boom762's forum posts 1296

If you were to catch them in the act it could cause a major mental brea*kdown, causing you to go into a fit of "Heat of Passion" psychosis. Basically... you could murder them both* and get away with it. A marin*e* took his swo*r*d and pierced his wife and her lover to his mattress when he returned home and found them. He was found not guilty because of his "Heat of Passion".

Seriously though, drop her. Sounds like a loser. Connecticut doesn't even require two signatures for divorce. You can go, say I want a divorce, and it is done. If not there, Rhode Island. One of the two.

Theory Crafts from fans on SUICIDE SQUAD:

This one went all out and crazy.. Again, don't read below if you feel these fan made ideas might reveal the movie plot.

.

.

.

.

.

.

1. The Joker is barely even in the movie. Rescued as 5th member of Squad at end.

I have been pitching this one for a while and I'm starting to see other people have the same idea. How little they show him in the trailer makes me think he's only there for last 20 minutes.

1. The Joker is actually Jason Todd. The tattoos have a lot of theories. The J on his face being like the Scar of a J on Jason's face, the Bird on his right arm, A robin presumably, the stupid tattoos saying "Damaged, Smile, HA hA ha Ha Ha HA" were done by Joker TO Jason as a punishment. Jason is crazy after his beating at the hands of Joker. Metal teeth needed because Joker broke out his teeth with a crowbar.

2. Christian Bale returns as Batman This is coming out of the fact that Batman V and Suicide Squad are the most expensive movies DC has ever made and they theorize that it is because Bale is getting 50,000,000 for A film that has not been listed, Will Smith and some of the other large cast members are getting GIANT checks as well.

So.... Rumors abound with the new Dawn of Justice movie. Here are some tasty ones. I'll put the old rumors first, then the NEW rumors. These are not solid, nor are they spoilers. This is mostly theory craft from fans. If you wish to be totally suprised, don't read below.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

1. Doomsday is first villain
2. Doomsday evolves from Zod's dead body
3. Cameos from Flash, Aquaman
4. Nightwing makes an apreance

NEW Rumors

1. Villain is BiZaRRo
2. Cpt Boomerang makes appearance
3. BEN AFLEC IS NOT BRUCE WAYNE. I love this one. Batman is supposed to be Deathstroke and Christian Bale makes an appearance as original batman at the end. The butler is not Alfred, but Deathstroke's friend. They say this because Aflec has grey in his hair and they never call him Bruce in the trailers.
4. The title isn't

*Batman VS Superman: Dawn of Justice *

It's

Batman V (5) : Superman, "Dawn of Justice"

making this the 5th film in the series. Dark Knight 1-3, then Part 4 being Man of Steel, then Dawn of Justice. Goes well with number 3 eh?

All 4 Green Lanterns of Earth (Kyle Raynar, Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner) do a combo tag-team on the Villain, putting him out of the fight. Movie sets up that the Lanterns will be the saviors of Earth against Darkseid. Guy Gardner turns Red Lantern in end credits.

Okay I made that one up, but you know it would rock your socks. Lanterns > Everyone else

I can tell you that Alex Webster's tone is 45% Spector Basses, 35% EMG DC40 Pickups, 5% Brass Frets/Nuts, and 15% Darkglass Pedal.

I vote no. It's not gear. It's just junk, art at the most extreme. If we don't stop it here, what neck?

"Voted Prom King's Court as you can CLEARLY see in this yearbook page"

If you can't tell, I also have a bias towards submissions that say "you can clearly see" in this :)

Okay Gchairen, I like that you used a golf example so I will too.

If your a fan of Tiger Woods and wanted to either get the new club he was sporting on TV or improve your swing through any secret items he may have, "Elbow brace, magnetized gloves, etc", would you be looking for items that he uses in his trade or items that he endorses?

He endorses Gatorade, a video game by EA Sports, Buick cars, NetJets "A private plane firm", and Upper Deck trading cards.

None of these items would be considered for improving a swing nor would they give any advice on what new club he was using. It's just what he's payed to put his name or face over. I don't think there are many golfers out there thinking, "Man, I need to know what kind of airplane Tiger owns" or "What is this crap! They didn't even list all the cards from Fleet he was listed on from 1996 to 2003!"

When you look up a recipe, do you want to know what kind of underwear Wolfgang Puc wore when he came up with it? Essentially, EquipBoard is a list of recipes for musicians. We're looking for tonal properties, wattages, and enhancers. What they drink, what they drive, what they won.... all that is unnecessary.

