DGBass

One of the nicest itterations of AH250 are these GP11 versions. Lovely bit of kit and still punch well above the suggested 250 watts. Like the original authentic price sticker. £595 is a rake of cash these days, back in the eighties it was a hefty amount of wedge. Worth every penny IMHO🙂

GLWTS!

4 hours ago, Jono Bolton said:

Also, if anyone knows where I can get a spare screw cap/cover, please let me know.

There's a UK company i've used in the past called Vital-Parts to source replacement blanking plugs for various different Ashdown and TE models. The only thing is the originals do vary slightly depending on the year and model and it can be tricky finding an exact replacement. Ashdown seem to use the bigger plugs these days for approx 16mm hole with overlap and the older smaller ones are mostly between around 14.8 mm to 15.1 mm with an overlap. The size of screwhead on the M6 mounting bolts also makes a difference because earlier combos like yours had large M6 screw heads with narrow wall plugs and later ones had smaller chrome head screws which leave more room for thicker plug fittings. Plug depth varies a lot as well but mostly 1.5mm to 2mm panel depth works. 

Most of the time its a case of measuring an existing plug and seeing if you can match whats on offer.  

4 minutes ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

That question was answered during the golden age of loudspeaker design, 1938-1973. The hi-fi guys knew it, the PA guys knew it. A few electric bass cab manufacturers knew it, those being manufacturers that also did hi-fi and PA, like JBL and EV. The mainstream musical instrument manufacturers didn't, operating in a vacuum as it were. JBL and EV never really cracked the musical instrument market, because they didn't make amps, and in those days amps and speakers were almost always sold as a set.

I just meant my particular MDF box cab🙂 And I guess you are saying the answer is Yes, it could make a difference to the sound although the yes word isn't specifically mentioned.

16 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

Energy wasted causing panels to vibrate doesn't end up in the audience.

I suppose thats also another way to look at it and I would agree there would be inefficiencies in a big box design. The question about whether the inherent sound of such a cab will change by extensive bracing and wadding is still open. Perhaps a little inefficiency is not a bad thing? Tube amps are a case in point. People still rave about their tube amp tone and buy tube amps despite them being highly inefficient. An 18mm MDF cab might not require as much bracing as a similar sized 12mm or 15mm cab but i'm sure it would make it more efficient. With this particular cab, anything added will also increase weight at this point as the basic cab structure is there already there. Testing with and without is likely the only way I'll find out and thats the plan at the moment🙂 

5 hours ago, BassAdder60 said:

I found I had to replace my JJ ECC83 tube in mine ( not many weeks of owning ) and it made it whisper quiet 

I had the same issue occur in my current ABM after only a few rehearhals from new. More of a buzz than a hum but i've owned enough ABM's to know when its a tube issue. Swapped it out with a reasonably good quality 5751 to dampen the gain a little and now very quiet. The tube it came with was all shiny new but no markings on it to say where it came from or who made it. 

One thing I've considered is making too many modifications to what is a very old speaker in a box cab. Maybe part of the charm of an early eighties Trace Elliot mdf box is pronounced mid boom or very peaky responses to certain frequencies, if you like a 'pre-shaped' cabinet. I will definetely add some damping with Dacron to the interior panels. Bracing and vanes are a considerarion however its in the back of my mind that by bracing sidewalls and/or baffles and rear panels I may make the box much stiffer and less prone to certain inherent cabinet resonances that you get with big empty boxes. Could these mods change the cabs orignal sound by effectively cancelling out those resonances in the original big box construction? I have no illusions of it ever being a perfect flat response cab but how much of a change in sound could result by making the cab super stiff? Could it be a dramatic or more minimal change?   

