alexclaber

1/4" jacks are fine with those current levels but the lack of locking and the shorting when they're inserted or removed can be worrying with some amps (particularly class-D ones if they aren't well protected).

It's not from the review, which was originally here: http://www.talkbass.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/489/title/el-whappo/cat/28

[quote name='jonnpip' timestamp='1383030195' post='2259200'][b]AccuGroove review: The El Whappo The new barefaced cabs use same speakers so ive read,[/b][/quote] This is absolutely not the case - no-one else uses our speakers, they are our design and ours to use alone! P.S. The AccuSwitch doesn't do anything - it's a 4 ohm cab, whichever position the switch is in. Don't flick it to 8 ohms and then try to bridge an amp into it that can't run down to 4 ohms bridged or something may go pop in your amp! Nice sounding cab, despite the AccuSwitch travesty...

[quote name='RandomBass' timestamp='1382957922' post='2258347']I had this before with one of my previous amps. Wouldn't it be nice to have a good all valver with a typical 19" or so width?[/quote] Mesa 400?

To clarify my comment about "a heavy right foot", that does not mean uncontrolled stomping or poor dynamic control - timing and dynamics come first! Obviously a kick that is tuned low will not be as loud as one that is tuned higher - the same physics that applies to loudspeakers of loud vs low vs large, pick any two, applies to drums. A big kick tuned higher (Bonham, Baker, Moon) will be a lot louder than a smaller kick tuned lower. Obviously it's personal preference and it's a pain moving big kick drums around but then again, if you're playing smaller venues and the bass rig is good then a big loud kick drum means you wouldn't need to bring a sub! I love that sound but it's a bit of a niche one nowadays...

Two comments: 1. If you're only putting vocals through the PA you really don't need subs and if you're using mics on vocals you should use highpass filtering to remove the unnatural added bottom end from the proximity effect and to remove air noise thumps, which both sound bad and waste system headroom thus increasing distortion. 2. I really like unamplified kick drums but you need a drummer with a sufficiently heavy right foot and a kick drum which is both large enough, tuned correctly for live acoustic use (rather than studio/miked use) and damped correctly likewise (much less damping that most use nowadays) or it won't be loud enough to balance with the band (plus a lot of drummers can't balance their kick/snare relative levels unless they're miked). My last drummer had two kits, one with a 22" kick for smaller venues or miked situations and one with a 26" kick which was SO much louder.

We'll be sending Roqsolid dimensions asap for all the cabs! fatback, I think for more normal upright bass requirements the Big Twin 2 would be complete overkill as the Big Baby 2 goes well into 'can't hear the drummer and the singer is giving me looks of hate' SPL territory on its own. However, in the process of creating a cab which combines the best aspects of the Big Twin T, S12T and S15, I think we've ended up creating the ultimate rockabilly slap cab!

[quote name='EBS_freak' timestamp='1382101318' post='2247969'] It's a pub band. He wants a small, portable rig. I reckon that a 2 powered tops, 2 powered subs (with built in crossover), 2 powered monitors, beats 6 passive cabs which would require 3 poweramps and some sort of crossover (e.g. on desk or external unit).[/quote] You're quite right. But I think that with our new drivers you could use two tops and a 2U rack with a class D DSP amp, plus whatever you use for monitors and that would be it. No need for subwoofers unless you're going very loud. If you need a subs we could make a single lightweight sub and build a 2U rack into it, thus making it effectively an active unit which will replace two typical active subs. However, we'd need to see how much bottom our drivers can bring when up on stands and thus losing the boundary reinforcement off the floor.

This is very much the niche we've been wanting to fill with our first PA cabs but we haven't had time to get any to market what with all the bass cab stuff. I strongly suspect that a modern lightweight power amp with DSP driving two Big Baby 2s could outperform many top + sub rigs at a fraction of the size and weight. DSP could be used for room space correction as well as EQ and crossing over to an optional sub for bigger/outdoor gigs. Anyone local want to test such a rig once we have some time?

With the Big Series cabs: Generation One = Big One / Big One T Generation Two = Big Baby / Big Baby T / Big Twin / Big Twin T Generation Three = Big Baby 2 / Big Twin 2 Most of the G2 cabs have serial numbers on the inside!

