Phil Starr

Hmmm first of all @Woodinblack is right, I've left my RCF M18 on overnight and for several days without a problem and you should be able to do that as well. This is not something that is going to go away and it willl happen at a gig sooner or later. I don't know where you bought it but I'd be asking for help and a possible loan of a repacement until it's fixed. You can't risk your band's reputation with dodgy gear, losing a regular venue is potentially worth more than the cost of a new mixer. Heat often affects components and soldered joints due to expansion. Many/most intermittent faults are affected by heat so turning the mixer off will probably give you a few more minutes before the fault cuts in. There's nothing very surprising going on here, and it was a good shout to try it, but personally I wouldn't take that mixer to a gig. Imagine if you'd just managed to fill the dance floor and had the audience fully engaged and then cleared the dance floor for 10 mins half an hour before the gig was due to finish anyway. Do you have any mates who could lend you a mixer? At a pinch I have a backup M18 I hope to never use. You can pm me if that would help

It's funny how people who differ over whether 10" speakers sound better than 15's and upgrade pickups on perfectly good basses also differ over vinyl and CD's If like me you have a collection of vinyl at home and just want to play it on something that won't degrade it any faster than you have to then any of the modern £500ish turntables will do the trick. I'd probably avoid vintage decks just because these are mechanical devices with bearings that wear. I want something I can use for the next 20 years without having to source parts. Once you get into hearing the difference it depends upon the cartridge you are using and the amp and speakers. There's no point sonically spending £1500 on a turntable if the speakers aren't equally revealing. The argument for the used Linn is surely that you like the way it looks and you can get your money back if you sell it whilst the poeple who lusted for them 40 years ago are still alive and feeling stirrings (note to self: sell that old Sex Pistols single) FWIW I have a Rega Planar 2 with the better tone arm fitted, can't remember which one. I've had it for years and have only had to replace the belt and needle. You don't have to replace the whole cartridge but spare needles aren't always available for such old gear. I've gone from Thorens TD160 (rumbled like hell) to a Pioneer 12D to the Rega. I used the Technics 1200 in my disco days. A mate has the Linn with the top arm at the time and the external power supply. It did sound better than mine in the shop but not through his amp and speakers. We spent many happy hours comparing systems to find that some records sounded great on his system and others better on mine. Nowadays we do almost all of our listening via streaming but it is nice sometimes to get the vinyl out and wallow in nostalgia, definitely worth spending £500 on that. Go for a decent cartridge though, it makes more difference than the turntable and will conserve your vinyl. Then just love what you have, if you've ever played bass with a drummer I doubt your hearing is still 100% anyway.

Since you are based in Bingley maybe you should use Fanes, a West Yorks speaker It's quite possible to use a ready made cab as the basis for a new cab if you don't want to go to the trouble of building yourself. I'd think of it as giving you the fun of having a unique cab rather than an upgrade though. The problem is that you won't have the free choice of any driver you want as not all drivers will give their best in that cab, each driver has a cab size and tuning that will work best with it and cab design is about choosing the right driver for the outcome you want and then designing the ideal cab to match. Choosing to go for an 8ohm cab is limiting as many 10" speakers aren't widely available in 4 or 16 ohms, finding ones that also match that cab is even more limiting so it's likely you won't have a lot of choice. Even the idea of 'best' and 'upgrade' are tricky. Which aspect of your speaker's performance do you want to improve? Is it power handling, overall volume, extended bass, general tone, weight and portability? However the cab is likely to be better finished than most of us can achieve by a home build and it could be a lot of fun. The outcome could be a cab you love and you can always refit the old speakers if you aren't happy with the changes and you can probably get half your money back on the replacement drivers by selling them on. You do need to think of cost though, the Kappalites mentioned above are now £170ea. If you think the risk is worth it and see it as a fun project there are plenty of BassChatters who will help with technical advice, so perhaps start with deciding upon a budget and by identifying what aspects of your speaker you want to change/improve.

