chyc

Hi all,

Just to jump on this thread to agree with everyone who says that Sandberg is amazing. Over ten years ago I went searching for my "last bass", the one that would see me through to the end of times. I went into every shop playing Fenders, MM, and the rest but nothing clicked. Long story short, one shop owner pointed me to a brand I'd never heard of called "Sandberg" and I fell in love with the range despite them looking so simliar to the other basses. It was the sound that drew me in. Speaking of sound, I was certain that the bass would be a MM style humbucker, but in the end, the California JJ (now TT) proved the most versatile and pleasant. I even narrowed it down to two seemingly identical JJs which sounded different enough that you could tell them apart in a blind test. As an aside, I realised then that buying instruments online is not for me.

Well, ten years have passed, and I've been true to my word in that no other basses have passed through my hands since (eagle eyed may see a different bass in my profile pic; I bought two basses that day!) Sometimes a little GAS has bubbled to the surface, but overall I'm satisfied that my search is over and resisting it has been relatively easy. At the time the bass(es) was a significant invesment, probably one I couldn't make now, but it's been a worthy one in my opinion.

The California JJ isn't an aged one, and this probably needs to be said that, while I'm no John Entwistle, the bass has been gigged and played extensively in that time and yet it looks as good as the day I bought it. In other words, if you buy a "shiny" Sandberg hoping it'll look aged after a few trips down the pub, then forget it: they're built like tanks.

Picture was taken yesterday next to my other old faithful of similar vintage: my Acoustic Image Coda III.

A bit of advice I wish I could give to my younger self is to buy headphones with replaceable parts, especially the cable. Pretty much every pair of cans I've owned that has failed has been cable breakage. Similarly I've owned some Sennheiser HD580s, and is on its third cable now. Official cables are much more expensive, but last longer than the eBay knockoffs.

I've tried re-soldering the contact points, but often you have to break the damn things apart to get at it, which kind of renders the exercise pointless.

This amp very much reminds me of an Ashdown ABM 600. I'm sure thats entirely coincidental.

3 hours ago, walshy said:

ABM 600. Mighty as a mighty thing! For £450 at the moment for B stock, its a no brainer.

Aaaand they're gone. You snooze you looze.

There's still an ABM-1200-EVO IV B stock in for £650, but I understand they're much heavier and not everyone needs that kinda headroom.

https://ashdownmusic.com/collections/b-stock/products/abm-1200-evo-iv-head-b-stock

Like @Dan Dare I'm hesitant to recommend anything without a budget, but I will say I own a 6.5" combo, and it's too good for practice in that it can get seriously loud and the tone is excellent: The GSS 06B400 Mini Bass Amp[1] at ~£300

https://www.guitarsoundsystems.com/gss-06b400-mini-bass-amp-c2x15043753

Your needs will probably be different to mine, but I bought it with the intention of gigging it with an upright bass. I wrote a review of it on TalkBass comparing it with my other combo, an Acoustic Image Coda Series III.

Hope that helps.

[1] Well, I actually got the more expensive coax version which goes full range and is fantastic, but for just bass guitar may not be worth the added expense.

Just now, ped said:

I use a lighting to 3.5mm cable for that. A guess Bluetooth would eat battery power? You could get a BT reciever and plug that in, which you could charge separately? 

Yeah, battery life would be worse, but a phone can send stuff to headphones and battery-dependent headphones can receive it so it can't be a colossal drain surely?

A BT receiver might be an option if the thing I'm looking for doesn't exist so thanks for the tip. It seems strange if an all-in-one system doesn't exist though. At home I have an Amplifi TT which does do what I want but is far too big otherwise (as well as being mains powered). Before I bought it I thought I'd never use the BT capability but since buying it I've grown to love the convenience.

Does anyone know if there's a headphone practice amp with Bluetooth capability? I want something I can put into my bass gig bag. The Ashdown Tone Pocket would be perfect for the lack of BT. I know it has a line-in, but increasingly phones just don't have that capability, and even if it did I prefer the convenience of not plugging it in. As an aside it would make for a nice headphone adapter for a phone for general use when not practising.

https://ashdownmusic.com/collections/accessories/products/tone-pocket-headphone-pre-amp

There are practice amps with the functionality, but nothing that I would consider portable enough to sling into a gig-bag.

Is there a product I'm just not finding with my Google-fu?

I'm watching this thread with interest as I have two amps that need to go in and I've been wavering because of the cost. Nothing major mind you.

