Happy Jack

Paging @Bassassin ...

That's major surgery, and it's unlikely the neck will ever be as strong again as it was when it left the factory. You'd never get back the money you'd have to spend to sort it properly. Not impossible (check out some of the Gibson neck repairs on https://www.youtube.com/@twoodfrd), but if I were buying it (and I'm not!) I'd be looking to source a new neck.

Pah! There's nothing there that can't be fixed with a couple of 2" woodscrews ...

Wow ... three controls, three flick-switches, and a selector, all for four strings through two pickups. On the old Hofner control plate (two controls, three flick-switches), if you set the switches just right then you could prevent any sound coming out at all. Marvellous! Small boys for goalposts ...

Just go with black. You can't go wrong with black. Black is black. I want my baby back.

A very good point ... a pair of 1x10 cabs that can be daisy-chained when you need the extra oomph is a near-ideal solution. The second cab can live in the boot of your car and only brought into the venue if you find you need it. As it happens, for electric bass gigs rather than two identical cabs I take one Trace Elliot ELF 110 and one Trace Elliot ELF 2x8, which offers three different solutions from two uber-light cabs.

One of the more surprising things that I've learned over my own DB journey is that very expensive, specialist DB amps make far less difference than you'd expect. Yes you can deffo hear the difference yourself, possibly one or two of your bandmates might hear some difference (though they probably won't), and the audience won't give a monkey's ... they're listening with their eyes, "Oooh look, she's playing a double bass, she must be good!". As soon as you get up to any size of gig at all, you'll expect to have PA support and your backline will be essentially there for on-stage monitoring; at that point your >£1000 dedicated DB rig becomes almost irrelevent, except it will make you feel better and perhaps therefore play better. If you're on a tight budget then I would honestly advise going to the Basschat marketplace and buying pretty much any really lightweight head (Trace Elf, Warwick Gnome, MB200, etc etc etc) and pairing that with pretty much any really lightweight 1x10 cab. If you're struggling to keep up with the horns then you just need to crank it up a bit; if that leads to feedback then a lightweight cab with a 'top hat' fitting so you can put it on a speaker pole at head height will usually deal with that very effectively - what you don't want is your backline pointing anywhere near the body of your DB. I always use a Crazy 8 for DB gigs - not cheap but really very effective for my purposes. I've had plenty of AI kit and I love it to bits, still have a really nice, expensive head somewhere, but I haven't used it for several years.

I'm guessing you're talking about a combo, Sarah? For lighter weight and more flexibility I would always recommend the separate head + cab route. There are now some staggeringly good lightweight 1x10 bass cabs out there. Like everyone else on Basschat I'm a big fan of the Barefaced One10 but I ended up replacing mine with https://www.gak.co.uk/en/trace-elliot-elf-1x10-cab/909654?gclsrc=aw.ds&&gclid=Cj0KCQjwy9-kBhCHARIsAHpBjHi2pxOa039IGjfxLQUL7p3flP41tD2B-L9K1R8gqvQYuzgAcGytWe0aAh_1EALw_wcB Incredibly light, incredibly powerful, very well made. I pair mine with a Trace Elf head but that wouldn't really tick your 'clean sound' box so well. An MB200 or even an MB500 would do that for you, though. The AI Double Shot is an interesting preference ... what would you be playing through it, and at what sort of gigs?

My digital bass is a keyboard.

Remember that it's not just the audience auditioning you ... you're auditioning the audience.

For double bass, I invested in an initial session with @Jake Bass to get the essentials right before haring off in the wrong direction.

I bought Crash Course In Bass by Basschatter @Stuart Clayton as my 49th birthday present to myself. Blame him.

Wow! Haven't seen the Hitler argument getting deployed like that for a while. Oustanding work, Sir.

If a lot of people (probably the very great majority) dislike the too-many-notes approach then there's little to be gained by dismissing it as just "the same old refrain", as if that means it doesn't matter. Just accept that this sort of musical masturbation is very much a minority interest. No judgment call there, it's all music and it's all good in its own way. But gauging popularity has been a fundamental of popular music since the very concept was invented, and this stuff fails that pretty basic test.

Awesome technique and precision, great time-keeping, etc. but I've never been a fan of "let's see if I can play lots and lots of notes really quickly". Frankly I'd rather hear her take on Mustang Sally. Srsly.

Often described as "true bypass" and sometimes it is. As Jean-Luc says, there will be a current draw when you have an instrument cable plugged in even if the tuner is not being used, but that draw will be tiny. I'ver used these battery-powered tuners for many years. A single (new) battery will normally last well over a year, even with extensive use. In fact, the battery life is so good that several of these tuner designs incorporate a 9V OUT to allow the battery in the tuner pedal to power another, non-battery pedal such as a fuzz or distortion, using a short fly-lead.

There's a lot to be said for it ...

Welcome aboard, Richard. At £10 you should be able to get your money back just by selling the control knobs. In terms of paying someone to get it working, a beat-up combo can easily become a money pit. Don't go down that road unless you have someone you trust who will give you an honest assessment before you get started.

Just noticed that no one seems to have answered this. The Phones Out gives a stereo FoH mix with an independent (physical) volume knob as the only real 'control'. I use a stereo jack to 2xmono jack cable to run that output to the XLR inputs on my Zoom H4. That gives me a flawless recording of the band at every gig, while placing the H4 close to the drum kit allows the X/Y mic capsule to record (mainly) that kit, which allows for the fact that the kit will usually be recorded pretty low in the mix from the X18.