Chienmortbb

Don't tempt me Pete. Right the good news is that some of the parts reached Heathrow this morning. The others are still somewhere between Singapore and Poole even though they were ordered two days earlier. Anyhow I will not peer too intently into the oral cavity of a equine present. The chassis is now stripped (although the transformer is still fitted). The boards are laid out on the chassis as can be seen in the picture. On second thoughts I will move the bridge adaptor to the centre and rotate the ICEPower module so thate the airflow from the fan blows ditrectly past the whole of the power supply/amp module.

Well I got the sander out and thought I had not done very well. It was hard and there is still a lot of adhesive and carpet residue on the sides but it is much better than the picture above. The covering is not due untill next week so I think I will test wrap that with the cabinet as it now is to see how it will look. However I suspect, like paint, it will show all the lumps and bumps. My original thought was to keep this cabinet. It is supposed to be a low cost build made largely ftom existing components and materials. It is very heavy though and a ply cabinet would be much lighter. Thinking cap on. On to the electronic design for a while.

The carpet (why do the call it that, it's felt) has come off but it was a b*gg*r, took three hours and it looks a mess. Tomorrow, weather permiting I will get the sander out, clean it up and cur the porthole (no cruising or Jane MacDonald jokes please). The box is made from a sort of heavy chipboard, denser than we usually get and the baffle is MDF. I almost wish I had started from scratch and made a new cab from light weight ply.

I did think of that but as I understand it, unless the bottom is well clear of the floor ( much more than the amount Alex designed into the one10) the tuning will be affected. Now that can work for you, as it seems to on the one10, but I don't have the measurement gear to hand to check the tuning. So it has to be a side port.

After some investigation, it has to be a side port. as can be seen by the mock ups below, the port cannot co-exist with the top strap. Go to the side though and there is just enough room for the port. I have just realiswed I did not put the lip of the port on the side view but it is only 5mm Next step is to remove the carpet covering so I can cut the hole for the port.

I loved my old Thunder 1A and wish I had never got rid of it. That deserves another thread

How much is the faux maple adding to the Status? The Gotoh machine heads are a good idea IMHO they are the best you can buy. As for the bridge, again IMHO tyhe good old bent bit of tin is just as good as many a "high mass" bridge so ugrade the bridge for cosmetic reasons as it is the ugrade with the worst payback.

Yes but it is a lot of work, less that the four cornered triangular port but having worked with Phil Starr and Stevie I have seen and heard the benefits of a single large round port. Remember that the only access to the inside of the cabinet is through the hole in the baffle. Of course I could remove the baffle with some difficulty and that would also allow me to move the driver and also allow room for an HF driver. If I were to do that, I would prefer to start from scratch. There is some good news today, some of the parts from Thailand have moved to Singapore. Not a great leap but although reported last night, it happened on Wednesday. So maybe they will arrive in the not too distant future.

I think a side port is the way to go. I was thinking top port as it might throw up some mids, but then it would invite things to fall into the cabinet As for uprating the amp, I have tha parts. However I think it needs an uprated transformer to get 65 Watts. Also there is a fault on the amp, the main reason I am reworking it. However I will be looking at that at some point in the build.

Of course the dreaded lockdown is slowing down the supply of parts I have ordered. Some from the UK and some from the far east. Sadly the stuff from the far east seems to have stalled somewhere around Thailand and DHL seem to be washing their hands of it. First class post here seesm to be takling a week or more and my last UK order was delivered to the wrong address. As I am shielding I cannot collect it ( I know where it is). Never mind lots I can still do.

I did think of that but adding them to an assembled cabinet is not easy, the calculations for them are not easy. As we are on the subject, one thought was to rebuild the cabinet in light weight ply but this is difficult with te lockdown and also more work than I was thinking of. However the carpet covering has to go and will be replaced by either a tough vynyl (tolexish) or TuffCab.

The construction of the After Eight sees the amp chassis mounted on the back of the cabinet. As you can see below, there is nowhere to put the port except below the amp and that is a very small space indeed. Incidently, the white two way connector was put there by me, and in this photo, the loudspeaker leads are not connected. If you look closely at the printed circuit borad, you can see where the extra components for the bigger combos would go. You can also just see the small gap at the bottom between the chassis and the cabinet where air is allowed into the space below the chassis, aiding the natural convection cooling of the amp.

