Dan Dare

This. Tubes also tend to overdrive gracefully, whereas transistors do not. You can listen to a tube amp working hard and not be made aware that it is being overdriven. Push a transistor amp past its limits and it's rarely pleasant to hear.

MU membership gets you public liability insurance up to £10m at no extra cost. You can insure your gear through them, too.

Danelectro guitars are made of hardboard (Masonite in the US). I owned a Danelectro bass and it worked very well. Needs to be painted, which rules out a clear finish over a nice looking grain, but does the job more than adequately, being rigid, inert and easily worked. Humans seem to find wood grain beautiful. I don't think it's due to the fact that we are conservative, necessarily. It probably appeals to some instinct within us. It may not make for a better instrument, but if it pleases us and gives us pride of ownership, there's nowt wrong with that.

You could extend this argument to virtually anything we buy or use. For example, I'm an angler. Do I really need a Hardy fly rod when I can buy a perfectly functional rod from China for a fraction of the price that will catch me just as many fish? No, but I can afford a Hardy or two and the pleasure of ownership is worth it. I admit I'm also a bit of a tart and like the cachet of owning nice things. I can't take my money with me when I go.

They have their own payment system for sellers, but if you buy, you are directed to use PP (I buy and sell on there). The buyer's payment goes from PP to eBay, who deduct extra commission (additional to the fee they charge for the sale) from what they pay the seller. That's why they don't like people paying sellers direct

They can expect all they want, but they don't get it from me if I've arranged to collect an item. Just ignore the payment reminders from eBay. They try to push you into using PayPal because they make a bit more commission if you do. eBay has no power to force you to use PayPal. Once you have paid the seller direct, just mark the item as received and payment sent. It's worth asking the seller to mark it payment received, too.

Wiping them down also gets rid of the gunk that manufacturers coat strings with to prevent them from rusting in the packet. Stops them feeling sticky. I use a little isopropyl or meths on the cloth to get them properly clean.

Correct. Binky told us earlier that our hero lived at home with his mum and dad. That's where he went to pick up the guitar. One thing this story does reinforce is that one should always pay on collection and not beforehand via PayPal. Then, if the item is not as described or damaged, you don't have to go through the rigmarole of getting a refund.

That's about it. Gear has to sound pretty dreadful if it's about to self-destruct. If you play on through that, it's down to you.

To each his own. I find my Beyer DT770s excellent for that purpose.

This. The trend towards smaller and smaller amps also means that components are more tightly packed together, which increases the likelihood of overheating. So many class D amps have fans because they are so compact. The better ones have a temperature controlled fan that only cuts in when needed (my AG700 does). We can either have large amps with heatsinks, etc, or compact boxes with fans. No such thing as a free lunch.

Some are, but a lot are just chancers. I was selling a PA power amp. Heavy brute, so stressed collection only. Some bloke got in touch and was incensed that I wouldn't post it. I tried all the reasonable replies - very heavy, post costly, not possible to wrap to ensure it won't be damaged, I'm a private individual not a dealer, etc, etc. He kept pushing. Eventually had to tell him to stop acting entitled and get lost, at which point he started bleating about what a nasty man I was.

Yep. A fashion product and absolute sh1te. Not remotely comparable with reputable brands - Sennheiser, AKG, Beyer, Grado, Sony, etc.

I'll sell you some of my dead skin and bogies if you like. That seems to be what strings end up covered with 🤢

This. I moved out of London (to Hampshire) last year and have realised how spoiled for choice I was in the Smoke. As Phil points out, once you leave the major cities, everything is more spread out, musical tastes can be a mite less adventurous and the standard of players can be more variable.

Take them up to tension, slacken, up to tension again, slacken, rinse and repeat. Should speed up the fatiguing of the metal.

Au contraire. it is obvious when something is struggling. If you can't hear when a cab is distorting, you will be unlikely to hear that it isn't getting louder when you turn up. If you're playing at insane onstage volume levels, you only have yourself to blame if you destroy your gear, anyway.

I also said "It will be obvious from the sound if a cab is struggling, so just turn down in that event" in the next line of my post. I guess if you want to find fault, you will. Btw, what does the OP's nationality have to do with it? I'm sure Romanian musicians are just as gear savvy as anyone else (including Kiwis).

It's worth checking how the bass sounds from out front (use a long lead or wireless). It can be surprising how different what you hear standing next to the rig is from what those out in the room hear, especially when the whole band is playing. I often find I need a stage sound that is too mid-prominent and even growly/honky for it to sit right in the room. This assumes, of course, that you are relying on your back line for the room sound, rather than putting the bass in the PA and using your rig as an onstage monitor.

By "bottlenecking" your amp, do you mean restricting? I wouldn't worry about that with any good quality cab. Solid state amps don't mind higher impedances (yours is solid state. The tube is only a small preamp tube). Just ensure that you don't present the amp with a total impedance of less than 4 ohms. Running into too low an impedance is more likely to damage an amp than a cab, especially at higher volumes. If you are able to obtain Markbass where you live, their cabs work well with their amps (as you would expect). A friend uses the MB 210 combo, which is excellent and produces a surprisingly fat sound with plenty of weight for something so small and light. You don't need to worry about overdriving any decent cab with your LM800. The difference between the 500 watts of the LM3 and yours is not great, despite the apparent difference in power output. It will be obvious from the sound if a cab is struggling, so just turn down in that event. One thing I would suggest is that, if you wish to use low tunings, you may need multiple drive units to produce very low frequencies at any volume, as you need to shift plenty of air.

This is appealing at first glance - FRFR (full range, flat response) suggests accuracy, clean, uncoloured sound, etc. However, unless you spend a great deal and use a lot of so-called FRFR cabs, I don't think it's practical for bass in the so-called "real world". I have high quality PA cabs (HK and Fohhn). I've tried them with my bass. Close up and at modest volumes, they sound impressive, albeit a little bland. Perhaps that's because I'm too accustomed to "coloured" bass speakers, although I do use PJB cabs, which are at the clean end of the bass cab spectrum. However, my PA cabs just don't cut it in a live situation, apart from when I use them purely as stage monitors and rely on the PA to route the bass to the hall/room. Even then, I find they lack that good old "heft". The specs of cabs that are claimed to be FRFR need to be examined. How is "FRFR" defined and between which frequencies? Where are the -3db or -6db points? At what volume levels and distance will they deliver true FRFR? An extreme comparison would be with headphones. Yes, they will do FRFR at miniscule volumes an inch or so from your eardrum, but they won't fill even a tiny room and especially not with bass frequencies. Many great sounding bass cabs are anything but FRFR. However, they work in a live context, where they have to compete with other instruments, drums/percussion, room acoustics and so on. Sometimes, coloured is your friend.

Don't buy on the basis of recommendation, reviews, etc. It's a sure route to disappointment. Take your amp to a shop and try it with some cabs. I think you may be confusing amplifier outputs with cabs - you say "the cab outputs 800W at 8 ohm impedance" and "the cab outputs 500W at 8 ohm". Cabs don't deliver watts (which are an imprecise measure, anyway). Amplifiers do. The only thing you need to worry about with your amp is to avoid using cabs with a total impedance of less than 4 ohms.

Exactly. I'm a bit mystified by this. Unless I'm reading it wrongly, the piece is going to be played in E. Most things are easier to play in E rather than Eb. The root becomes available in E. It would be far more challenging to learn something in E and then be required to transpose down a semitone to Eb.