Phil Starr

Yes I'm continuing with the Beymas as the basis for experimentation. I'm going down a different track to Stevie and John at the moment in my thinking, accepting that design is a compromise and looking for simple solutions that gig well even if they aren't perfect technically. In this case we've seen people arguing for years that anything above 6-8kHz isn't necessary for bass and that small cone drivers are more useful than horns. Now we are seeing the use of FRFR cabs for bass and the argument that control of dispersion of the middle and upper frequencies is a crucial component of a good sounding bass cab. I want to find out to what compromises are acceptable or even noticeable. There's a number of other issues I want to investigate too but I've got my own FRFR cabs and I want to compare them with using a 12+6 and a 12+3 (actually a 4x3 line source) The Beymas are a good platform for that as I they have good low frequency performance, are as flat as any other speakers in the midrange and don't have a lot of awkward personality issues meaning crossover design is simpler. They also have fairly typical sensitivity for a bass driver so if I do come up with a worthwhile DIY design it can be upgraded with a lot of other commercially available alternatives for the self builder.

I had the Behringer B205 personal monitors, their version of the Thomann one. Actually a clone of the Mackie. They are really good in a noisy band environment and you can have a personal mix if you get a feed from the PA. I A/B'd them with the Mackie, nothing in it, if anything the Behringer was more tidily put together but that may have been just luck on the two I had in front of me. Studiospares do their own version of the 'Box' version if you want to purchase from the UK. The Behringer was used as a monitor by my drummer so I sold it to him and upgraded to the TC one. It sounds much better and has a lot of useful extra features. Not least it actually just clamps onto the mic stand, fixing the Behringer/Mackie to the stand is impractical really as you end up with something that topples really easily. The TC works well as a monitor in my fairly loud semi acoustic duo too. In a band situation I'd go back to the Behringer style monitor in a heartbeat, The extra fidelity of the TC means feedback at lower levels than the Behringer which is very mid biased meaning it cuts through with the bit's you need to hear to pitch when singing. If you want a 'proper' floor monitor I'm using the Behringer 1320 The band love them and they sound unbelievable for the price, much more accurate than the Laneys, though see above for the feedback consequences of wider flatter frequency response. If you don't need the controls on the front of the speaker then the PA route of the ART310's or similar is a great solution. If the cost of that is too great then a couple of Wharfedale Titan 12's is the bargain of the moment, they sound really good on vocals and reliability seems excellent. I think DJKit had them on offer but search around

Funnily enough I'd intended trying out my 6 in a separate box first, I see no reason why you shouldn't build the horn and crossover into a separate box other than that you would have to carry it on gig days. The crossover design published wouldn't be right for a pair of 12's though as they would present a 4ohm load. Chienmortbb and I tried the mk 1 and 2 together at the last South West Bass Bash briefly, not an ideal environment as groups of bassists are as noisy as drummers but to me it sounded really promising.

After so much time I had to check to see what I'd said

If it's not too late. The enemy of wooden structures is water, both fungal and insect attack are more likely if the wood has a high moisture content. There are centuries old buildings with exposed wooden frames still standing but they are designed to keep the frames dry. It's worth thinking of how you can limit the water soaking into the wood and how it is going to escape. Shape the top to shed water or better still create a cap with a proper drip strip which will shed water as far from the written surface as practical. Then consider how you can mount the plaque clear of the soil surface and prevent wicking up the wood. You probably won't be allowed to use concrete but setting the wood into concrete stores the water at the base which guarantees rot unless you design a way for water to escape. If you make the cap and base sacrificial and aim to replace these fairly simple parts when needed you could probably double the lifetime of the memorial.

Tuning the cab to that frequency means the cabinet starts to resonate and produce air movement (sound) through the port. This creates pressure on the back of the cone and damps down it's movement so effectively the port takes over making the sound from the speaker. How the cone moves is controlled by the design of the speaker, the volume of the cab and the tuning. The trick is to balance up the speaker, cab size and tuning so the sound stays the same all the way down and all WinISD and the other programs do is to do the balancing act calculations for you. So, as the speaker starts to lose output the port takes over and adds in a bit more sound, ideally just enough to keep the sound level the same but lets you go deeper.

That's really useful information from Bill. I'd think most of the mids came from the other drivers in this cab, it may be that your 15 was itself swapped in the dim and distant past, you often find non original drivers in old cabs.

