Phil Starr

If someone returns the Emperor's New Clothes you could always say they'd torn them.

I think I get where you are coming from now. Recorded bass sounds really punch through the DXR's and you are hoping you might get that punchy bass through them yourself? The thing is, you realise, that the recorded bass has been eq'd in the mix. Is that right? The thing is that in most if not all cases studio recordings undergo a lot more than just eq'ing. The first thing most engineers do is filter out all the subsonics often at surprisingly high frequencies There will commonly be little bass below 50Hz. maybe higher. Then they will limit all the peaks from the bass and maybe add quite alarming amounts of compression. Add in an octaver which will add in a lot of harmonic content to thicken out the higher notes on the bass making an overall bassier sound. The 50Hz filter will remove the damaging tones though. Lastly once the whole mix is finished they will compress the whole mix which means the bass is compressed even more. Live bass has much more dynamic range, though there is an increasing tendency for live engineers to follow studio practices, so the FOH PA sound is often compressed and filtered giving the 'disco sound' to some bands. That's why a lot of folk on here, sometimes sensibly, insist on taking big rigs with them to gigs. Your B3 isn't going to do all that unless you program it to. Some patches are going to boost the bass and fail to filter subsonics making it impossible for your poor DXR's and some will sound great. You are going to have to keep the volumes down whilst you experiment and learn to keep all the really deep stuff out of the feed to the DXR's. the interaction between the electronics in the DXR's and the Zoom are going to be 'interesting'.

It's certainly not a crazy idea but simply one where you need to price your time. There are minor safety issues too. I've never looked at this model but I've repaired a number of combos over the years. The securing bolts may be tricky to find and the amps are often very snug in the space and difficult to slide out, Ive even found them stuck in place by the glue used to cover the cab with Tolex/carpet. Sometimes the speaker cable will need to be removed. Obviously make sure everything is unplugged before you star and don't stick any bit of you inside the amp even if it is unplugged. The power supply can store some charge for a long time. Once out you'll need to make or buy a sleeve, a simple enough job but it'll take you a couple of hours or cost you a few quid. Sometimes amps are only partially cased when they come out of a combo so electrically they are unsafe out of the cab. I've no idea if that is the situation with the Ashdown. If you sell the 'cab' as a combo with the amp missing you will effectively be selling a damaged cab. Will it have the necessary plate with sockets on it or will you have to buy one and solder it in? Next you need to deal with the amp casing, remove it and re-finish it or remake the cab using the grill and fittings. Alternatively you could scrap the cab and sell the speakers as bare drivers or let someone else do the work and sell it off cheap as a project. None of this should put you off, a bit of fiddling around and £50 for the speakers if you are lucky sounds about right.

You might want to look at this thread if you haven't already the third post is the relevant one http://basschat.co.uk/topic/305026-powered-cabs/

[quote name='geoffbyrne' timestamp='1493632336' post='3289505'] Don't really have much of a clue what you're talking about, Phil, but it's great to come across someone thinking outside the box. G. [/quote] Hi Geoff, as someone spotted I forgot to put the links in. I'm happy to write up something about the theory behind this design though if anyone would find it helpful.

Thanks for the link, forgot to paste it, there's also a review on You Tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItMtFGlKjoo

Well if you already have them then suck it and see. They'll either sound how you want or not. With DSP controlling the sound it's unlikely you'd damage anything, but it's always wise to start quiet and then turn up gradually.. The problems are likely to be that Yamaha only quote response down to 52Hz, if that's -10db it's going to be bass lite, the cab is ABS and may be buzzy at low frequencies and the electronic speaker management may choke what you can do as it limits/compresses loud bass peaks. Equally with a flat response and designed to cover the full range they might sound quite nice. My suspicion is that they may sound great as on stage monitors with the bass gently rolled off but you'll then need a little bit of extra bass output from the FOH to keep the band sounding balanced. You don't need us to guess though, just try it.

Does anyone have any experience of these? Genzler 12-3 Bass Array https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItMtFGlKjoo I've been toying with the idea of using 3" mid high units for bass for a while. As most of you know conventional bass drivers start to beam at relatively low frequencies and most horns only operate at frequencies too high to be much use for bass. The problem is that most of the 3" wide range drivers used for line source PA are too insensitive to be easily adapted for bass use, I'd come to the point where I'd settled on four in line to up the efficiency and chosen the Faital as the most promising unit. Seems someone was way ahead of me. If you aren't a techie think of this as being like one of those Bose PA's with the long thin bit fixed in front of the sub. It promises a full range frequency response and a broad flat projection of the upper frequencies even when you aren't in line with your speaker. I'd love to hear what anyone who has used one thinks.