This is what drives my opinion in the matter as well as personal experience searching for a certain pedal and having to scroll passed a bunch of nonsense to find it.

No they don't. They used to be marked with #productdemo to allow the mods to go back and delete them later.

They were accepted until a later time when they would be dealt with.

I personally never accepted them myself. I think it's misleading. Someone looking for what gear was used by a certain famous musician and you see a junk, $200 guitar on their page because they held one once in a video. Blah. I think, if they didn't use it on a published album or they didn't use it on stage with evidence showing it, then it shouldn't be listed. It's their gear page, not a list of every product they've ever touched.

Leaking scripts before a big movie comes out is not new, but it is worse now. The vast amount of YouTubers, Bloggers, and Independent Media that we are now swimming in have made script leaking nearly impossible to avoid for a fan who would rather be surprised.

The Star Wars script was leaked recently and I have nearly ruined the film for myself. Allowing YouTube to run while you go to the bathroom or make dinner will eventually lead you to a site of screaming nerds, all rejoicing that "This person is really this person!" or "That's EPIC that they kill that person!". Just kills the hype for me.

In low-tech days, the guys were the douche-bags who ran around the office or classroom spouting out the endings to films before you got the chance to watch them. We hated those people. "I'm not spoiling anything, I'll just let you know that there are 2 people that come out right at the end and do something".... THAT RUINS IT pending what the film is and what it's about. Why do we glorify these people now with responses, subscriptions, and views? What changed where we once crucified people for ruining the final episodes of shows for us and now we support it?

It drives me nuts I tell ya. My only hope is that the spoilers are all incorrect. Personally, if I were a director or producer, I would leak a fake script and then blow them out of the water on premier night. You would get so much more success in the first week if word of mouth said that the leaked script was completely wrong. Everyone would go to see it just to believe it.

Might have been to ensure they had enough for replacements. I think having backups as well as having them for different continents is a good idea. The Kemper representative told Alex Skolnick of Testament that Metallica has, or at least ordered 80 of them and muse had 20 of them. I fudged the numbers. A band like Metallica i snot only making sure they have enough, but I would bet they would gift those out to people as well. Family, friends, other bands, etc.

Here's the source. https://youtu.be/0f0XGzbXtiA?t=5m

How can we know for certain, it's not out yet :)

... because all the big bands in the world right now are buying them all up. I heard on a Premier Guitar video that Metallica has like 30 of them. We need to go a couple of years with them having low sales to see the price drop. I think it's imported as well.

Didn't they already release Steve Jobs last year? It may have been someone else they did it for but I thought it was the Apple guy.

I'm uncertain which pedals have downloadable content right now, but you can make near exact tone-prints of any rig with the Kemper Heads. It even figures out the pedals and racks played through and simulates them in your tone.

Easy... but expensive.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ProfilePwrHD?adpos=1o2&creative=55281441601&device=c&matchtype=&network=g&gclid=Cj0KEQjw-7GxBRCL_Kq6mZSHvdsBEiQA7r8VhIAPeqFiaVm4CvOE1cMx63Hsn7u-E5df_cpRAMugdc8aAgSB8P8HAQ

Cinema season is upon us. The good season anyway.

Personally, My list of MUST WATCH is as follows...

Star Wars VII, Ghostbusters, Deadpool, Dawn of Justice, Macbeth, Now you see me 2, Warcraft, and Civil War.

Comic book movies are a given for me. I LOATH MMORPG's now, but 10 years ago I was really into Warcraft and I remember discussing wanting to see a movie from the Blizzard folks. Diablo would be better but meh...

Ghostbusters and Independence day were throw ups for me. I WILL go see Ghostbusters even though I completely disagree with how they did it and the universe they chose. Independence Day will not get my money.

It seems like there weren't any huge Horror movies this year and that there are none coming out soon that I'm aware of. They used to have one about every 2 months. I blame documentary horror. Every paranormal and exorcist movie that comes out now has to have a documentary feel to them. I'm not going to a movie to see a collection of CGI and string tricks, I'm going for the story. I want to place myself in someone else's shoes and feel terror. You need to be able to say "Oh hell, I don't think I would be able to do that" and have empathy for the characters. The documentary style films don't allow much time for this. It's just chair moving shots and jump scares with loud noises constantly. There is no true creepiness.

