mcnach

[quote name='KiOgon' timestamp='1419957334' post='2644316'] Very nice looking kit just one thing would niggle me - TKS - why not fit the badge the other side, not part over the 6"? [/quote] THAT is exactly what I thought too. I'd have put it on the right too, or even at the bottom a bit over the 12" rather than in front of the 6". I imagine it won't make any practical difference, or they wouldn't do this. But it does strike me as a little odd and I don't normally suffer from OCD-related behaviour

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1417051892' post='2616695'] That's alright, I believe you have some red cabs to make, among others [/quote] and they're here! [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/252310-ncd-tks-1126-x2-dont-look-if-you-hate-red/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/252310-ncd-tks-1126-x2-dont-look-if-you-hate-red/[/url]

I haven't been able to test them properly, I only tried them a little bit at reasonable volumes... well, ok, I did turn up a bit, but nowhere near "real life" levels. The first impression in this less than ideal test is very very very good. They have a very pleasant sound. The midrange harshness of the BigBaby 2 is not there, at similar volumes, and they extend enough into the top end for my liking without using the tweeter. In fact, although I can hear what the tweeter does, I think I would have been happy without tweeter, not required at all for my kind of sound... although we'll see once I get to play it loud. It's hard to tell for sure at this kind of volume. They have similar bottom end as the Big Baby 2, again, at this kind of volume, or marginally less... but they sound tight, and considering I normally have my amp bass knob sitting at around 10-11 o'clock, I'm sure I'll have no problem turning them up a notch if I feel they need it. The tweeterless cab, with case, weighs 17.5Kg, and the tweeter-equipped one 18.3Kg. Compared to the 14.4Kg of my BB2 and 12.5Kg of my Compact, they're clearly heavier. The Compact in particular is unbelievable... But they're smaller and the handle is very comfortable and well placed (some cabs are very uneven in their weight distribution, and when they place a handle right in the middle... it is not a lot of fun to carry them, like the TC RS210 and RS212 cabs for example), so despite the extra combined 9Kg, I think I'll find it easier to manoeuvre with them in narrow staircases and other tight places. So... will I like their sound once they get up to full band volume? Will they be loud enough and be ballsy enough or will I run back to my Barefaced begging for forgiveness? We'll have to wait a little for that. I might not take them to my NYE gig after all tomorrow... But they'll see some action for sure on the 10th, and probably a rehearsal in the meantime... so if you want to hear more, watch this space.

and this with the Genz Benz Streamliner 900, as I intend to use them mostly...

The top cab has the tweeter: and the bottom one is tweeterless:

Posing with my red Precision, which is becoming my number 1 at the moment, upsetting the Stingray a little bit...

I ordered the cabs with their protective covers. They're very nice, nicely padded. Like them!

These are the boxes as they arrived in my hallway... Opening the first box... nice packaging work... oh, what's that? It's a handle!!!! And a nice one too