Even if there was a mass shipment and pooling of postage I'm sure there would be some savings.  I don't need it back in a hurry, it's not like I'm gigging at the moment.

Something new to drool over, the Acoustic Image Coda Evolution.

Seems like an Acoustic Image Doubleshot, but with one 10" instead of two (should this be called a Singleshot?)

Not quite sure of its place in the market given its price to performance against the double shot. Does anyone here have a doubleshot? What are your experiences?

https://gollihurmusic.com/pickups-mics-amps-electronics/amps-and-speakers/combo-amplifiers/coda-evolution-speaker-cabinet-and-combos/

3 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

I hook my thumb over the neck apart from when I'm playing the E string, deadens it when I accidentally hit it with my pick, which happens quite a lot 😄

I use my right thumb for that duty, but I guess that'd be quite difficult to pull off while holding a pick

Personally I keep my thumb behind the neck, but by doing that I'm shutting myself out from the bow-and-arrow string bending that some bassists use. Looking at the list above, it looks like the big benders tend to have their thumb on display above the neck and the less bendy bassists don't.

Fretless bassists with no need for bending all seem to tuck the thumb away, so that may be the differentiator?

10 hours ago, Frank Blank said:

No. After reading comments from people far more technically knowledgeable than me on the highly informative...

 

I'm on page 6. Hooo boy I wish I hadn't started now.

On 15/08/2020 at 09:11, Frank Blank said:

My QSC K12.2 gives me a better response and sound than any trad bass rig I’ve had over the last forty odd years.

Do you use a sub?

2 hours ago, ped said:

Try clearing your cache memory and see if that helps!

Thanks. Unfortunately it doesn't work.

I need my fix on the move, but it's not a deal-breaker for me as I can just run Opera for the one site. 🙂

35 minutes ago, chyc said:

I don't usually use other browsers, but I tried it with Opera and the phone seems warm with that too.

This is wrong. I've left the phone idle for a while and it cooled down. Looks like this is just a problem with Firefox on Android

Whenever I go to Basschat on my phone's browser (Firefox) and leave the tab open, the phone's battery life plummets. It also gets quite warm.

I don't usually use other browsers, but I tried it with Opera and the phone seems warm with that too.

Anyone else have this problem? Is it the notifications system?

24 minutes ago, machinehead said:

Unless I haven't found it elsewhere on their website, Barefaced are not claiming the "cabinet rating" is 800W.  It's very clearly a recommendation for suitable amps.  If you follow the "cabinet rating" argument through you might argue that they rate their cabs as low as 150W.

That's on the barefacedbass.com website right? Yeah that site makes it much clearer what they mean, even though it seems to be quite glitchy and giving me "The requested URL was not found on this server" errors all the time for the same pages; the site looks abandoned.

I was looking at barefacedaudio.com which has

Quote

 

Max Amp Power

800W RMS

 

I now know that "Max Amp Power" is not the same thing as the thermal limit of the driver, which is lower. Wasn't clear to me however given I've seen e.g. "watts is watts is watts" elsewhere in other threads.

14 minutes ago, jrixn1 said:

Presumably you've already seen now, but they also claim "Power: 600 RMS" for their 1x12".

Yeah, that's high, if not 800W high. However there are certainly numbers on there that are raising my eyebrows in the same way that Barefaced's did. 30kHz upper frequency limit?! That'll be some nice string detail in the mix

Yeah yeah I now know that the number is meaningless. Doubly so since only cats and dogs would appreciate the subtleties going on up there.

1 minute ago, Muzz said:

Barefaced offer a try before you buy/returns policy, so if you're serious, that's the first point taken care of...I'm not aware of any other manufacturers that do this.

That's a good point in their favour. As I understand it you pay the full amount up-front and on return you pay the return postage though.

As a point of information DB Bass offers this too.

20 minutes ago, chris_b said:

If you really have to know the numbers you'll have to build your own cab.

As a Barefaced user I don't need maths to tell me what I like about these cabs. I'll believe my ears rather than determining my sound by looking at a sheet of numbers.

I don't want to know the numbers. I want to make some kind of comparative evaluation using data online, prior to committing. If there were a shop nearby I could visit to compare cabinet X from Barefaced with cabinet A from manufacturer B with cabinet C from manufacturer D then I would do that.