All the advice is right so far and I wouldn't doubt Ashdown, nice to see you on here guys Always helpful people I find. It's possible that someone has replaced the drivers at some stage I guess, 8ohm drivers are the most commonly available which will give you a 4ohm cab. you need to check before you proceed. If you have access to a meter than any resistance above about 5ohms would indicate an 8ohm cab. The impedance is always a little higher than the DC resistance. Alternatively you might be able to take the speakers out and they may have the impedance marked on the back of the magnet. If they are 8's and you always want to use the two cabs together the series route is the one to go for. I'd imagine though that your 4x10 is going to be loud enough for most things.

[quote name='Passinwind' timestamp='1493225579' post='3286733'] True that, but this thread isn't about Nancy's Johnson's needs and wants, it's about how the rest of us make it work with one small cab. Or at least the part I answered is. [/quote]Hi Charlie, loving your amp designs and can't wait to hear John's (chienmortbb) combo when it's finished. It's a shame in a way that there has been a little more heat than light so far. I think there is a general trend towards lightweight single driver cabs in bass amplification and lots of people fear that the cabs generally won';t have enough oomph. There's a lot of advertising hype from manufacturers too and unless you have a technical mind it's difficult to separate the fluff from the genuine claim. I hope it helps when those of us who do understand the technical side of things and who aren't selling anything pitch in. I don't really apologise for introducing decibels either. If someone is asking if the bass can be as loud as the drums then the decibels are pretty much the starting point. Without that you just have to choose your expert and take it on trust, with measurements you can check what is being said. Decibels aren't difficult either 1dB louder is the minimum increase you'll notice, 3dB louder is tweaking the volume up a notch and 10dB extra is double the volume. Drummers produce around 100-103dB at their own ears on average. That's roughly a metre away from from the bits they are hitting, so if your bass amp can produce around that level it's going to be able to match the drums. The trouble is that this is an average for the drums, your bass amp is limited by it's peak output. For a typical 12" speaker that's going to be around 120-123dB at frequencies above 100Hz. Now drums are especially dynamic so a really hard strike is going to be louder than 123dB but all that means is that some drum beats are going to be heard over the rest of the band. Well, what a surprise! Without going too technical my belief is that if the bass can play 20dB louder than the average sound level of the drums it's going to be able to match the drums. That means that if all I'm saying is true half of the 12" speakers around can get to this level above 100Hz. There's an extra bit though, below 100Hz is the real deep bass, here the problem is that the output is limited by the amount of air the speaker can shift, and for a 12" speaker that's about how far backwards and forwards it can move without breaking. That's the real innovation that has come in. To do this successfully you need bigger magnets ( well more powerful anyway) You can do this with a very large conventional magnet but that defeats the lightweight advantage you are trying to achieve or you can use a stronger magnet material, Neodymium. This gives you an extra few dB of bass, so long as you use one of the new long throw bass drivers. In my opinion this is pushing up against what is possible, not every design is going to be equally successful, you certainly would have to be careful boosting the bass by 3dB with a single 12 but yes, it is technically possible to do most of your gigs with a single 12. My experience is that the theory holds true, I do most of my pub gigs with a single 12 and use a second one in the larger venues. None of this means that there is only one way of doing things, or that you'll get the sound you want this way, if you love your Ampeg then stick with it but with a well designed lightweight you can be loud enough, and the audience probably won't notice.

That's not fair, you didn't tell us that bit. If you're lending it to other bass players it can't be big enough.

The J Retro is great, pretty much keeps the character but somehow tightens everything up. I fitted one only as a lazy way of fitting a pan pot instead of the VVT set up but loved what it did for the sound and the fact that I now don't need to visit my amp all night as I only need to tweak the tones on the bass.

The ME 15-200 was at the cheaper end of the Eminence range and dates back to the 1980's. The specs i have are. Power Handling 200W response 45-5000 200W fs 46Hz Vas 224 l Qts 0.67 Sensitivity 99dB/W it had a fairly small magnet and lightweight cone, I wouldn't imagine excursion is up to much given its high sensitivity and I used to blow the ME series fairly frequently, given it' s age I'd look for something else. The Eminence Beta 15 is probably fairly close although a better speaker. You'd be better off giving us the details of the cab sizes and we can suggest speakers that are a good match rather than trying to do a like for like substitution with speakers that probably weren't original anyway. It's easy to make the cabs sound fairly good but they won't sound like the original drivers.

