Me too. I like you guys are describing, with the the G12T-75s it is hard to get a bad sound. The Jensens on my Fender are way pickier about mic placement than the Celestions.
+1
One of my favorite basses, but a little $$$ needed for the initial investment into that range.
+1 on another great bass. I bought my MIM j bass used. It's very nicely built, sounds and plays great.
And I'm the half opposite of that: I don't use them for recording OR live playing. :)
Also, Greg made a great point about a good modeler sounding better than a shitty mic'd up amp for recording. And in context when I'm talking about loving to use mic'd amps, I'm using a Fender Super...
I just like the whole process of real amplifiers for recording. I could see going with a modeler for live playing if programming it didn't take much time, but I use a house amp live (no amp hauling) so I don't want a modeler.
I do the same thing with some outboards running into a Mackie 24.8 (bypassing the each channel's preamp of course) and then sending it to an HD24 versus wiring them directly to the HD24. It seems to work well for me, but there is definitely some extra wire travel the signals have to go through...
I just have to comment on the cool-ass Marantz stereo up there. That should be worth some $$$.
I'm assuming you want ideas for improvement, right? Get some decent monitors is a good start. How far into this do you want to get? Hobbyist, or do you want to start recording local bands...
Nah, not right now.:) A few weeks ago I bought a second VC3 gold-letter edition to match the one that was repaired. Not a "matching pair" in serial #s, but they didn't really make matching pairs anyway. Serial #s were sequential for everything they manufactured, not just particular models...
I swear I think he polished mine while it was there. :) I know there is a new inspection sticker he put on it. It's cool that he backs his designs and is a total gentleman about things.
Have you had a chance to play with it yet? Pretty awesome-sounding boxes, man.