Phil Starr

Disagreement is good. It shows that no-one is gospel and that there are more than single solutions that work. I've seen Steve's band two or three times. They are seriously good and very seriously loud. When I saw them down in The Marine in Sidmouth they were ear splitting, but Steve is right the mix and clarity is really good. I haven't heard anyone else that loud recently though.

I think you've answered your own question here. It's largely about what venues you play and the drums. In most of the gigs I play the drums are a problem, they are too loud. why on earth would you wantto amplify something too loud already? I.ve some drummers who don't get that and more than once I've miked up drums with no intention of putting any drums through the PA. IME few gigs 'need' mic's on the drums. If I don't need to mic drums then do I need bass through the PA? Even if I want to reduce the backline levels most PA speakers will handle a bit o bass reinforcement so the only time I need subs is for really decent sized venues and for outdoor gigs where the bass is lost with no rear walls to reinforce the sound. I've got subs, they come out literally once or twice a year. I like the backup of being entirely self sufficient and picked them up cheaply but need them? Well only you can decide that. Probably not for a pub band or one that goes out without a sound engineer.

What speakers are you looking at, dual coils are pretty specialised kit?

This is all really exciting, I feel quite left out and can't wait to see all the reviews. Well done everyone

I don't think there is a lot of difference John, I suspect they are made from the same pulp. Obviously brands vary with softness being traded for strength. Also I think we could be over thinking this. If the tissue is thin I just use more layers, the composite is going to be stronger than the latex or the paper on it's own and if you build it in layers it's eventually going to be stronger than the cone itself. Anyone doing this is just going to have to estimate the balance of strength and adding weight and stiffness. I try to offer conservative advice so using baby wipes which contain plastic fibres is introducing an extra material. It might be worth a try but I haven't tried it so won't recommend it. Silk is light and strong and might be good if you had it but again I don't know because I haven't tried it. All I can say is I've done the tissue/Copydex thing a lot and so far with no failures and no noticeable change in sound.

Copydex for me. You want something flexible and Copydex is latex based, effectively you are putting a rubber patch on. I layer up in stages with tissue over the tear. You need to have some sort of fibre to bridge the tear itself and it needs to be compatible with the paper in the cone as well as absorbing the glue well so paper fibre it is. I suppose you could use something like blotting paper but most of us have toilet paper to hand and you need to keep the repair as light as possible. I've done this a lot and no failures yet, some of the patches are over 10 years old. I'm not particularly clumsy, I repair other people's stuff.

We use a couple of RCF 310's for our loud semi-acoustic duo. (no drums though) and a couple more as floor monitors. Everything including bass goes through the 310's and they are perfectly adequate, I reckon a pair would be easily enough for bass with a drummer but I haven't tried it. Remember also that there is a limiter built into the amp even with the earlier RCF's and DSP in the modern ones so you pretty much can't blow anything as compression and limiting is applied if you push too far. The 710's should be better if anything. You could always add in a bass cab for the bigger venues but I don't think you'd need it.

So was I mmmnn

I had a similar problem with mine, it was the power supply capacitors for the pre amp. The construction of the amp makes it an easy one to repair and any competent tech should have little trouble in finding the problem and the parts are widely available. Shouldn't be too expensive. Unless you understand this stuff I wouldn't advise poking around inside. The power supply caps are there to store charge and they will do this even after the amp is switched off and unplugged. They can give you a nasty and dangerous shock.

That's really shocking, even with the state of knowledge back in '69 (just before Thiele and Small) we knew better than this. The idea that we would put out something like this in 1980, well it's no wonder the UK lost it's reputation as a serious manufacturer of pro audio. As a speaker it isn't really worth repairing. if it's a valued piece of vintage kit you won't be able to source replacement parts easily, but someone might be able to recone the broken speaker. Only the OP can decide it that's a project you want to take on.

I tried Elixirs and they do last well, I left them on for a couple of years and when I changed them there was an improvement in sound but not that dramatic and the degradation in sound is so slow you don't really notice. My regular strings are Dean Markley Blue Steels which last really well, I like the sound too and reckon to get a year out of them. I was changing Rotosounds every 3 months. I don't like a really bright sound (for me the Roto's sounded best about 4 weeks old) and I don't use a pick which I guess would be tougher on the coating for Elixirs

Social Club shudder.... Did they tell you to turn down and then stop you for the meat draw?

Ha ha recording studios, it's like stnding in front of all of your friends with no clothes on. I hate the sound of my bass playing on recordings, you can hear everything completely unvarnished, Every undamped note, timing error, squeaks on the string, irregularities in volume etc etc. It's all very humbling. Then the recording engineer says; "bass and drums are OK, let's go again with guitar and vocals". At gigs I'm expecting someone to come along and tap me on the shoulder and say "come on now, you don't really play bass do you?" We've all been there.