I became intrigued by TKS cabs a while ago. They looked good and got great reviews, but I was happy enough with my BF cabs and I wasn't planning on changing anytime soon. However, when you find yourself with a little extra cash in your pocket, the "need" factor starts to become blurry and "want" starts to appear in our thoughts. So I had a closer look at TKS... My BF cabs are loud and sound good enough, and are very very light. I really like them. Do I love their sound? Well, I never really had that "wow" feeling, but they do kick the behind of many other cabs around, that's for sure. The combination of sheer volume, sound and lightweight *is* lovable, and I love that. I often use only one cab. It varies which one... I like the Compact a lot, but it does lack a bit of top end for my liking. The Big Baby 2 does not have quite as much "oomph", but it does have the clarity. I find it a bit harsh in the mids, a bit, but it's not terrible. I tend to favour the Compact when using only one cab, and it's also lighter than the BB2. When I can, or the gig requires it, I prefer to have both. I may not need the volume at times, but the mini stack sounds pretty good and getting the BB2 closer to my head I get to hear my bass better, without having to be too loud. It's a nice combination. The Barefaced stack works very well. There's one thing that I find a bit of a drag about it... and on reflection, it's not their fault, but my choice of vehicle. I used to have an ancient Golf Mk4, which had a nice boot, but one could not fit both cabs in there. Now, 4 months ago I sold the car and bought... an Audi A3 Sportback. Yup, the boot is taller and deeper, but not by much, it clearly is not the car one would pick if carrying speaker cabs were an important requisite. But I didn't want a bigger car and this one had about the largest boot of its kind... yet, it's about 4cm not deep enough for me to be able to fit both BF speakers in the boot. So I have to do what I did in the Golf: one speaker in the boot, one on the backseat. This means a little less space for passengers. Not too concerned about that,, to be honest, being an 8-piece band means more people to transport and equipment to carry, but it also means more people who can drive. Unfortunately, it means sometimes I have to leave a speaker on the backseat, in full view, when the car is unattended. The car has dark tinted rear windows, and black interior, so I bought a big black linen throw in IKEA and I put that over the speaker... it makes it look like there really is nothing left in the car. But it's still risky... There are enough &^%$£%s about who go around taking an interest in pther people's property, and I'd rather reduce my chances to cross paths with one of them by not leaving anything in view that may attract the wrong kind of attention. That means smaller cabs. Slightly smaller. Enter the TKS 1126. It's just the right size so that I can place them upright in my boot, just, and that way two can fit in it. I like the idea of a 6" extension speaker complementing the 12" woofer. After a bit of pondering, and asking questions, I decided to get a pair of them, One with a tweeter, one without. I suspected I would not need a tweeter, but it's nice to have one, just in case (it can be attenuated), and Barrie at Bassgear suggested to just get one, as when using the two cabs one tweeter is enough in his opinion. So that's what I did. Oh, and since we get a choice of finishes... mine had to be red. Oh yes. I placed the order in late November, and they shipped from Sweden on the 12th of December, ahead of schedule. I then asked Barrie to please hold them for me at the shop until I returned from my vacation, as I'd rather they slept there than in cold warehouses especially with all the crazy Xmas-related deliveries and increased chances for mistakes. They were posted to me yesterday, and this morning delivery man called at my door. He was not very handsome, but to me he looked just beautiful. I didn't tell him that, of course, but I almost kissed him when I saw the two boxes he was bringing to me.

[quote name='Prime_BASS' timestamp='1419926036' post='2643944'] That's some backwards dark ages opinion you got there brother. You are entitled to it, but you might find that majority will disagree with you here. I do agree that one should develop technique however you seem to be neglecting the hundreds upon thousands of players in pub bands that might not have a tech savvy engineer and PA at every job, or even record a CD. And if the they do and the audience hears a nice compressed signal why are we the players not entitled to hear that sound? [size=6][b]If you think you've lost control by using a compressor then you've used one wrong.[/b][/size] I tell all my students, as long as you play comfortably and you like the end result it doesn't matter what goes on from point A(your hands) to point B (your ears) [/quote] +1

[quote name='vailbass' timestamp='1419921011' post='2643921'] nah, compressors don't do any of those things...it's a terrible crutch that is never advisable. Now the sound engineer may use a limiter to good effect on the mains or a mix engineer will use compression after the fact on a recorded track and that won't affect your playing. Using a compressor in your signal chain that you hear while playing will take much (if not all, depending on the settings) of the control out of your hands and put it in the electronics; hence the "crutch". If you can play proficiently (and that should always be a goal) you will never want, much less need, a compressor in your signal chain. My advice to all my students is to develop control over your instrument so that electronic 'aides' will not be necessary. Best of luck to you! :-) [/quote] Well, you're entirely entitled to hold that opinion... but my opinion of it is that you're sounding like you have barely experienced with any decent compressor and/or only at extreme settings. I do find it a bit ridiculous. But that's just my opinion.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1419937406' post='2644048'] If people still wish to imply that TC amps only put out 200 watts, I'll continue to relate my experience of them, that they are easily the equivalent of 500 and 750 watt amps. The yawn is because the continued misinformation from a few people is getting very boring. [/quote] Misinformation? It's a fact that the TC amps can output up to 236W. I used an RH450 for 3 years, I was a very early adopter, I'm very familiar with how they sound. Equivalent to 500W amps? Depends on teh sound your after entirely. Doubling the power does not give you exactly a huge increase in volume (through the same speakers), so it's not that surprising that if someone is happy with a 500W amp that they never really push, a 236W amp can work pretty well too. TC are not magicians. They can make a loud amp, that's for sure, but that comes at a price: the price is the energy-rich lows are not as rich as in other amps. It's really cleverly done, and I was happy enough with that for three full years. There's no need to get all upset... it is what it is, the facts are out there. At the end of the day some like it, good, and some don't, good - go buy something else. I did, eventually, and I am happier with my current amps, but the RH450 is not a bad amp, just not for me. The way they process the sound to enhance their loudness gives it a sound that is not what I prefer, when it comes to the bottom end in particular. I wish they offered the choice of defeating (or relaxing) their power management program, as I feel that with the right speakers it could sound much nicer and still loud enough. Attempting to infer loudness by quoting watts is what leads manufacturers to getting creative with their numbers, but it's not a good way to measure how loud an amp can be, and the sooner the majority of people realise that, the better. Some people end up making a choice between a 600W and a 750W amp going for the "louder" one because it's good to have enough watts under the hood, right? But the volume difference between a 600W and a 750W amp -if the signal processing is the same- is not enough to warrant making a decision based on that. TC knows it, and chose to lie quoting 450W for their RH450... and they probably sold more amps than they had if they had explained their approach and stated it was a 236W amp. That is a shame, because if your main goal is loudness, the RH450 can do loud, no question. The wattage is not that relevant. The sound is. I'm very disappointed that TC Electronic, a very innovative and clever company, treated their customers as if they were fools who could not handle the truth. There was no need to lie. THAT was misinformation.