@Obrienp It was over six years ago that I mailed BF regarding my 1x10 issue (still have the original mail exchange) and I would agree its probably an uncommon occurence. In my case it wasn't the actual fixings that were the problem, it was lack of wood at the rear of the baffle where the nuts had fallen off.  Also worth mentioning is that too much torque when tightening can cause the t-nut at the rear to rotate and chew up the timber that its fixed into. It then has little to hold it in place and will eventually loosen off with vibration from use. I never use power tools or power screwdrivers when mounting bolts and t-nuts with speakers because of this. Then again i'm not operating a production line😉 

IME its much easier to over torque when working with thinner baffles. Less likely if its 18mm voidless plyboard and M6 fixings. I'd be interested to see how you get on with your plans.🙂   

2 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

see if there is any internal bracing of the panels

@Phil Starr It's an old school empty rectangular mdf box with no internal bracing and I suppose that was fairly common and typical of mass produced boxes in the early to mid eighties. I recall seeing battens fitted across the large rear panels of some Peavey cabs of this era and guess this might have been to reduce vibration from the biggest panel in a cab. It's not a very deep cab so there isn't huge scope(space) for fitting internal bracing once the large Fane driver is fitted. It's something to think about though and as its stripped down to bare wood at the moment it would be the ideal time to do that. I'll do some actual sound testing ( at rehearshal ) as it is and see how it sounds. If there are any serious cab vibrations that need attention I can consider trying battens 🙂    

@Obrienp I Couldn't say, but it was mentioned that this hadn't happened previously. The first 1x10 I had started buzzing within a week of use. The second one after about a month of use. I only contacted BF about the first one and when it happened on the second, I fixed that and both cabs were fine. The bolts were quite small, maybe M4 or M5 and I did refit them with spring washers and new t-nuts before selling the cabs on.

11 minutes ago, Obrienp said:

a loose mounting bolt on one of the speakers. It had worked its way so far loose that the captive nut had come free from the back of the baffle board

I had the same with a pair of BF 1x10s ( early 100s serial numbers) where t-nuts worked loose from the rear of the baffle causing an audible vibration in the low to low-mid sound range. Luckily the t-nuts stuck to the magnet assembly when they fell off and were easily retrievable. I was able to fix this myself but had to rotate a driver slightly to get fresh baffle as I could see the wood in the original position was splintered away at the rear and there wasn't much for the t-nuts to grab onto. The baffle board wasn't very thick. I did mail BF about it first time it happened but was happy to keep the cab rather than send it back. I was using an ABM 500 with my two 1x10s at the time and they always sounded fairly farty because I was driving them too hard in the low frequency dept and they didn't like that at all. 

I've decided to fully refurbish the 'porthole' bass cab I recently mentioned on another thread after finding out from its previous only owner it has had some interesting history. I'm happy about the porthole and port tubing aspect of what I hope to achieve however something thats always made me wonder is why some cab manufacturers use 'wadding' in their cab offerings and some don't. There doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency whether its in ported or sealed cab designs. Is there a specific scenario where 'wadding' is mandatory and is lack of 'wadding' in a cab just a cost cutting exercise? And does lack of wadding really make much difference, especially in ported cab designs? 

As examples, I once bought a Peavey MKIII bass combo which sounded very damped tone wise. It had a king size duvet shoved in the back and removing it totally changed the amp back to what I'd expect from a vintage Peavey combo. I also bought a TE 1110 ported combo which had about 20kg of four inch thick loft insulation in it. Again it was quite 'damped' sounding and removing the insulation changed the sound back to what I would expect a TE 4x10 to sound like. I've used Dacron  in some cab restorations in the past but never more than one inch thick wadding and I have noticed that it sometimes smooths out the bottom end quite nicely but it doesn't always have the same effect with different cab designs eg 2x10s or 2x12's. It seems to affect 1x15s most noticeably or that may just be my hearing. So, is it worth 'wadding' a 3 cu ft 'porthole' 1x15 cab with 1 inch thick wadding and what should that do to the tone if anything?     

Thanks @stevie, @Phil Starr and @Bill Fitzmaurice. It's sounds like a Kappalite in a box ( with a port hole) is the real world version of the dream. I have the feeling it wouldn't be a particularly small compact box either to get the best from a Kappalite. As an example, the box 'on the bench' at present that I calculated the tuning for is not much over 3cu ft internal volume and its not exactly small. When I have the time, i'd like to look further into a self build 1x15. For now, i'm going to experiment with some cabinet tuning basics using this project box.🙂

16 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

you can measure the specs of a driver if you have a a small amount of test gear and patience.

