Phil Starr

Welcome to Basschat

I really feel for you. You are at least behaving decently. I really hope it works out for you

I hate all this, the only bands that really work and have longevity are those that avoid all this. So as written is C the replacement for B and friend of A? If I'm reading this right then there must be a D and maybe an E??? My experience is that if C is a friend of A (and that may be the qualification that makes him 'better') then the two of them might potentially gang up on you andl become the united powerhouse of the band. You will then be the semi-detached bass player when decisions are made. We all have videos of ourselves playing at our best and in practice he/she/they might not be so proficient as the video shows. Ask yourself what you genuinely think of B's playing. Were you concerned before this all came up? If not then this is a stitch up, probably. Then there is the human and moral side of this. This is really awful treatment of B and you are clearly uncomfortable with it all. If B is genuinely holding you all back you need to be honest with them and give them the chance to fix any issues. Even if they are awful and you are confident that they will never be good enough then there are ways of dealing with this that are open and honest. It's never easy to say these things but it can be done kindly and decently even if it is tough at the time. I sense that you think this is a really S****y way of dealing with things. If there are a D and E then talk to them, see how they feel. If there are only you three then I'm afraid you have to choose between them. I know from past experience I'll go against the one making me choose. You need to tell A that you aren't happy. If you ant to stick with your current line up then say so. If you aren't happy with B then agree how you are going to deal with that without stabbing him in the back. I'd be saying that if you collectively want a replacement then you should audition several musicians and choose the best, not just hand it to a friend. Balance that against ending the band. I've been kicked out of bands for insisting we should all behave professionally. based on your post alone however A is a bully.

I'm a big fan of the Sennheiser E935 and completely agree about the E835 which I found really thin sounding. I really find super/hypercardioids demanding when singing, you have to get your position on the mic spot on and when you are playing an instrument it's just one more thng to worry about. I'm pretty loud so feedback isn't an issue for me. I've a couple of AKG D5's I used for other singers and in the hand of someone with good mic technique they are crazily good for the price but when I use them myself they have such a tight pickup pattern I had to find something else. There really aren't a lot of cardioids round now so the E935 was a big step up in cost. I had an interesting experience last night at rehearsal though, I have an old EV ND757 super cardioid but this one has a trick, it has some sort of filter which removes the bass/proximity effect it's a nice mic too with a really clean vocal sound. I don't think I've ever sounded better. They don't make this any more but the EV ND96 seems to have the same switch and to be the modern equivalent. My experience is that your mic is a much more personal choice than any other part of the chain. There isn't such a thing as a flat response mic so that makes sense. It's not just response though, there's pickup pattern, handling noise and feedback rejection if your voice is quiet. Then once you have your mic there is a learning curve on how to work with it. The ND757 has got me thinking though, it was damaged and didn't go out of the house but should I change from my E935?

I've had the same problem with DMX where the protocols are changed and all you have is an out of date manual. It's the problem with a lot of the Chinese made stuff, they make a batch and send it out and then decide to add extras not allowing for users needs. Mind you buying from the brands you find model ranges change frequently. I now make a quick decison and if I like a light and want a pair or whatever I order the second as soon as possible. I have to confess my DMX controller is largely unused and I tend to only use the internal programmes. I don't want my lights to be as big a job to set up as my PA. DMX for me means I can pair my lights with one as slave, this halves my set up time. The problem is usually with access to the built in chases and so on. If you've 256 onboard presets and each has a different code then trial and error is going to be challenging. Using fewer DMX channel modes keeps it simpler I've found and 3channel mode usually gives you control of RGB. All my lights are RGB to date though to keep this simple but I love the colours with RGBW

I have the 5.8G Lekato system as above and so does my guitarist in our duo. They just work and so far go on working. I think I've had mine for three years. Before that I had the Line6 system with the 2xAA batteries which is still going strong but I preferred the fom of the Lecato ones with no more fiddly battery, covers bought the Lekatos to try and never looked back. Hmmm a second pair so I always have some charged.... @neepheid you may have started something.

