cable gremlins.  

I've pretty much got the collecting basses psychology whipped into shape. Last time I had a lapse and bought one was seven years ago and it more or less gathered dust until I sold it recently. A pair of Fenders do more than everything I need and have done for a long time. I do have one other bass i've owned for nearly forty years but I pretend that its more ornamental than for everyday use so its listed in my head as furniture & fittings. The part I haven't yet got fully under control is buying bass amps of all shapes and sizes. I'm almost there and have leaned more and more towards using ABM's for several years now. I recently emptied out a whole pile of amps I'd accumulated over the years leaving me just two amps, a main and backup. Everything was going well until the proceeds of the selling spree burned a hole in my pocket and I ordered a custom shop UK Ashdown.  

As soon as it arrived, I did sell my main gig Ashdown ABM so back down to two. Oh, and then a GK arrived in the post so back up to three. Oh dear, I think there is a Trace Elliot on the way as well. Back up to four. And thats how it goes.

It's my thing though and I enjoy trying all sorts of used amps and mostly selling them on when i've had my fix of whatever they have to offer, or if I need cash for something more pressing. Gigging also helps me rationalize what is actually needed and what is a nice to have.  I have the ultimate basses for me, i just need to settle on the ultimate bass amp for me and I think i'm close to that.

Very nice rig! These era cabs in particular are superb, great build quality and made of good quality birch ply. Also quite a bit lighter than the early era 1048's made of MDF / Chipboard. Sold all my Trace kit earlier this year and almost feels strange not having a Trace Elliot setup. Bit overkill for my purposes but its a total barg at the asking price if you are in the market for this kind of rig.

I think the only settings I can whole heartedly recommend is to have youer LMB3 switched on all the time and I like it last in line😁 Agree its a matter of fine tuning to however it suits the individual. I rarely change settings and might tweak the level depending on what amp I'm using. Thats usually an Ashdown ABM although I have been testing an old GK bass amp and found it can cope better with a bit more signal from the LMB3 without any detrimenal effect. Just had a look at my board from the last rehearsal and looks like this:

This was my rig of choice for a recent gig and one of the few gigs I've done this year that hasn't involved an Ashdown ABM. It was more a nostalgia trip to use this Trace Elliot as I was intending to sell all my Trace Elliot kit at the time and have now done that. The AH200 GP12 is quite a special bass amp and in my experience always punched way above its weight and had that sound.

Still using my LMB3 and its the only compressor/limiter I've used since I sold my old MXR M143 limiter. The M143 was the best pedal comp/limiter i've ever used and haven't found anything to match it. The LMB3 does a good job though and the thing about both pedals is I think they did colour the tone slightly and enabled me to have 'my' sound. Done the spectracomp thing as well as a few other things and none were particularly bad at what they did, I just prefer what the LMB3 does. Been on my board for about eight years now and was used when I bought it back then. No issues with reliability either.

The good thing about a P-Bass is that there isn't actually a lot that can go wrong electrically. If your bass had been stored away for a long time, and was working before it was stored, i'd go for the simplest culprit of corrosion/oxidisation on the jack plug and/or dirty/dusty wipers on either the volume or tone pots. Switchcraft type jacks are for the most part bomb proof, the only thing they can suffer from is as user @Grimalkin mentioned, a build up of oxsidisation especially in the barrel part. I would work a jack in/out quite a few times, give it a wiggle for good measure. And, give the tone and volume pots a good massage back and forth for a good few minutes each to see if that works anything into life. A sparing amout of switch cleaner in the jack barrel and to the pots is also a good strategy assuming you have some. I wouldn't start cutting wires or desoldering until you are sure the basics are covered. I had a similar issue after storing my p-bass for a few years and a dirty tone pot was the culprit.

If its a gig in a larger venue or one where the backline is provided I'll always take the P-Bass as I know the tone will fill up bigger rooms easier and with provided backline, there is less fiddling about to get a useable sound with a P-Bass. I like using a Jazz with my own backline though, probably because I use the Jazz more at home and at rehearshal. I have learned over the years to rotate between them for gigging to minimize wear and tear, and either instrument works well in a band setting. The P-Bass just nudges ahead slightly for overall giggability. Never been a fan of PJ basses and although I did own one for a short time, I just couldn't get to grips with the range of tones it made. 

I remember there being lots of 5 string action around that time and I even jumped on the bandwagon myself with a Yamaha BBN5L bass. Only 5 string i've ever gigged and it was a regular feature from around 2000-2003 for me. 5 string Soundgears were very popular amongst my local rock/metal fraternity, as were Stingray 4's and Fender Jazz basses. I suppose you could also ask what was the popular bass in the 2000's featuring on mainstream  music TV or for a particular genre of music. Or even your local scene. Fenders always seem to feature in any decade and any genre music. They still do even now.  Bands like A Perfect Circle released Mer De Noms in 2000 and I remember putting down my Yamaha for a while and realising my Fender P was still cool in 2000, especially after watching Paz Lenchantin rock a P Bass during a performance of Judith on MTV. 

5 stringers though are what I associate most with the 2000s.