One last thing from me and I'll shut up. The above is more or less what I do, except my 'pedalboard' is just a Sansamp Programmable. In my case I have a single lightweight speaker, an LFS Monza, and my amp (TC Elf) is in the bass case with the SansAmp so bass on my back and one hand free to open doors. The Monza is beyond the £600 budget but the Goodwood is cheaper and only 9kg. The LFSys have a ruler flat response which is what you need from a 'does everything' set up. The only issue is that LFSys are such new designs that your chance of buying a used one are remote and you would have to stretch your budget.

Have you contacted Allen and Heath? This is a very odd fault.

The port will add noticeably more bass. I hope you will be happy with it. For the jam session see if you can get the cab in a corner and the bass will be reinforced by the room.

I'm an unreformed fiddler, nothing I ever do get's finished. I always have mods I want to try. In this case I thnk you could set a limit/tolerace of 2% of cab volume and be perfectly safe and maybe 10% would be liveable with. There's always more mods I want to add so I'm finding publishing designs and seeing them live on as a stable design a new experience. I decided early on that designs had to be built and tested before publishing and nowadays I have to refer back to my own designs on BassChat to answer questions

That's a great question and I had to think about the answer. Part of this is that I rely on experience, I've spent a lot of time building and modifying cabs. When I build pairs of cabs I'll often try modifications on one cab and then A/B them next to each other so you do get an instinct about small changes The first thing is that the efffects are slight. First of all most of the 'sound' of the speakers is what goes on above 200Hz and the box modelling is about the response of the true low end below that frequency. The other David has tried the cab out as a sealed cab andit 'works' and it probably sounds OK, even though he will get 3db of boost of the low end with a port plus a lower roll of frequency. Secondly the calculations give incredibly percise answers but in real life it's a bit messier. Manufacturing tolerances mean measured speakers vary and the published figures I use can't always be trusted. Thre are always air losses from a cab which are allowed for in the calculations but I use a 'standard' value of Ql=0.7 which is middle of the bell curve. Importantly I then build the cab so ay significant error would show up. I'ver no control over how accurately people build the cab so calculating port sizes to 3 decimal places doesn't make much sense. You can build the cab successfully even if you make small mistakes, which should be reassuring Anyway I've looked at the responses with the same tuning and the box sizes increased and decreased by 10% but tuned to the same frequency. This is the box you are all building with the Fane in blue. You can see that increasing the cab by 10% (red) gives you a bit more bass but reducing the cab 10% makes a smaller difference. The red trace gives 1db extra at 60Hz and you'd hear that with the cabs next to each other but only just. You wouldn't be able to detect the difference with the smaller cab in this case. This is a 2l shift in volume and the increase in port size is only 0.2l so insignificant. It looks like my instincts were good in this case, Phew

Hi David, to keep the same tuning you only have to match the area of the round port and keep the same length. Those are the only two numbers that matter. I keep using the drainpipe because it's simpler for most people. if you can calculate pi r^2 that will be ok, but if you are forming a port then it would be better to make it slightly bigger to reduce potential wind noise in the port. I've had a look and something 8x5cm inside measurements and 11.4cm long would work. You can change the shape so long as you keep to 40cm^2 area

Stop worrying about the diameter of the speaker, it's only one of many things that affect the sound. Smaller speakers are less directional so easier to hear if you are playing close to the cab. Bigger speakers are more efficient all else being equal, Any speaker can be made to go low at the cost of reduced efficiency and most of the sound of an instrument speaker is about the midrange not the bass. In terms of cone area a 2x8 is bigger than a 1x10 and nearly as big as a 12 so I'd expect a 2x8 to give a similar maximum output to a 1x12 all ese being equal again. In fact Markbass have the 2x8 as 99db/W and the 1x12 as 100db/W so youd barely notice the difference in sound level. The NY121 is smaller but heavier and the 2x8 an easier shape to carry. The 2x8 has a less powerful amp. The only way to resolve this is to try them both.

