alexclaber

[quote name='Eight' post='445876' date='Mar 26 2009, 12:23 PM']Not so hot on my electronics, but was wondering if this would work? I'm just after a wee device so that I can easily/consistantly adjust the volume going into the amp when I change from playing fingers to pick.[/quote] Your hands can do this. It just takes practice! Alex

[quote name='EBS_freak' post='446778' date='Mar 27 2009, 12:23 AM']www.whenbearsattack.co.uk[/quote] Ooh, a trombone! And an equally motley crew in photos! Alex

Large diaphragm condensers work great on bass amps in the studio, I've got some fantastic sounds with mine when I was running a ton of effects through my Acme rig. Live I think you'll find an SM57 goes plenty low enough and high enough and is close enough to flat to accurately capture the relatively limited bandwidth of your TE combo. Some of the more expensive options go quite a lot lower but what's the point if your amp isn't producing any sound down there? Alex

[quote name='Hamster' post='446765' date='Mar 26 2009, 11:59 PM']Apostasy!! So you don't like your own cabs then! [/quote] Not you as well! I've had enough of my bandmates whining when I don't bring my new cab, all this "it's so much harder to hear you," blah blah blah when I use the house rig. Honestly, talk about spoilt! Alex

[quote name='Mr Fudge' post='446745' date='Mar 26 2009, 11:44 PM']Portishead, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and The Ink Spots? and Dr Who and Gerry Rafferty. I like the start very much.[/quote] Iggy Pop is definitely one that I hadn't realised until you said it - I love the whole vibe of The Stooges and his baritone growl as exemplified on The Passenger. Not familiar with The Ink Spots or Gerry Rafferty's music. The start (and its reprise later on) is where I'm particularly channelling one of my favourite bassists and his band. Alex Edit: Misused apostrophe.

[quote name='josh3184' post='446759' date='Mar 26 2009, 11:52 PM']whats the idea behind biasing? I.e. why? Just curious[/quote] [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_(electrical_engineering)"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_(electrical_engineering)[/url] Alex

Bass has never struck me as an instrument that rewards virtuosity in the obvious sense. Better to become a good songwriter/arranger/producer and then be able to provide the ideal foundation for your compositions and drive a band along from the back. 10,000 hours is an awful lot of time - I doubt I've spent that much time playing bass but my nearest and dearest may disagree... Alex

A new song, from Monday evening, see attachment! Prizes for those who spot the key influences... Alex P.S. That's the RIM Custom 5 being abused through a Peavey Mk IV which in turn is upsetting an old TE 4x10".

I suppose I shouldn't mention my old vocalist's Dad (himself a pro drummer who has one of Mitch Mitchell's kits from the JHE) picking up an Orange head at a car boot sale for £40 about ten years back... Alex

Good rant and in line with most of what I've picked up about valve amps. If kept correctly biased power tubes should outlast the electrolytic caps! To head off on a tangent, would I be correct in presuming that Class A valve amps don't have adjustable bias because the valves always have full current running through them? And Class B (as used in radio transmitters) have no idle current at all? Alex

[quote name='Zoe_BillySheehan' post='446336' date='Mar 26 2009, 07:19 PM']thank you and I wish i could sing! really do [/quote] Not being able to sing has never stopped me! (Well it used to but it doesn't any more - though it does mean my wife avoids my gigs...) I got sick of trying to find a vocalist and was already writing the lyrics and it just happened by accident. Rather like the bass cabs thing, who knows where life will lead you?! Glad you liked the tunes - hoping to do a whole album this year if we find the time... Alex

Great work. There's nothing quite so satisfying as getting songs down onto tape - I did all the production and engineering on the tracks linked in my signature and it is SO much work but it's always worth it once you've got the end product. Now when can we expect some vocals from you as well? Join us singing bassists! Alex

If you can't afford anything loud enough now then by buying something secondhand just to get by then you'll be able to upgrade later without the depreciation costing you. Check the 'for sale' forum on here! And whilst your amp is on the quieter side take the opportunity to teach your guitarist about the value of dynamic control and that the volume knob turns anti-clockwise too... Alex

[quote name='Monz' post='446059' date='Mar 26 2009, 02:55 PM']Now the stinger question... If they are so powerful do I need to get a cab capable of handling more juice? Like a 400W or 600W to match to the 200W head?[/quote] Although valve heads sound a lot louder they don't put out any more power than a s/s head run equally hard therefore the same rules of thumb apply. Alex

[quote name='spongebob' post='444905' date='Mar 25 2009, 12:41 PM']My 150w Trace has a single speaker.....so I would assume output would be fairly similar to the Mini Mark?[/quote] But what is that single speaker? For starters, how big is it? It takes almost three 6" speakers to equal the cone area of one 10" speaker and almost seven 6" speakers to equal the area of a single 15". Alex

Anyone can do one finger per fret in the first position if they pivot around their thumb. I can and I don't have huge hands and play a 36" scale - however I only play OFPF when I have to, the rest of the time the four fingers are across three frets, it's groovier that way baby. Alex

