LewisK1975

[quote name='yorks5stringer' timestamp='1477916163' post='3165186'] Too misquote from another source, the only way you'll make a fortune selling bass related gear in the UK is to start off with a larger fortune...! [/quote] Ha Ha, you're probably correct!

Like plenty of us all I'm sure, I've been lucky enough to visit (and spend in) most of the Bass shops we all talk about on here, Bass Direct, Wunjo Bass and The Gallery in Camden for example. Never got to BassGear which I'm sad about, as I understand it was a great shop to go to. Of those 3 I'd say The Gallery is probably my favourite place to [i]visit[/i], but I've actually spent more money with Bass Direct than I have in the Gallery and Wunjo. Not 100% sure why that is, but what I do like about BD is that you certainly know where you are with Mark, he's opinionated and that's fine with me, I don't really need buttering up to purchase something, GAS usually does it for me anyway. But I also understand that folks like to feel that their custom is valued, and I agree that sometimes, that can be lacking in the experience at BD. I mean, a smile costs nothing, right? Personally, I will have usually exchanged some emails with the guys before visiting to check a few things, as with it being 140 miles away I can't just call there on a whim. The point I'm making is that they know that I've travelled for probably 2.5hrs to get there to check something specific out (and most likely buy) and I [i]have [/i]felt that they could make more of an effort with the pleasantries given the distance I've travelled. Not a show stopper for me like I say, but still true. Over the past year or so, I've put some serious thought into opening a Bass shop myself. I have not looked into the financial aspects of such an endeavour as yet, and that will probably frighten me to death!, but moreso thought about my combined experiences of shop visits around the country and wanting to provide customers with a positive experience on every level from arrival to departure. Perhaps I should ask Mark for a Job?

At the moment I don't have any backline for gigs. I own amps and cabs but don't gig with them right now. Arrived at that by having frequent complaints from our singer about stage volume being too loud. The band has an excellent FOH PA so after a chat we made the decision to just DI the bass, and I use good in-ears and get my own personal mix without bothering anyone else. Lovely. For now.

[quote name='itsmedunc' timestamp='1477310256' post='3161239'] Ask Kiogon on here to make you one. Did a great job of a vintage Precision harness for me. [/quote] [quote name='gary mac' timestamp='1477310902' post='3161249'] Yes, Kiogon is yer man First rate product and always speedily delivered. [/quote] They speaketh the truth!

[quote name='skychaserhigh' timestamp='1477349722' post='3161706'] The Ashdown doesn't use the ICE power module , it is a much bigger thing they use. I'm not saying too much about big iron versus class D...got accused of imagining things last time..! [/quote] Correct - it's an abletec unit. The ALC1000 to be precise. I have an ABM1000 and it's an absolute monster. And weighs less than 10kg.

[color=#323232][font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif][size=6]'Sorry, but there really is no substitute for big iron'[/size][/font][/color] You'd really love my setup at the moment then. No amp on stage at all. Sansamp to desk and good in-ears. A revelation. I understand that not everyone has their bands on full PA though, and regarding backline, I think it's a case of horses for courses. For me, the perceived lack of heft from a class-d amp is more than compensated for by the ease of transportation. YMMV!

Did a cab trade via couriers with Dave. I hadn't used couriers before for sending bass gear and Dave was really helpful in suggesting the method we use. Trade went off without a hitch and Dave's communication was excellent throughout. Top Basschatter and wouldn't hesitate to deal with Dave again!

[quote name='keving' timestamp='1477047674' post='3159460'] It's almost like playing with a guitarist that understands how to play in a band with other musicians. [/quote] What is this madness you speak of?

Tuning I don't mind, BUT, why oh why do they always fiddle with their settings SOOO much?!?!? Our guy even does it in the middle of songs! Drives me mad! Just finish the song and make your adjustment before the next song! No-one can tell the difference anyway!

I've recently made the switch to having no amp on stage and using in-ears. Last on my pedalboard is a Sansamp para driver, that, together with the mixer controls, takes care of everything necessary to get a good out front sound, and I get a controllable, comfortable mix direct to my ears. Lovely.

I quite like that actually.

I see that Bass Direct have started selling new Maruszczyk basses now.

