Phil Starr

Early days, how many bands are still going two years after forming/re-forming. I'd be running with both, giviing them my all and enjoying the ride, it'll be a long ride before you get overwhelmed. If both bands are popular and successful well there are worse problems for a musician.

A snapping sound doesn't sound good, it may be the speaker coil hitting the back of the magnet assembly If you hear this you need to back off the gain/volume and maybe roll off the bass. If this is indeed what is happening then your speaker will break fairly soon. Speaker watts and amplifier watts are measured differently and I doubt that many if any 10" speakers could 'handle' 300W at low frequencies without distorting or hammering the coil to destruction on the back plate of the magnet. More watts aren't an option with this speaker I suspect. Getting a second matching 10" speaker should give you nearly 6db extra sound and help a lot. With DB you may get feedback issues though. Where is your speaker? if it is on the ground then it will be pointing at your knees or your calves and not your ears. Raising the speaker or tilting it to point at your ears with a stand will improve matters a lot. Turning the bass down a little and turning the midrange up will also help. Turning the bass down will decrease the excursion your speaker is failing to cope with and the midrange is what we need to hear any detail in the bass above the rest of the instruments. Pointing your cab at your ears and re=eq'ing will help you in the short term and give you time to think about next steps. Good Luck

I liked those two songs and it's easy to see why you have a hunger to do it again. Good solid playing too so I can see why you wouldn't want the standards to fall there either. I absolutely don't think your expectations are unreasonable but they are quite high which means your odds of achieving them are reduced. You are asking foir a high level of creative input into the music that means you would also expect to be one of the bands driving forces and effectively a band leader. You've been co-writing songs so you are obviously a co-operator but also quite driven and demanding which probably comes with being creative. Your tastes are probably more niche than you think, I had to google all the bands you listed, the 90's not really being my decade. You've been playing for nearly 40 years so you are probably late 50's so the people you want to hook up with are probably a similar age. You are fishing in a diminishing pool. Your contemporaries will have their peak of work and family commitments and many will no longer be playing, those that have continued throughout will be in established bands playing sets they are happy with. Many will have succumbed to the lure of covers bands and regular paid gigs. Existing bands looking for a bassist will want you to play their sets at least initially. I'm not saying thai to be depressing but it's a bit like dating in later life; by this time you know what you want, there's no point in an unsatisfactory relationship but at the same time dating is more demanding than when you were younger and more pliant. It's worth thinking about what is really essential and what you might be prepared to compromise on. I suppose if I've any advice it's maybe to look for a creative partner you can work with. Two of you are halfway to forming a band and between you will be a strong driving force. There are plenty of fine musicians who are not particularly driven but like to play with a properly organised going concern. Anyway good luck with your search, I hope you find your people.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if this is repeating information you have already. You need some searchable web presence IMO I'm not sure any particular source is 'best'. If you are canvassing venues or handing out business cards most people will want to check you out so a website they can be directed to on your card is kind of essential. A lot of people who aren't web savvy still use Facebook and that includes an awful lot of pubs and other venues. It is still the most widely used media for pubs and covers bands. You are kind of stuck with it useless though it is. On the plus side Facebook Marketplace is a good place to pick up secondhand kit The biggest problem with Facebook is that it is swamped by people with great social media skills and good looking pages for mythical bands that rarely or never gig. Nobod visits unless they know you already. Sound and fury signifying nothing! A dedicated website with a band specific domain name is really professional looking and gives you lots of control. Most function bands operate that way. Booking agents often insist on these too so if you have multiple agents this is a way to go. In a few areas Lemonrock.com is a great place to be as it is a dedicated site where venues will go looking for bands, I pick up a dozen bookings a year that way. It depends upon a certain critical mass however. In the West Country is is great and around St Albans and surrounding areas it is equally good, the rest of the country you'd have to check. Whatevcer you do make sure you have good quality sound and video for people to see so anybody genuinely wanting to book a band can check you out. A set list of other indication of what your music is probably a good idea too.

I'm looking for a big favour. Is anyone regularly travelling in my direction who could pick up a bass sub from Bedminster and meet up with me somewhere this end? Taunton or Yeovil would be good but I live in Chard. I can't get up to Bristol in the next couple of weeks. I'm happy to make a donationt towards petrol if that helps.

All cabs are 'designed' in that the cab is matched to a particular driver and if you swap that driver then it will be in a sub-optimal cab. In extreme cases you can seriously reduce the power handling of the driver and any sub optimal cab will have the bass response compromised. Fortunately most bass drivers of a given size and made for bass or PA use will cluster around a similar set of specs and work (sort of) in the 'wrong' cab. The crazy 8 has a tweeter and is a flat response design. The BassChat 8 has a single driver and hopefully is a 'musical' design. I did look at a wide range of other speakers for the BC8 and the Fane 225 is the best option for this design. That's not just the Thiele Small numbers but frequency response sensitivity, excursion and even price. The other thing is to be wary of shopping by spec. Partly because adverts lie. Also you probably don't want any output below (arguably) 50Hz or so, particularly if it is in a domestic environment where room dimensions are probably smaller than the 30Hz wavelength. The BC8 has -10db @ 45Hz which is pretty good, more importantly it is fairly flat though the whole of the bass range giving good rendition of the crucial second harmonics of the bass. Rather than thinking about the specs think more in terms of wht you are trying to achieve musically and practically.