I stream a really awful horror movies came out the last 5 or 6 years and I think it's just about killed the market.

In comparison to the bass by itself, the sansamp combo was trash. No where near the range that the EMG setup has. I run an RBI and an RPM together in my rack at the same time. I used to like the options available but this Spector sounds so good on it's own I think I'm going to try and sell them soon.

The best SansAmp product I own is the Bass Driver DI pedal, the pedal version of the RBI. Sounds better than the rack version somehow.

The answer is, all of them.

When you need info on gear, it's best to use all available resources to get what your looking for. I've never had a channel that consistently reviewed stuff I care about. They all make 1 or 2 videos that I used.

The best demo of the Lakland 44-01 was an Italian channel that is utterly worthless for gear reviews in all other videos. They made this one video that nailed it. Make sure you use studio monitors or you won't hear what you need to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUlpyWEW1BU

I started playing around with the bass today and discovered some things.

1. The pickups still blow me away. This whole time I've been impressed with the sound of the bass o'naturale. I decided to plug it into my SansAmp combo and man did it sound like ass. The bass on it's own with a flat EQ does the work of rack preamps. This preamp/pup combo is amazing. There are 2 switches inside the control on one of the chips. These effect the frequency somehow. It's above my head, but I played with them and found out the both switches turned on make the bass sound the way it does. Both switches down make it sound like a jazz bass. It's crazy. I may want to figure out a way to have the control panel come off without the need of a screwdriver. Maybe a clip-on panel.

2. The action is too high. I've been playing with truss rod and the bridge the last couple of days and I just cannot find a good medium. I suspect that it is due to the height of the brass nut. I also suspect that I'm losing a tiny bit of sustain by not having the nut glued to the structure and just being held in place by the string tension. More stuff to fix.

To any bassists reading this. I highly advocate getting the BQC System and the 40dcX pickups. If you have a bass company that has a distinct sound you like, it play blend that tone into the EMG tone nicely. This is supposed to be ran at 18 volts and I'm running it at 9. Sounds amazing. I can honestly say it sounds like one of the best basses I've ever heard in my life. Top 5 for sure. The other 4 are all $4,000 - $9,000 basses. Seeing how this whole project cost me about $850, it's a steal. It does for the most part what I wanted it to do. I wanted Alex Webster's $4000 tone. I got his tone in but only about 20%. It DOES however still sound like a very high end bass.

On my thoughts of not doing this again... I take it back. I wouldn't do this with a Spector again probably as I also want the true Spector tone as well, but this combination of BQC and 40DCX I would do again, maybe on Fender Jazz to beef it up a little.

Alright. It is finished. It's not perfect, but it's still awesome.

Once I got the correct part in from EMG, it only took a day for the Luthier to get it all installed.

Once home, I discovered that the company on eBay I bought the brass nut from did NOT follow my measurement. The nut was not long enough, it was too wide, and of course the gauges were too small. I took a variety of sandpapers to the nut and custom fit it to my neck.

The tone is amazing. It's the one for me. Powerful, burpy, and distinct. It's attack is so high. Every note, no matter how low, is crisp and individualized. The BQC Preamp has some small things about it I dislike. The volume control is weird. The volume is WAY low until you get it to about 6 or 7, then it gets really loud. Otherwise, I enjoy it. The 40dcX pickups steal the show. Most of the sound is coming from them.

The unique Spector growl has changed. Where it was 70% of the tone before, the other 30% being a clean tone, it is now only 40% of it's tone. You can still hear it in the background but the super driven pickups are forefront. I love this. I feel like no one else has this tone and it's all mine. The overall tone at very low levels sounds a lot like it's being played through a really large system at a stadium.

My luthier was not able to fit 2 batteries in the control port. I told him in a few months Im going to pay him to make me an 18v box/section because I really want to hear just how powerful this thing can be.

The pickup padding needs to be redone on the neck pickup. It's sitting at an angle because of the wiring. Slants towards the neck a little. One of the screws is stripped so, I will wait until we add the 18v box before I mess with it.

The brass nut is amazing. Helps the overpowered tone of the pickups and the growl of the Spector to sound like a natural, massive instrument. It sounds close to a large grand piano hitting a note. Its awesome. Totally want brass frets some day so this sound is match all over the fret board.

While working the brass nut, I ended up pulling up some paint near the truss-rod cover. No biggie though.

Would I do this again to another Spector? Probably not. I now want a high end Spector for sure, but my next one needs to be the pure Spector sound.

