Phil Starr

I'm dying to come across to hear these John. I gigged in a small venue this Saturday with my band and my RCF ART745's were just way over the top and physically narrowed the stage. The volume limit was restricted by feedback so I was just carrying a lot of cabinet for no reason. My duo sound every bit as good with just the ART310's and I'm thinking a smaller rig for smaller venues with the band might be justified. We rehearse in a bigger venue than we usually gig so I've got the opportunity to try out a smaller system.

I'm always slightly worried when somebody buys equipment I've reviewed so I'm really pleased the Flow 8 is working well for you. Mine is sitting on my desk doing it's thing so much better than my old Alesis without a hiccup despite being on 24/7. I've only used other peoples Alto 408's a couple of times at open mics but I'm really impressed with the sound for vocals /acoustic instruments which I find better than the Alto 12" cabs.

Yeah I don't think using different frequencies on the crossovers is a good idea. you can easily end up with a gap in the frequency response which is audible and hard to get around. Far better to just use the sub's crossover. The response of subs is often far from flat but a 24db/8ve crossover is going to keep a lot of problems under control. I know I set a bad example in the past but that ws in the absence of any sort of crossover, if I'd had one I would have used it. By all means experiment with aux fed sus but I still think your best result will be to use the built in crossovers, it aids set up times too once you have the relative levels set between subs and tops.

I think that by 'noise' we mean pink noise, electronically produced random noise filtered to mimic music content. The idea of hundreds of watts produced by 50 bass players all playing different things... No, wait,that is a Bass Bash 😁

Absolutely, firms like Mesa, solidly grounded in engineering, are exemplary in terms of presenting data, especially if you dig deep into their manuals and technical documents. Long may it last. The problem is in many countries that regulation has become a dirty word, it's become quite a brave decision to be honest with your customers when your competitors are 'cheating'. There aren't many chief executives who want to genuinely risk being brave

Only quoting this bit because it raises an interesting question which your post does go on to mention. Everything goes to pot once the marketers get hold of every bit of printed and broadcast material. It's the governments fault. To a large extent it's the voters fault and to a greater extent it's the non voters fault. Anyone who ever proudly says 'I don't vote, they are all the same' it's definitely their fault. Companies are over claiming figures massively and across the board, they routinely measure their amps output power then simply multiply the figure by four. Literally just that, times four, no science, no measurement just barefaced lie. To be fair some even admit it. In the small print you'll see "**calculated figure". Frequency responses are now given +/- 10db rather than the +/-3db used decades ago and sometimes even less honestly. The problem is that once one company does it everyone eventually has to. Who would buy a 500W PA speaker from RCF when they can get a 2000W one from Yamaha. And that's the thing; for years you could buy really cheap 'party speakers' from the likes of Maplin advertising 1,000W PMPO which we all knew weren't serious speakers, but people who wanted to party could buy something good value for money and claim they had a 2,000W system. Then firms like Alto and Samson started to use the same PMPO figures and ate into the market. "I know it's only an Alto but is sounds OK and it's 2,000W so it's got to be as good as a 500W Yamaha" In the end Yamaha and others cracked and started using the 'calculated power' fiction and everybody else had to fall into line or let their sales fall. I notice that even Wharfedale have cracked and FBT are quoting the silly 4x power figures and then giving the maximum output figures of their PA in real money. So why is this the governments fault? Because there are laws in this country, and the rest of Europe to prevent advertising lies, to protect the public but the laws aren't enforced. The penalties for dishonest advertising aren't particularly severe but all of the funding for public protection has been slashed by politicians of all the ruling parties in the name of cutting spending and goverment red tape. The refgulators have almost no power over the sectors they are reglating and everything gets a little more s**t. Literally in the case of the water companies and some of the hospitality venues. Meanwhile with the loss of interest in politics and membership the parties are all now dependent upon 'donations' from rich individuals, lobbyists and the companies they are supposed to be regulating for our benefit. We go on voting for parties that promise tax cuts and cuts to the nanny state so now all the major parties promise to do just that. (whether they do or not you can judge for yourselves, there's not a lot of advertising standards in politics any more,though they aren't all the same in how brazen or even plausible their lies are. We also seem to enjoy being lied to, you can work out an amplifier or a speakers power if you know a bit of simple physics and can be bothered to do the sums. I could name dozens of people on BassChat who do this routinely several of whom have already posted in this thread. The trouble is that people love to say they bought a 2,000W bass amp and that their PA is 10,000W just as much as they like to say they voted for the party that will fix the £16billion worth of potholes, cntinue the triple lock and promise to cut taxes and borrowing at the same time.

I don't know why you would use 15" tops with 18" subs really if you are buying these new. You'll be crossing over well above the frequency where 15s give any potential advantage over 12's. I have a Passat estate I can take 15" tops plus two 15" subs, 10" monitors, my bass gear with leads, stands and several lights with careful packing but it is tight and it would be far quicker to pack into something a bit bigger. You can't see out of the back either. I rarely use the subs as there is not much the 15's can't do on their own but starting again with 12's might be better.