I hope he isn't a basschatter If it sounded bad to you then it isn't really something to worry about, if in your opinion the outcome wasn't right then you don't need to replicate his approach. It could be he simply wanted to replicate his on stage tone but be able to fiddle around with the on stage amp without altering the PA output, sensible if you don't have someone mixing out front. However this looks like a very expensive way of achieving something you could do in other ways.

If you are only doing it up to sell then it probably isn't profitable to do much but no harm in getting a quote for a re-cone. Old drivers turn up on ebay from time to time so if you are in no rush then keep looking and an old EV may come up. Or try and sell your old working drivers to someone who has holed their other speakers but has a working 15. There's always a market for old drivers for people who love their vintage gear. If the driver is working you can repair. layer up tissue paper and latex adhesive (Copydex) over the tear as if it is a fibreglass repair on an old rusty car. you might get away with an old Peavey Black Widow as a cheap replacement, it'll be roughly right in a cab of that size, not ideal but I don't suppose the old EV was either. Used they go for £30-40 on ebay

The horn cab probably has a crossover in it so won't matter as far as calculating impedance is concerned (unless you buy a second horn) If the other three cabs are all 8 ohms then you probably shouldn't use them all in parallel as this will present a 2.6 ohm load to the amp. combine any two of the three and you should be fine. Turned right down you can get away with a lot but at gig volumes you will be demanding too much current from your amp if you just keep adding cabs.

I suspect most of us don't play with great technique, that's true of my own playing. If you want to observe note lengths properly then the longer notes have to sustain. Equally if your damping is sloppy then a bass that stops ringing quickly makes my messy playing sound crisper. There's not many bassists who play a good staccato for example a lot relying on palm muting and a pick to get a more staccato effect. The other thing about sustain is that generally the lower tones last longer than the higher overtones meaning the timbre changes as the note decays, great if you are playing a pumping root note but not great if you are trying to play something more melodic. I wonder if we all subconsciously choose basses with just the right amount of sustain for our playing style. I tend to pick up my (medium sustain) J bass rather than my sustaining American Deluxe P bass which shows up all my sloppy mistakes. Just saying. The other factor is amplification, at high levels with a bit of feedback all basses sustain.

People might be interested in a programme just broadcast on the BBC 'Copyright or Wrong' http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08md9xf Food for thought anyway

I wonder if George Harrison ought to get his money back for My Sweet Lord. That court case seems to have been dependant upon a couple of short runs up and down the tonic scale. surely no more copyrightable than a chord sequence. Of course it wouldn't be George but his dependants and the Beatles agent was busily ripping them off and trying to buy the original copyright. So much copyright law has nothing to do with protecting artists rights and only to do with trading in ancient song rights.

We used something like this to hold them up https://www.toolstation.com/shop/Hand+Tools/d10/Builders+Tools/sd140/Extension+Support+Prop/p66745 though ours came from Lidl

You need to give us an idea of budget. If money is no object there are some lovely sounding and small combos that would do all you are likely to need. The AER Amp One and the Markbass Alain Caron models come to mind. Or one of the 3-500W class D lightweight amps with a decent 12" speaker if you don't mind separates. Your choice there is pretty unlimited but if your budget is limited to a Rumble 40 then you are asking a different question.

New original rock bands? Rock is the music of my generation, the music of 40 years ago. It's a bit like asking why no-one writes original Dixieland Jazz, original Blues music or even original Britpop. Styles just come and go. Don't get me wrong I love all these and more but whilst there will always be people who love this style or that and will write tributes in the style they love most creative people will push the boundaries on from the music they grew up with. We're several generations on from true Rock so why would you expect people to doggedly stay in one place. There are plenty of successful bands and musicians around, music goes on and keeps changing, good luck to the kids there's no reason for them to humour our tastes. At least so far fashion still demands drummers and bassists

Back to the spec of your speakers. 300W continuous is the rating of how much power your speakers can dissipate as heat. Without getting all technical that means that you can pretty much use them forever with an amp of that power without them burning out. Programme means that if you play average music through the speakers they should be OK. It isn't measured in any way and is just the continuous level doubled. it's a made up thing really. Peak value is meaningless really, the speaker would be ok if the peak only lasted a fraction of a second and didn't contain any bass. PA engineers will/should know the physics and sometimes choose to use high powered amplifiers for PA, they know if they filter the bass and have compressors and limiters on the amps they can get away with double or more of the power handling because they can control the peaks. Basically what you have are 300W speakers (and that is what most 12 and 15" speakers will handle of any brand despite the advertising claims) and until you understand all the technical stuff stick to an amp which will develop that power.