One con to the pickups... they are so hot, they pick up a lot of string noise. I'm having to use my fingers to mute all the strings. I usually don't have to do that on every string transition.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151017_141306.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151018_132521.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151018_141720.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151018_132551.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151019_155424.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151019_155506.jpg

Marvel just rebooted all their franchises this year in the same way DC made "The New 52" series.

Some of these almost sound exciting. For those who grew up playing air guitar to the X-Men Fox Animated series, they have started a comic called X-Men '92 which picks up right where the cartoon left off. Same characters, artwork, and story arcs.

I think there are 5 different Deadpool comics.

Even though they said they were retiring Wolverine from comics.... they lied and made a couple comics. Old Man Logan, Wolverine (X-22 wearing the Wolverine costume), of course he's in X-Men '92.

No. Just the bass. He wanted to charge me 80 bucks to file them and I knew I could do it for free with old SS Strings.

The nut is okay... for $17 bucks. They got the measurements correct except for the gauges I told them to put in. They put small gauge string slots so I've been using stainless steel bass strings like a wire saw and widening them a bit. The nut was rushed. Could be good or bad. They had my ordered shipping within a couple of hours but the job was not as round and beautiful as it was on their demo picture.

Got it from here.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/350464172459?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Give him a week alone, locked in a room with various instruments. If he doesn't come out playing them he little more than a kid playing video games.

A list of well known Jewish Superheroes.... WARNING... Do not tell them about this. They do not enjoy being on lists.

Magneto, Kitty Pryde, The Thing, Barry Allan, Harley Quinn, Solomon, Wiccan, Iceman, Moon Knight, Sandman, Scarlet Witch, Quick Silver, Polaris, Batwoman, Doctor Fate, and Berlin Batman.

Some... NOT... so... well known.

http://comicsalliance.com/files/2010/08/magendavid.jpg

http://thefilmreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/hammer.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/4b/18/5f/4b185fd51b489ce08f71d67e95a204e6.jpg

http://jhvonline.com/clients/jhvonline/9-23-2010-8-49-45-AM-2855999.JPG

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/m/maya-gur_dorit/maya-gur_dorit.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.lambiek.net/artists/m/maya-gur_dorit.htm&h=460&w=330&tbnid=bxxAEhZQrmuWNM:&docid=aEqJLWUOfOr5gM&ei=lfYcVsC3KMy4-AGe84OIAw&tbm=isch&ved=0CJIBEDMoWjBaahUKEwiA1tSMt7_IAhVMHD4KHZ75ADE

http://comicsalliance.com/files/2010/08/matzahwoman.jpg

UPDATE:

My EMG Tech was sick or on vacation or something since Thursday. He's sending the part to me free of charge.

He mentioned on the phone that they have one specifically designed for the X series pickups I have that is made without a buffer. I'm hoping I get that one!

Well, had to contact EMG. It seems the reason for me being unable to figure out how to plug it all in was that EMG had the wrong part in my preamp box. They put in an older model Active Balance control which is why they don't have enough pins for active pickups, at least that's what EMG thinks happened. We sent them photos and serial numbers. It's a good thing I ordered this directly from EMG. Makes things easier.

I was told if they are correct that the ABC is the wrong one for my box, they will send me the correct one for free. Sweet.

Lubbock is a decent size. I grew up in a town of 6,000 (2,000 of those were university students) and then moved from there to Austin and San Antonio. Lubbock I think is 236,000 right now and we do get a lot of businesses building here but they are useless to me. Mostly "Crazy guys burgers and shakes from California" or "Trendy clothing outlet for girls that want to dress like Delia from Beetlejuice". The scene here for artistic expression is very low for some reason.

I've always said I wouldn't ever move back to Alpine, TX but I think in a year or so I will to further my education. Cheapest University in Texas and has some Ivy League professors. They call Sul Ross "Harvard on the Hill" due to a large number of high end professors going there for tenure and retirement. My first semester there, my Botany 1301 Professor was the world's foremost Peyote Expert, Dr. Martin Terry. It's pretty common to get a big scientific name out there as a teacher. Of course, Sul Ross hit the limelight a few years ago because of Dr. Sechrest. They sent The Daily Show to the town and interviewed LITERALLY the 3 most insane people we had in town as our representatives.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/mp3jqt/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-comfortably-dumb

Oh! I forgot to mention. The reason for me going to Guitar Center was because ALL.... that's right, ALL furniture makers, cabinet designers, and craftsmen in town refused to even return my calls.