The new thread is at

I found a label inside the box that seems appropriate to share. Back on subject though: Despite the shape of the combo being a cube, the speaker cabinet is approx 29x29x14.5 cm. That is an internal dimension of approximately 12 litres. I want to put a new speaker in and I have chosen the P-Audio E8-200*. This is an 8", 200 watt neodymium driver that suits this cabinet well. Hovever unlike the Sica speaker it replaces, it does not work best in a closed cabinet. *http://p-audio.co.uk/products/P-Audio_E8-200N_200W_8_Inch_Low_Frequency_Driver_with_2_Inch_Voice_Coil.php As you can see the speaker sits centrally in the baffle and there is nowhere I can put a 75mm port on there. So the question is top, side or bottom? More on that later.

Firstly a warning: There are dangers in opening or building amplifiers. Unless they are battery powered, somewhere inside there are mains voltages that can KILL. Depending on your location these could be between 100V ac and 230V ac nominal. Only open an amplifier if you really know what you are doing. I worked in Electronics until my retirement and was an IEng (Incorporated Engineer) Electronics, having studied to degree level. Despite that, I do not know everything and have had to cram up on current safety requirements in order to make this amplifier safe. I have used commercial power modules form ICEPower that are built, and certified, to current standards around the world. DO NOT try to build amplifiers with low cost power supplies and/or amplifiers purchased from EBAY, Ali-Express, Bangood etc. Remember that you are connected to your amp when playing, don't save pennies, save your life. Now on to the build. The Trigger's Broom of Amps? I have one of the original carpet covered After Eight combos. It is rated at 15W and has an 8" Sica 35 watt speaker that is showing signs of wear. The amp makes a strange noise after a deep notet is allowed to sustain. It is hard to fault find and I have decided to rip out the guts and rebuild it. This project is related to my other project to turn the Basschat BC112 into an active FRFR cabinet and much of this design will be used (or possibly discarded) for that design. The existing unit is from the series that included the Perfect Ten and Five Fifteen and appears to have been codenamed the BakPac series. Eight Ten and Fifteen tells us the size of the speaker and the amp can have extra components added to increase the power output for the Ten and Fifteen inch variants. The powers abvailable from the amp is 15 watts, 30 watts and 65 watts respectively. The controls are shown below including the new handle that I had already replaced. You can just make out the outline of the old handle in the picture.

I have had to modify this project due to ........ guess what? So I am prototyping some of the bits, in a lockdown build renovating an Ashdown After Eight. I will post it in the builds area and post a link here as soon as I can. TheBasschat 1x12 Active FRFR Cabinet is still alive and will be completed after we get out of lockdown.

To break mine I need I usually put 20 Hz through them overnight. The advantage of 20Hz is that you cannot hear it but can see the cone moving.

I seem to remember that many of the early Jazz basses were made with stacked knobs like that.

Good call, also while the amp is out clean any dust, fluff or dirt from the heat sink as any of these will either reduce/disturb the airflow or reduce the heat transfer.

check that there are no air leaks in the cab. I had a cab that made a similar noise and it was air leaking out through the jack socket.

If you are going to put an HPF in thhe system, the best -3dB point depends on the cabinet response and it need to be quite vicious (24dB/Octave) to protect the drivers and take out the low end waffle.

Very wise. The team at Ashdown know their stuff and would have considered this in the design. I am just repairing my 15 year old After Eight combo and the thing that impressed me was how well the cooling has been thought out. No fans but a really well thought out design where the heatsink is bolted to the rear of the chassis. It not only has cooling vents, but the chassis is mounted on two spacers so that air can flow behind the chassis. There is also thermal compound between the heat sink and the chassis to improve heatflow between the two.

You need to look at the amp as it may be that one fan blows inwards, the other blows outwards. It depends on where they are placed.

If you look at the fans they will have an arrow on the top usually pointing to the direction of airflow.

Just a couple of points. Firstrly Channel 38 is a great call, but do pay your licence fee. Incidently, there are no plans yet but Channel 38 is earmarked for other use in the future. Just a bit of backgroud on 5GHz. That band was given to the Wireless Mic manufacturers for the development of Wireless mics shortly before Channel 69 was stolen. Sadly, in the early days of digital mics, few saw the benefit and so the band was unused. As a result a substatial part of it was given over to WiFi.