[quote name='phatbass787' post='445743' date='Mar 26 2009, 10:11 AM']I've got one of these with my superfly and it sounds great, 4 ohms and 550 watts handling, couple of these with a LG 1000 and youd be away! [url="http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/product/37072-ashdown-superfly-2104h-cabinet.html"]http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/product/3707...4h-cabinet.html[/url][/quote] Unless the Nemesis cabs have a serious sensitivity or excursion limited power handling problem then that isn't going to be any louder. Just because a cab has a thermal rating of 550W doesn't mean it can handle 550W where it counts. Anyway, extra loudness is not the solution - learning to play together is. Alex

[quote name='Jamesemt' post='444732' date='Mar 25 2009, 09:26 AM']No only one guitarist - but he does use a 1kw PA just for his guitar...[/quote] That screams "TONE PROBLEMS" to me. If he's like most guitarists then he'll have too much bottom in his sound and if he's going through a decent PA whilst you've only got a couple of small bass cabs then you don't have a hope of being heard. If you're fighting to be heard you will never succeed unless you have lots of power and speakers and are willing to go so loud that the drummer sounds quiet in comparison and the vocalist loses their voice. The extra 3dB output from a 1000W vs 500W won't do anything useful for you, especially as it's unlikely your cabs can handle the full 500W in the lows. Sort the guitarist's sound out and try to use the acoustics in your favour instead of ignoring them and letting them suck out your tone and output. Alex

One of the greats is gone: [url="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090325/people_nm/us_motown;_ylt=An0qcFRhKqDYCyRVYo4pgUNxFb8C"]http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090325/people...yRVYo4pgUNxFb8C[/url] The three Motown drummers are all gone: Uriel Jones, Richard 'Pistol' Allen and Benny Benjamin - those cats could teach any drummer a thang or two! Alex

An isobaric cab has the drivers in pairs, one behind the other, firing in phase. The air space between the drivers stays constant, hence 'isobaric' or 'constant pressure'. Because the drivers are working in unison you only get the acoustic output from the front of the front driver and in a ported isobaric from the back of the back driver exciting the port. Hence the radiating area is half as large as you'd get from two drivers conventionally mounted, thus the lower sensitivity. The sensitivity is lowered further because you effectively have one driver with a cone that is twice as heavy. The upside of this is that the increased cone mass means you can get the same frequency response from a pair of woofers in a 20 litre cab as you would get from one woofer in a 40 litre cab, but with lower sensitivity. Isobaric cabs used to be more popular because woofers tended to require very large cabs and had relatively low thermal power handling. By quartering the volume required to get a given frequency response and doubling the thermal power handling you could get a nice small sub. However nowadays the main restriction with woofers is their excursion limited power handling and isobaric cabs don't give you any advantage with that, as each pair of drivers can only move as much air as one driver in a normal cab. If you want small and deep I think it makes more sense to get something like an Acme cab where instead of pairing woofers in an isobaric cab they use one woofer with a heavy cone to get similar results at less cost and weight. Alex

Ampeg did some isobaric cabs a while back as did EA (though theirs may have only been pre-production). Should go very deep for their size but will be very quiet for their speaker complement. IIRC an isobaric 4x10" will have the same sensitivity as a 1x10" though the excursion limited power handling will be twice as high. They do look cute! Alex

That's the optimal flat alignment - less expensive woofers usually require a seriously big box for this. A smaller box will give you less deep bottom and a hump in the midbass but that's what many commercial cabs sound like. I find WinISD Pro far more useful because it also gives excursion plots which are very important when dealing with bass. Alex

[quote name='mrdirtyrob' post='444545' date='Mar 24 2009, 11:59 PM']Fair point. Still a good deal though, it's like getting a 4ohm cab for very cheap.[/quote] Corrected that for you. Alex

[quote name='ARGH' post='444015' date='Mar 24 2009, 05:42 PM']Distance of the bow of the neck in relation to the strings.....in other words 'Action'.[/quote] Relief is the bow of the neck. Action is the sum of the relief, nut height and saddle height. Alex

[quote name='uzzell' post='444017' date='Mar 24 2009, 05:44 PM']Please forgive my ignorance but how does this work. I'm in the market for either a small combo ar cab too and this comment has intrigued me.[/quote] Basically the electrical power from the amp goes into the speaker which attempts to turn it into acoustic power in the form of pressure waves in the air. This process is extremely inefficient with most of the electricity turning into heat and only 1-2% turning into acoustic energy. If all else is equal then the larger the total speaker area, the greater the conversion efficiency. Furthermore when you put 150W of low frequency power into a typical loudspeaker in has to move rather a lot to turn that into big bass waves. An expensive 4x10" cab will handle at best about 300W of lows so you can imagine that a 2x6" cab has no hope of handling 150W of bottom. The 15" in a TE combo will handle quite a bit more of your 150W than that 2x6". So there you have it: Efficiency aka sensitivity is the first thing that matters. True low frequency power handling (not the manufacturer's claimed power handling) is the second thing. You need enough of both to get loud. See these 1x15" cabs awaiting being finished off - 150W into all four of these at once will flatten even the loudest rock drummer. It's not about using electricity, it's about moving air! Alex