Bill Fitzmaurice

They go north/south as well. For instance, 'Oh Canada' is always played in the key of 'eh'. Hoser.

We haven't drunk tea in Boston since 1773. We drink Sam Adams beer, the colder the better! 😊

And after all that piffle about watts not a word about what really matters, voltage swing and cone excursion. Without mention of these actually pertinent factors the OPs question could have been answered with one word: Yes. Trying to confuse the Brits on where you're originally from, New England or Dixie? I know I've never heard anyone use both of those terms, always one or the other. It's almost as bad as when they refer to all Americans as Yankees. I'm no Yankee. I'm from Boston, I'm a Red Sox fan! Bad indeed, the discussion involves Z, not R.

A crack noise can happen when one of the devices in the signal chain runs out of headroom. It may be in the amp, it may be in the pre. The first thing I'd do is make sure there isn't too much bass EQ, as that eats up headroom like mad, in both the pre and the amp.

It's not a matter of HF protection. When you clip the amp or use distortion the high frequency content can be 10dB or more higher than normal compared to the low frequencies. It might be improved somewhat with a higher order filter (I haven't used a second order high pass for 50 years) but even 4th order filtering won't stop the highs that are so irritating. The only full on cure is to somehow attenuate the high frequencies when using distortion. Or do what I do, which is no distortion. I leave the guitar toys to guitar players. 😊

Now you know why guitar amps/speakers don't use tweeters. When you push an amp to clipping or use distortion there's massive harmonic distortion. It sounds good below roughly 5kHz, but horrid above that.

That. The crackling is mainly from dust between the pot wiper and track. Turning it fully a few times may clear the dust away. Only if it doesn't should you use a cleaner. It's a good idea to have a regular turning routine with all the pots, especially those that are seldom used, to keep the dust at bay.

By and large separates work better, and always have. Combos usually sacrifice function for the sake of a small form.

+1. Of all the factors that combine to determine how loud a rig will go power is the least significant. Those who are unaware of this basic rule are playing into the hands of 'the more watts', which is to say the more expensive, 'the better' marketing departments.

Penn Elcom used to have one but I don't see it on their site now.

I already explained it. It's the same as having a 1000 amp breaker at the nearest breakout transformer, followed by a 100 amp breaker on the service entrance, followed by ten amp breakers at the individual branch circuits. It adds one more layer of redundancy. For whatever reason the UK decided that extra layer of protection was warranted, while most of the rest of the world did not. I guess it's like wearing both a belt and suspenders, you halve the likelihood of your pants falling down. 😉

That appears to be a ground fault circuit interrupter, GFCI for short. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device In the US they're usually built into the wall socket, where they've been a code requirement in kitchens, bathrooms, basements and outdoors for at least 20 years. They're often built into hairdryer leads as well, in the event they're used near a bathroom sink with an old outlet that's not GFCI protected.

There's some logic to fusing the cord. For example, assume that the breaker for the branch circuit that the outlet is on is 10A. Assume that a device plugged in to that outlet is uses a lead that's rated for 5A. A fault in the device or its lead could pull more than 5A, enough to perhaps start a fire, without tripping the breaker.

Assuming the 15 stands for 15 watts it's no more than a 3 amp fuse. 13A at 230v is 2990 watts.

The more likely scenario is that they stick the Eden name plate on inexpensive Asian imports to make them appear legitimate. That's what GC did with Acoustic, not to be confused (though they endeavor to so so) with Acoustic Control Corporation.

Power supply caps have a shelf life of 25 odd years, so it your amp is that old or older they could probably stand replacing. With vintage amps you might be able to upgrade the caps while replacing them, as capacity for a given physical size has gotten better over the last half century. Otherwise a periodic vacuuming of dust, lubrication of the pots and cleaning of the jacks is all you need be concerned with.

I wouldn't do a 4x12 at all. In 1977 they used four twelves because they had to. There's no need for four twelves with modern drivers. A 2x12 is sufficient for all but the very largest venues, and for those a pair of 2x12 vertically stacked will work far better than a 4x12. For that matter a well designed 1x12 is sufficient for the average club venue. That's what I use.

I'm not aware of any. Crossfiring can work well with guitar, where the cab interior size doesn't need to be large, but not with bass. The speaker jacks are an unusual arrangement. The main speaker out connects to a 4 ohm tap on the transformer. When both jacks are used they're in series, connected to an 8 ohm tap. When the extension jack only is used it connects to the 8 ohm tap, so with a single 8 ohm cab it should be plugged into the extension jack. I can't say why they did this, the circuit is almost identical to the Twin Reverb and Dual Showman, which ran parallel jacks with a 4 ohm tap and were just fine with a pair of 4 ohm cabs. I chalk it up to being another of the oddities of CBS era Fenders. I've never used LaVoce, although they look OK. Their cab designs are all PA, and are nothing out of the ordinary.

The angling in of the drivers is actually better than forward firing as far as midrange and high frequency dispersion is concerned, but the more or less halving of the cabinet rear chamber volume killed the low end, such as it was with those drivers.

If it's one of these cabs pass on it: https://reverb.com/item/387356-79-fender-bassman-135-and-4x12-cab-near-mint It was quite horrid. The inverted pyramid baffle made the cabinet interior volume too small, the drivers were guitar drivers, and the joints between the baffle sections were prone to failure.

Most amps have de-facto high pass filtering, even if it's not via a separate high pass filter per se. Most electric bass speakers don't go really deep, a necessary trade off to realize high sensitivity. Precise mating of amps and speakers to the exclusion of other brands would be counter-productive, as most users tend to buy one or the other, to use with an amp or speaker they already have.

That brings up another point. The speaker power rating is thermal. The mechanical rating could be far lower, as much as 60% lower being not unusual. Speakers with a mechanical rating even approaching the thermal rating are rare and expensive.

Not necessarily. That's often the case with 2nd order/2nd order, but not always. In any event it's prudent to test the system both ways just to be sure, playing a test tone at the crossover frequency.

From the consumer's standpoint, and from a marketing standpoint, true. It's like touting horsepower in a car, even though torque is far more important. From an engineering standpoint failure to understand and apply these concepts in the design stage often leads to failure of the product. I believe this is at the root of the problems Ampeg had with new products some years back.

That's one possibility. There's also mechanical compression, where the speaker has run out of excursion, so additional input doesn't give additional output. The same can happen with the amp. In practice all three can occur simultaneously, especially with guitar amps, in which case it's often intentional, although the player probably has no idea why he's getting the result.