[quote name='thebassman' timestamp='1381686295' post='2242326']......a few more pics, including the new input/ control panel on the back.[/quote] There will be a rear panel label on all the generation three cabs, with all the info printed on them, including the serial number, but we haven't had time to design them yet! They'll be self-adhesive and once they're done we'll be posting them to early customers to apply themselves.

Thanks gaf! I hope that with the new Generation Three cabs we've addressed all the aesthetic/cosmetic issues you've commented on - let us know if/when you get to see one. Tonally, it's impossible to keep everyone happy but I also believe with the new models we've come much closer to making the (impossible) ideal bass cab - time will tell...

On the top of Everest the cab would be quieter and the bass response thinner. The treble extension from the woofers would be increased too. The thermal power handling would be about 25% greater. However, your bass playing would suffer a lot more than the cab at that altitude!

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1381580018' post='2240885']Will one BF cab really match an ampeg 6x10 and I fail to see Mark bass being not nearly an equivalent either, I just don't.[/quote] The Generation Three 2x12" cabs (Super Twin & Big Twin 2) will both play louder and put out more bottom (if you so desire) than an Ampeg 6x10", and everyone who's heard one so far has loved the tones on offer. The first production Big Twin 2 out there was gigged last night, replacing an Aguilar 4x12". Regarding the aesthetics, its new owner said the following: "The cab is stunning by the way. Congrats on the finish, it is a stunning cab."

[quote name='fretmeister' timestamp='1381499933' post='2239932']Anyone with a BF close to Northampton? [/quote] The specific Barefaced cab matters - if they all sounded the same we'd just make a small cab and a large cab and that would be it! And the Generation Three cabs sound different to the previous ranges.

The number of Barefaced cabs being sold secondhand seems remarkably low to me, especially bearing in mind the ones that are sold because the owner is buying a newer/bigger/smaller/different Barefaced cab. Also, they don't all sound the same - although there are lots of very happy Compact owners we have a lot of customers using other Barefaced models who would absolutely hate gigging with a Compact all the time, they'd never get their sound, not even close! Horses for courses...

Lawrence, I'm glad you (conceptually at least!) like what we're doing, it's been a massive project over the last few years and we're thrilled with the final products. Dave, I hope Friday's gig doesn't befall any more unfortunate events and the new cab brings the rock - your rehearsal tone bodes well on that front!

A lot of bass amps have some kind of highpass filtering, whether it be in the form of a PA-style steep highpass filter in the 30-40Hz region or a more gentle LF roll-off, often starting higher up. I've measured or seen plots of various Trace and GK heads gently rolling off from around 80Hz, Markbass and Genz steeply at 40Hz, TC surprisingly steeply from about 80Hz, etc. Both Mesa and SWR don't tend to have any filtering, so they go very low and cause woofers to wobble back and forth. The SWR Grand Prix preamp did have a switchable 30Hz highpass, which was a nice touch that was missing on their heads. An interesting example of how much difference a filter can have is using my Avalon U5 rig with a passive bass (some active basses already have filtering) and my QSC PLX. The QSC has a 5Hz subsonic filter whilst the U5 is DC-coupled. The QSC also has 30Hz and 50Hz switchable filters - the former stops a lot of cone wobble with no change to the tone. The 50Hz filter removes almost all visible cone movement until you're playing incredibly loud but you can hear how it tightens up the sound and also makes the sound smaller. Bear in mind that if a filter is a 30Hz filter, that means it's 3dB down at 30Hz, not that it starts working at that frequency, so for the best balance of tone and loudness, if you're not going through a big PA, then filters are best off being on the lower side, at ~25-35Hz, so they don't mess with your tone. There is a risk that if you put too much effort into reducing cone excursion through the use of filtering and limiting that you'll be able to raise the average power level dangerously high without hearing the warning sound of increased distortion caused by over-excursion. Also, bear in mind that the less a loudspeaker moves, the lower its thermal power handling will be because that movement literally pumps the hot air out of the motor.

