Phil Starr

I've just checked and cab sized pieces are still available. They also sell wholesale so you may need to re navigate their site.

I'm not sure you need to worry abnout sacrificing the bolts. the T-nuts will be well below the surface you are painting and you could always use blu-tac/chewing gum/plasticine to cover the nut, it's all going to be invisible once the speaker is fitted. I don't really like t-nuts much so I'm shifting to furniture nuts in future the t-nuts sometimes overhang the narrow strip of baffle left once you've cut the speaker hole so I'm hoping these will be neater

I was in Carlisle last week

I've fitted a few cabs now with 'Fender' cloth sourced from China, which appears to be identical with the cloth sold by the specialist dealers in the UK. What i didn't realise was that many of the 'Fender' cloths are shrink to fit. A bit of a shame as I warmed mine up to make it more flexible and it didn't fit after that. Fortunately I did buy enough for a spare. It's a joy to fit as you don't have to tension it as you staple. Just fit it nice and straight and let the hair dryer pull it into shape. Oddly they don't tell you the cloth is shrink fit so you'd have to test a small piece before fitting it. The 'Marshall' cloth is the old fashioned stiff stuff and much harder to work with http://www.kldguitar.com/Home/cph is where I ordered my cloth

I think that is right, the test was through Yamaha Club series speakers S112IV if my memory serves, and these had a real midrange peak due to the Eminence Delta's they used. At the time they were so much better than the Peveys everyone else used I quite liked them but they had to have affected what we were doing so hardly a fair test. My own anecdotal experience

Interestingly (to me anyway) I tried a mic shoot out with one of my bands who were using some ..... less than good mics. They included an SM58 and a XM8500 as well as a Samson of some sort. generally the band preferred the 8500 to the SM58 though I did have to resolder the Behringer to make it work! The Behringer does have a brighter sound and the resonance peaks are in a different place which could sound tinny if untamed. The shure had a lot less handling noise but the Behringer rejected feedback slightly better. Shockingly there are Three Behringer mics below the XM8500 as well as the XM1800 which is sold in packs of three. The singers husband went out and bought a Shure KSM9 sadly he didn't ask me and I didn't have phantom power at the time so it was never used in anger.

2 minutes from me, you'll have to call in for a cup of something some time Actually if you want to drop in I could lend you a Micromon I don't use it very oten, just to tempt reluctant singers to try in-ears

The Behringer Micromon MA400 is what you want. You can also feed in a monitor input so she can hear everything else and/or practice to backing tracks at home. Merry Christmas

I'm going to put this out there just once, in case Rob gets swamped. This is a really generous and genuine offer. Rob very kindly printed me a new grip for an ancient but expensive microphone, where the plastic had crumbled with age. He really represents the best of the BassChat community.

Depends upon what you mean by flat, it's pretty high build and you won't get rid of all the brush marks but you can get quite a nice 'linen' texture with a short pile roller. I have tried sanding TuffCab and i have multiple types of sander. It's well named and I gave up on that one

First of all I think it's probably the room causing a particular problem. I think we've all experienced that and I share that opinion. However I'm seriously worried about your hearing. I use a single modest Celestion 10" cab quite frequently as on-stage monitoring and it's plenty for my needs, it does have a horn too though which helps articulation. Those four Celestions will knock out 130db which is easily enough to damage your hearing and that Crown amp is no weakling either. I would seriously consider in-ears, you might not like them but being so hard of hearing that you have to give up gigs altogether you will hate even more. It comes to all of us in the end and some hearing loss may already be part of your problem. As to your problem you need to boost the mids and cut the bass. The bass is where the room resonances are and the fact your sound egineer was struggling with the kick sound says there was a problem in the room. On stage you'd also be hearing all the lowest frequencies from the PA which are omnidirectional, just as loud behind as they are in front. With the PA probably louder than the stage levels you almost won't need any bass at all from your amp. I suspect you were close to the PA? I've gone as far as cutting all the bass below 120hz by 24db/8ve before now. Look to boost 200-2kHz as Bill suggests. Also look to get something designed to get the mids to your ears like the LFSys Monaco which has the horn rotated to project a vertical rather than horizontal plane. It might also be worth wearing ear plugs, they do muffle the sound a bit but at the sound levels you were operating at tiny muscles in your ear contract to protect your hearing, just lowering the sound levels might help you get enough information to follow your own playing. Counter intuitively you might hear more with plugs in place

https://www.facebook.com/reel/834906742617867 I've never tried this before and the pictures and sound are compressed to hell on FB but this is something the singer put up. You should just about see the lights illuminating the band tucked in behind the speakers and the two flashing facing the audience. You can also make out the Par Bar behind the guitarist, there was nowhere else to put it given the space. The phone has also corrected the colour which was primary red for the static lights These lights come with an optional diffuser which was fitted which is why you can't see the bulbs

OK I did say I thought you could achieve all of these, I did say thousands to do it well though. I was hoping for you to prioritise A lot of these lights can be quite compact, I carry six of the 1 metre length light bars in a single bag shown above including the mains leads. In small venues I have used two of these pointing backwards and set to static to light the band, two out front on a sequence to light the audience and two at the back to colour wash the stage. I've also got stands so that some of the tunes can be mounted vertically. I also have two small and cheap lasers that mount on top of the light bars and make pretty patterns on the ceiling. You could achieve most of this with the PAR lights described above and these would be more compact to carry. The light spread would be different however. You could also mix the lights of course. The advantage of having six identical lamps is that there is only one system to learn and you can also be certain that the DMX protocols are the same, that's important if you want to link lights so that they perform in the same way. Without DMX they will all do their own thing. This system illuminates the band and you can see what you are doing well, the rest of the stage is bathed in colour or colours if you use a sequence. The real failing is for the audience area, if it is any size at all it needs a lot more light and more going on. I also have a set of four lights on a bar like the Stairville ones but a couple of generations older, they are bigger and bulkier but sit in a case the size of a bass case, so not impossibly big. I've done gigs with just these at the side with one light illuminating each band member and with them running a programmed chase. That looks really dynamic out front and you can usually choose a chase where none of the lights go out completely so you are never plunged into darkness. Nowadays they sit behind the band and give the audience a show in most venues. These are most peoples first attempt at lighting and are really simple to set up and operate mine has a 4-way footswitch and remote control so it's plug in, put on the stand and just select your pre programmed display. Two of these raised really high will illuminate the whole audience area and make a good display viewed from their perspective. Those Stairvilles are the only ones I've found where you can have one can static to illuminate the stage. Two of these would make the band really visible and be good for the audience. They won't do the illumination of the instruments so well. I also really like the system set up in @gazhowe's video a really strong stage wash with smaller spots to illuminate the instruments. The slow fade in the wash I think adds some drama and the band are the centre of the illumination and therefore the show. Thats a little more complex as most of the fades are too fast so you'd be limited as to what lights you could use or have to learn DMX. Fortunately the contollers are really cheap Fortunately all of these things are expandable, you can add lights anytime to fill in what you find is lacking, but its better to have a plan and buy a few 'good' lights that do what you want rather than just the bargain on Ali Express. Time to go out and see what other bands are doing I think.

Hi Tim, Using wi-fi links sounds really interesting, winding up DMX cables every gig is already getting very boring on top of the XLR's. I'd be really interested to know how that works out.

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