thinman

Another year and the site might be toilet trained or even dry at night.

I feel a snood coming on... I GAVE away my 1983 Westone Concord II in metallic red to an ungrateful little sh1t round the corner last year. He never even said thanks.

I think you'd be better off giving your guitarist £50 to turn it down or cut the bass frequencies from his guitar - you're the bassist - not him! I often have this debate with one of our guitarists - he keeps adjusting his tone to sound good/full by itself. I keep trying to persuade him it's about getting a sound that fits in an ensemble which for a guitar can mean cutting the bottom end a bit. With a bass plus one or two bassy guitars things get awfully muddy and you can lose any real punch.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='200320' date='May 16 2008, 11:59 AM']To match the SPL of a loud drummer with a compact deep response (and thus low sensitivity) cab you will need a lot of watts. My Acme rig was driven with a 2000W amp and sounded fantastic. Use more conventional cabs with less bass extension and you could reach the same SPL with 500W or less. Those who continue to equate power with loudness are completely missing the point. Furthermore there is little point of a manufacturer selling a range of amps whose different power models exhibit less than a 2:1 power ratio, due to the logarithmic nature of hearing, other than to pander to marketing needs. In my experience those old TE rigs had much less bass extension, a much more midrangey sound and much more compression than I like - I am not surprised that 150W is enough with that kind of sound and enough speakers. But if you want deep bass and don't want to carry a van load of cabs then you need big power to reach high SPL. I should also point out that many bassists have such poor control of playing dynamics that a rig with good headroom and minimal compression can make them sound awful - that's one reason the SVT rig remains popular. Likewise rigs with true deep bass extension are such a shock to the average bassist that they continue to boost the lows and end up sounding rubbish. Alex[/quote] Alex, That was a bit of a broad ("basic" as I said) statement I made there. I do understand that dependent upon tone, eq, compression etc widely different levels of power are required to produce equivalent levels of perceived loudness. I was expecting someone to pipe up and say, for example, "I play heavy dub and I need 2k to produce even moderate volume levels for the sound I want."

My original point wasn't really about volume so much (although that may be part of the reason for having all that power) as the need for really powerful amps (and by that I was think approaching 1kW and upwards - I don't consider 500w unusual). Neither am I saying that a lot of power is unnecessary before I offend someone or make them think I've got some sort of wattage envy! My question was more curiosity about what having that much power practically enables you to do and whether the way most people couple those big amps with cabs that they ever realise their potential. Are there some horrendously inneficient cabs out there? Also, as Alex Claber says, the position of you master volume doesn't tell you anything about what's being pushed out. In basic terms I keep coming back to thinking that there's no need to have anything louder than an unamplified drum kit. Maybe not the case?

Decent compressor plugins add so much to either group mixes or mastering. It was while back now but I bought a PSP (Polish Sound Processors) "mix-pack" which included really good analogue compressor emulations and a "tape saturator". I was still using Cubase 5.1 and the built-in compressors used to induce delay which put the track sync out making then almost unusable. The PSP compressor is great though.

[quote name='Bass_In_Yer_Face' post='199265' date='May 15 2008, 08:07 AM']I just feel really uncomforatble watching ALW...there is something not right there.[/quote] Myself and Mrs Thinman were pondering the same. We then decided that anyone who's had kids will recognise that he bears a worrying similarity to a baby in a bouncer seat that surprises itself with its own belches.

[quote name='ahpook' post='199600' date='May 15 2008, 02:27 PM']thanks for the advice ! i'll open it up this arvo and see what the psu caps are. i love half-days from work !![/quote] Just remembered. If you're going to give it a going over it's also worth getting a magnifying glass and going over the solder joints on the board - especially for the larger components like big caps and anything mounted to another surface that can move independently, e.g. pots bolted to a front panel etc. Look for hairline cracks around the component legs and resolder any that look dodgy. Solder gets more brittle as it ages and anything that can vibrate can get stress fractures. I'd expect things like big caps to be clipped, strapped or glued down. I had a lot of prolems with a boiler controller due to cracked solder joints - it's quite common but easy to fix and can cause all manner of odd problems.

[quote name='ahpook' post='199590' date='May 15 2008, 02:14 PM']hmm...interesting. i may have to open mine up and see if there's anything obvious. when you say 'the electrolytics' do you mean all of them, or just the psu smoothing caps ?[/quote] IIRC the distortion or overtones are caused by the psu smoothing caps not smoothing fully so there's a bit of 50Hz ripple on the power supply which can get imposed on the output signal. I'd try these first. They're also the ones likely to fail most catastrophically. The other smaller electrolytics may also degrade. I think inter-stage couplers degrading means their capacitance falls so the bass response may be reduced.

[quote name='ahpook' post='199567' date='May 15 2008, 01:37 PM']well, i guess it's at least 15 years old, so a bit of tlc is prolly in order ![/quote] I've read quite a bit that states it's a good idea to replace the electrolytics after 10 years as a matter of course. I've done it one of my heads. Apparently a symptom of power supply smoothing caps not working as well as they used to is a strange harmonic/overtone on dying notes.

Certainly agree that a big amp is less stressed at lower volumes and that power comes cheaper these days. And, yes, the commonly recommended 300-500w is usually adequate and not excessive. For those of you that play with a full PA and have a large rig, is the sound man usually asking you to keep it down as it makes getting the FOH sound right difficult? I think it would be interesting if we all knew how much power we were actually using typically. IIRC, a typical cab with 500w drivers doesn't get any louder when the input power goes above about 150w! (Obviously that varies with driver/cab design) so I'm always suspicious that we get a bit misled. Some like Alex Claber or Bill F can probably elaborate on/correct this statement.