Still the recommended driver. Here's the 8" cab

Sorry I haven't found time to model the two speakers but @David Morisonhas modelled the bass response and it is just as you would expect from the changes they've made. I'd say that for bass guitar the 12CMV2 is the better speaker of the two for bass. It's also increased in price by 60% since I recommended it and is now in a price bracket where there are quite a few rivals. https://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=LAVWSN12250AF is a lightweight Neo speaker at a surprisingly low price https://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=FANSOV12300_2 currently looks a beter bet than the 12CMV3 and there are a few more speakers which are possibilitiesThe Celeston Pulse 12 looks promising. I note that you ay this is for home use mainly. The advantage of the 12CMV is that it is a high excursion speaker and will threfore go louder than some of it's rivals. The spec of this design was to build a single driver cab capable of live work with a loud drummer on it's own. For home use it is overkill. The 8" design would be better sounding and have a deeper bass at the expense of a lower but still good maximum volume The 110T would give you a really clean sound and isn't far short of the 12 in volume. I've a wide range of cabs here and it is the 110T that I gig with most frequently. It's full range flat response, really compact and portable and loud enough for 60% of gigs and pretty much any rehearsal

PS this probably belongs in the Amps and Cabs section rather than PA Welcome to Bass Chat btw.

I've had a brief look, they've changed the cone a little lightening it by 10g there's a corresponding increase in sensitivity and they've changed the suspension as well a little. the coil and magnet remain the same so power handling and excursion limits remain unchanged. The HF response of the speaker has changed with more noticable HF breakup in the older version. That's to be expected with a different/less stiff cone and a smoother response might have been what they were aiming for, though it may be a cost saving thing and they may just be rationalising so they can stock fewer cone types by sharing across different models. I'd probably go for the Mk2 if you are building without a tweeter as the cone breakup gives you a boost in the high mids which will help you cut through a bit more in the mix. The differences aren't huge though. I'll have a look later and re-model the system in WinISD to see if there is anything unexpected going on Thanks for the heads up, this is still a good value for money driver so I'll check it is still suitable. Are you planning on building the 50l or the 30l cab?

I think you'll find that settings are saved to the mixer so you will need to be connected. The tablet is just a control surface and that makes sense, otherwise you would lose everything if you used a different tablet.

If you are using an x32 then this looks like a great way to go. Never having used one (and apologies if this is a false steer) the behringer offers a digital snake/ultranet system with loads of add ons to send individual channels to a DAW or their personal monitoring system and I'd be looking to see if that might be utilised too. If you can send 32 channels to a DAW you ought to be able to send them to FOH. I almost always find provided PA's a problem. It's usually at an event where there are multiple bands and only the headline act gets much co-operation from underskilled techs who are reluctant to change a system they don't fully understand because it has been hired in and set up by the hire company. You may of course find that the better ones already have split the feed between FOH and the stage monitors. I suspect whatever you do will involve some negotiation but most should cope with the simple 2x8 splitters you propose and the loom gives and extra option. I'd love to see their little faces when you suggest unplugging 5 mics and 6 instrument feeds, some of them stereo and relying on someone elses snake for the FOH sound

It’s good to see/hear that it is still being debated and that minds are still open in the team. If we are honest they often aren’t kept open by some in the ‘political’ threads. It’s a shame that sometimes people forget their manners in political debates and it’s that behaviour that needs to be kept out of BC not the debate itself. I love the early discussions of the big issues in BC. It’s rare to get the chance to talk politics with people who come from a different background to ourselves. We all live in bubbles where we are rarely challenged. If our friends disagree with us they are often too polite to disagree. The only thing we all share is music and bass. For the rest we are strangers and we should expect to be challenged. i can understand why the mods don’t want to referee the political debates. They often start well but end up with a couple of the usual suspects trying to score points off each other on page after page. Moderating this must become tedious. I’m of the opinion that the earlier debate is worthwhile and would love to see more of it. Maybe allow free debate but shut it up after it gets repetitive and or rudeness starts to creep in.

I’m absolutely finding that bookings for the duo are a lot easier than for the band at the moment. We’ve turned the set around but I’m sure price is just as important. As you know a lot of pubs in the SW are pretty small and I’ve often wondered whether a band ever made financial or practical sense for the smaller venues. I think the combination of Covid and austerity has made a lot of places re-evaluate their entertainment budgets also. I feel bad about it but we’ve looked hard at what we offer as a duo and upped our game. We’ve programmed drum tracks and added a few rhythm guitar backings which has opened up a lot of the cover band repertoire to the duo so we are effectively undercutting the market for the full band. Everything is easier with a smaller outfit; fewer egos, easier to get together for rehearsals, quicker set ups, everyone pulling their weight and of course more money with fewer mouths to feed. Fortunately money is not that important for me. The band is more fun and more challenging so despite the lower pay and extra stress it’s where I want to be. When the band really gels and the room is responding there’s no experience quite like it.

That would be asking a lot The 112 has state of the art drivers and one of the best crossovers you'll ever see in a bass cab and it costs maybe 6x the price of the little 8". You should however get quite a 'grown up' bass for such a small cab and a nice musical sound but nothing like FRFR. Anyway I hope you like it