Thanks BFM. The Dayton kit looks very interesting. I've messaged their UK distributor. It's often occured to me that i'd like to get more into speaker box design if only to build the ultimate small compact and lightweight 1x15 cab. Its taken years of playing many different brands of bass cab to realise mostly everything is a compromise of some sort, whether its design, weight, or cost or usually all three. I can understand why the small lightweight cab market has really taken off and why most manufacturers centre their design efforts around 10 inch and 12 inch speakers. A 12 inch driver in particular is the perfect compromise of size and performance while still being able to fit into a relatively small compact box. But I see a trend where two are really needed in real life to feel the bass. So its a great sales opportunity for these manufacturers. Being an avid user of 15 inch cabs, the notion of a lighweight compact high performance 15 inch cab is more difficult. Perhaps thats why certain lightweight cab purveyors have no such 15 cab in their offerings and perhaps its time for a BC MK IV cab, the ultimate 1x15? Or has that been done? Some specs I have in mind - 600 watt, 4 ohm, ported and able to deliver a 35Hz to 5khz range, at least 100db 1w @ 1m sensitivity. No horn or tweeter and weighing 15Kg tops. And it has to fit into a small hatchback/town car. 5 kg for a high performance neo driver, 2kg for hardware and coverings, and 8kg for an enclosure thats strong enough and small enough to to cope with the rated power without vibrating, shaking apart or compromising the drivers performance and design parameters. It also has to retail at no more than £499 😉Some folks might scoff and say 'dream on' and they might be right. It's a nice thought and if something like that could be built, I'm sure the single cab fans who just like to feel the bass and dont really care about portholes would be interested. 🙂   

5 hours ago, stevie said:

You don't actually need the specs of the driver to calculate the tuning frequency of the cab. Just the internal volume and port size.

via the wonders of the internet and out of curiosity I did find something that gave an approxiamate calculation for the tuning of this box I have with the 18mm porthole.  It worked out at a cabinet tuning of approx 52-53 Hz. Sounds about right for a 15? Interestingly fitting a 3 inch depth port tube same diameter as the hole will re tune the cab to 41hz. I may experiment to see what different this makes real world.

Thanks that does answer the question. Its a 38 year old driver so i'm never going to find specs for it nowadays. I have searched far and wide but wasn't able to find a match. The cab is reasonably large and made from 18mm mdf from what I can see so port depth is 18mm. It's sounds fine although I haven't put any serious power through it yet. I'll assume Trace Elliot knew what they were doing at the time as the cab and speaker came as a package🙂 

I've come across cabs over the years which appear vented but have little more than a hole cut in the baffle and no port tube or mechanism behind the hole. Sometimes its rectangular, sometimes tri-angular, but mostly a circle. I have a 1x15 cab 'on the bench' at the moment which has a basic circular hole cut in the corner of the baffle, diameter 4 inches. It's always been that way as the previous owner owned it from new and assumed it was a proper porting/venting design( from 1985 ). My question to the learned speaker cab guru's is does a simple hole in the baffle with no port tube or anything behind it other that air have any real sonic benefit where increasing speaker performance eg low end is concerned? The orignal driver is a vintage version of the modern Fane Sovereign Pro cast frame type with an enormous magnet assembly and what looks like a 3 inch voice coil. Rated 250 watts rms 8 ohms. It appears to be quite efficient but i have no specs for it. 

I owned  DSL401 combo and it was a guilty pleasure playing bass through it. Lovely bright tone and being all tube had that sparkle thats difficult to really emulate on a sold state amp. EQ was fairly basic but a little graphic boost worked well. The crunch channel was very sweet sounding  and the stock speaker was a Marshall Celestion G12-100 so it could take a reasonable amount of bass. Curiously I enjoyed noodling with the reverb on. The verb isn't a common effect used these days on bass. Or is it?

