Phil Starr

These look really great, thanks for the tip.

My coffee time teaser for today (mainly because I'm not 'allowed' to do Wordle) So the first thing to understand is that balanced line signals have an earth that is at 0V and two other signals +ve and -ve. The two signals go up and down at the same time but when + is going up - is going down. When the signal gets to the amp a transformer or a bit of electronics turns this back to an unbalanced signal. In a jack the tip should be +ve and the sleeve is the earth the ring should be -ve and inside the jack socket there are three sprung contacts that touch the plug when it is connected. Many jack sockets also have switches built in operated whenever a plug is inserted, so this can complicate the wiring. If you use the mono jack (the bottom one) then the - and the earth connectors in the socket are both touching the sleeve and are short circuited. What happens next depends upon the grounding arrangements. Since it is working for you then there are no issues. It doesn't work on my Flow 8 for example unless I only insert the plug halfway.

I possibly didn't think this one through did I? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. So could you drive headphones with the line output from a mixer? Well yes, what I didn't say was if I thought it was a good idea and the answer is probably not, most of the time. The outputs are almost always balanced mono so you'd need to wire a connector specifically to take that to your headphones and drive both sides. Secondly not all headphones have the same impedance so the mis-match may be serious enoughthat you'd lose a lot of output. I'd be checking the manual before starting this. If a new lead is going to cost you £10 then you are well on the way to a simple beltpack headphone amp. The Behringer P2 is £23. Ali Express are doing one for £13 that looks very like The Behringer and a passive one for <£10 I'm not really sure why you wouldn't go that route. As you were

There is no mystery about headphones and line outputs. Just looking at the Sennheiser IEM100 because that's waht I have to hand they are a 20ohm load and produce 115db for a 1V rms output or 0dbV. Line level is usually quoted as 0.7746V into 600ohms. In practice the output is often fine up to +10dbu and almost always +4dbu or 1.228V rms. So whilst there may be an impedance mis match (leading to a lack of current) a line output from most mixers will go well above 1V and deliver 115db right in your ears, plenty enough to cause you permanent tinnitus and with a good seal able to hear yourself. The headphone amp just gives you a better impedance match between mixer and phones, with a bit of extra gain with and a volume control. Correction: I was just musing about how levels here. I don't think this is a practical or sensible way to go when headphone amps are so cheap. Please don't do this at a gig and read my next post

Hi @scrumpymike can you send me details for payment please

I suppose I'm saying there is something in between. which is probably not particularly helpful The main thing that you want from a bass cab is that it is rigid and strong and as airtight as you can get it. In this case the cab is going to be portable so it would ideally be lightweight and tough enough to take knocks along the way. Already you have to compromise, lightweight timbers are almost always softer than those with more densely packed fibres so even in an ideal world there are choices to be made and probably no simple 'right' answer. Plywood is a man made material, there are lots of variables in it's manufacture. The species you use for the plies can vary and wood itself is a variable product between trees and even within a single tree there can be variation in the wood. Then you have variations in how the wood is handled and the resins and glues used to bind the plies together. There are British standards for the glues used and the resistance of the cores (based upon European Standards) and grading for the quality of the face veneers A-D commonly B-BB where B is the best face but not perfect and BB is meant for the inner surface often with small patches but still good enough to take a paint finish. The last ply I bought from B&Q was graded B-BB. The thing is there is such variation most of us won't try to specify. Often the better grades are only available in large qualtities so you aren't going to be able to specify. I have some block board in front of me with tropical hardwood (FSC) outer veneers 1.8mm thick. Three 8x4 sheets cost me an arm and a leg and had to be supplied by my timber merchant as part of a much larger order. These were for some furniture btw not for cabs. The reality is that unless you want to spend a fortune and hours searching you are pretty much stuck with the ply supplied by the big sheds. If you buy hardwood ply which is grede 2 or 3 (exterior grades) then you are going to get a reasonable quality product. I've got mine from Wickes over the years as I can go in and sort out the best sheets in the pile. If you look along the cut edges you can see if there are a lot of voids and if the edges are separating or splintering. Honestly I doubt if you would really hear much difference in the completed cab. I know a couple of people here who have made a cab with softwood ply I shudder to think about it, but they built a cab that worked. So my advice is to buy the best ply you can find, be aware of the gradings but don't agonise if the choice is down to take it or leave it, you can still build a great cab. Probably the lower grade is ging to affect the finish more than the sound of the cab.

As far as I know B&Q only do one grade of hardwood ply. It's usually got one good side and one where the knots and voids are patched on the outer veneer. It's good enough for a speaker that is to be painted or vinyl covered but subject to a bit of splintering if your saw blades are a bit dull. Wickes do a better range of plies, though sadly they have stopped doing their marine ply. Saying that I haven't visited them for a couple of years as I have quite a lot of ply in stock. Mine is currently from a batch Jewsons got in just before covid described as Poplar but actually Chinese sourced and made from two varieties of 'Eucalyptus' only one of which is actually Eucalyptus sp. The thing to understand is that the English names aren't strictly defined, you need the latin names to be sure what you have. So Poplar isn't always Populus sp and neither is Birch always Betula sp. When you are looking at species that grow in China they have no English name, so they can call them what they want. A lot of Russian 'birch' was exported from Kaliningrad so became Baltic birch. You can't even rely upon counting the plies as a test of quality, generally it is quicker and cheaper to fabricate fewer plies but if the wood is poor then they might take thinner plies. It's a bit like choosing a wine on the basis of the dimple in the bottom of the bottle.