You are getting great advice btw. You've hit the barrier of taste I think at this point. You can see the advantages of a speaker with better excursion, the effects of cabinet size and so on. the question is what you want to get out of this. Is the extra bass of some of the designs important to you or can you afford to sacrifice that for other things? Speaker design is like squeezing a balloon a bit, as soon as you change one thing something pops up elsewhere. I think you've come a long way, you've clearly made the Pulse the one to beat and it's a good choice given you aren't intending to put a huge amount of power through it. you can see why the Beyma was so attractive. With Qts of 0.38 it is neither over nor under damped and so gives a fairly flat response in a range of cabs. The extra excursion (Xmax) is what makes the maximum SPL look so good but you aren't going to put 350w through it. You might be better off seeing what the spl is at the maximum power of your amp and comparing that. I'm glad you stumbled on the Beta 12A2 I love the look of the big wide upper peak in it's response. Eminence are just a little more expensive over here but one of the advantages of Eminence is that they don't change their designs too often and replacements and re-cones are possible if they go wrong somewhere down the line and they have proven longevity. A really safe choice. I think of them as being like Levi's, if you can't be bothered to shop around you know you are buying a quality product which won't date or let you down. Mind you I've had no hint of trouble from the Beyma's. B&C, Celestion are good too. Of the speakers you've looked at the Beyma is going to give you the most bass and the flattest response. In a 50l cab it doesn't sound 'hi fi', at low levels it sounds clean, unremarkable, the top end is there but more laid back than most commercial cabs, cranked up it sounds immense, huge but IMO it needs a bit of mid boost to cut through the mix and in a small space the bass needs trimming. The Eminence 12A2 is going to sound quite old school, in a practical sized box you'll get the 100Hz boost and that midrange boost as well, a smiley faced eq in fact. It's an engaging sound. The Celestion Pulse is going to be somewhere in between but maybe more similar to the Eminence. you could make a good argument for all of these speakers but it looks like a 12 is going to be your thing.

I think my initial advice that you should only use this at moderate volumes until you have this sorted is good, as everyone is saying you may do further damage. Is this a bit of historic kit you want to keep original, something you particularly love or just an old system you happen to use? I suppose I'm asking how much money and effort do you want to spend on it? Have you emailed Marshall? Is this a sealed cab or is it ported?

I'm having trouble finding the speakers, is that a 2x10 in a separate cab?

assuming it is a 4x10? the speakers are most likely wired in series/parallel, ie they are wired in pairs first and then all together. this means you can only disconnect them two at a time. They are then effectively using the whole of the space they were once sharing with the other pair. This will affect their bass response and may end up with some excessive excursion/reduction in power handling. You'd be fine at moderate sound levels but not in a gig situation. Time to look to see if you can source the blown speaker.

Ha ha let me know how you get on, The H4N is a bit big so I was thinking of the H1 as a lighter, less obtrusive solution for when I'm playing with someone else's PA and had no control over monitors. The crucial thing is the mics and the mics in the H4 are brilliant for the money. As said the in ears only work if you have isolation so one ear doesn't work. It will also fail to protect that ear and they will end up with hearing loss, as I have. An audience mic is a good call

Are they happy to try things in the rehearsal room? Try your singer with some closed back headphones and an ambient monitoring system. I used a Zoom H4N recorder taped to my mic stand but all you need is a mic and something which will take the signal to headphone level. Using an ambient system was revelation, I was in the room but the sound was hyper real. When we weren't playing I could hear everything everyone was saying, no sense of isolation at all. When we were playing I could hear every instrument clearly in the mix and by sliding the Zoom closer to me I could put my vocals exactly where I wanted them in the mix. Best of all I had a volume control so I could simply turn the whole band up and down as I wanted. You can also tune out the drums by simply pointing the mic's away from the drums. The thing is this shows people what they have to gain. No amount of talking will do that. 30 secs of singing and hearing your voice over the rest of the band will show how it works. Moving the ambient mic/recorder towards the singers mouth to make him louder will make sense in a way that telling him you are going to buy a mysterious box even more complex than your current mixer won't work. OK you'll have to swap in ears for the 'phones and the mixer for moving the mic around but they'll understand the goal. Stop talking about saying they can do their own mix, start talking about giving them their own volume control.

No, you will be sharing the power equally between the two speakers so 450W will go to each. The amp will only produce it's full power into 4ohms so using one speaker on it's own for smaller gigs will be fine too. Don't worry about it

I know, should have warned him I've dragged the design details up to the front in each case though.

oops

If you do decide to go ahead with the SM212 then there are a couple of threads about the cabs you can read

Do say I've seen both bands several times. Andy Powell used to play Honiton Motel just down the road from me as a warm up for his annual European tour, it would have been rude not to go. A mate of mine is a big Wishbone Ash fan and I've seen the Martin Turner version a couple of times too. Very different approaches Martin's band is a recreation of WA with Martin front and centre. Andy Turner who I think has never really stopped gigging is more of a band, they'll play their latest songs as well as Argus and whilst the old ones are recognisable there's a lot of improvisation too. Both are good bands, I have to say Andy Turner is a lovely guy and so is Bob Skeat his bassist.

Where are you based in the UK? If you are anywhere near the West Country you are welcome to try out the SM212. It is loud and it does do lots of nice clean bass, the good excursion means that the transfer magnitude (basic frequency response) is maintained at high power. The response is pretty flat over most of the frequencies you get from the bass. Subjectively it means that it seems to lack a bit of top end as most other bass speakers either have a a bit of extra output above 1000Hz or are used with a horn. I gig with a pair of these (no horns) They are just kind of effortlessly bassy, in small rooms they can sound muddy but great in larger venues. I've designed a smaller cab for them too (30litres) which reduces the deep bass and creates a 3dBish boost around 100Hz which solved the problem of overwhelming bass in smaller venues. If I do go out with one cab it's the smaller one I take. That B&C has a bit of a top end boost which I currently dial in with a bit of eq on the Beymas, They are neo's too which are much lighter and would also work well in a smaller cab. Choosing a cab size for all your speakers helps you narrow down the choice but remember each speaker will work better in a cab which matches it try experimenting with smaller cabs and changing the tuning for the B&C and you might find a better compromise. The output at 100Hz needs to be pushed upwards and you can afford to lose a little below 50Hz. a smaller cab will also reduce excursion and improve power handling where it currently dips.