I think that is right. What are you intending using the speaker it for? The Fane's of that era were pretty unreliable and would end up making magic smoke if run at the full power rating. If I remember clearly they changed the voice coils to something fireproof not long after this generation of drivers but I think these had 'treated' paper coil formers. If you are going to use it I'd suggest limiting the power to less than 50W. The only reason to use it is if you are doing an authentic restoration of a historic cab but treat the old lady with respect. She was born in the 1970's/80's. Somewhere I have Fane's book of cab designs which used the Fane Classics and the then newly introduced Crescendo range. thre's some huge cabs trying to squeeze every last bit out of the low powered speakers of the day.

It's hard to tell from just pictures but that looks to me like the elecrolyte has leaked out from an electrolytic capacitor. Those are the blue cans you can see on some of the other photos. That's not an uncommon occurence in old amplifiers and outside of mechanical things like switches, potsand connectors probably the most common fault you see. It should be fairly obvious which components are leaking and they are cheap enough to replace usually just a few pence depending upon the sizes. The replacements will probably be smaller than the originals, thinks have moved on. Youd need to really thoroughly clean of the boards and de-solder the offending item(s) and Id be testing nearby components but I've had a pretty good rate of successful repairs by doing no more than replacing faulty caps. No guarantees of course, they may have taken other items with them but worth finding the little so and so's and pricing them up and better than creating more land fill. This all assumes you can solder and know at least enough not to electrocute yourself

Which one did you go for?

I couldn't resist trying one of these at the silly low price. Here's my impressions: Delivery was really slow, months rather than weeks but it arrived safely and working. Ali Express is pretty much no different to Amazon or eBay IME. The light is bright and the 40deg beam angle is not far off though it is much brighter in the middle of the beam. The light itself is well consructed with a similar aluminium case to all the rest of these lights, the end caps are plastic (ABS?) with brass inserts for the screws. the bulbs are all identical with all my other lights (inluding the brand name ones) and chuck out similar light levels. This one is brighter overall because it has more bulbs. It's a good uplighter , really useful and if I needed extra lamps I might well order more of these. You can however see the shortcuts down to keeping the price down. The kettle lead is too short to be usable, just one metre long. The remote control doesn't really work well. The button for white only works with repeated presses and the light when it comes on is neither white nor bright. The remote doesn't offer all the light can do withmany adjustments either not available or maybe just not working on my remote, it seems a bit of an afterthought. The built in programs aren't great, they are mainly chase or strobe programs which are too fast for band use IMO, they are clearly more orientated to disco use and are too fast for that use also if I'm honest. The control unit on the back isn't much better than the remote. There doesn't seemto be an adjustment for sensitivity in the sound to light and slowing down the chases isn't very intuitive. The four buttons on the back don't follow the 'standard' arrangement of menu, up, down and program and leave you guessing as to what each button does. It may have features I haven't managed to find yet. Other cost cutting issues are that the mains out is a Euro/US socket even thought the input one is IEC whch is odd. The Lightmaxx uses powercon connectors for mains which are much better . I'd use these lights either as single colour uplighters or in fade mode, confusingly labelled 'jump' on the remote. (yet another sign of cost cutting, jump usually means and istanteneous colour change) Instad of jumping it starts a gradual fading in and out of a colour sequence. That's really useful for a band as the colour change is so gradual you barely notice it and it won't distract from the band but it is potentially more interesting than an entirely static colour. Crucially this is slower than any of my other LED bars. So some minus points but at that price? I think it's all good.These lights would work best with a separate DMX controller but the colour intensity is good in the primary colours and the slow fade is a useful effect. The beams are broader than most and if you don't have a haze machine that works really well. The construction seems to be great for the price, I shudder to think how they do it. I don't think the lights wil prove to be unreliable but time will tell. If I were starting from scratch I'd be ordering three or four of these to illuminate the stage in steady mode and then have something overhead to do sound to light or chases.

