Re: Recomended wattage for gigging
The wattage of the amp will largely determine how clean you can get it at a certain volume. More wattage (say 2x more) equals the ability to get a cleaner tone at the same volume. A lot more wattage (say 4x to 8x more) equals the ability to get a cleaner tone, *and* be louder. If you never really need to play that cleanly, you don't need a ton of wattage. 200W solid state is a good middle-of-the-road number that provides a decent balance of cleanliness and volume (and definitely cuts it if you will always be piped through a nice sound system when you play).
The speaker array you use goes a long way toward determining volume. Using a single speaker, you are not maximizing the volume potential of the amp, no matter what amp you're piping through it. A vertical stack of two identical speakers is noticeably louder and more "present" than a single speaker cab, or a single speaker combo.
One 4x10, two 2x10's, or two 1x15's are each a good setup that cover a lot of ground. The 4x10 would cover most things all the time, but it's bulkier. Not good if you have a smaller car, or can't lift a bulky, somewhat heavy cab. Two 2x10's allows you to run either two or four 10's, depending on your needs for the gig. Same with the two 1x15's.
A 200W solid state head through one of these cab setups would cover most things (as long as the tone controls on the head are excellent).
It is generally not ideal to mix and match different speaker sizes (or even types) for bass, because you can get weird dead spots in the room by doing so – spots where your bass' volume just seems to drop way lower than in other spots. You certainly can mix and match, as plenty have done and continue to do, but it's not ideal. Point being, if going with a two cab setup, two identical cabs is recommended (by me, as well as many others).
I lived and gigged for a long time (20+ years) with an Ampeg B-100R as my only amp. 100W solid state, 1x15 combo with no external speaker jack. Nothing has ever sounded better to me in terms of raw tonal ability, but man, unless there was a decent PA and sound man, that thing was always pushed past its reasonable limits, and still wasn't loud enough sometimes. I mostly played it unmiked, pushed way too hard. I don't know how nothing has ever broken on it. I still have it, and play it whenever it cuts it volume-wise. But I did just add an 800W head and several cabs to take over the bulk of my gigging duties. I think I would have been fine with 400W or 500W, but my friend got me a good deal on the amp, so I just went for the most deluxe model in the lineup.