Unfortunately this is the answer and only you can really decide yourself. I've been regularly using a single 8" cab with a 130W amp at rehearsal and it's been fine, a 2x8 should be better. I've gigged small venues with a 1x10 too, so it can be done. To an extent it depends upon the drummer, some are more controlled than others and the difference in volume can easily be 10db playing the same songs. It also depends upon your 'sound'. I tend to roll off the bass below 80Hz and use HPF at 50Hz to keepthe bass clean. I try to leave space for the kick drum in the lower frequencies. This alll makes it easy for the speakers. I love the space ship @Dan Dare Dan Dare should always have a ship

If anything was plugged in and powered up it is providing a signal, that might be just a bit of hiss (noise) but if that device is faulty then it could provide the fault for the desk to amplify into the speakers. You'd have to switch everything off or better still disconnect it to be sure it was the CQ causing the problem. The Zoom appears to be lit up which is one reason why I suspected it, I also know from my duo partners rather random approach to fx that the Zoom can be driven into instability if you come up with fx chains and settings Zoom never dreamed of. I used to do a lot of repair work when younger and earning my living as a part time sound engineer/speaker builder. Hence my hatred of intermittent faults, they never happen when the tech has the device. I do suspect B-stock as a result. Someone returns something to the shop and it lays around until one of the shop assistants decides to have a look. They run it for 24 hours (ideally) and nothing goes wrong and it becomes B-stock. You run it for a year and the fault doesn't happen, and then it does. It could be the desk but until you try it without anything connected you can't be certain. By all means talk to a tech, if they repair a lot of CQ's there may be a known fault but I'd be running it just conected to the speakers for a couple of days before I took it in. The spare desk is a great idea, I have a spare M18 in case mine starts playing up and I've transferred my settings to it so it is ready if I ever need it. I'll get my money back if I ever upgrade When it comes to repairs I'm strictly analogue though

That's a very strange noise. I don't think it is a cable. It's not clear from the pic what inputs you have to the mixer. The Zoom seems to be on, was that connected to anything? I've had strange noises (nothing like that though) from my Zoom when the batteries are flat. It sounds to me like something entirely separate from your sound system something mechanical like a relay chattering, maybe on a freezer/washing machine or anything really. It could even be in a neighbours house. That interfeence can either feed into your system from the mains or by radio waves. Anyway the first thing to do would be to disconnect everything from the mixer when you aren't using it and see if it ever makes the noise with everything disconnected. If it is fine at least you will be reassured it's your house and won't happen at a gig. Then reintroduce one thing at a time to see if any one connection causes the noise. If it recurs then check if it is that source which is faulty or the lead by swapping for a different lead with the same source. Good luck, these intermittent faults are often really hard to track down

Just thought I'd show our most recent set up to show the lighting. this was a huge hall probably 250+ capacity but it cgace us a chance to set up as we wanted. The overhead house lights were on so our lights more effective once the ordinary lighting was off, but you can see how effective our lights were by the colour changes on the floor. The phone kind of makes them look like white lights but the clours were pretty intense in the room. We had our six pixel bars running together via DMX using the internal program from one of the lights. They are all on 1m high stands. The rear curtains are illuminated by Two 180W led floods on a sequence program, again with one slaved by DMX. At the back is A KAM REM1 with four PAR's, no longer available but similar units can be found pretty much anywhere. The venue had it's own lighting but we only had axcess to the extremely grimy mirror ball and some old school incandescent overhead floods with straw filters. You can see the ones with the barn doors at the top of the pics. The flashing is to recorded music. The Pixel Bars are around £60 ea and the stands £20 so you are looking at £480 worth of lights in these alone but they were bought a couple at a time and were useful even when I only had a pair. Most of the money I've wasted has been by buying random lights on impulse I'm now planning the lighting a bit more and I think getting better value for money, Now and Then new lights 1.MOV

Sorry David, I can’t help,all my stuff is Apple.