[quote name='Dave_the_bass' timestamp='1419939455' post='2644079'] Out: erm nothing! In: SFX - X&M (thanks the wife I have no clue how you knew what I wanted for Christmas! ) [/quote] she's obviously having an affair with someone else from BassChat...

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1418375801' post='2629618'] The cabs I ordered have been already made and are being shipped!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!! excitable me? nah... [/quote] I had to ask Bassgear to hold the cabs for me as I was away on holiday for a couple of weeks... and they sent them to me yesterday. This morning a not very handsome delivery man called at my door, but to be he was just beautiful. ... they arrived!!!!

[quote name='Musky' timestamp='1419886186' post='2643677'] Facebook changes often sound really innocuous and a huge boon for the user. [url="http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2013/12/news-feed-fyi-helping-you-find-more-news-to-talk-about/"]This announcement[/url] sounds quite good all round but the reality was a [i]mahoosive[/i] drop in the reach of posts to the news feed (as Molan pointed out) and this doesn't really help if you'd actually like to know about gig announcements from certain bands. And this most definitely is going to affect bands as Facebook considers them commercial users - there's a reason they offer analytics on bands' pages, and it's not just to stoke the band's ego. [/quote] That doesn't sound quite so good A good old-fashioned mailing list might end up being the way forward for bands to inform the people who sign up for that kind of announcement. Mailing lists are quite good if they're not abused, I think.

[quote name='Pinball' timestamp='1419885642' post='2643664'] I agree-on the face of it. The problem is that if your unknown or an originals band looking for the chance of a gig or a festival spot, your almost always asked for a link to your sounds and your facebook page. Recently I have been asked twice to reply in writing how many "Likes" do you have on Facebook? It's a "catch 22" as if you can't get any decent gigs/supports slots you can't reach an audience to raise your profile. Are "Likes" fair way to Judge? Well no in my opinion. The last band we shared a gig with had 270 Likes, 4x as many as us at the time. I mentioned this when we were setting up and one of them said "ignore that, none of them have heard us, this is only our 2nd gig and its all family, friends and our year group from school and collage". Sure enough when the gig started sure enough far more of the audience had come to see us. It's all a numbers game but one that it can hold you back-just like not having sound samples or a professional looking presence on the web. It helps get you in the game in the first place. That's my theory on Facebook Likes so thanks to everyone who liked my band in the other thread-much appreciated [/quote] I see. Nobody ever cared about the number of likes we got on facebook (I think we only just recently broke the 1000, but don't recall exactly) we had been asked for youtube clips, which was a problem as we don't really have any good videos, but have a bunch of definitely not good ones, and old too! We should definitely only post good stuff. We have been asked for soundcloud links too, many times. Some actually came to see one of our gigs before booking us, or sent someone to see us, but they never asked us about Facebook likes. Maybe they checked themselves, I suppose... Now I understand why some bands are so focused on the number of likes... But I'm surprised anybody promoter really pays attention to that. It's like the number of people who say they'll come to an event we're organising... "wooo! 423 people are coming!" yeah right But it may be reasonable to assume that a band with 1,000,000 likes may represent a bigger draw than another band with 10... Maybe