Alright. I went to Tarpley's Music and spoke with the head guy. He suggested I go to McLuthier's. Dude actually has Luthier in his name. I've dealt with him before and in fact, he was the guy who I went to first about the route job and said "I don't have a router that can work that deep". Tarpley's said the only thing they could do is call a guy they know to come pick it up and work on it. I said I didn't like that idea.

I head to McLuthiers place. I walk in and sit in front of his bench. He comes in and sees it's me. I have had the feeling that he does not want to work with me because of an incident we had a year ago. One of my rare Takamines were in his shop on consignment and when I picked it up months later it had a cracked neck. He said it was like that, I said Iit didn't. Months later I end up talking to a guy who I was trading with on craigslist. We started discussing McLuthiers and I mentioned the cracked neck thing. The guy's face froze as if I just said the guy was secretly Hitler. I always figured the word got back to him. Maybe, maybe not. Anyways...

I tell McLuthier what I need. I need him to install the preamp and hook it up to the pickups. I also need the pot holes widened slightly and maybe some light shaving to accommodate the massive EMG pots. He seemed very interested in doing it. We agreed on $100 for the job and he said if anything else needed to be done to make it work, he'd call me with a quote first. I explained to him my situation with this bass and all the stress I've been going through with it. He said he liked my thinking on buying a cheaper Spector and making it an expensive one. He said he does the same thing. He buys MIM Fenders and upgrades them to high end guitars for his personal preferences.

When I explained the differences between my bass and Alex Webster's, he was shocked at the idea of brass frets. He had never heard of them before.

Here are the photos of the botched route job AFTER I sprayed my conductive paint on it with a few layers.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151004_043109.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151004_043127.jpg

It's not AS noticeable now, but the second photo shows where the chunk of wood was just glued over a hole. Gaps, spaces, and wood glue all over.

I forgot to take photos BEFORE I put conductive paint back on but I will upload 2 photos later today of it after. You can still see that nothing is level and of course, the big block of unknown wood and glue jutting out.

Update:

Guitar Center's tech did a really shitty job. He cut through the wall of the pickup cavity and ended up sloppily gluing a chunk of wood in the way to cover it up. His carving job looked like he whittled the wood with a pocket knife. It was so unprofessional I really should have just risked doing it myself and buying a router. He also did not route out all the pieces I wanted.

I decided to truck along and attempt to put the pickups and preamp in. Because of the new piece of wood in the pickup cavity, my screws were getting stuck. I bought a 4 amp power driver and ended up stripping the hell out of the screws. I've never seen a perfectly round screw before today.

I manage to make new holes and get my pickups in. As I start to hook up the wires to the new preamp system I notice that the picture on the manual doesn't match up to my actual peices. I double check to make sure it's the same system and indeed it is. This BCQ system says its passive, the HZ version. When I bought this item, I asked the EMG salesman on the phone all the questions I could muster before the purchase. He claimed that this was the system I needed to be able to use active or passive pickups and that the other system was for passive only. Going through the manual and the wires, there are only 5 pins on the active control balance which is the first in the chain. The pickups have 6 pins worth of plug-ins. each has a black, a white, and a red.

The actual preamp itself has so little room, Im not even sure if it's possible to hook it all up now.

Here lately Ive had some major anger problems. I've been getting worse and worse to the point that I distain being around other people. Stuff like this going on just adds rage to the pile. I'm going to see if the Tarpley's music in town can get this thing together. If not, I will have wasted my best bass and hundreds of dollars on equipment and services for nothing.

Well, I lucked out.

I tried Guitar Center as a last ditch effort (I don't like the company nor the specific store here). I walked in thinking if they COULD do the job, they would charge $250 and take 3 weeks. Instead, the guy is doing it for $50 and it will be ready in 2 days. Can't wait to get this thing setup and plugged in.

I ordered a small brass nut off of eBay and the guy filed the string slots to a smaller gauge than what I had ordered. I asked the GC tech how much it would cost to have him make the gauges bigger and he said $80 by itself. Routing 2 inches into a block of would and carving out detail costs less money than a 3 minute job on a nut. Crazy.

I like them okay. I bought one off of Craigslist here and it sounds great. I figured if it didn't play well I could always hang it on the wall.

