Dan Dare

Keys players, especially inexperienced ones, forget (or choose to ignore) the fact that there is a massive difference between playing a piece solo and as part of a band. A solo keyboard can do the lot - melody, chordal accompaniment/harmony plus bass part - because you can play up to 10 notes simultaneously. Put that kind of everything but the kitchen sink keyboard part into a band context and you'll have clashes - rhythmic and harmonic - all over the place. Not just with the bass, but with any other chordal instrument and even the vocal. Some KB players are less than amenable to being told to trim/thin down what they play. The previous guy in my band was one such. He was a nightmare and would even sulk when told to thin it out. Fortunately, he decided to take his ball home recently. His replacement is great and gets it, but then, he's very experienced and knows his stuff. I'm mightily relieved, to put it mildly.

Be aware that there is no "standard" LP12. Depending on age and spec', they come with different electronics, different arms and carts, etc, etc. £1500 will get you a fairly basic model - LP12s hold value and the name ensures prices remain high. The LP12 is very upgradeable, but you can quickly get into spending serious amounts. It's your money, but do compare the one you're thinking about buying with similarly priced offerings from other manufacturers.

Very much a subjective opinion. 700 and 770 use the same drivers. I prefer (and own) the 770, especially if you want fuller bass, but that's just my choice. YMMV.

Good old Beyer DT770s (or 990s for more money) do fat bass very well. Closed back cans will tend to give fuller bass, whereas open backs are more airy.

These days, production costs in Japan are as high as any in the world. That's why production has shifted to lower wage economies like Indonesia and China. Japan does high quality engineering and mass production better than most and they know their worth.

As someone who plays the fiddle (it was my first instrument, prior to the bass), I doubt you'll find a compact, portable amp that will do both equally well that doesn't cost money. You're asking for something that will do the job at both extremes and for it to be battery powered. A big ask and I doubt such a thing exists. Perhaps a powered PA speaker might work, but battery powered? I doubt it. If you get a power bank, you can run a regular amp or PA speaker off it, which will widen your choice. Either way, I don't think you'll find a quality solution that's cheap.

Phil's right. A banjo is not an instrument that sustains. Its construction - effectively a small drum/large tambourine with strings stretched across it - ensures notes decay swiftly. You could try different heads (an old style, thick head will deaden notes more), a heavier bridge as Phil suggests, experiment with string types and add a resonator if it doesn't have one fitted, but the nature of the beast will mean it won't sustain like, say, an acoustic guitar.

Good advice. To isolate my subs from floors and stages, I use semi-hard rubber tiles that I bought from a company that supplies them to schools, playgrounds and similar to place around swings and slides to prevent kids from injuring themselves if they fall. They're half a metre square, quite heavy and do a good job. The material is grippy, so cabs don't slide or move. Being intended for outdoor use, they're tough, too. Google "playground rubber tiles" and you'll find plenty.

Your bass and treble controls will each have a centre frequency and those frequencies will be most heavily cut or boosted. Depending on the slope of the filters, there will be a gradually lessening effect above and below the centre frequencies (probably stretching over approximately an octave, maybe a little more). Two frequencies of "bass" and "treble" adjustment, as found on most domestic amps, are crude and inadequate to cover the entire audio frequency range. They're really only put there as sales aids by manufacturers. If you really want to tweak eq properly, you need something like a 31 band or 1/3 octave graphic or a decent multi-frequency parametric eq.

And here. A Planar 2 is a great inexpensive TT, but adding a cartridge (the Rega ND3 is ideal) will take it quite a bit over your £500 budget. Pro-Jects are decent. For your budget, I'd steer clear of real vintage items. Any suspended sub-chassis designs, such as Linn, that you can get for £500 are almost certainly going to need you to spend money to bring them up to snuff. However, something like a used but fairly recent Planar 2 or 3 (or Pro-Ject equivalent) would fit the bill and come in around budget. At that level, people upgrade quite quickly, so you can pick things up that aren't too old or heavily used. I'm a Rega fan because they're made in England, spares/parts are readily available and they sound excellent for the price. They're also a nice to deal with smaller independent company and not part of a faceless corporation, which is important to me. Re siting a TT, unless your floors are flimsy and you jump around whilst listening to music, you'll be fine and won't need trick isolation devices. Purpose built hi-fi racks and shelving from the likes of Atacama are ridiculously over-priced. High mass shelves are often counter-productive, because they store low frequency resonance. A good inexpensive hack is to buy a laminated bamboo cutting board (they're light, rigid and non-resonant) of suitable size and add adjustable spikes at each corner so it can be levelled. Put it on top of your sideboard or wherever and stand the TT on it. I've done that with my Planar 6 and it works very well. I can tap the rack it sits on firmly whilst a record is playing and no sound comes through my speakers.

Try it with no instrument connected. Single coil pickups are prone to picking up RF noise. If the amp is fine with no instrument connected, you may benefit from adding some screening tape to the control cavities.

Is that with or without an instrument plugged into it? If not, the hiss isn't coming from the amp.

It's that time of year. People have loaded the credit cards to the max for Xmas and won't be making large purchases until they've made a bit of a dent in the debt. It's always that way at this time. A good time to buy if you have money burning a hole in your pocket as sellers know it will be March-April before things pick up, so you can make cheeky offers.

The D4 will be far superior sounding, but I think it might lack the weight you need in situations where there is no PA support. I'm a PJB user and love them, but I'm under no illusions about their abilities. The volume they produce is remarkable for their size, but two 4" drivers aren't going to blow the bloody doors off, although they will sound lovely.

As a PJB user, I can assure you it's simple. Unbolt the grille and you can remove the bolts that hold the drivers in place. Just make sure you note the way connections are made to the drivers (the C8, like my C4s, has them wired series/parallel). There is stuffing in the cab, which will have absorbed the smoke and will not respond to leaving vinegar nearby or similar.