I'm not sure it does. First of all many of the arguably most successful and musical cabs are non-flat response designs. There is room for highly coloured designs to become part of a bassists sound, for people to bring experience and creative flair to musical instrument design. The frequency range of a bass is limited and can be covered by single speakers and a successful single speaker design is relatively easy to design and build. Mid priced commercial bass designs are often compromised by cost cutting so putting a higher spec driver in a cab with a bit more bracing can lead to a cheaper cab or one which genuinely might work 'better'. Though you won't get an awful lot of agreement about what better sounds like. Also fewer bass cabs are sold than PA speakers so building at scale is less likely and teh market will be less competitive. It's also more common to use passive cabs for bass and it is amps that are more challenging and expensive to build than speaker cabs. Few of us now would go out and buy a passive PA system and building an active cab is difficult and expensive as a one off. For PA speakers the issue is that you can't cover the full audio spectrum with single driver cabs so you need multiple drivers and a decent crossover. It's simple enough to use open source free software to design a basic 2-way crossover using theory alone but getting the design of the crossover right is an iterative process of having a target response for both divers building the cossover and accurately measuring the actual response then making corrections. You will also have to consider the phase response as well as the frequency response. The response through the crossover frequencies is way less important in reproducing bass than reproducing the human voice for example and it is going to be a rare amateur that can match the professionals. You can build great cabs and put the absolute best drivers in them but without the ability to design a great crossover your design probably won't match the best commercial designs. The paradigm for PA cabs shifted with the introduction of cheap, lighweight class D amps of almost unlimited power and is shifting again with the advent of DSP. It is still possible to build a bass cab for less money thatn a commercial cab or to spend that money on something better than you could afford to buy. It's still possible to build a valve amp yourself but you won't make a huge saving if any. It's just not economic to build your own active PA amp for anything other than the joy of it.

It's both economics and functionality. I use RCF 745's; the 4" coil compression units are £300 ea, the amplifier modules £200+ per amp and a 15" drive unit from RCF around £300, that's without th e DSP, matching horn flare and all the other bits of hardware. Building at that standard would cost well over £1,000 per cab and I paid £1300 for a pair second hand. In addition I don't really have the facilities to develop and design the crossover, even if I had that level of skill. I know how long it took @stevie to design the crossovers for his cabs and this is someone who designed for KEF and Yamaha. Did I mention the cost of pro level design software? The truth is that it would be really challenging to match the technology now used in speaker design. The plus side is that you can buy some really good kit for not a lot of money. Active cabs with amplification and speakers designed as a complete system saves money and time setting up and allows you the chance to design in things that the best sound engineers can do but few bands could deliver. It's a bit like trying to build your own car, you might be able to build something which excels in one aspect but it is going to cost you a fortune, take up hours of your time and isn't going to be able to match an ordinary family car in general usefulness and probably reliability On a practical level if I am in a band I want a PA I can use tomorrow. I'd be balancing the needs of the band against any desire to build my own PA and if the band folds I can sell the PA and get most of my investment back.

That's interesting, I never thought of trying and I need to sort the pop filter which has turned into dust. Fortunately a Basschatter 3D printed me a new sleeve after seeing the post above and once I fix the pop filter the mic will be fully restored. BassChat is truly a wonderful place to be. Thanks for the tip @Dan Dare I'll see if I can get a pop filter, it'll save me having to improvise. I still think your avatar should be a space ship

Welcome back @LawrenceH it's good to see you again, I did a double take when I saw your post The M18 seems to be going at around £300 used. The downsides are 'only' 8 proper mic channels, it will only record the stereo mix and the external antenna is slightly flimsy. My band is a 4 piece and we all sing so four voal mis and three drum mics are do-able and you have 6 aux outputs for monitoring. Two of the channels are hi-Z for guitar and bass with amp sims and fx. Band members can access their monitor mix on their phones but are locked out of doing any damage elsewhere The plus side is wi-fi that works. Really slick seamless software with very little in the way of a learning curve. I was up and away in 10mins at the first rehearsal. No menu that is more than two clicks away. Gloriously you can tap on any of the faders and they will go up or down 1db so one two or three taps will usually get you where you want mid gig.

Sadly they no longer manufacture this. I've even bought a second one, they are so good that I don't want to lose what they do. Fundamentally they are designed to do one job and that is to mix live music for a typical pub/club band. You have extensive facilities but nothing that is superfluous but workflow is meticulously worked out to be simple for any poor sod who is mixing whilst playing. Zero problems with the wi-fi on the mixer though Apple have decided that you can't use an iPad without an internet connection for more than an hour. I need to stop it tethering to my phone in the middle of a gig. That's not the mixer's fault it's 'Apple knows best'