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1419878393' post='2643534'] I haven't had any basses in or out this year, though I did build a new neck for my homebuilt five string and put a set of Sadowsky flatwounds on. It's not that I'm particularly non-materialistic or anything like that, just that I don't really have the disposable income to do much about it! [/quote] if I had such cool surname, I'd also prefer to build a neck so I can put my logo on it

[quote name='Jimryan' timestamp='1419644085' post='2641624'] I'm after more control of the mids. The current pre only has bass and treble boost/cut so I'm thinking drop in a 3 band so I can play about with the mids a bit more. [/quote] Then the John East MMSR is the one. With the mids set at the centre detent, it's a traditional Stingray 2EQ. So The classic 2EQ is covered (not that the 3EQ is all THAT different, but you know what I mean). The mids module where you can select the centre frequency with a sweepable control is fantastic. Only I wouldn't say the SD pickups are very "classic Ray", neither the ceramic nor the alnico. I like them, but if you want more classic Stingray I'd look elsewhere... maybe try to source a real Stingray pickup? They do come up on eBay from time to time. edit: the Nordstrand MM4.2 is sometimes recommended as an old school Stingray pickup. I tried one and I did not like it much. It felt a bit lacklustre compared to the real thing. The SD alnico (model SMB4A) does not sound like a traditional Stingray, but at least it sounds really good! Regardless of the pickup, the MMSR preamp is excellent.

Good to see another player in the amp world... but that video left me distinctly unimpressed

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1419538806' post='2640781'] Just out of interest... What are you hoping to achieve by getting likes from people just for the sake of it? (genuine question - not sarcasm!) [/quote] I often wondered myself. I like it when we play a gig and we notice a bunch of new likes, and I can check who they are and maybe remember a couple of them as someone who was at the gig. That's cool. I don't really care for adding "likes" just to fatten up the number. I'd like to think the likes represent people who actually felt like checking us out and liked what they saw. Is the actual number of any use, beyond being an ego thing "my band has 2x the number of likes than yours ner ner ner neeer ner"? Just curious.

[quote name='Pinball' timestamp='1419462564' post='2640328'] Hmm neither do I, my understanding was that when you share something from a band page it will no longer automatically go to people who have liked your page but that there will be an option to pay to have the information circulated. Hopefully I'm wrong though. There is no charge for having band pages etc, which is good news. I'm not really up on facebook etc. can anyone else clarify? [/quote] Oh, I see... so they really don't cut the annoying irrelevant self promoting posts... they just make sure they pay to do so I was too naive to believe FB would actually do something useful for us.

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1419458380' post='2640280'] [url="https://www.facebook.com/business/news/update-to-facebook-news-feed"]https://www.facebook...ebook-news-feed[/url] [/quote] It actually looks good to me and it doesn't sound like it would really affect posts from bands talking about their coming gigs etc.

[quote name='Sibob' timestamp='1407157769' post='2517842'] Remember that you're somewhat limited by what the amp is/isn't capable of. My suggestion would be to look for an bass/amp combination that gives you the sound you want, then just use pedals as colours on top of that! Si [/quote] this. I'd start with a bass that gives you that tone, roughly, then play with it and modify it, but start with the right source

[quote name='skelf' timestamp='1419714028' post='2642198'] Look at the East BTB. Single stacked pot bass/treble/pull bright. [/quote] This!

[quote name='Nodd' timestamp='1419598871' post='2641150'] FWIW, I've always found the right angle jacks more prone to failure, went back to using some recently in the interests of better ergonomics. Three failures/breakages in so many months [/quote] What are you doing to the jacks??? I've been using right angle ones (Neutrik always) for years, never had a failure. Actually, I don't recall the last time I had a cable failing on me, whether at the plug or elsewhere, other than being accidentally cut (heavy lid falling onto a cable) or burnt (solder iron), and that was totlly self-inflicted and not during a gig.