LawrenceH

From a manufacturer's perspective, pickup differences are the easiest and main way for the manufacturer to differentiate cheap/expensive product lines in terms of tonal differences. I swapped out the 'vintage alnico' pickups on a Mexican Classic 70s bass for then-current AV75 pickups and it turned an anaemic, polite instrument into a snarling funky monster. I know I could have got close to that sound another way, but the pickup swap was simple, it's inherent to the bass itself which is useful when going through house/rehearsal rigs, and I enjoy playing that bass a lot more with those pickups in.

Yes I assumed you'd need the low pass side - an optional defeat switch for the tweeter might be an interesting extra. I suppose a 2.5way ideally necessitates a (switchable) extra pole on the low pass filter to smooth out the transition, and I guess that'd normally be an inductor so a bit more cost as it'd need to be low down. I built 2.5way tops with some Deltalite 10s that I deemed unsuitable for bass guitar compared to more robust drivers, it did do that 'girth' thing which bassists chase.

In my experience yoga mat doesn't tend to work as well as foam slabs, it's not thick or firm enough to properly support the weight of heavy cabs through their feet so the decoupling is compromised. I've found foam blocks are much more reliably effective. The cab needs to be properly 'floating'. Spikes can make a bit of a difference with hifi speakers, I suspect because they're placed in the corners of the cab where the panel vibrations tend to be reduced compared to the centre. That doesn't really apply in PA where cabs tend to have feet already.

Not used spikes, but when putting cabs on wooden stages or hollow floors with a propensity to resonate in the upper bass and low mids, I've had very good success using slabs of firm packing-type foam between the speakers and the floor. Audibly and measurably tightens up the bass in those scenarios - the kind of situation where you're otherwise pulling out tons somewhere between 80 and 300Hz on a graphic in an unsatisfactory attempt to control the woolly boom. Edit to add it's also great under stage monitors and often buys more gain before feedback.

Not necessarily, that was a bit of a postcode lottery in any case even by the 80s/90s, and in my case the subsidy (limited to only those who passed an aptitude test) went towards a different instrument.

To add a little to what Phil has said, it is tricky to truly compare like with like across different manufacturer's offerings without just building some cabinets and having a listen. One spec that's not always published but does tell you something useful is Xlim. That is commonly defined as the actual amount a speaker can move before damage. Celestion have provided info on Xlim in email exchange before, I've always found them very helpful. In general I've always found Celestions to perform very well in practice. Gigging rig years ago was a pair of 12" Celestion PA drivers, Xmax 2.5mm. Never ran out of juice on a gig. A decade ago I built two 110 cabinets loaded with sadly discontinued NTR10-2520D. The Xmax is 'only' 4mm (I chose these over the long-throw E version due to midrange response) but mechanical Xlim is 13mm. I have used single cabs as subs before for indoor gigs and again they've never come up wanting. On bass, the pair cover me for anything I do up to the point where I'm on a stage where serious monitors and PA take over. In contrast I have blown Eminence Deltalite II 2510 before and reading online this seems to be fairly easy to do. Xlim somewhere around 8mm I think. Published Xmax 4.2mm and same wattage, but not the same class of driver as the Celestion in practice.

In terms of cost - the 'right kind' of charity shop (eg Oxfam book shop in posh area) is always worth a look in for sheet music including many grade books. I personally remember only ever getting the main pieces book and the scales and arpeggios one, and even there, I think if you just get the one for a higher grade it contains all the info you need for lower as a default. Meanwhile a single good book on music theory covers everything you need to know up to grade 5 theory for any instrument. Finally, any teacher my or my kids have had would provide photocopies of necessary/useful extras. I even remember using the local library for some stuff.

Could look at a secondhand Kawaii MP6? The keybed is good and the sounds were decent for their time. No internal speakers though

I agree with both of you (albeit mostly from the perspective of studio work and just playing with my A&H CQ at home, yet to gig it and previously been all-analogue live apart from reverbs). Presets can be pretty useful as an over-the-top caricature of a sound to, especially where you're struggling to know where to start in a complete mix. But they generally need taming a fair bit. What would be cool is if the presets had an extra 'intensity' control where you could dial them progressively back towards flat. Multibands comps also, especially combined with presets, can be quite good to quickly brute-force a mix towards an impression of what it should be. But generally then best turn it off and go back in to make changes at channel level based on what you've heard. Finessing at the end a la mastering sounds nice in theory, but in all honesty I can't remember the last time I heard a live band where the mix was at the level where that was all that needed sorting!

Freak Pooer (sorry)

Oh that's a shame, was that with matched sensitivity on the horn to compensate? Might work better with the smaller cabs, assuming they use the same HF driver, might have more leeway. Stacking speakers in mirror when vertical seems less than ideal on a cramped stage because it takes the tweeters lower. Plus they still don't add entirely coherently. Splitting hairs on bass guitar I guess. But then that's what really good speakers are about!

It's that bottom-end reinforcement. I've wondered before with a good FR cab like the ones LFSys is building, whether rather than stacking two complete cabs and accepting lobing there's sense in having the pad on the compression driver variable, so you could switch that out to pair with a second, (cheaper) woofer-only model that just had the low-pass filter rom the crossover. Of course that depends on the tweeter using a pad and having the headroom, but they usually do. Even without a second cab model, you could potentially make the comp drivers switchable to achieve the same outcome.

On the other hand I've never seen a 'name' band toting a Dingwall, for example, and the only Warwick player on my radar ever is/was Zender. Before the inevitable deluge, yes I'm sure there are multiple examples to prove my ignorance but that's the point But Hofner is a brand I'd associate more with guitars, more with jazz, and more with players on the continent - not so much the Anglosphere.

Great info on this thread! From my own thread the other day on jazz bass component weight (which I'd encourage others to participate in): Jap 75RI jazz: 773g Jap Aerodyne Jazz: 703g Also from an eBay seller I enquired of, Jap 75RI jazz: 740g Reported on talkbass, 2 Fender replacement roasted maple jazz necks came in around 680g. I'd definitely aim for under 800 as the 773g one ain't particularly light to me. For tuners there's also the 35g Gotoh Carbon-o-lite but they are pretty spendy. I bought some of the Gotoh GRL510C (the slightly heavier 12mm version) via eBay and sucked it up on customs duty.

Don't take this as a dampener, but rather a way of avoiding disappointment due to unrealistic expectations - the ABRSM grades are not designed as a linear progression as far as hours put in per grade. The estimated Total Qualification Time for preparing for grade 5 is 3x that for grade 1, with 2x the Guided Learning Time (ie lessons). See page 6 of the piano syllabus if you want more details, or not, because the estimated are optimistic IMO and especially so for an adult learner once you hit the higher grades!