Found this on TalkBass from Alex, hope he doesn't mind me quoting this.. [color=#191919][font=Lato, Arial, sans-serif][size=3] [indent]Right, so the impedance thing. I know most bass players think a 4 ohm cab is 4 ohms all the time and an 8 ohm cab is 8 ohms all the time but that that couldn't be further from the truth! When designing a driver one of the first things you decide on is the target impedance. You then have this complicated juggling act of wire material and gauge, length of voice coil, number of layers wound, and then that gives you the total length of wire on the voice coil and thus the DC resistance of the coil. Changing any of these physical properties also changes the inductance Le, the magnetic force BL, the moving mass Mms, the maximum clean excursion Xmax, and the maximum excursion before permanent damage Xlim. Changing those parameters also changes the resonant frequency Fs, the total Q Qts, the compliance equivalent volume Vas, the EBP, the Vd, the calculated sensitivity and so on. It also changes the tone through the midrange and treble. So as you can imagine it's not a straight forward affair in the slightest! That voice coil then needs to be matched up with a suitable cone, dust cap, surround and spider(s) to create your driver model. Once you have your driver simulation you can then model the impedance and the low frequency performance. If both are in the right ball park then you make a physical sample and test it to see how it sounds/performs, particularly through the mids and treble (because you can't model that, it's too complicated - although you can certainly predict approximately what's going to happen if you've got a decent feel for how loudspeakers work and understand the parts you're using). Now the thing about the impedance is it's a very long way from a simple flat line - in free air you get a peak at resonance whose height and width depends on the resonant characteristics of the driver and then it starts rising at higher frequencies due to the inductance. Once you put the driver in a cab that changes the low frequency impedance because you're changing the resonant system. The DCR of your voice coil is lower than the target impedance because the driver exhibits both inductive and capacitive reactance both of which add to the DC resistance to create the actual impedance. When you first set out with your coil design you have to figure in how those two aspects of reactance will add to the resistance to create the impedance. You don't want to start out with too high a resistance and end up with your driver having excessively high impedance compared to the nominal target as that will cost you in voltage sensitivity but you don't want to have too low a resistance or you'll cause amp shutdowns (destructive failures are rare nowadays). Also you can't vary the DCR continuously - wire comes in specific gauges, winding layers are one, two, three or more and you can't stop halfway around a turn! And changing the gauge or layers drastically changes the BL whilst changing the length drastically changes Xmax/Xlim. There are yet more issues - impedance is a vector quantity with magnitude and phase. Inductive reactance pulls the impedance into positive phase angles whilst capacitive reactance pushes it negative. Negative angles are much harder for amplifiers to drive than positive. The DC resistive component of impedance varies hugely with temperature - impedance is quoted at room temperature but at full power your voice coils will be at around 200 deg C and your impedance will have doubled. We've generally erred on the side of caution (the higher side) with the actual vs nominal impedance of our new driver designs - why? 1. Gen 3 cabs are loud already so we don't need to squeeze extra watts out of your amp 2. Some Gen 3 cabs have complex crossovers which make them more challenging to drive due to shunt coils dropping the impedance and series caps pulling the phase negative. 3. The Gen 3 cabs have huge thermal power handling so they don't get as hot and increase in impedance as much when you're playing loud. 4. Our Gen 3 cabs have big well-tuned ports which act as a capacitive component pulling the phase negative again. The end result of this is that the Gen 3 12XN cabs are all nice loads to drive. The Retro 10CR driver was designed as a 6 ohm driver so our new 6x10" would be 4 ohms. The final driver design we settled on is a particularly easy load to drive with the minimum impedance in free air not dropping as low as the norm. The hybrid resonator enclosure further raises the average impedance in the sub 150Hz region. There is that added capacitance higher up though and it's a series crossover so it drops the impedance more than a parallel crossover would. Also with six moderately large voice coils there's a lot of thermal power handling and thus minimal impedance rise due to heating. With the performance and tone we were getting there was no need to try and squeeze the impedance lower for more voltage sensitivity so the Retro Six10 was left as a very easy to drive 4 ohm nominal load. The Retro Two10 is simply one third of a Six10. Hence the 12 ohm nominal impedance with one third of the drivers, crossover and wiring loom. I realise that designing around six 10" drivers is unconventional but it just makes more sense to us for use with old school / valve amps than the "rarely loud/fat enough" sealed 4x10" or the "usually louder/fatter than you need" sealed 8x10". Yes our Retro10 cabs aren't technically sealed but they're more like sealed cabs in terms of sensitivity than ported cabs. It may be a more difficult marketing challenge than selling an 8 ohm 2x10" but hopefully our target market will understand! So, finally back to the 4 ohm 2x10". After we put the Retro Two10 on our site there was quite a bit of impedance related discussion online and I went back to look at our various documents and measurements. And that got me thinking... Almost every valve or solidstate amp on the market will drive a 12 ohm nominal load very happily - the only exception I can think of are valve SVTs which have 2 and 4 ohm taps but no 8 ohm tap. If we parallel rather than series wire a version of the Two10 then SVTs can drive a single cab without worry. Therefore we could offer a lower impedance alternative for SVT users (a great recording or small gig cab!) Due to the parallel wiring we'd need a different crossover and this crossover would have no capacitive component (reducing the negative phase angle) and would also raise the magnitude of the impedance at mid/high frequencies. This means that the lower impedance version would be a particularly easy load for its nominal impedance - so I did some modelling of a variety of 4 ohm bass cabs on the market, particularly focusing on the impedance minima and the phase angle at those points. We compared our model of the Two10 low impedance version to those cabs and it came out very well, especially considering that a simplistic analysis would declare it to be slightly lower nominal impedance. We need to test what happens in practice with a variety of solidstate amps whose minimum load is 4 ohms but based on all our measurements, simulations and the comparisons with other bass cabs I think it should be fine and thus can be deemed a 4 ohm nominal design. Sorry, that got a bit long! [/indent][/size][/font][/color] [color=#717171][font=Lato, Arial, sans-serif][size=2][right]Last edited: May 14, 2014[/right][/size][/font][/color][color=#191919][font=Lato, Arial, sans-serif][size=3] [color=#717171][url="https://www.talkbass.com/members/alexclaber.17037/"]alexclaber[/url], [url="https://www.talkbass.com/threads/barefaced-69er-thread.823993/page-11#post-15894787"]May 14, 2014[/url][/color] [url="https://www.talkbass.com/threads/barefaced-69er-thread.823993/page-11#post-15894787"]#203[/url][/size][/font][/color][color=#191919][font=Lato, Arial, sans-serif][size=3] [/size][/font][/color]

[quote name='goingdownslow' timestamp='1476882017' post='3158060'] How do you convert a 2X10 12Ω cab to 4Ω with just a wiring loom, is it magic cable? [/quote] The 'kit' you get includes a wiring loom, crossover and rear panel. I guess the magic's in there somewhere!

Yep - still £30. Ordered!

Singer / Songwriter - absolutely definitely.

I've had what I consider to be a lot of pedals on my board before now - think I had 8 on there at one time. I know that's nothing by some folks standards, but it seemed a lot to me. Gradually worked it down to being just a micro pog, EBS Billy sheehan deluxe, Sansamp Para Driver and a clip on tuner!