You're not looking hard enough! The speakers in the (2nd gen) Big Twin move as much as those in the (3rd gen) Big Twin 2 for a given SPL at a given frequency. However they'll move much less with an amp with inbuilt steep highpass filtering and often also less with an amp with lots of power and good damping (they wobble around much more with a 200W valve amp than with a 1000W s/s amp).

I'm not particularly appreciating being (mis)quoted to attack Blue Aran. As I said at the start of the thread the Kappalite 3015 is a great driver for bass guitar but as with all drivers it needs to be use appropriately. Put it in too high-tuned a box or too low-tuned and/or large a box and it will not perform as well nor be as robust because its excursion-limited power handling will drop well below its thermal power handling. Use it in the right context and it will not only outperform the vast majority of commercial cabs but will outlast them. To continue the Aston Martin analogy, this is a case of putting a Aston engine into something with completely the wrong gearbox/final drive, so to use it at motorway speeds you're running well into the red on the tacho, and there's no rev limiter (compressor/filtering) to protect the engine. The photos show horrible over-excursion damage. Either this was used in a very loud band where the bassist could barely hear his cab, or the bassist didn't know or care that those nasty over-excursion sounds were bad, or it was being used as the bottom half of a stack so the sound from the cab on top was obscuring the distortion. The 3015 starts exceeding 10% THD at 5.9mm excursion and that distortion rapidly increases as you push harder. Because the voice coil is leaving the gap it takes an ever increasing amount of power to push it all the way past the 5.9mm Xmax to the 11mm Xlim where the coil hits the backplate. Knowing how robust kapton voice coil formers are, the damage pictured doesn't look like it was one freak incident but repeated impacts - maybe only one loud bit of one song but those impacts were both hard and repetitive. It's user error, caused by putting a driver into the wrong cab and then being unable to hear the audible warning signs or ignoring them. Make the cab large enough and/or tune it low enough and it's surprisingly easy to ask too much of a woofer in the critical 60Hz range - that's how I wore out my Acme 10"s (though it took 900W per 2x10" cab to do it!) If Blue Aran were advertising "buy this driver to upgrade your bass guitar 1x15" " then they would definitely share the blame, or if they advised the customer that this was a good use for it. I don't believe that's the case, though please correct me if I'm wrong. It's horrible to see such a nice driver wrecked like this. If Eminence sell a recone kit (they do for some Kappalites) then it would be repairable for less than the cost of a whole new driver.

[quote name='Bassman Steve' timestamp='1380876324' post='2231708']I must confess that this is where I struggle. The argument goes that a smaller speaker can move the same amount of air as a larger one (if I understand it right) with the main difference being excursion. Ok, so if the area of a circle (I know it's not a flat circle) is Pi r2 so that is either 36Pi or 52.25Pi. To accomodate the difference the excursion is longer which means the speaker is travelling further and taking longer to do it (surely)[/quote] Yes, the excursion is longer, so you're absolutely correct on that front. By the way, it is a flat circle - it's the projected area that matters, not the actual area of the tone. Where you're getting confused is regarding your "taking longer to do it"? query. To generate sound requires a speaker produce a pressure change, so it isn't about the position of the speaker, it's about its rate of movement. To put it mathematically, if you have an equation stating the position of the cone with respect to time, then the SPL generated is proportional to the differential of this equation. The transient response which you're worrying about is the differential of this second equation. The time to get from A to B doesn't matter, the raw acceleration is what defines the transient response. In developing this new 12" speaker we've actually improved the transient response vs its 15" predecessor - the main true reasons are the motor strength : cone mass ratio and the stiffness of the cone. There are also other things that improve the perceived transient response, the key one of them being improved dispersion so you hear more direct and less reflected sound.

If it really bothers you then you could wire the drivers in series rather than parallel, which will take the level down by 6dB. Opening the cab up without permission would void your warranty so it depends on how much it matters to you!

There was indeed a 2x8" called the Boxster, sized to fit said car.

I'm quite jealous, I really like the ethos behind that Toyota/Subaru pair. The forthcoming mid-engined Alfa looks nice too. Sadly I am many thousands of bass cabs away from such dreams becoming reality...

[quote name='Twigman' timestamp='1380624330' post='2227919']Was going to get a Porsche but there would've been NO WAY I could carry ANY cab in one of them....[/quote] First world problems...