Should I downsize?

Ok, I'll try to keep this short.

The last couple of weeks/months, I haven't been feeling as good about my set up as I used to. Not because the tone is insufficient, the tone I get and the tones I can get are absolutely great, but because everything I play is so darn expensive(and also big and heavy). Maybe you can call this some sort of guilt or something, but it all me makes me feel so materialistic and decadent.

My current set up, or everything I currently own, is this: a Fender MIM Classic 50s P. a Squier VM fretless J, and an Ibanez GSR 190 (my first bass). I play these basses through my Marshall VBA400 and VBC412. The pedals I own are a EBS Valvedrive. a EHX Bass Big Muff and a Morley Dual Bass Wah. I also play a little guitar, I play a Dean ML79 through my Ibanez BSA10, usually with either the Valvedrive and/or Muff for distortion, which doesn't even sound that bad.

If you got this far, I'll apologize in advance for not being able to keep it short, but I just have to get this off my chest.

The things that bother me are numerous, but the main problem is the size, weight and not-funny-anymore overkill amount of wattage that my great sounding Marshall rig has. Other things that bother me are, the amount of basses that I have, and the fact that my only guitar doesn't have a whammy bar, because I only noodle on it anyway and that would add to the fun of noodling. I just don't want to chop it up, because that would ruin the appearance completely.

Things that I'm completely fine with, on the other hand, are my P Bass, even though I paid over 600 euros for it, my effect pedals, except for the Morley because I don't really like its sound/options. And the fact that I own only 1 guitar.

Some additional info: I play mostly (hard) rock and metal, currently I'm in 2 bands, 1 of them, a metal band, I just joined and they told me they have serious gig plans (and the necessary connections to get them) as soon as we get a decent set together. The other band, Mittens (kind of Tenacious D-ish), doesn't have heavy gig plans, mostly performances at our schools and stuff, and we might enter in a contest next year, but the venues we'll play at then will have house equipment available. I also once played as a bassist in the backing band for a school musical which had to fill an entire auditorium, and even then I didn't have to turn the master volume up above 10:30.

The more serious metal band told me that when(or if) we start gigging, I'll need to bring my own amp, at least the head most of the time. Now, the head is probably do-able in most of their cars, because it's not that big, even though it's quite heavy, but I'm strong enough to carry it around and because of it's relatively do-able size I can also easily maneuver it in and out of the apartment I live in with my dad and into cars/vans and bars and such. The cab however, is a whole different story. It weighs almost twice as much as the head and is BIG. I can lift it on my own but carrying it around, hell no. Luckily it has wheels, but when trying to get it down or up a quite narrow and curved staircase (like the one in my house) is a real pain in the a.. and ideally requires 2 people. I can't do it alone, my dad can but he has some trouble with it so it's always better with 2 people.

So all of this is why I'm thinking of downsizing to a smaller, more light weight rig, but, I have talked about it with my dad and he brings up the point that maybe I will regret it if I sell my current rig for something else and might not be able to get it back for whatever reason, and this is why I need your advice. I have some thoughts on what to replace my current rig with, but I'll first wait and see if anyone actually reads this monster and responds in the first place. My budget will be around what I sell the Marshall rig for, which will probably be around 1450-1700 euros.

If you made it to end, I thank you for reading this thing and hope to hear your opinion.

Jason.

P.S. I've been playing bass for 2,5 years now, and I've had my guitar for a little more than a year, for those who want to know.

 

I get your point, and I have thought about that, too. The main thing about that is, though, that I'm only 17 and won't be able to drive a car for at least 16 to 20 months (I'll have to turn 18 first and then take driving lessons) so I won't be able to haul my own stuff around for a while. My dad doesn't drive a car either (because his employer pays for all his public transportation fees, and because of his Greenpeace past...), so I'll have to rely on bandmates, friends or my mum and step dad to transport my big rig, if I want/need to use it. Also, buying and additional combo would maybe make me feel even more materialistic, in a bad way, because I'll have even more stuff I don't really need or really want, it kind of feels like fixing a problem with another problem.

Also, I probably should explain what I am looking at as a replacement, as I'm not exactly thinking about going all Markbass or something.

For the head I'm looking at a Blackheart Hothead, which is a 100watt all-tube guitar amp, but it has a lot of options that are really usable for me in an amp, like the switchable full and half power modes, the dual channels, and the switchable pentode/triode mode also really interests me. I know that it's probably voiced primarily for guitar, but I don't think that's a problem actually or something that a 10-band EQ pedal couldn't fix if it is. Also, the soundclips that Mark Olson posted with his bass through an Orange Tiny (or was it Dual?) Terror guitar head, sounded really cool to me, and only a little bit too 'guitar-ish', but that probably also has to do with the settings he uses and stuff like that.

