Phil Starr

Payment sent, how many more do you need?

My experience is that it is really variable and depends upon who is in charge in individual yards. To be fair the main issues are now in how the wood is grown, slow grown softwood is becoming rare and the species planted have changed. I noticed a steady downhill slope in the 30+ years I was restoring houses and I've a barn full of reclaimed Victorian timber 'just in case'. When I was doing this more regularly I used to check out the timber whenever I was in a yard and bought up the good pieces when I saw them which saved a lot of time compared with having to drive round looking to see who had the best stocks half way through a job. I'm such an old curmudgeon

Correct, it's part of a tuned system and the dimensions have to be calculated

Finger joints are great if you have the machinery. They more than double the glued area and they help hold the cab together and square, just like the reinforced butt joints used in the 'easy build' method. Many commercial cabs use finger joints which are a lot quicker to fabricate than a reinforced joint. You will be changing the volume by removing the battens from my design so you would be best to calculate the volume of the wood you are missing and reduce the cab size by an equvalent volume. "If you have a hammer everything looks like a nail" For a keen woodworker wood is all, and plywood the devil's invention. He's probably envisaging using something with a lovely grain and making a feature of the beautiful finger joints. He's possibly seeing your cab as a furniture making project. I suspect that if you asked him about the Young's modulus, density and internal damping properties of the wood he won't know. Engineered woods are the best material for speaker cabs, tough, stable, easy to finish and the best combination of physical properties. It's kind of your friend to help and it is possible to build a solid wood cab. Some exotic hi fi goes this route and you could end up with something beautiful. I'm not saying dont do it but there are potential issues to think about and if you want the most practical cab then insist on using ply, MDF or high density Chipboard, probably in that order unless you are completely on board with the beauty of wood. As a woodworker I know the allure of a lovely bit of timber but it needs a bit of thought and planning. If this is going to be used for gigging then ply is best if it is going to sit at home then the right wood is going to look stunning. I really wouldn't use pine. I've struggled to get decent knot free dry timber from any of the builders merchants and only by being prepared to go in and personally select timbers. I've not found ayone at Jewsons, Travis Perkins and the like who know anything about timber and frequently it is poorly stored, left out in the rain before stacking and mauled by builders who don't know redwood frome white wood. I make doors and windows and sourcing genuinely joinery grade timber needs a great timber merchant. Your friend may have those skills of course but I think I'd go hardwood for something like this, but what a waste, I'd be looking at that timber and thinking it would make a great body for bass.

These look really great, thanks for the tip.

My coffee time teaser for today (mainly because I'm not 'allowed' to do Wordle) So the first thing to understand is that balanced line signals have an earth that is at 0V and two other signals +ve and -ve. The two signals go up and down at the same time but when + is going up - is going down. When the signal gets to the amp a transformer or a bit of electronics turns this back to an unbalanced signal. In a jack the tip should be +ve and the sleeve is the earth the ring should be -ve and inside the jack socket there are three sprung contacts that touch the plug when it is connected. Many jack sockets also have switches built in operated whenever a plug is inserted, so this can complicate the wiring. If you use the mono jack (the bottom one) then the - and the earth connectors in the socket are both touching the sleeve and are short circuited. What happens next depends upon the grounding arrangements. Since it is working for you then there are no issues. It doesn't work on my Flow 8 for example unless I only insert the plug halfway.

I possibly didn't think this one through did I? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. So could you drive headphones with the line output from a mixer? Well yes, what I didn't say was if I thought it was a good idea and the answer is probably not, most of the time. The outputs are almost always balanced mono so you'd need to wire a connector specifically to take that to your headphones and drive both sides. Secondly not all headphones have the same impedance so the mis-match may be serious enoughthat you'd lose a lot of output. I'd be checking the manual before starting this. If a new lead is going to cost you £10 then you are well on the way to a simple beltpack headphone amp. The Behringer P2 is £23. Ali Express are doing one for £13 that looks very like The Behringer and a passive one for <£10 I'm not really sure why you wouldn't go that route. As you were

There is no mystery about headphones and line outputs. Just looking at the Sennheiser IEM100 because that's waht I have to hand they are a 20ohm load and produce 115db for a 1V rms output or 0dbV. Line level is usually quoted as 0.7746V into 600ohms. In practice the output is often fine up to +10dbu and almost always +4dbu or 1.228V rms. So whilst there may be an impedance mis match (leading to a lack of current) a line output from most mixers will go well above 1V and deliver 115db right in your ears, plenty enough to cause you permanent tinnitus and with a good seal able to hear yourself. The headphone amp just gives you a better impedance match between mixer and phones, with a bit of extra gain with and a volume control. Correction: I was just musing about how levels here. I don't think this is a practical or sensible way to go when headphone amps are so cheap. Please don't do this at a gig and read my next post

