lemmywinks

Two and a half hours for setup is nuts, we're done in an hour every time. I think your drummer needs to buy himself a decent full range monitor or use in ears.

Being a good band member works both ways though, hopefully your band leader can rectify your on stage sound.

Why are you the one turning up early to help cart all this junk around? It's bad enough you have to suffer through this dual PA nonsense let alone being the one carrying it all! I hope your gig doesn't involve stairs. If band members want to live through some infantile rock fantasy then the least they can do is load the equipment in and out of the van. I know it might be a futile effort but have you mentioned in ears to them?

I'm not arguing a point, just trying to ascertain what is inside the actual cabs the OP owns and whether it would be ok for him to swap out the tweeter for a different one. From memory the piezo tweeters had a habit of blowing (this is what happened to mine) so maybe those P cabs had incorrect configurations. If anyone has either cab and fancies taking internal pictures then that would probably help a lot.

Two posts where owners of both P and H cabs have discovered the same crossover used in both: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/installing-new-tweeter-in-markbass-combo.991340/#post-14458666 https://www.talkbass.com/threads/replacing-the-tweeter-in-a-markbass-cmd121p.505727/#post-6812438 Anybody fancy opening theirs up and posting a picture?

When I put the Stageline in my cab I went off information in this thread: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/installing-new-tweeter-in-markbass-combo.991340/ The fella opened his CMD121P and his accompanying extension cab (the H version with a proper horn) and found they use the same crossover regardless. If you want to disconnect it and are unsure of what to do then have a look at this thread which details which wires go where:

What does he have against using two cabs and one or two subs for out front along with stage monitors? Surely having a PA at the back of the stage causes mic bleed and feedback issues?

They do/did, quite a few of their cabs have nice little compression drivers in. I think it's just a cost saving measure, those LeSon tweeters will cost MB pennies to buy per unit whereas a better quality alternative with the hardware to make it attenuable will be many times more.

I replaced it with a Stageline HT30, on some MB cabs you have to widen the hole (you can make yourself a template from the rubber grommet that comes with the tweeter) but on some of the older ones I think the hole is ok as is. Was a vast improvement over those LeSon piezo things they use(d), no horrible scratchy noises or brittle sounding highs. Really you could just bypass the tweeter anyway, I think someone on here did that a while ago and posted instructions.

I get home, have a little bit of rum and watch telly for half an hour while browsing eBay ending soonest listings.

Depends on your budget and volume needs, I'd look for something that can be wedged back personally as unless it's on some sort of stand those little combos are going to be firing at your ankles. If your budget is lower then have a look for a used Hartke Kickback or one of the A series combos. I've used a Kickback 15 and an A70 for smaller gigs and they were great little things. Not the lightest (especially the KB) but sounded solid, Behringer did a decent copy of it if you need to get down to a budget. If your budget is higher than a decent powered wedge monitor with a preamp pedal would be my go to option, or if you already have a small amp then just get a nice 1x10 or 1x12 cab.

I got no response after I had problems with my Superfly, similar situation to yours. Fortunately mine was still within warranty so the shop covered repair twice and I ended up getting enough use out of the amp to make it worth £199. Seems like everyone who had that amp got ignored, I think it's a part of their history they seem very eager to forget. It put me off buying Ashdown again (and I spent a fortune on rigs over the next few years), a stance which was strengthened when I used one of their higher end combos that sounded like diarrhea in the bath.

Sounds like you need some of that famous Ashdown customer service that everybody else seems to get! Hopefully their rep here can chime in and mail the correct driver to you, a bit silly letting it leave the factory like that and good you spotted it before anything nasty occurred.

Or if you do want a new amp just buy whatever you like and when it turns up just hit her with "it looked smaller in the pictures".

Let her grumble?

That's a steal.

EBS Multicomp is hard to beat for price to performance ratio, just sold mine for £70 which seems to be the going rate.

Two options I can think of are whether they can be powered from a standard 9v Boss style adapter (some compressors need 12v) and also if the are dual band or not.

Keep an eye on local collect only stuff on eBay, me and the drummer use a little 10" JBL Eon for vocal/keys monitoring, wasn't expecting much from a little plastic thing but it kicks out a lot of sound for what it is. Cost us £100.

Try a powered monitor with a cheap mixer?

Packs of 10 on AliExpress for about £1, different colours too.

I thought the same really, would have bought it already if it was blank!

Had a quick look on AliExpress (after a bridge upgrade myself) and this looks suitable: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/5-String-IB-Electric-Bass-Transbody-Bridge-Chrome-Behind-the-strings-Bridge/32834794882.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.219.3ee0777bXrr8m5&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_4_10152_10065_10151_10344_10068_10130_10324_10342_10547_10325_10343_10340_10341_10548_10696_10192_10190_10084_10083_10618_10307_10301_10303_5711215_10313_10059_10184_10534_100031_10103_10627_10626_10624_10623_10622_5711315_10621_10620_5722415,searchweb201603_25,ppcSwitch_4&algo_expid=98320dcb-bdd8-4e4f-ad32-ce4cf1089ef2-34&algo_pvid=98320dcb-bdd8-4e4f-ad32-ce4cf1089ef2&priceBeautifyAB=0 You'll need to drill new mounting holes but it has 18mm spacing and the part the strings run over looks much less chunky than the Fender style one so the break angle shouldn't be as sharp. The difficult part with finding a replacement bridge for the Sire is that it has 6 mounting screws all along the back so your options for drilling new holes there is limited.

The bridge on the non-vintage 5 string is fine, might be worth messaging Sire and seeing if they'll send you one seeing as that's a design flaw. I remember the 4 string V7 having this problem at launch, weird that they would go back to making the same mistake with the Vintage versions.

£299 each or 4 for £1200, that's an extra £4!