alexclaber

[quote name='stevie' post='440163' date='Mar 20 2009, 11:54 AM']No offence, by the way. I know you are trying to bring knowledge to the masses, Alex, but that post had me laughing out loud. [/quote] Glad to be of service. Alex

It'll only be about 4dB louder than an LMII. Note that 10dB louder is twice as loud so it's like going from a car that can cruise at 60mph to one that can cruise at ~80mph. To continue the analogy if the rest of your band and your typical gig requires you cruise at 70mph then you might like the improvement but if 50mph is all you need then there's no point. It will take a fairly substantial cab to handle that extra power though - would be nice with the Big One for instance - but most 4x10"s couldn't take advantage of the extra power. So if your current cab is limiting your loudness then a bigger amp won't help. Alex

Billy's Q&A from BP mag: Question:"My amp makes a loud, annoying pop when I turn it on, what can I do about this?" Answer: "I used to have a loud, annoying pop too, but my mom divorced him." Legend. Alex

A fantastic marketing concept... Alex

[quote name='chris_b' post='439227' date='Mar 19 2009, 01:42 PM']Are these crossover improvements available as upgrades?[/quote] None of the cabs with a crossover have gone out yet, so it's a case of perfecting before selling! Running out of time though, needs to be sorted within a couple of weeks... Alex

Ben Folds Five - fuzztastic early stuff. I don't think it's a wise move to have the bass and guitar both fuzzing at once unless you're totally happy to be lost in the guitar sound. It may be workable though if you have a ton of bottom and top on your fuzz sound whilst the guitar sound is all midrange, so you can hear your fuzz above it and your bottom below. That kind of extreme EQ might must do the trick. If I'm doing fuzz bass though I'd rather I'm the only fuzz on the block. Alex

Last night I had the fun of doing a whole load of impedance measurements and then redesigning the crossover. Barefaced Top Tip: Crossover design has a similar ability to make time vanish as does a large LSD hit whilst listening to Pink Floyd - but it does your head in even more. New design should be flatter through the mids and more open in the highs. Alex

Certainly no hard in adding a neck pickup to a P-bass - if you don't like the result just cover it up with a new pick guard. Could add a stereo output jack and then run one pickup clean and one distorted for maximum RAWK. Alex

Awesome. The most artistic I've got with my rig was filling an empty 2U space with half a dozen oranges (it went with the band name). Alex

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='438899' date='Mar 19 2009, 08:12 AM']I've been meaning to ask: What's the max. power you can bung at one of those before it breaks? I can't see it mentioned on the page anywhere. I appreciate it's an 8ohm cab so it would probably have to be a big amp, but I'm curious.[/quote] If the amp is running clean and you're not boosting the lows then probably over 1000W. The driver is thermally rated at 450W which means it's been run with a signal peaking at 1800W and averaging 450W over a multi-hour period without damage, and Xlim is high enough that it won't die from over-excursion with that amount of power right down to 40Hz. If you get really silly boosting down around 30Hz then you could kill it with a lot less power but the same is true of any ported cab. Realistically the sensitivity is high enough that few players would need more than about 200W to gig with it which gives a nice margin of error! Alex

[quote name='bass_ferret' post='438843' date='Mar 19 2009, 01:12 AM']Alex is working on some Barefaced 12's that look good as well.[/quote] However I suspect the [url="http://barefacedbass.com/thecompact.html"]Compact[/url] would do an even better job - a single cab that is lighter than one GS112 but louder than two of them! Alex

The Sennheiser PX100 work really well with iPods - the hyped low frequency response makes up for the rather weak headphone amp on iPods which doesn't have enough oomph to get good bass from a headphone with studio-flat response. The stock headphones really are spectacularly poor. Alex

[quote name='LWTAIT' post='438510' date='Mar 18 2009, 05:51 PM']why not just play a righty upside down like hendrix did?[/quote] Hendrix didn't have a damn great long neck attempting to nosedive - that upper horn is really rather useful. Alex

I know someone who bought an old JPJ Alembic for an obscene amount but then you'd pay a similarly obscene amount for a new one too! I'm guessing those paying top whack for old Fenders are predominantly collectors/investors rather than players. Alex

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='438400' date='Mar 18 2009, 04:09 PM'] Oh and don't tell anyone else but I recently stuck a nearly new set of DR flats on a Warwick bass for a laugh. [/quote] My one's now wearing tapewounds and it's still sounding annoyingly bright! Alex

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='438400' date='Mar 18 2009, 04:09 PM']As for the Berg cabs; am I mistaken or did I read that they are supposed to be 'Hi-Fi' or 'bass-shy' because they had a nice fat full tone last night.[/quote] They're high sensitivity and low excursion drivers. That means they don't require much power to get loud but also means that their max clean LF SPL is relatively limited because they can't move all that much air before going past Xmax. However with four tens in unison that should be pretty high SPL - I think if you were using one cab on its own then you'd notice the limitations much more. Drivers like this do tend to sound rather nice but you have to be willing to carry enough of them! Alex

I'm so underrated I don't even get rated on the underrated threads. I was listening to Korn's first album in the car today, really groundbreaking tour de force. Fieldy rawks! And Duff does a great job on Appetite. Alex

Pumping and breathing are common characteristics of incorrectly used compressors - and as the one on that amp only has one knob then whoever designed it has screwed up the attack and release times. The old TE dual band is quite nice apart from its amazing ability to remove everything below 80Hz from your sound. Alex

[quote name='EdwardHimself' post='429361' date='Mar 9 2009, 01:49 PM']Okay obviously any bass that costs £700-2000 is not going to be "mass produced" by machines like a light bulb but it's probably going to be more mass-produced than a completely handmade bass like the amlebic.[/quote] I have two basses that were both completely handmade - an '87 Warwick Streamer that cost me £500 secondhand and a 2008 RIM Custom 5 that cost £1500 new. The former was a bargain, the latter was extremely good value and I've never heard anything whose tone can compare. Alembic have that most desirable of business characteristics - a very valuable brand! Alex

Rickenbacker copies, what a legal quagmire! Alex

I don't think it'll be as hard as everyone thinks - I've messed around on left handed basses now and again and although weird its not as bad as starting from scratch. I personally believe that left handed guitars and basses should not exist - how many left handed violins, pianos, saxophones etc are out there? Alex

Probably no louder or deeper but it should have more punch and growl to the midrange, which hopefully you'll prefer! And be quite a lot lighter with it. Alex

[quote name='bass_ferret' post='437546' date='Mar 17 2009, 05:02 PM']big baby looks cool - whats the size and weight looking like ?[/quote] Same dimensions as the Compact but a few lbs heavier due to the added midrange speaker and crossover. Will completely and utterly flatten every other 1x12" you can buy and even many 4x10"s! Should have the first one done some time in May. Alex

I haven't got round to modelling it but as Qts is high you should be able to tune it low as Stevie suggests to prevent over-excursion below the tuning frequency without losing bass sensitivity. It's certainly a far better driver than the comically misapplied Orange label 'bass' models which have hardly any Xmax and really high Fs - weird! Alex

I'm still in shock that Bob Babbitt was drafted in the replace the bass tracks on the first Talking Heads album... Alex