Hi @scrumpymike can you send me details for payment please

I suppose I'm saying there is something in between. which is probably not particularly helpful The main thing that you want from a bass cab is that it is rigid and strong and as airtight as you can get it. In this case the cab is going to be portable so it would ideally be lightweight and tough enough to take knocks along the way. Already you have to compromise, lightweight timbers are almost always softer than those with more densely packed fibres so even in an ideal world there are choices to be made and probably no simple 'right' answer. Plywood is a man made material, there are lots of variables in it's manufacture. The species you use for the plies can vary and wood itself is a variable product between trees and even within a single tree there can be variation in the wood. Then you have variations in how the wood is handled and the resins and glues used to bind the plies together. There are British standards for the glues used and the resistance of the cores (based upon European Standards) and grading for the quality of the face veneers A-D commonly B-BB where B is the best face but not perfect and BB is meant for the inner surface often with small patches but still good enough to take a paint finish. The last ply I bought from B&Q was graded B-BB. The thing is there is such variation most of us won't try to specify. Often the better grades are only available in large qualtities so you aren't going to be able to specify. I have some block board in front of me with tropical hardwood (FSC) outer veneers 1.8mm thick. Three 8x4 sheets cost me an arm and a leg and had to be supplied by my timber merchant as part of a much larger order. These were for some furniture btw not for cabs. The reality is that unless you want to spend a fortune and hours searching you are pretty much stuck with the ply supplied by the big sheds. If you buy hardwood ply which is grede 2 or 3 (exterior grades) then you are going to get a reasonable quality product. I've got mine from Wickes over the years as I can go in and sort out the best sheets in the pile. If you look along the cut edges you can see if there are a lot of voids and if the edges are separating or splintering. Honestly I doubt if you would really hear much difference in the completed cab. I know a couple of people here who have made a cab with softwood ply I shudder to think about it, but they built a cab that worked. So my advice is to buy the best ply you can find, be aware of the gradings but don't agonise if the choice is down to take it or leave it, you can still build a great cab. Probably the lower grade is ging to affect the finish more than the sound of the cab.

As far as I know B&Q only do one grade of hardwood ply. It's usually got one good side and one where the knots and voids are patched on the outer veneer. It's good enough for a speaker that is to be painted or vinyl covered but subject to a bit of splintering if your saw blades are a bit dull. Wickes do a better range of plies, though sadly they have stopped doing their marine ply. Saying that I haven't visited them for a couple of years as I have quite a lot of ply in stock. Mine is currently from a batch Jewsons got in just before covid described as Poplar but actually Chinese sourced and made from two varieties of 'Eucalyptus' only one of which is actually Eucalyptus sp. The thing to understand is that the English names aren't strictly defined, you need the latin names to be sure what you have. So Poplar isn't always Populus sp and neither is Birch always Betula sp. When you are looking at species that grow in China they have no English name, so they can call them what they want. A lot of Russian 'birch' was exported from Kaliningrad so became Baltic birch. You can't even rely upon counting the plies as a test of quality, generally it is quicker and cheaper to fabricate fewer plies but if the wood is poor then they might take thinner plies. It's a bit like choosing a wine on the basis of the dimple in the bottom of the bottle.

I'm so pleased that you like it. I've used mine at rehearsals with a moderate drummer and a Gnome sitting on top. With a second cab you should be able to gig with most bands. I hope other people are inspired by you to give it a go. Well done Rob

I don't have one of these but there seems to be a simpler way which gives you better control. The Rolls has a built in DI splitter for the instrument. Plug your bass into the jack 'inst in' Your mic into 'mic in' Use the 'mic out' to send to the PA Use 'left out' to send your bass to the PA, 'right out' to send to your bass amp if you have one. Ask foir a FOH mix without bass to feed into your 'line input' You now have complete control of the mix in your in-ears and the PA is getting a clean feed of your bass and mic. The feed from the bass is isolated through a transformer and there are ground lifts on both feeds to the PA should you need to kill any hum p

I'm happy to come up with the cash, and to bring a pot of something to eat.

I wonder if bluetooth that works consistently is a better idea than wifi that is so inconsistent that you have to take a separate router? As it happens I have a Flow 8 sitting next to me which I use at home. to date I've had zero problems with the Bluetooth even in the next room. Using this mixer I think I'd only need the remote option when setting up just to check FOH once the gig started I'd have the physical controls on stage with me. You wouldn't expect it to compete with A&H the CQ12 is £150 more expensive and the physical controls more limited. Yamaha do mixers with a similar ability to do everything with Physical controls but these are way more than double the price of the Alto. Price wise it fits into the Behringer X18 sort of bracket and a few other stagebox mixers.