For cabs, I am indeed looking at dual 2x12s, dual 2x10s or maybe a 2x10 + 2x12 or a light-ish 4x10. Of course I'm talking about bass cabs, not guitar cabs, because I don't want to run the risk of destroying my speakers.

Also, I seem to have a preference for amps being pushed hard, even when they're solid state, because once when I played a gig with Mittens I played through a 35w Ibanez combo I could use from another band, and we needed to crank it to fill the room properly and it actually sounded good to me. (I have vids on youtube from this particular gig if you want to hear it).

So downsizing in this case would be from overkill that I don't need at this point in time, to a medium sized rig that can probably fill all my current needs.

 

On the first one, yeah I like it big and loud, but at this time it's just extreme overkill at this time, because I mostly play at home and small venues, and big venues should have a PA anyway. Also, I don't like carrying big and heavy down 2 staircases just to get is out of the house.

On the second one, materialism and decadence are fun and all, when you have lots of money and it doesn't matter anymore when you spend it and on what. But now, I'm only a teenager, and I try to be a responsible one, and almost all of my money is in my stuff, and I have almost no income or real job, because school is hard enough for me as it is, so if I have to go somewhere by train, the question is always 'how am I gonna afford the ticket?' and when one of my favourite bands plays in my country, the question is 'where am I gonna get the money to go see them?', it always works out alright in the end but I hate having to think about how I spend my money so much just because I've spent it all on something ridiculously big I don't even use outside of the house that much at this point in time. Also, if something, anything in my rig breaks down thats more than a 9v battery or a cable (which I have plenty of) it's always the question whether or not I can afford the repaircosts at that point in time, and if it's more than a string or one of my basses, then I have zero back up and zero back up funds which would mean I'm totally screwed. There have been instances when my dad wasn't able to make dinner for me that day because he was away for business and I had to ask for money for food up front because I had no cash left. That made me feel kind of irresponsible and overly dependent because I couldn't rely on myself. I know I don't have to fully rely on myself yet because I still live at home, but I plan to move out in 2-3 years and then I'll have to rely on myself too, so I have to start learning now how to properly do so, you know.

And another thing that makes me feel weird is that some of my friends that have inferior stuff to what I have play their instruments just as good/bad as I do or better, and that not so much makes me feel unworthy, but it makes me feel like I don't need all this volume I have. Most of it is just 'clean' headroom anyway, which isn't exactly what I look for in an amp.

Also, read my previous post, I'm not exactly planning on going to a jazz-volume rig all of a sudden.

 

Rock and metal definitely is reflective of my personality, as you would notice if you knew me in person, because I do feel like most of the things you stated, anti-establishment (the Dutch democracy really is a lie), counter-culture (we rockers and metalheads have our own community), I can be annoying p), loud = good, but to me, materialism is not counter culture at all in the western society, as everything in this consumer-oriented world is targeted at capitalism and consumerism, not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer to take a "use what you can afford and use it well" standpoint, and I feel like I'm a little out of my budget like I stated earlier because if something goes wrong I can't afford the repairs/back up and don't really want to rely on my parents.

Also, I can definitely play the loudest and angriest metal in a convincing way, it's usually lighter music that I have a problem with playing in a way that it actually seems like I belong there.

Thanks for the kudos, man. I'm trying to do a good job in making my life a success, and I feel like when I got my financial and all the other stuff figured out the right way, it'll be way harder for people who don't want me to achieve my goals to actually stop me from achieving those goals.

P.S. please read post #5 too, as I think that kind of explains my own hypothetical solution and is a more middle-of-the-road, medium-sized (just lighter/more portable, mostly) rig approach.

 

So because I'm not like most kids I'm whining? Geez, did I offend you or something? Did you actually read past the 'materialistic and decadent' part? Can't blame you if you haven't, though, but it does make you come across close minded to form an entire opinion about me based on just those words.

Or maybe you just tried to offend me, not that it matters though, because I'm just a whining kid to you anyway. I think you missed my entire point about the 'materialistic and decadent' just because that one sentence comes across a little whiney, but I didn't really know other words for it because English is not my native language (even though I think my English is decent enough).

 

Your second post certainly cleared things up, rbonner. I think you can probably understand that just reading something about me being a whiney kid without the explanation got me a little on edge there. You definitely make a good point, though, and I am in fact planning on getting a van when I get my driver's license/own car.

I guess I'll just work and save up for a smaller combo/rig for small stuff, just like I did for the Marshall rig. I was already looking at options a while back and a Warwick Take 12.1 seems like a good candidate.