paulbuzz

My two penn'orth: The most important, but trickiest, element you need to duplicate is the very sharp response dropoff at the top of the speaker's range. You can see this on the response graph posted above: you need to be aiming for a cutoff of at least 18dB per octave above about 5kHz. Very few desk or outboard EQs can achieve this without cascading more than one channel. The next most important element is a rolloff of the low bass. This needn't be as steep as the top-end roll-off I mentioned previously though, so is easier to achieve with normal EQs. With these elements in place you can fiddle about a bit in the middle: maybe a bit of a boost around 2kHz and a bit of cut around 500Hz? Again, see the response graph above, but I would argue that these aspects are a bit more 'tweak-to-taste'. One cheap way to address your issue would be the Behringer Ultra-G DI box. This has a built in (switchable) analogue cab-sim. It's supposed to model a 4x12 rather than an 8x10, but I've found it to have a good and useful sound, and to be a reliable item, despite a few inevitable anti-Behringer sneers. A more accurate and flexible way to get what you asked for would be to use a cab-sim which can make use of impulse reponses, and find an IR that exactly matches your preferences. There are many of these now, but probably most of them exceed the cost you want to pay, and have a lot of additional features that would be redundant or unhelpful for your purposes. I've been impressed by the Mooer Radar, which is relatively cheap. It has built-in IRs, including an 8x10, but you can also load your own IRs into it if you found one you preferred. And although its output is only on a 1/4" jack socket, it is in fact balanced (TRS), so a simple jack-to-xlr cable would presumably provide a suitable feed to your FOH desk. It does require a horrible wall-wart power supply though! Good luck with your quest!

Pretty sure the 'bathing suit' story is nonsense; as others have pointed out, there seem to be no references to this supposed French word on the web, except in the context of this tale. Also, I recall long ago reading an interview with Hugh Cornwell where he was making his excuses for the weird pronunciation of the word in the song by saying that he just didn't know the correct pronunciation at the time. [ Edit: found it: it's in his book "The Stranglers Song By Song". ] Perhaps the line in the song was originally written as 'bikini', as in the radio-play version, which obviously makes much more sense, and the change to 'clitoris' was just typically Stranglers-style provocation? Fantastic song though, questionable sexual politics notwithstanding. Pretty much responsible for me playing bass.

Oh lord, Warwick... just went to their website to check whether I was being unfair, but no, almost every single one of their designs looks like it was templated from a five-year-old's first attempt to draw a bass... The wonky tuners... the dildo top horns... the nubbiny bottom horns... that one that looks like a melted Thunderbird... But also - their website...! That little window, lost in the middle of the screen! It's like travelling 20 years back in time...

Alongside the trivial personal foibles we've been discussing here, that is genuinely dreadful.

Or indeed the MM 3+1. Make yer damn mind up! Are we going double-sided or not?

I'm not sure I've ever seen a wronger post on this forum, though I admit that being nearly crushed to death in a sea of gob whilst standing directly in front of the first P-bass I'd ever seen (The Damned, 1979) probably qualifies as a formative erotic experience, so I may not be entirely objective on the matter! 😁

I'm fully onboard with many of the suggestions above: lumpy singlecuts Stingray scratchplate MM Bongo pointy headstocks I disagree strongly with any argument against the shape of the Fender P: what an absolutely fantastic design it is; introduced in 1954 and still dominant today, though several of its familiar design elements (headstock shape, scratchplate shape, body contouring) were really first introduced by the Strat in 1956. Man, that must have looked like a spaceship from the future when it appeared! Utter genius! As a general rule, I think symmetrical body shapes need symmetrical headstocks, and conversely for asymmetrical ones, though I accept that there are notable exceptions that look great.

Thanks - another interesting-looking option, though as a confirmed skinflint, I am slightly averse to paying for stuff! Also, from their testimonials section, it appears that they have the endorsement of the protagonist of the Die Hard movies, who I thought was a maverick cop but seems to have an additional career as a sound designer in Las Vegas...

Was that just advice, or would it not even let you continue on a WiFi connection?

Thanks for the replies, folks. JamKazam looks interesting and nicely thought out. Lowlandtrees' experience of the amount of fiddling and grief involved is somewhat offputting but not unexpected. Reaper's Ninjam also sounds interesting if a bit mysterious! I'll investigate further. I imagine that loads of people would like to be able to jam online like this, so the fact that so few people actually seem to be doing it may be a fair indication of how hard it is to get it to work satisfactorily! In general there seems to be a consensus that you're always likely to be struggling against lag, and everyone involved had better be using a decent computer; with a decent audio interface; ethernet rather than wireless connection to the router; and a good internet connection. I'll try some practical testing when I've got lots of spare patience and time for the tweaking. And have managed to acquire a giant ethernet cable...! Any further suggestions or experiences are more than welcome!

Apologies in advance if this topic has already been well covered somewhere here. In our current socially-isolated conditions, I've been wondering about the prospects of playing music online together with others. I've really only got as far as realising that the most obvious options (using a webcam with Zoom, Skype etc) seem to be out of the question, as there's far too much lag to make it possible. (Seems to be usually about a third or half a second, as far as I can tell - I'm not sure how you would measure it accurately.) Not sure where the delay might originate (cam, browser, internet connection...?) , or whether it could be reduced to an acceptable amount. So... has anybody here managed to do this successfully without a whole load of grief? What do I/we need to do?

YOU CAN'T REFER TO MY GRANDMA LIKE THAT!!! 😲 Oh wait I might have got the wrong end of the stick...