I'm so pleased that you like it. I've used mine at rehearsals with a moderate drummer and a Gnome sitting on top. With a second cab you should be able to gig with most bands. I hope other people are inspired by you to give it a go. Well done Rob

I don't have one of these but there seems to be a simpler way which gives you better control. The Rolls has a built in DI splitter for the instrument. Plug your bass into the jack 'inst in' Your mic into 'mic in' Use the 'mic out' to send to the PA Use 'left out' to send your bass to the PA, 'right out' to send to your bass amp if you have one. Ask foir a FOH mix without bass to feed into your 'line input' You now have complete control of the mix in your in-ears and the PA is getting a clean feed of your bass and mic. The feed from the bass is isolated through a transformer and there are ground lifts on both feeds to the PA should you need to kill any hum p

I'm happy to come up with the cash, and to bring a pot of something to eat.

I wonder if bluetooth that works consistently is a better idea than wifi that is so inconsistent that you have to take a separate router? As it happens I have a Flow 8 sitting next to me which I use at home. to date I've had zero problems with the Bluetooth even in the next room. Using this mixer I think I'd only need the remote option when setting up just to check FOH once the gig started I'd have the physical controls on stage with me. You wouldn't expect it to compete with A&H the CQ12 is £150 more expensive and the physical controls more limited. Yamaha do mixers with a similar ability to do everything with Physical controls but these are way more than double the price of the Alto. Price wise it fits into the Behringer X18 sort of bracket and a few other stagebox mixers.

I've been absent from this feast for a while. Interesting to catch up on developments. The Swiff definitely looks like an interesting option. I'm still wired but if I went wireless the Swiff is really attractive. I'd have thought that offering your singer stereo would be where I might go first if you have a spare aux. Or try it yourself. Just knowing what advantages it brings might be useful to know when the next upgrade comes along.

I rarely play my banjo nowadays but I don't think of it as a sustaining instrument, that big old skin moving in opposition to the strings is going to damp the energy fairly quickly. Harmonically the banjo is complex and the skin is going to be tuned higher as you tighten it. I can only imagine that tightening it will just shift the resonance so the sustain would be shifted to different notes. The general concensus seems to be that increasing the mass of the bridge or the skin will increase sustain, at the expense of volume. Theres a a thing called Mikes Banjo Mute which might help. It might also be worth looking at how your strings are sitting in the nut movement there will kill the sustain. How old are your strings?

I've just stumbled upon this and it might interest people looking for a new mixer. I stress that I've not seen one yet or tried it out but it looks like a really useful addition to what is available and has a very different approach to what is already available. It skips on the touch screen and everything is 'physical' controls; note the parenthesis. You can control it with an app but that is via bluetooth not via a router. To me it is set up for live work more than a studio it only seems to allow two channel recording and it has a very physical, practical set of facilities. Andertons have it in for £499 So basically it is a 12/16 channel mixer with 10 XLR/mixed inputs and a couple of stereo inputs, standard stuff. Four main outputs, four submix outputs and three Aux outs. Mixing is via 6 capacitative touch faders, effectively a separate touch screen for each channel, No more problems with dirt in the faders I suppose. Faders are arranged in two banks Everything else is accessed by touch switches and rotary knobs at the side of the screen, which is not touch sensitive it is just a display. Eq is fully parametric with three bands and HPF on every channel. Compression is available on each channel as is phantom power FX is a comprehensive collection of reverb and delay, again with all the parameters adjustable by the rotary controls. To me the facilities are pretty much all you need for a typical pub band and very similar to the offering I have on my RCF mixer. This is going to be much less flexible than the Behringer X18's but so much more intuitive than any of the current stagebox mixers. The use of physical switches and rotaries is going to be completely comfortable for anyone who has used an analogue mixer and much better/simpler for anyone mixing from on stage. All the channel fx are available with one click and completely flexible, you can do as little or as much as you want. I have to say that this might be a game changer for many bands, physical controls are so much simpler when you are also playing. Alto have clearly looked hard at the shortcomings of other budget mixers and this looks to have come up with fixes that make sense. I've no idea of the build quality or long term reliability of all those knobs and buttons but Alto have been producing reliable and well loved speakers for a while so no reason to doubt them. I haven't found a manual yet so there are many questions I couldn't answer, primarily if you can save scenes and waht is on the app but this looks promising

Hi David, the truth is I haven't tried it yet. I'm not really big on recording other than laying down some bass lines so my duo partner can do solo gigs without me. We've been busy together over Christmas and we have a couple of gigs this month so nothing has been pressing. We've also had a lot of guests staying over the festive perion but the last one left this morning. I'll try something as soon as I get time and let you know. Everything else about the Flow 8 is better than my old Alesis so I'm expecting it should be OK in that area but the proof is in the eating. We will see