1 hour ago, Reggaebass said:

Do all the SVT’s have a fan 

The CL's and Heritage 300w versions do and older 300w tube SVT's do. Its usually tucked in behind the front grille and is pretty noisy if the ones I've used before are anything to go by. Of course you dont hear it once the amp is doing its thing. I'm not sure what the rack SVT's have for cooling, might be a different arrangement.

Person D(G)😉 - I've grown to appreciate each 'decent' amp I have on the amp shelf and to use their on board EQ sections to suit my purpose. Whether thats an AH250 GP11, an ABM, or a GK 700RB. I have a few other 'decent' amps as well and all have strengths EQ wise. Thats my thing though, having a few different amps and to enjoy what they can each do while working out how to get the best from them.  My pedal board is now almost empty of bass effects/EQ pedals and I find that very liberating not relying on external boxes to shape a sound. But then I'm always supplying the backline and I can appreciate the need for a pre-amp/DI pedal option for shared bill gigs where I'd have to use what is on stage. In that case a good pre-amp box will carry your unique sound straight to the desk or into the line in/return jack of a donor setup. I don't need a seperate pre-amp box though, just more 'decent' amps!

7 hours ago, waaldijkh said:

HI, I'M LOOKING FOR amps without fans. or amps with fans that can be switched off

would that be brand new amps or potentially used/second hand amps and is there a particular use case eg home recording/practice or studio session? New amps without any cooling fan at all will probably be small output amps where cooling can be done with a big enough heatsink or by using the casing itself. Larger amplifiers these days do tend to rely on fans as its more efficient and much cheaper than having large blocks of cooling fin made from expensive alloy. Some manufacturers have always understood the need for a measured mix of quietness and cooling. Thermostatically controlled fans that only kick in when the amp is working hard are a great feature. Thats not as common as you would think but gaining more popularity. For example, Ashdown now thermostatically control the fans on their ABM range (they always have actually ) but only recently with an automatic switch on feature when it reaches a certain temperature. Warwick have been doing it for many years eg Profet bass amps which have massive block heatsinks and you really need to be using them hard to get the fan to switch on. Gallien Krueger are well known for thermostatically controlled fans that only engage under high power situations on their Backline and RB amps. They also have this feature on their brand new Legacy and Fusion heads. I still use an old GK Backline 125w head for home use and recording (great pre-amps). It has no fan at all and is whisper quiet. Just a huge heatsink that can cope with 125W. I'm sure there are many more amps that have thermal switch on fans but I can't think of any modern class D stuff generating a reasonable amount of power than don't rely on cooling fans. That's another class D conundrum, you can shrink the amp size into a small case but it still needs cooled. So you end up having to use small diameter fans that run all the time and at high revolutions. Some tube amps dont have fans but large ones often do as an aid to normal convection cooling( eg SVT).

Worst cooling fan noise I ever heard was on  Peavey T-Max I owned years ago. Great amp and super powerful but the fan sounded like a rusty old bag of spanners while running and it was on permanently. Could still hear it at gig volumes.

1 hour ago, fleabag said:

Also, i'm the only person that decides my out front sound

Yes same here and onstage sound is also to an extent irrelevant for me as I (choose to) wear strong ear protectors because of the high spl in my corner. The bass onstage is more feel than what any mids might be doing or can be heard doing. I guess i'm lucky to have been using the same basses and cab for nearly nine years and that's allowed me to fine tune 'a sound' i'm happy is doing the job out front for me and doesn't distract the rest of the band or have the audience gritting their teeth. I've recently ordered a wireless transmitter so I can go out front and check what the bass sound like at a distance. That was mainly because I changed just one item in my signal chain recently and despite me thinking it was EQ'd the same as before, it didnt sound the same. Different kit, different tone. It was an unintentional over abundance of mids that caused the problem. I might be pleasantly surprised or deeply shocked at what I hear out front when I get to use my wireless setup although I hope its the former. And here's hoping the wireless doesn't change anything either. If it does sound naff out front, then I'm sure someone in the band will be happy to twiddle a few settings for me. They're all a helpful bunch in that respect🙂

36 minutes ago, fleabag said:

 

Answer 1 :  You're having a laugh , i know. 

