On bass amps and speakers

I'm a bass player myself, and considering how much I love Fender basses and Fender guitar amps you'd think I'd play through a Fender bass amp. Well, I do, but I play through a very rare model, and there will be a post about it later. But for the most part, even bassists who love Fender basses dont play through Fender bass amps. Why? Because for the most part they suck, particularly the CBS era amps.

Great for clubs the size of a small closet!

Now at first glance it looks ok, Its fairly small, about the size of a modern 4x10 cabinet (I actually own its big brother the bassman ten, which uses the same cabinet) but its only 30 watts. As far as bass amps go a good rule of thumb is to divide the watts by 3 to compair how loud it would be to a guitar amp, so it would pair up well enough with a 10 watt guitar amp, say your guitarist is using a princeton or something. The only issue with that is the guitarist can drive his princeton and the bassist usually wants the bass to stay clean. The thing is, the wattage isnt the issue so much as the speaker...

Why?

The speaker is made out of styrofoam. What? Yes. Thats the other reason you couldnt turn these amps up. The speakers blew all the time, in fact, the original speakers are nearly impossible to find. So in short, these amps were very low power, and on top of that the speaker blew if you cranked it. CBS quietly discontinued this model around 1972.