I understand the science bit - it's more the application. If you can drown out an unamplified drummer then what's the point? Demolition, internal organ damage? Won't your band sound terrible? I know some very flat cabs need a fair bit more power but 1kW!!? I think burpster's closing comment may be nearer the truth. Marketing men know us blokes too well. Some of Bill Fitzmaurice's forum posts are very interesting on this. It's quite astonishing how little power quite highly rated cabs will absorb before they stop doing anything useful with the extra power being shoved into them before just turning the rest into heat (which is really what the RMS rating is giving - voice coil power handling before it melts). But then a big stack is a bit more rock 'n' roll.

I'm a bit struck by the huge amounts of power (500/600 watts +) some people have in their rigs and I'm a bit curious why. Are some of the cabs out there very inefficient? Is it required to get certain tone at volume? Do people want 130db at 30Hz? Do they never really use it? Do they play just too loud? Am I just being an old fart? I've always thought that if you can get your desired tone and keep pace with a loud unamplified drum kit there's not a lot of point being able to go much louder. Once your drum kit is getting mic'ed up then there's probably a PA available that can handle bass reinforcement too and then the soundman won't appreciate your backline being too loud.

Could have been the other cap (C411) going momentarily short before dying open circuit taking the resistor out when it did. But hum breaking through could be one of them not doing its smoothing job properly anymore. If the amp's of any age then it's worth replacing the electrolytics anyway - especially the smoothing ones - just done mine. Some of the higher voltage ones can be a little trickier to get hold of depending on the packaging - axial seem to be a bit more rare. Be careful!!

[quote name='jamesf' post='198592' date='May 14 2008, 11:16 AM']is that the buckeye burl sei millenium 6 with blue LEDs from the gallery? if so, i was going to buy that bass but decided that a flat was more important - plus i'm terrible at 6 string. i'm beginning to realise i made a horrible mistake after seeing it again, it looks incredible in the photos! did you pair the EBS TD650 with the schroeder? I have a BFM omni 10 sans tweeters at the mo, and am looking for something a little more HI-FI and shiny - i love the sound of EBS gear, but the cabs are just too heavy. I know schroeders aren't the lightest cabs in the world, but i think it's great compromise for the tone - just wondered how it paired with the EBS in the 'shiny' department. my BFM has a middy, growly old-school tone that sounds great, but doesn't have the 'sheen' that i'm trying to achieve. i know this is hardly an objective comparison and it would be incredibly difficult for you to try and quantify any of this, but just thought i'd try and get some (very) subjective and hearsay comparisons before i drive the 300+ miles to go and try them out for myself!! J[/quote] Is it worth risking a tenner on 4 piezos to fit to your Omni 10 before replacing it? I built mine with 4 and it's quite zingy when required.

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='198365' date='May 13 2008, 11:12 PM']... wish I'd brushed my hair [/quote] Still can't tell which one's you.

[quote name='Merton' post='197993' date='May 13 2008, 02:26 PM']Generalisation of the year Try 'em, if you like 'em, buy 'em.[/quote] Couldn't agree more. For example, Bill Fitzmaurice designs PA sub-woofers with 10" drivers. I wish people would consider the enclosures as much (if not more) as the drivers sizes.

[quote name='lowhand_mike' post='197816' date='May 13 2008, 11:16 AM']would be nice if they did but isnt the mag 1x15 combo narrower than the mag head? then the sleeve that they make would be too wide unless you didnt mind making some fillers for the gaps. and you could always cannibalise the speaker enclosure into a small extension cab.[/quote] I think your 210 head is wider - it's got the vents each end which neither the separate head nor 115 have got. According to Ashdown's site there's 11mm difference in the overal width of the MAG 300 head and 115 combo which may be just case thickness differences. I'd probably make a sleeve anyway. Can't really use or need the 115 as an extension cabinet as my Omni 10 is 4 ohm and I doubt the Ashdown cab would keep up with it anyway.

Yet another John Barrowman! John Barrowman! John Barrowman! vehicle. They've only got to bring him back into Dr Who and he'd be in three programmes in a row. That Jessie seems a lovely girl but born 40 years too late.

I've been using an Ashdown dual band but got increasingly disappointed with it - I think the attack's set too fast (it's not adjustable) and removes the attack. Instead I tried my TFPro P1 (formely Joe Meek) pre-amp. It's a half-rack width unit with a preamp, EQ and an optical compressor. I think it sounds brilliant compared with the Ashdown even though it's single band. You might find one secondhand somewhere but TFPro seemed to have stopped making the P1 now. It also makes a good recording preamp for vocals etc.

It's like any genre - there's good and bad and stuff I do like and stuff I don't. However, I generally dislike any funk record that uses the word "funk" when they really wanted to say "f*ck". It's like a rubbish "Two Ronnies" sketch put to music.

I'm currently using a BFM Omni 10 with a Hughes & Kettner head which I'm very pleased with. I was going to sell my Ashdown MAG 300 1x15 combo as I want a spare head (250-300w into 4 ohms) but wondered if I may as well build a sleeve for the MAG's head so I've effectively got a MAG 300 head rather than sell the combo (for £190-ish???) then buy another head. An obvious down-side is that I get an amp-less combo hanging around as I doubt a MAG head in a home-made sleeve will be worth much. I wonder that for the money I could get for the combo I might get me a better head than the MAG secondhand. I quite like valve pre-amps which the Ashdown doesn't have but the spare doesn't necessarily have to be a sound-alike. I'm sure someone here can put me on the right road.