 

Answer 2 : I'm not using on stage cabs

 

Yes of course I am to an extent 🙂 and its only my experience of gigging. I can't recall ever doing any gig without a backline of some sort, maybe only ever in a recording situation where I was DI'd and that was all down to EQ set by the recording engineer. In those cases a good tone through the monitoring cans was never a consideration. A third person to the band ( the engineer ) had the final say on what sounded good and a monitor tone was all that was needed through the headphones to do the gig. In those cases I put my faith in someone else to decide where the bass and mids were in the mix.   

 

 

On 11/02/2023 at 10:32, fleabag said:

I can never get a clean sound by increasing the mids. So whats the answer ? 

I've never been a fan of the low mids are where its at thinking and have theories about where that saying originated. That being said and not wanting to court extreme controversy, its a fact in my experience boosting them gets you heard out front. But not always appreciated. And it might sound naff on stage. I've tried similar experiments at rehearshals and usually the band comment on the growly and sometimes farty sounding low mid honk that results. For the most part I boost low frequencies and scoop the lowish mids for an old school clean thump as it suits the classic rock covers we do. I've often had folk come up to me and say after a gig that the bass was just barely audible but more than anything they could feel it coming up through their bar stools and see it rattling the glasses on the table. That apparently i'm told is not so common these days amongst pub and club bands. Tales of growly and prominent bass tone that carries little weight seem to be common nowadays. Perhaps thats a symptom of modern times where we've all never had so much choice with lightweight gear and tone shaping devices to tweak the most from our setups. Everyone obsessing over the 'T'  word and how they sound when how the bass feels in a live situation to an audience and sits in the overall mix might matter more? Most people in an audience don't care about how the bass sounds and care even less about bass rigs. They do notice more if they can feel the bass and/or dance to it - imho.

I use a single large folder horn cab with a big reasonably decent excursion driver and a reasonably powerful amp. The band have a 2k largely vocal pa with some acoustic and kick drum through it so our amps are doing all the backline. The bass works the low end of the spectrum and I boost between 60-180hz, flat by about 340hz and then cut anything above that except for a little boost around 2khz to add a nice click to my flatwounds. Granted, i'm using a lot of power just to keep that sort of sound clean but it works well with a P-bass which has just enough natural mid content to still be heard. Also and importantly it leaves a clear sonic slice of the spectrum for the guitarists who dont boost any bass frequencies on their setups at all. It works well. With a proper PA support, I have to back off my usual low end settings a lot because it upsets the sound engineers when so much low end is coming off the stage.

So whats the answer? Well there probably is no easy answer and its all a sonic compromise. Maybe its time to dust off the old Trace elliot 1518 full range cabs, get back to feeling the bass and be able to boost lower frequencies knowing the cab won't complain because it can take whatever we throw at it. The natural mid tone of the bass can then surf on top of a silky smooth and clean low end wave without so much as a growl being heard. And if one (1518) cab isn't loud enough or struggling to cope then get two as is often advised on BC😉 You'll also need some accesories for that kind of solution eg a van and optionally a roadie! You will sound great though and growly low mids will be a thing of the past unless you choose to have them. 

First Westone Thunder I bought ( in 1981 ) was the Thunder 1 passive for all of £99 brand, new same finish as the pictures. I recall the sales guy in Thompson's Music in Glasgow saying it was criminally cheap to sell such a bass for that price. Thye caused quite a stir when they first appeared in shops. I bought a Thunder 1A the following year after trading the passive bass for it but never got the hang of the active eq and personally preffered the passive Thunder one. Both were fantastic basses back then and even now have a certain classy appeal to them. I wouldn't say no to owning one again if the right leftie came up for grabs. GLWTS!

The only time I played pick was with a stingray back in the day. That was an originals band doing rock/rap/metal type material. Been a fingers only player since doing classic rock covers and i've found finger style works just as well with a p-bass or jazz bass. It's all flats I string with these days and I find its easy enough to get plenty attack on the strings with fingertips and digging in when needed. Tweaking the EQ helps as well, particularly high mids.