Phil Starr

I may be able to help with the lift Not literally of course, and you may not thank me. It involves another build. I enjoyed playing around with my 15 and the Bash coincided with a couple of people asking for a 15" design. So... I've quietly adapted the design I have to be an 'Easy Build' project and when the drawings are ready it will be good to go. It weighs in at around 14kg at the moment which for me is a one handed carry.

I ran sound at free festivals in my 20's. Turnarounds averaged 15mins but were very band dependant. You never knew what you were getting but the pro's were always easiest to work with. Steve Winwood turrned up with Traffic refused to go on stage 1 because of the sound and wandered across to our stage listened to the band I was mixing and asked to come on. Are you kidding me! . A total gentleman, no fuss: "I'll play and you make it sound as good as you can" The easiest band I ever had to mix for. They knew what they were doing, the onstage sound was great and all I really had to do was make it loud out front. They even said "thanks" at the end. Sometimes it isn't the sound guy.

As @Bill Fitzmaurice has said I did a blind shootout of six speakers ranging from 6" to 15" at a couple of bass bashes this year. All eq's flat and diven at the same volume by identical PA amps so no tone shaping taking place. Even when I told them what they were listening too people couldn't reliably list them from smallest to largest. The favourite was an 8" cab which a number of BassChatters are now building but all had some admirers. If I did the same next year with different drivers I'm pretty sure the favourite would be a different cab. After the demo I had the 15 out so I used it at a couple of rehearsals, with a TE Elf it sounded great but not special, with a Warwick Gnome it sounded special. Neither amp is flat (and we've measured them) and the speaker certainly isn't flat but the Eminence Deltalite 15 suits the Warwick Gnome and the high efficiency of the Deltalite and limited top end suit the Gnome. I am a scientist and can use measuremnts to understand what is going on but using your ears is still the only test that really matters. We all percieve sound differently so personal taste is what matters in the end and if you are enjoying your sound you will play more and ultimately better. It just isn't the 15'ness of the speaker that's doing it

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. (I enjoyed looking up Hanlon's Razor, some variations can be quite rude ) These venues are probably barely breaking even and are giving a chance to musicians who can't organise their own gigs or get their own gear to a venue. A few turn up with no instrument. Some of the musicians will show litle respect to the gear provided. The 'roadie' doing the sound may have had little or no training and not be the person who set the gear up. They won't want to unplug anything because they won't know how to reconnect it for the next act. They may be there because they are the only person available and not because of any skill they have. The logistics of running a multi band event with people you've never met are overwhelming at times and with little or no funding the options of buying in or hiring equipment out of the question. The best thing you can do is look after yourself at these events. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Take your own gear and have it set up so you can do a quick change. Take your own DI and ask them if they want to plug into yours or where you can plug into theirs. If they don't put the bass through PA be prepared for that. If possible just set your stuff up next to or in front of their bass amp and do it quickly. Arrange a signal so you can turn up or down if they need you to. Give them confidence that you know what your are doing and that they can trust you to be helpful. Arguing with someone who is already anxious and under time pressure is never going to come out well so avoid giving them a decision to make.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/156983722403 A pair with free delivery, eBay is weird and wonderful. I hadn't looked at the delivery but it's fairly normal to see the same item from the same supplier with two different prices and delivery costs but strangely adding up to the same cost. Anyway I just wanted to show you what to search for. Thanks to @nekomatic for the idea which I have unashamedly copied. Beat it flat with a rubber mallet by the way, as the paint comes off fairly easily. It cuts with tin snips and with a disc cutter.

I have contemplated using welded wire mesh, as sold to gardeners. my thought was to use it to protect the speaker but to cover it with fabric. There's a wider range of fabrics available for hi-fi cabs but it's too flimsy to protect your speakers at a gig, a sub layer of mesh could protect the speaker but give you the look of fabric.

