Daniel, your observation for a lack of bass in the
kick is likely my fault more than it is your small
monitors.
On my work machine I have Celestion Ditton 10 speakers, which are very
small monitors from the mid 1960s. They do sound sweet, but with a 5"
driver and no tuned port they really don't have any bass thump at
all. I guess they could be an indication of what the bass would sound
like on other small speakers though.
I knew a band who used to keep a crappy tape player in their studio,
the portable kind that has built-in speakers either end. When they'd
finished a mix, they would run off a cassette copy and play it back
on this machine to see if it still sounded good. (In those days that
was the kind of equipment that a typical teenage music lover would
own - I guess now the equivalent would be a portable MP3 player with
nasty in-ear headphones...)
Cheers
Daniel