Welcome, if you have GAS then avoid Mansons. I'd sworn Fender were overpriced and trading on the brand until I dropped in, tried a Highway One Jazz and fell in love. Still my favourite to play

Sorry Stevie I was just about to use the car analogy I don't think I can stop myself..... Sure buying any 1litre car as Alex suggested is going to leave you short of power but going out and buying a 1.4 Golf is going to let you cruise the motorway at 70 in reasonable comfort, and carry four people when you want. It's a perfectly functional way of getting around for most of us. Of course other 1.4 litre petrol cars are available which will do service equally well, and a few people will genuinely need a bigger vehicle or perhaps 4 wheel drive or whatever. Equally some people just want something more interesting and stylish than a Golf. Volkswagen will tell you the Golf is the best in its class but in reality there are other cars which cost similar amounts that do some things better and others less well and it comes down to personal choice. Nobody seriously thinks that a new car nowadays isn't going to be fuel injected do they? My position is that just as most of us (80%???) could get by with a mid priced family car most bassists could get by with a decent 1x12. That doesn't mean they should or that other choices wouldn't suit them better. FWIW I thought NJ's original post was a perfectly sensible start to a discussion we've had a hundred times before.

[quote name='alexclaber' timestamp='1493119438' post='3285722'] There's a spectacular amount of misunderstanding in this thread!!! [/quote] Hi Alex, I agree and I'm obviously as guilty as anyone, I thought you were singling out my comment that 80% of people would be fine with a decent 1x12 as that was the only quote in your previous post. I still think it's true that something like the Super Compact would be enough for 80% of bassists by the way but I'll defend that position later.

[quote name='alexclaber' timestamp='1493031843' post='3284917'] I completely disagree with this. It's like saying that 80% of cars are fine with a 1 litre engine. It totally depends on the specifics of that engine. Give it direct injection, sequential turbocharging and hybrid assistance and properly optimise it and yes, you can get hundreds of horsepower and a good working torque curve. Get it straight out of an old Austin Metro and watch most of the 80% drive it to the scrap yard instead of their gig. Paul/Nancy - aren't you just using a single 15"? [/quote] That's a surprise Alex, since the cab he mentioned as 'how the hell do you cope' was one of yours! I was really addressing the OP's post and by saying 'decent single 12' I thought I'd made it clear I was talking about the Barefaced mentioned and a lot of others that utilise the best of modern driver design to enable us to go out with much reduced kit in terms of weight and speaker acreage. I was specifically referring to your single 12's because the OP referred to them and saying that the claims made for your speakers are perfectly reasonable in terms of the technology. There's no magic just good use of technology. In saying you 'completely disagree' I assume you are telling everyone that a single Barefaced 12 isn't enough to keep up with the band for 80% of bassists. Is that what you are saying?

I'm not going to recommend that particular box only because it isn't something I recognise as a brand but it has a link out and a 30dB pad (the pad reduces the signal by 30dB, so it's there to reduce the signal from a speaker down to a few thousandths of a volt) It is designed so you can insert it into the speaker chain reconnect your speaker and take the reduced output to the mixing desk. Most DI boxes do just this with either a 30dB or a 40dB pad which someone else mentioned. Loads of passive and active DI's to choose from. You should be able to use this with confidence, just read the instructions. If not then your alternative is to go the Sansamp/V amp route, loads of choices there too.

[quote name='SisterAbdullahX' timestamp='1492986043' post='3284689'] Simply that. Does anyone on here play pubs but not play the same old tired Classic Rock covers? Been finding that my usual staple of function gigs has steadily dwindled over the last few years to the point where I'm getting fewer than ten a year and could quite fancy packing them in altogether and just finding a nice local pub band to play for the enjoyment of it rather than having to entertain drunken wedding guests. However, the prospect of having to go and play all the standard rock tunes makes me think I'd probably just rather sell all my gear and pack in altogether! Does anyone play covers that aren't well known at all and still get a favourable response from the audience and get rebooked? Seems to me that, even if you don't play the rock stuff you still have to play well known songs, whatever the style of music you play, and that just bores me. Also, all the other bands that play that style of music play the same tunes! [/quote] I think you've summed up the situation really well and herein lies the problem. Too many music pubs are run by people who can't see beyond the genre of their own youth. they only book classic rock so that's what aspiring musicians see gets the bookings. The only thing on offer is Classic Rock so only those people who like Classic Rock go to pub gigs and others avoid those pubs, their turnover suffers so eventually they close. The truth is that only a small fraction of the public want live music in their pubs and only a small fraction of those want Rock as their only diet. The only way to grow the market as a whole is to offer more variety, the alternative is to let Pub Rock wither. All the audience want is to be entertained, to see a bit of a show. I don't think they are that bothered about what the music is in the main. They want to sing along, dance, maybe interact with the band a little, have as drink and a good time with a bit of atmosphere. People who really go for the music will be more likely to go to the bigger venues to see bands they know or to the few brave places that still put on bands doing original music. If you want people to dance and sing then you need to play stuff the majority know. That's tens of thousands of songs over my lifetime with hundreds being added every year. If you want them to dance then your music just needs to have a predictable rhythm the audience are comfortable with. To give them a good feeling you just need to show you enjoy what you do and reach out to them in some way. There's no real excuse for us all playing the same songs over and over again. To get bookings you need a recognisable identity be that genre or era (60's, 00's, whatever). The better pubs have realised that and are trying to serve up a variety. As well as playing the pubs I love live bands, I'm a 60something old bloke that grew up with all the classic rock bands. If there's a weekend when I'm not playing then I try to catch a band if I can but why would I see a classic rock band? I've heard every song they play a hundred times before, they are great songs but constant repetition has killed them for me. So so long as you can make it make sense to the audience, give them a little of what they want and sell the rest to them so they have a good evening out I don't think you'll have trouble getting repeat bookings whatever you do.Pub bands are in the entertainment business not the creative one but there are a hell of a lot of great songs rarely played and any number of ways of playing them. Your days of playing pubs are only over if you want them to be.

