Bill Fitzmaurice

I've yet to see a technical description or a picture of the innards that shows what it is. It may be a double bass reflex with a passive radiator connecting the two rear chambers as opposed to a port, but that's purely a guess without any evidence to back it up. There's no defying physics, nor much new under the sun for that matter. All reflex cabs reduce cone excursion. While most do so only at the tuned frequency of the box it's possible to have more than one tuning frequency, as in a double bass reflex, to reduce excursion at more than one frequency.

My 2x12 '65 Fender Bassman sounded good at bedroom levels too, but being loaded with guitar drivers, as most bass cabs were back in the day, War Volume was more of a skirmish than a battle.

The source doesn't matter, and an interface isn't necessarily required. The issue is that the output of an iPod is probably at line level, about a volt. The output of passive pickups is closer to 1/10 volt, so an iPad could overload the input stage. That normally would only cause the sound to be very distorted, but if one's not careful it could pop something in the amp. If anything valves are less likely to suffer damage from a high level source.

Did you check the fuse?

You're right, 35 liters isn't fantastic for bass. It's barely marginal, and assuming you didn't account for the space taken up by the ports it's not even that large. I'd move on.

A 12" driver doesn't mean it's good for bass. If it's really optimized for guitar the xmax will be too short and Fs too high.

It's not likely A, which you see in valve amps of no more than 20w.

It does depend on the amp. Where the DI out taps the signal isn't the same with all amps.

The minimum protection required is a full inch of polystyrene foam beneath heavy cardboard.

If you were a guitar player I'd say a power soak, but you're not. You shouldn't have to run the amp loud to sound good. Now if your preferred tone comes from pushing the speakers hard you can't do that at low volume.

I've never owned an Orange amp, but over the last 56 years I've owned quite a few amps, and never found any of them to be genre specific. Having played pretty much every genre there is I wouldn't even know what would make an amp genre specific.

If you're looking for a head that sounds half as loud as 800 watts then 80 watts will suffice. Considering how small and light your RM800 is I don't see the need.

I noticed that. I guess they don't want to have to pay a royalty to Sir Paul or whoever it is that has the rights to the Beatles name.

I woudn't use a 1x8 anywhere other than my house, and then only when alone. I consider a 1x10 the minimum for gigging, even with PA. As for it sounding like the original, I played through some Super Beatles back in the 60s, didn't care for them at all. Besides, even back then what was heard on a record was seldom pure mic's bass cabs. Very early on they used a mix of mic'd and direct. Sounding like Paul isn't difficult, use flat wounds and a pick, with not much high end. No one ever mistook his tone for the Ox.

https://www.eminence.com/support/understanding-loudspeaker-data/

He had a valid question, whether playing bass through a guitar driver would damage it. In fact you're less likely to damage a guitar driver with bass than with guitar, because it will sound horrid at power levels well below the voice coil thermal capacity. As for excursion, exceeding xmax doesn't hurt drivers, reaching xlim does. Guitar drivers tend to have xlim to xmax ratios in the vicinity of 4:1, because they're intended to be pushed past xmax. Bass driver xlim to xmax ratios run around 2:1, so you're more likely to mechanically damage a bass driver by creasing a cone. One manufacturer was well known for their drivers creasing, because the driver xlim to xmax ratio was only 1: 0.6.

Carol Kaye probably played on as many records as James Jamerson and Duck Dunn combined. She was originally a guitar player who got pressed into playing some bass tracks with a borrowed PBass through her own Fender Concert, and that became her standard rig. She was paid homage to last year in Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, by the Carole Keen character playing bass in the fictional Shy Baldwin's band. Kaye never actually toured in the 60"s when the show was set, so I guess one of the writers wanted to come up with a female member of the band that bore some resemblance to a real person, as do most of the characters in the show.

Ever heard of 'The Beach Boys'? Most of their bass tracks were played by Carol Kaye. Her main amps were Fender Concerts and Fender Super Reverbs. Bass can sound quite good through open back guitar cabs, provided the volume isn't too high.

You may be fine with the combo speaker. Guitar speakers will distort long before their power limits are even approached, let alone exceeded. If you don't play loud enough to cause distortion you're good.

It used to be a very common format, if not an obvious one. For instance, the ubiquitous Hartke 3500 is a 19" rack mount. You wouldn't know it to look at it in the factory case. There are fewer now, with the proliferation of micro heads.

I had one who played through a JBL loaded Fender Twin which he placed on the floor without using the tilt back legs. He stood never more than two feet in front of it, so the only way he could hear it was to play loudly enough to shatter drink glasses on tables thirty feet away. 🙄

Guitar amps should have a mute, remotely controlled by the bass player. 😊

My 50w '65 Bassman was loud enough to gig, but never without the bass control on 10, and if it had gone to 11 I'd have done so.

With the controls at noon maybe. So turn them up, that's what they're there for!

Two points to make here. First, the tone controls make a big difference in the output. 6dB of bass boost is equivalent to boosting power by a factor of four. According to Orange the bass EQ is capable of +/-15dB. That means with the bass control flat and the volume full you might not be getting 50w. Depending on the output level of your bass you might be getting 5w or less. Second, the difference between an amp at 25 watts and an amp at 50 watts is 3dB. 3dB is audible, but just. All else being equal if you want to sound twice as loud as 25w you'll need 250w.