Of COURSE there are bass players that play too loud. Certainly not as many as guitar players though especially in bands with two guitars. Two guitar hero's are the easy-bake oven recipe for volume wars.
But bass rigs rarely "icepick" the audience or take up all the available frequencies and drown out the rest of the band so it's more of a misdemeanor than a capitol offence.
what do you do when you're too loud? There's a knob labeled "volume". Turn it to the left.
How do you know you're too loud? Someone says "dude, you're pretty loud..."
"I have to be this loud to get my tone". Who are you again? Jimi? SRV? Brian May? J Mascis? No? Then you don't have "your tone". Try for a great tone that fits the ensemble.
Sound guy: "hey, I don't have you in the mix, can you turn down a little?" Guitar god: "sure"... Goes and fiddles with knobs but doesn't change anything but rolls off a little volume on the guitar so he can turn it back up when the slider monkey's not looking. ***? Are you actually trying to make the band sound bad? Help the guy make you sound great and turn down a little.
"I like the off-axis sound of the speaker better, so I gotta turn it up to hear Seriously? it sounds like poop so you'll beam it directly at the audience instead? Move the amp and mike it so the crowd gets to hear to good stuff too.
There, did I hit all the big ones? I used to do all kinds of stuff to get my volume under control. I turned the amp around, used the plexi shield of shame, tossed a volume knobby thing in the effects loop, had a badcat leash... All these things worked, but you know how it is, you want to get the tubes nice and hot... So I stuck the cab backstage in a box. Problem solved. But after a while I got tired of hauling around a bid ole' doghouse for a 212. So I ended up demo'ing a RK5 flyrig and dammit if it didn't work. It's not the same as the brownface bassman, but I had to get over the fact that it wasn't all about me. A band is a single instrument, top to bottom.