Those Wharfedales will blow any of the other speakers you are looking at out of the water (both for sound levels and quality) and will take bass at semi acoustic duo levels all day. The Thumps are 6dB down on them in terms of sound output. The only problem is the weight (I use the active versions) and the need for a power amp but with an active desk you have that covered. There really is no point in taking a sub to reduce weight or trips to the car, a dedicated bass amp for these medium levels is likely to be lighter and smaller as well as more versatile. Save your money towards a better PA like RCF or QSC, until then the Wharfedales will do you proud.

The biggest problem with a guitar combo will be the speakers which aren't designed for bass, you'll probably blow them unless you cut the power by a lot. If you just want something at very low volumes then why not get one of these, basically a bass pre amp with all the tone controls you need (but not as many as you might want of course) and a bit of overdrive if you need it. Take the output from this into your guitar combo and keep that volume right down.

They are 2.5 mm and the rating is conservative as people have said. Celestion's Xmax is based on the dimensions of the voice coils and magnetic gap, they'll do a little better in practice. They'll do as well as most of the drivers used in commercial cabs though you'd want two if you were needing lots of low bass. They are 15's though so if you wanted to build a one cab for small gigs/two for bigger venues solution they'd work well. It is a good price for Celestion Neo's though.

I'd avoid any compression on the MG unless you really know what you are doing. They really increase the likelihood of getting feedback, especially if they are used on the vocal mics. I only use compression on the kick drum. Turn them all right down to zero before you start.

Re reading this thread I think you are on the edge of this being worthwhile at the moment. Your PA amp is pretty limited, it only produces 160W/channel into 8 ohms and 300 into 4ohms according to Behringers own manual. the 450W on the front is a peak rating not RMS. If your Peaveys are 8ohms the system won't be loud enough for bass at rock band levels. In any case by putting all your bass through the PA you'll be pushing the PA to it's limits unless you accept lower sound levels than most pub bands. Then there's the question of monitor mixes, basically you have two mixable aux channels which are set up to run the internal effects engines (echo/reverb) but which can be disconnected or paralleled by inserting the right sort of jack into the fx sends. Not complex but you'll need to read the manual to get it working. Assuming you'll use some echo on the vocals that only leaves you one mixable monitor channel or you can use the main mix in your monitors. Honestly the people who most need monitors are the vocalist(s) so your one spare channel should go to them. They may be happy to share it with you but IME inexperienced vocalists like a lot of monitor and you'll probably throw them if you share their monitors. I commend you for wanting to get as much audio clutter off the stage as possible and a fully mixed sound through the PA will ultimately be much better for your audiences but I don't think your current PA gear is up to it. By all means try it at rehearsals but I wouldn't base my purchasing plans on using the PA at this stage unless you are prepared to accept operating at moderate sound levels.

Cover Band Bingo, someone else put that up earlier in the thread. It's at the top of this page. I kind of agree, punters generally want to sing along or dance and they'll only do that if there is a degree of familiarity. There have to be moments in the gig where there is 'whoah, I love this song' which means the odd classic song. Equally though you need variety, and a bit of personality from the band. I certainly played in one band which gradually weeded out everything but the usual suspects. The audience reaction was interesting, they lost interest halfway through the set. There were no highs or lows and they'd heard all the songs several times before that month in all probability. We'd played a more varied set a couple of months before and got a great reaction. I love pizza but I wouldn't want to eat it every day and by the time we came back from Italy I'd happily give it a miss for six months. Classic Rock though covers 20-30 years where it was the dominant musical genre, depending upon how wide your definition of rock is. For most of that time hundreds of songs charted every year and the music moved on year by year so even within the genre you can be quite distinctive. There's also the risk of narrowing down our already diminishing audiences, if all covers bands end up with the same core set then you'll only go out once a year to see them, and it won't matter which one. There's no need for that to happen with so much back catalogue to choose from. I've just spent an hour going through local bands set lists for example. Only found one band that plays Final Countdown, hardly a less well known song. Most of them do Long Train Running and All Right Now seems to be compulsory, including for us.

Ha ha, you all know what I mean though. And you are spot on, the ones I think are fillers are probably another band members killers. In our case we've only just started gigging and a lot of songs remain from that original 'what do we all know' set list. Inevitably they are also in the 'bingo' list too.

Thanks Dave, the more the merrier, I' having fun listening to a lot of these. We tried a couple of ELO and they didn't work too well for us (I don't think their heart was in it), Get It On is already one we do. hardly Rock but it'd be fun to have a little Glam section to the set for functions which someone suggested earlier.