I'm glad to know I'm not alone

Thanks Rosie that reminds me. One use for these LED strips which I've exploited is to fix them to the speaker stands or even just place them in front of the stand. If it's out in the audience area they are really quite bright and it keeps the audience away from the stand avoiding the trip hazard of the stand itself and protecting the speaker from drunks. Oh the joys of gigging tiny pubs

Grille for the BassChat 8 Somebody, I can't remember who, used one of the round grilles for an 18" speaker and hammered it flat, I copied that idea for my cab it's a great way of buying just enough perforated metal to do the job and is purpose designed. it even comes in black £6 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/126150460308

Any sort of obstruction in front of the speaker affects the sound and if you listen to music then there is an audible difference when you remove the grille. Most Hi-fi buffs will remove them for critical listening and you never see them on studio monitors. However practicality reigns and bare paper cones would last minutes in most gigs never mind rattling around in the back of the van. Quite apart from the resistance to air movement the holes each act as diffraction points and a metal grilla as a diffraction grating. The hole size is important as is the ratio of open space. The effect is most evident at high frequencies and is clearly audible. I look for holes that are as big as possible whilst keeping anything as big as a pencil out. I'd avoid anything with more than 40% of the area covered so not all perforated metal sheet is suitable. Fortunately there isn't much high frequency coming from a bass speaker and so the sound isn't too badly distorted by the grille. Most commercial grilles will be OK so have a look at what the manufacturers do and you should be OK. However I do look at some cabs and wonder if style over substance isn't creeping in. You really don't need to put the badge in front of the cone.

One of the speakers parameters is Xmax which is the furthest the coil can move and stay within the magnetic field. Like a lot of these things which determine maximum power there are slightly different ways of measuring this but that's a technical thing which isn't really relevant to the cab builder. Basically Xmax is the furthest the coil and cone can move and beyond this point the speaker will start to distort and the coil will begin to overheat as it is outside the magnet which also acts as a chunky metal heatsink. Xmax is 5.5mm for the Fane 8-225 so that means the cone will move 5.5mm forward and 5.5mm back or 11mm in total at full power. so, 6mm clearance for the grille is needed. If you look carefull at the speaker you'll so that the cone is set back from the gasket and the frame by a few mm, roughly speaking the cone sits level with the front of the baffle so if the grille clears the speaker frame by 3mm you'll havbe your 5.5mm clearance. In practice you can allow a little more and 10mm in front of the baffle is what I would use as a minimum. Metal grilles get bent in use and pushed inwards so 12-15mm is my usual clearance. Oh I've just spotted David's @Mottlefeeder post. All he says is true. Some manufacturers do give figures like Xlim or even Xdamage to indicate the extreme excursion point. Fane don't give this figure for the 8-225 in their current spec sheet. 10-15mm clearance of the front of the baffle will be enough.

It's likely that the video shows one of the built in effects and these are usually accessible from the internal programming accessible from the four buttons on the back. On mine the display shows a four character code: 1J-- to 8J-- are all chases (which I think is the Knight Rider thing). The two last digints control the speed so 1J00 is slow and 1J20 is super fast changing the first number gives a different chase so there are 8 options and you just have to plough through them to find something you like. If this sounds like gobbledegook it is and the manual will be in mangled translation from Mandarin, no two lights are the same so if you want a second get it ordered before they re-stock. The good news is that it starts to make some sort of sense and once you've got on top of this light the next one will seem simpler (probably ) Make note of any settings you like so you can get back to them

I'm not sure if what you have is the same as mine. It looks like the same case and set of lights but the programming may be different. Mine operates in1,2,3,4,6,7,12, and 24 channel modes depending upon whether you want individual control of one, two, three four or eight sections seperately. some modes give you access to the built in programs too. I also have a remote control. On the rear panel I can select the built in programs and adjust things like speed and sensitivity of the sound to light. Start off by finding the intensity controls for red green and blue, you can then at least control the colours and their intensity from the rear panel and via DMX if you choose. There should be a 3 channel mode which does this.

I think you'll be pleased with that, it's a lot of light for the money. You'll probably not want it shining onto your faces though, full on it is pretty bright.

On the serious side, don't solder your mains cable, if you do want to tidy up the wire ends (and escaping strandd of mains cables are a hazard) then you can use a crimp connector over the stripped ends. You often find these on the few wired plugs around. I prefer wired rather than moulded plugs as I often chnage out the mains cable, either because of wanting a different length but also so I can change to a nice flexible cable rather than the overly stiff plastic that a lot of gear comes with. However I don't think I've ever had a moulded mains cable actually break and wonder why I look down on moulded mic/guitar cables which frequently need re-soldering?