Best all-rounder bass cab for recording?

[Drone]

Another vote for 15" and maybe an old tube head in the 50W range.

I've got an Alamo Paragon with a 15", and the speaker is great, I have no information on it, except there was one just like it in that cover photo in whichever issue had the cover with all the speakers on a staircase.

Way back in the mists of time, I had a Selmer Futurama Bassist minor, and it had what looked like a cast Fane 12" and it was a 5W single ended amp, just volume(s two channel) and tone control. One day I'm going to build a copy of it, but I doubt I'll find the 15ohm 12" Fane.

[roscoenyc]

a tip for tube amp bass sound.
If you have an older Fender amp or even a re-issue that has 2 inputs on each channel the 2nd one is padded down. Makes a Bassman, Showman even a Twin a lot more usable as a bass head.

[LupineSound]

What do you mean by "padded down"? Like -X dB?

[Corey Y]

My all time favorite bass recording rig is a Bag End 15" speaker mic'd up with an RE20.

+1 for this, Bag End makes a great 1x15" (hard to go wrong with the RE20 as well). Having a single driver in a well designed/matched cab is a great for a lot of different applications with bass.

Most of the time for my own needs I use a ported 1x10" cab loaded with an Eminence Basslite (Duke LeJeune's budget DIY design), that's purely for having the maximum amount of volume/headroom and ideal response for the smallest footprint. 90% of the time I'm recording another bassist, they insist on using their own amp/cab.

[Drone]

From memory one input goes thru a 22K or 33K resistor, the other input goes thru the same, but is also tied to ground via a 1M.

[roscoenyc]

What do you mean by "padded down"? Like -X dB?

Yep.
Try it out and see.

[vvv]

My Musicman HD 130 (a Leo design, I believe), alsdo has that padded input on both channels.