I think the best relic job is one that time produces.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20150609_173538.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20150609_173505.jpg

Right now I'm in the process of calling furniture makers. I've not gotten any contact so far. This is a diagram of how the control looks now and what changes I want made.

I also commissioned a brass nut replica of my current nut and after shipping, it's only costing me 19 bucks. The only thing really missing after all is said and done will be the brass frets. That's a $300 job about.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/Spector%20Control%20Cut.png

Earlier in the year I purchased a Spector Legend 5 for just $400 with a case and shimmed neck. It became my favorite bass immediately. The feel, the looks, and for certain the tone. The very best tone on the planet as far as I'm concerned is Alex Webster's Spector. So guttural and burpy.

One day I was reading up on the specs of his Spector and comparing them to mine. For $3,500 more than what I spent, you get a slightly wider neck (Yuck), brass nut, brass frets, and the most important IMO the EMG DC40 Pups with the EMG BCQ Preamp. This preamp and pup set runs around $330. That's when I decided to make myself a webster Spector. People in this area are afraid to work on brass nuts for some reason and charge insane prices to have them cut due to their lack of experience with them so far now, I will go sans the brass nut.

I ended up stripping the bass and ordered the BCQ first. IT DOES NOT FIT. The Legend series routes out the control panel with circular indention's that shape to the Tone Pump Jr. preamp that comes with it. I ended up going to a Luthier here in town and he said he can't fix this. His router only goes 1 inch. He pretty much told me to go to a furniture maker and they can probably do it. I kind of like this idea so long as they can in fact do it.

I just ordered the pickups. I ended up reading about the EMG X-Series and after asking a few people about them compared to the originals, I decided to spend an extra 20 bucks and grab the EMG 40DCX pups. More head room, less compression, and more POWUH!

It's an exciting project for me. The idea that I'm saving $3000 and hopefully getting nearly the exact same tone, maybe even more so.

Ill make a video of the end result which should be in a couple of weeks. I still haven't called in furniture makers.

http://www.spectorbass.com/uploads/ProductPage_HeroLg/EURO5LXAW_1920x500.jpg

Can I enter? I'm from India.

Yes!

What WOULD the shipping be to India?

I remember looking into shipping a bass from Texas to Hawaii and the shipping was going to be like $700.

The days of 160 lbs. rigs are starting to fade. Companies like Fender are taking the initiative to lighten the load without sacrificing the power and volume. The Fender Rumble 500 V3 is a fine example. Great little amp that you can hold out in front of you with 1 hand. I think they are like 30 pounds for a 15 inch cone combo amp. These things get plenty loud too without distorting.

Headroom should always be taken into consideration as well. I like to be as prepared as possible and when allocating a lot of money to a piece of gear, I like to buy something that will be a Swiss Army Knife. With the Fender, I already had a sweet SWR LA15 as a travel amp it's heavy and when playing with a loud guitar and a drummer, it was distorting at the levels I needed it at. No Bueno. I bought the Fender 500 and didn't get that problem ever again. A lighter package, with more power, and more options. Can't go wrong.

I think it depends on how you view your property as well. I personally would rather have just one or two $2000 instruments that are versatile than to have eight instruments that are all single purpose for $500 a piece. I want that one piece of gear to be able to do anything I need it to and when I acquire that item, other items of it's type lose their sparkle to me.

I wouldn't be all that keen on carrying around a mic set either.

They do come with volume knobs :)

I don't see how a 40w would work with a live drummer.

I look at amps like cars. In this case, the law in an area says the amp go beyond 80db for example or in car terms, the speed limit is 45 in town. I'm not willing to buy a car that can't go faster than 45mph because I MIGHT want to get out on the highway and go out of town. I have no plans for it now but I certainly don't want to be handicapped to the situation when it comes up. Turn the volume knob down and you are within legal limits just as you would be letting off the gas enough to stay within the speed limit.

For a bass Head, 100 watts is pretty decent and varied. Of course, 300 is always better. I say go as high as you can afford. Buying the nice gear first saves you from needing to buy 2 or 3 other okay items before realizing you wish you had the best to begin with.

Don't buy gear for only what you need it for now. Buy it for everything you may use it for.

I guy in town here recently bought a Boss ODB-3 off of me to play Sabotage and said it didn't do the trick. I believe the tone he was after came out of an MXR Bass D.i. pedal.

Narp. I rarely mess with tabs and haven't ever written them myself. Sounds simple enough to learn by ear though. The bass line repeats itself a lot.