And here's one of the major problems: Most bass cab manufacturers rate their cabinets by simply quoting the thermal limit of the bass driver - ie how much power (in watts) it can take before the voice-coil is damaged by heat. BUT: For most uses of most bass drivers in most bass cabinets, the effective usage is limited WAY before the thermal limit by the excursion limits of the driver - ie how far the cone can travel back and forth before bad things start happening. Because of this limit, in reality most bass cabs can't make use of anything like the power suggested by the manufacturer's given (thermal) power handling spec figure. The excursion limits of any particular driver are given by the driver specs Xmax and Xlim (in mm), but how much power (in watts) it will take for the driver to reach these limits varies depending on the cab design and the frequencies being reproduced. All of this is sufficiently complicated that most cab manufacturers don't even attempt to explain about this stuff. Barefaced, by contrast, have loads of information about this stuff on their site. They make a point of using drivers with high excursion limits, which means their cabs can go unusually loud before things start sounding bad. These high-spec drivers are one of the things you pay a premium price for. But most manufacturers AND players don't want to have to get into a conversation about all this, so instead we tend to get stuck with unhelpful and misleading cab specs. This kind of stuff is very much the area of expertise of Bill, Phil, Stevie and a few others on this site, so I'm sure they'll jump in if I've explained any of this wrong! 😁

I think their point is that there just isn't any simple number that can give an unambiguous and definitive representation of the power handling of a given cab, so instead they have chosen to restrict themselves to an (admittedly vague) suggestion of what size of amp is likely to make a suitable match for their cabs. As to why the cab with the same bass driver, but in a bigger box with an added mid/high driver should be more suitable for a more powerful amp, I haven't got an answer. (Though of course the practical difference between 600W and 800W amps is minimal anyway; certainly less than the difference between identically rated amps from various different manufacturers. ) If I seem to be coming over as something of a Barefaced apologist here, I should perhaps make clear that I've never owned, played through, or even heard one of their cabs! 😁

A few relevant articles from the Barefaced website - there are a whole load of others...! https://barefacedbass.com/technical-information/understanding-power-handling.htm https://barefacedbass.com/technical-information/recommended-amp-power.htm https://barefacedbass.com/uploads/BGM68 Jul2011.pdf

To be fair to Alex/Barefaced, I think the OP has misinterpreted the information they give about their cabinets. I'm pretty sure that they don't claim anywhere that the Super Compact is "rated at 600W RMS" or the Big Baby "rated at 800W RMS". Instead, these figures are given as the top end of the range of output power of amplifiers that they recommend for use with these cabinets. Admittedly this is different to the way in which most cabinet manufacturers talk about the specs of their products, but there is a reason for this: the reason is that the traditional/usual practice of quoting a single "rated power handling" figure for a speaker cabinet is unsatisfactory and misleading for a number of reasons. This is illustrated by several of the points made by Bill and other posters upthread. So, as I understand it, Alex at Barefaced decided instead on the more nuanced (but arguably more vague!) set of descriptions used on the Barefaced website. I always got the impression that this was a genuine attempt to be less misleading than cab manufacturers have often been with their specs. Unfortunately, in this case at least, this approach seems to have led to increased confusion, rather than enlightenment...! As a self-confessed enthusiast for this kind of tech-talk, Alex has engaged in discussing this stuff repeatedly over the years; here on Basschat, on the Barefaced website, and in magazine articles. I'm sure his views on these matters will still be there somewhere on the Barefaced website.

That's the brutally-severed head of a Mk IV GP11 combo; possibly one of the huge 1x15 ones with massive vents below the speaker - in fact they may even have been horn-loaded? Can't find a decent picture of one now... I still have my Mk IV GP11 preamp, though it's largely in its well-earned retirement these days. An excellent bit of gear that was worked hard and never missed a beat.

I have a Mooer Radar and think it's excellent. In terms of its power supply requirements, I have just measured it as using 182 mA at 12V I have also just tried running it at 9V, and it seems to work fine; the current draw then goes up to 212 mA. I can't comment on whether this might have any impact on headroom, stability etc.

It's interesting to bear in mind that the speed of sound is roughly one foot per millisecond, so a piece of gear that introduces a 1ms delay is equivalent to stepping one foot further away from your amp. It would be interesting to see some real-world objectively measured figures for the amount of delay introduced by these items, as Stub was proposing upthread. I wait with bated breath! 😉

I know you were largely being humorous Al, but that's an interesting point about the MarkBass VLE. I haven't owned a MarkBass amp, but have got a Harley Benton amp which copies the same feature. I've measured its frequency response, and found that it rolls off the top end at 12 dB per octave, which isn't really steep enough to achieve the desired fizz-reduction without losing all the desirable top end (which may be why you regard MarkBass as having a muddy sound!). The kind of top-end rolloff required is really at least 18dB per octave. As I said, the response of 10/12/15 inch drivers tend to drop off like a stone above a certain point; this is the fizz-free sound that we're attempting to emulate. It would be interesting to see a measurement of the response of the genuine MarkBass VLE circuit. Apologies to Stub if this geekiness-heavy discussion is getting too off-topic! 🙄

No, you're right - tweeter down is perfectly adequate! 🙂 My points 1, 2 and 3 were intended as alternatives to each other, not intending to imply that all were necessary! 😁 Although turning the tweeter down does still potentially leave you with the problem of horrible fizz in your DI signal to the PA, if that's used.

I was taking "cab without a tweeter" to include "cab with the tweeter turned down". Didn't want to elaborate every point as it was enough of a wall of text already! 😁 As to 'why a speaker sim...' : because the most notable feature of a speaker sim is that it rolls off the fizzy frequencies very steeply, as required. It will also have additional EQ characteristics that one might or might not find desirable!