It's pretty hard to generalise mainly because we all eq differently and go for different tones. All the power is concentrated in the bottom octave or two but most of the sound comes from the higher frequencies. But, if you go for a fairly flat eq this is how I reckon it works. A decent single 12" speaker will handle around 300W over most of it's frequency range and probably have an efficiency of around 96dB/W so from around 100Hz upwards it'll produce 120dB or thereabouts. That's pretty much going to match the output from the drums. It's also going to produce peaks of around 100dB at the vocal mics so they are going to pick up quite a lot of bass and make all sorts of problems for the vocals. There's no point in being louder than this with backline and most bands will improve their overall sound by reigning back from that point and putting stuff through the PA at the bigger venues. That's kind of marginal though, a particularly monstrous drummer with heavy sticks and a big kit combined with a band where the vocals take second place might push past this point and any bass boost is going to challenge the speaker at the bottom end. My guess is that for 80% of us a single 12 will just about do everything you need form backline. Boost the bass at all though and that speaker is going to struggle. Just a small bass boost is going to double the power demand so the few people who find these tiny speakers are not enough aren't wrong, they are just doing things differently. For the rest of us why carry more than you need?

Why not just buy a PA power amp. You might find one with a sensitivity high enough to drive direct or you could add a simple pre amp just to boost output an active DI might well give you enough. I have to say my best sound ever was using a simple PA amp with no tone controls, but that had mic level inputs.

I was going to suggest a Peavey 1x15 but again I suspect they are too big. How about a 2x10, most old Peavey stuff is more or less valueless but is reliable and sounds good at the expense of great weight. My 1x15 has done sterling service as a sit and forget occupant of just such a man cave.

[quote name='lowdowner' timestamp='1492717969' post='3282720'] Looking at some new dots today (see http://basslessons.be/transcriptions.php?i=94 for a current example) and it started me wondering how long it took people to learn a new track in readiness for performance? I realise this depends on the complexity of the track but in the case of Doobie Brothers "Long Train Runnin'" what do you reckon? 2 hours of effort, 8? 16? Is this a 'how long is a piece of string?' question? [/quote]this feels like taking my clothes off in public but if like me you are an 'intermediate' player you'll be very depressed by some of these answers, it takes me longer than this and from some of the conversations I have with other bassists and gigging bands I'm not totally alone in this. To give some context I've been involved in three start up bands and I'd reckon to learn three or four songs a week depending upon complexity spending about two or three hours most evenings working on them. They'll be all I listen to in the car whilst I'm learning them and I'll use every cheat I can (You Tube, tab,etc.) to get there. Like all the pro's here I won't gig unless I'm 100%. In all I've found it takes about twelve weeks to get a two hour set together from scratch. The other thing no one has mentioned is genre. So far I've played modern pop, indie, 70's Rock, glam rock, 80's rock, each tends to have its own little tricks and it can take a while to get your head round new stylistic things. That slows you down, or maybe it's just me Apart from that the pattern is pretty much what other people describe, breaking it down into parts, concentrating on structure and listen listen listen. No song has beaten me yet but I've taken a month to learn the more stretching ones and as soon as you get quicker at learning you inevitably end up being given something even more challenging to learn.

Good to hear, I've been planning to design and build a filter like this myself for years but I'm thinking of accepting how slow/lazy I am and biting the bullet on buying one. Technically they just make so much sense.

[quote name='redbandit599' timestamp='1492808926' post='3283465'] Well, I'm 49 you know... [/quote]Haha your kids must be around the same age as mine. It's already a set I'd go to see. Run. Snow Patrol Bang Bang Dirty Pretty Things Monster The Automatic