Hi Pete as we say in the West Country "if that's where you want to go I wouldn't start from 'ere" The attractive hillock of top end with the Fane would have to be removed to successfully integrate a tweeter and its a lot of hillock and would make for a very complex crossover. Other 8's have a much smoother roll off like the Celestion Pulse in your 110T and you'd be far better looking at one of those.

I just cross my legs and go for it

Yeah next level in some cases. It's why I enjoy playing pop, there's often a load of work gone in by people who are anonymous session players but with huge musical knowledge. The best of them do what is right without needing to show off. I've looked at a lot of Abba but their songs do look challenging. I've only managed Does Your Mother Know to date.

I'm a fascist when it comes to this. So many covers bands waste huge amounts of time at rehearsal by not pre-agreeing an arrangement. It's a bit like sending your bus driver out without deciding where to put the bus stops. I send out a spotify list with a version I think is OK, if people object I'll go with the majority feeling but if someone objects once we get to the rehearsal room it's too late, the rest of us have spent time learning the 'original' from the spotify list. You've let the band down, let yourself down, let your parents down basically it's up to the person who has done an alternate version who will have to adapt. Once we've got the basic song working we will always look at starts and endings and often make decisions about taking bits out or more often adding extra choruses and we may then come up with an own, arrangement. The guitarist and I live close to each other so we've usually met up by this stage to iron out issues. For instance theres a little decending scale in Maria played on bells that I do. I also try and reflect the piano part at the beginning of One Way or Another.

Call Me is one I've done for years, really tough on the singer, Debbie Harry has an unusual range so . It's lots of fun to play for the rest of us. I love the complete switch to A-D in the guitar solo but keeping the rhythm from the verses in Picture This, dropping down to open strings at this point makes it feel like a bit of a break in intensity too. It just feels right. Throughout the songs there are so many tiny details. Interestingly he plays far more freely in their live performances. The other thing I'm enjoying is that so much of the playing is four to the bar. I've played so much indie stuff over the years that it's fun just to make the change and it then makes the 8-beat more exciting when you bring it in for a couple of bars then drop out again. I think I'm getting slightly obsessed here My big issue is that run on the F#m in Atomic, so many hand shifts, I'm still dropping the octaves at that point in rehearsals and working it at 2/3 speed in practice whilst gradually speeding up. Interestingly my opera singer/director friend tells me classical players slow things down a lot more than that and play really strict tempo on pieces where the tempo is an issue. It's kind of reassuring really that we are all human and effortless playing is hard work.

Ooh "May Contain Blondie" that could be a band name

My new project is a covers band that only play female led songs. I got so bored playing Sex On Fire and Mr Brightside when there were just so many other songs equally iconic which almost nobody was doing. Why have a female singer if all you play is 70's male fronted rock plus a couple of 25 year old bangers to show you aren't really 70 years old? Anywaty after the first couple of gigs together we discovered that our drummers idol was Clem Burke and one thing led to another and we decided to look at including a Tribute to Blondie into our set. The boot was suddenly on the other foot. I'd been pressuring (gently I hope) the new guitarist and drummer to learn our existing set but now I had to learn a dozen Blondie songs. I'm struggling with a couple but I'm absolutely loving it. I'm thinking tributes might be a thing for me. Looking at a set of songs with the same bassist you find they re-use certain tricks and play in a certain way. It's a real education. These Blondie songs have such tighly written bass lines, there's usually a trademark key change but the fills aren't just fills they usually take you somewhere and it's all thought out or at least worked out. Whether that's Harrison or Chapman I don't know but for me its a real discipline learning a song from start to finish note for note. Picture This is a little bass gem four verses all start the same with some interesting bits of timing but then there are four different 'turnarounds' each with different chords and with a varying number of bars. I hadn't realised this project would be so much fun. I'm just hoping the audiences respond. We aren't planning on going the whole tribute band route just offering a Blondie and Friends set alongside our Female Anthems set but I'm loving being made to learn songs properly. Respect For Nigel Harrison too.

Have we been playing for the same bands Anyway my experience at last rehearsal was that the band were playing through the set just to avoid the rust, we had half a dozen new songs which we spent time on but we regularly play around a third of our set when we have a longish gap between gigs. The band were playing all our usual songs maybe 5bpm fater than the originals not absurd but fast enough to be a little frantic. We're meant to be a dance band and I know that any band who plays faster 'for excitement' kills the dancers who can't move that quickly. It was late though and I guess they wanted to go home but I said at the end something along the lines of great but we don't want to play that fast at a gig. They, unusually, got really cross with me I didn't apparently know what I was talking about. The thing is that my practice always contains a major part where i just play along with the originals I absolutely feel any change in tempo from that original. I know the singer and drumer never listen to the originals because if there's an error in the lyrics anywhere or a version by another singer she'll find them, sing them and swear they were in the original song. The drummer is in two bands and only learns the drums properly once the song is established and the guitarist bless him listens to every version he can find then solves the intellectual puzzle of playing two guitar parts, keys and brass section all at the same time by coming round to mine and methodically going through everything. I think it proves one of the earlier posts that talked about the fallibility of memory and what we really remember is how it was the last time we played it through in our heads. My other band play with a click track, it is bliss