I was looking at various cabinets and Barefaced stood out as having specs that no other manufacturer can touch, so much so that I asked the question here. From this thread is looks like

1. These specs are meaningless from any manufacturer (not just Barefaced) without bounding by other parameters
2. Barefaced define things differently to any other manufacturer

Now if BF genuinely think that these numbers are a better reflection of a cabinet's capabilities I cannot argue with that as I'm not the expert. I may take issue with the fact that BF claim the measuring of watts is an inaccurate measure, then redefine the meaning of cabinet rating so that their wattage rating is higher than others' definition. I may then take further issue with how difficult it is to find that definition (it's on a different website).

The take-home for me is that

• Numbers don't matter, you need to try the cab
• Barefaced numbers, if not misleading, would have misled me had I not asked here
• People seem to like their cabinets

On  the first point, I would perhaps use a dreaded car analogy. If a car can do 0-60mph in 3 seconds you can probably safely infer it will have a high top speed rather than a top speed of 80mph. However, you should not buy a car based on its spec alone, you need to try it.

Carrying on with the car analogy, I'd be a bit miffed if a car manufacturer quoted their 0-60mph as X seconds while burying in their small print that this was measured on a downhill as down-ramps to motorways are commonly when you need the better acceleration.

However, if they sound great, they sound great. I guess I'll never know as the first point is a good one, and I'm a little bit miffed (rightly or wrongly) at feeling misled on the second.

8 hours ago, paulbuzz said:

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.

I'd accept that. However I would say that after they've made the case that wattage is misleading, Barefaced have not given the numbers that could give a clearer representation of their cabinet (an on-axis SPL or x-max for example). Instead, they've overloaded XXXW rms with their own meaning.

Surely I can't be the only one to have tripped up on that? Their definition isn't on the same website , and I appreciate the posts that have given the link to that as I'd missed it.

I still cannot fathom in my head why a bigger box can allow for 200W extra power from the amp though.

22 minutes ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

Go to the Cabinet Design pdf link on the driver catalog page.

My estimation of Eminence has shot up considerably. Those PDFs are incredibly insightful for someone like me with no access to their Eminence Designer software. Off topic but you've given me a lot to digest. Thanks.

12 minutes ago, GisserD said:

im willing to bet cash money that a one call to bobby or alex at barefaced will give you a straight and reliable answer.

Good suggestion! If I can find a spare moment I'll give them a call to find out how they're calculating these numbers.

14 minutes ago, itu said:

This thread is again one of those "gimme 31.5 Hz @ 1 kW, and quickly". These numbers tell very little about loudness, or performance of an amp or a cab.

That's not what I'm asking. What I want to know is why Barefaced's numbers are so different to every other manufacturer out there. Have they got some secret that nobody else knows about?

The numbers they give don't tell the whole story, I get that.  So why mention them? And even if they don't tell the whole story, how can adding extra cabinet space via a tweeter increase the handling by  200W?

47 minutes ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

Is that range quantified by a measured SPL chart? If not you have no idea what the tolerance is. +/-3dB is one thing, +/-10dB is something else entirely.

I cannot see anything about tolerances on the Barefaced website. Eminence define their "usable frequency range" in the most handwavy way I have seen.

Quote

This is the frequency range for which Eminence feels the transducer will prove useful. Manufacturers use different techniques for determining ‘Usable Frequency Range’. Most methods are recognized as acceptable in the industry, but can arrive at different results. Technically, many loudspeakers are used to produce frequencies in ranges where they would theoretically be of little use. As frequencies increase, the off-axis coverage of a transducer decreases relative to its diameter. At a certain point, the coverage becomes ‘beamy’ or narrow like the beam of a flashlight. If you’ve ever stood in front of a guitar amplifier or speaker cabinet, then moved slightly to one side or the other and noticed a different sound, you have experienced this phenomenon and are now aware of why it occurs. Clearly, most two-way enclosures ignore the theory and still perform quite well. The same is true for many guitar amplifiers, but it is useful to know at what point you can expect a compromise in coverage.

Even with this most generous of definitions of usable frequency range they've given themselves, I cannot see any 12" below 40Hz (except for the LAB12, which I'm discounting as it has a range from 25Hz-100Hz).To Eminence's credit, that's more than I can find on Faital's website or datasheets.

In any case, from what you're saying Bill, I'm inferring that these numbers that are on Barefaced's website are absolutely meaningless without bounding from other parameters. You've also got me wondering on how the BF range is quantified as I cannot find that mentioned anywhere