Sparky Mark

That's the spirit!

So which three bass players would we have wanted to select and analyse their own and others iconic bass lines? Can I start with Mr Paul McCartney? Who else?

Are you going for the stainless steel or nickel steel frets? SS will last forever.

This is a nice combo for a pretty good price.

Have you looked through this thread yet? There's a lot of brochures showing the badges used over time.

On a different tangent but definitely linked; think of one of your favourite classic bass lines that sounds great, iconic even, in the recording mix. Then Google to see if there's a recording of that bass line in isolation. For me, they are rarely a tone that I would use at home whilst practicing, they often have much more essential mid content.

Beautiful amp, congratulations. My only comment is that unless you believe the valves will be unseated from their sockets during rough transit or handling, I'd remove those retainer springs, that could potentially scratch the glass. I replaced the spring retainers on my amp with the Ampeg Birtcher style retainers that just hold the valve base. My amp never moves though, so not really needed.

I've got one of these and it's effectively the TE Series 6 GP12 pre amp with an adjustable mid pre shape control. It cops the TE heft really well. FS-EQ12-DI – Ashdown Engineering https://share.google/lx57PeJ9I6rntwTU6

I think it wise not to buy any vintage TE gear unless it's exactly what you really want. Don't compromise, you can almost predict that once you buy anything different, what you really wanted will be advertised for sale somewhere. New TE equipment is pretty expensive IMO, and although very good, sounds quite different to the vintage gear. I did see a guy playing rock/pop through an elf head with two of the single 10 cabs in a small pub and it sounded really good, but I'm not sure how that rig would perform in larger venues?

To be fair that's pretty clean for a 40 year old fan; it must've been cleaned of dust/crud a few times. I'd be more concerned about the amount of fluff inside the amp, which is why I prefer the sealed heat sink cooled heads. They're pretty much pristine when opened up.

Another thing to consider is how the amp is cooled. The AH250 pictured is going to be fan cooled, which you may be able to heat spinning when practicing at low level in your living room. There are 200 watt Series 6 and 250 watt SMX series heads that have rear heat sinks so are completely silent.