Phil Starr

The guys here will work out the tuning for you, I'm going to take a slightly different tack. Buzzing from a speaker doesn't mean its terminal. possibly the most common cause is something loose in the cab. Check all the screws holding the speaker are tight, that there are no loose joints near the speaker or foreign objects loose inside. Check the speaker cables inside the cab aren't touching the cone. Now examine the speaker itself, any tears in the cone? examine the dust cap in the middle of the cone, has it come loose? Now work your way round the corrugated surround, has it come away from the speaker frame or from the cone itself. Just about all of these things are a very simple fix, just re-glue with a latex adhesive like Copydex. If you find anything let us know and we can give details of what to do.

[quote name='Kevin Dean' timestamp='1489791478' post='3259998'] One of my bands have been dropped in it more than once by the drummer not turning up, & rather than cancel a gig would you use a pre programmed drum machine ? Or just use one for a basic tempo or cancel ? any suggestions . [/quote]Hi Kevin, my experience is that you certainly shouldn't try it without a lot of rehearsal. In the absence of a drummer I've been rehearsing with a singer/guitarist and programmed drums. It was OK ish until we got a second guitarist and then the mistakes multiplied. You'd be surprised how often playing live a mistake is covered up by playing an extra beat or an extra bar, you can't do that with pre programmed drums. I reckon every third song failed to end on beat. Playing to a recorded track is a skill in itself and needs to be learned.

Probably not relevant to all types of music but I find playing bass with a guitarist/singer in my covers duo that I end up playing the drum rhythm more often than the bass rhythm and end up varying the attack on each beat more than when playing with a drummer. Making the 1 and 3 stand out in one song and shifting to the 2 and 4 in something else if that makes sense.

There are genuine problems about just swapping any old speakers into a tuned cab. Many swaps work but equally some mean that you can reduce the power handling and bass response considerably. At least one BC member has blown a speaker with an ill conceived swap. Swapping speakers for a different model will also completely change the sound of a cab, it could be better or worse of course. I'm not telling you not to do this, there is satisfaction in having a unique cab and having done it yourself, and you'll learn loads from doing it but the sensible answer if all you want to do is to play bass and love your sound would be to sell your cab as it is and put the money plus the cost of the new neo's towards a cab you can try before you buy. If you want a challenge though then take advice from people here before you go ahead and you are far less likely to have a real disaster.

[quote name='The Shrek' timestamp='1489382382' post='3256441'] My cabinet is finished and I am proud to say it sounds great. Nice and fat and loads of punch and very loud. Unfortunately I had to get my brother to help me to the finish line as I had a groin hernia op 2 weeks ago. Probably caused by lugging 2 Eden xlt 2 x10 cabs around for years. Thanks for all the help guys. Michael. [/quote]Really pleased for you, let's hear a full review sometime. Well done.

[quote name='casapete' timestamp='1489342858' post='3256197'] Doing Chuck Berry stuff properly is a damned sight harder than you may think. Getting the feel of the originals is notoriously difficult, with the drums and bass often not playing the same styles ( straight / shuffle etc. ) As Keith Richard once said, most bands can rock but few can roll..... Also it's easy for songs to descend into a Quo type thrash, and for the chord changes made the same. ( For example , in 'Johnny B. Goode' so many people insist on playing the IV chord towards the end of each verse when it stays on the V etc.) Good luck, hope you enjoy the gig! [/quote] When I pointed this out to my guitarist all I got was a blank look and 'it's a 12bar isn't it?'

Honestly I don't think it'll make much difference, even the more heat comment is a bit spurious, you wouldn't notice in practice and the amp will run at 4 ohms all day long, but it won't be enough louder at 4ohms to make much difference. Save your money.

I'm glad to hear that about Phil Lynott, my band want to do one of his. All I can offer is what you already know, practice both separately until you are comfortable with both parts and only combine them when it is comfortable. On the plus side it's amazing how even very ordinary backing vocals can lift the sound of a band, so long as they are in tune

[quote name='Passinwind' timestamp='1488940368' post='3253126'] Oops, meant the 3012LF. The one I'm thinking of has a single 3" mid driver for the 12" loaded one. We can get finally get dozens of Beyma drivers quite easily over here these days, but not the one you guys are using. It probably wouldn't be too hard to special order through the primary US dealer though, but I doubt it'd be any cheaper than the 3012LF. [/quote] It might be worth checking the price of the SM212 but if I was based in the US I'd probably have looked at a different driver myself, if there is no cost benefit then there are other drivers to use. I believe Eminence are cheaper over there too, which would further tip me towards choosing one of their offerings. It's the balance of cost to performance that makes the Beyma such an obvious choice here and it was always crying out to be part of a two way design. In fact I originally chose it for my PA speaker, but you gotta try it with your bass haven't you?

3Below has the right technique. Most glues go too hard when cured. I wouldn't use white glue even on the cone never mind the surround. Copydex is latex based, it makes rubber as it cures so ideal here. It also sticks really well to paper and fabric. You ought to be able to laminate it up to cover the hole enough to effect a complete repair. A tiny bit of toilet tissue might be needed to bridge the hole and give you something to layer the latex on to. Neoprene glue might be as good, I've not tried it. Copydex is widely available and well tried though.

That's right, the MK1 was designed so that anyone could build it with no special skills or tools. and if you prefer a tweeterless cab it's a pretty decent one. one of the reasons we've designed these cabs so publicly is that you can adapt them if you want, and I hope share any experiences you gain. I recommended 18mm ply in the MK1 to avoid any complex bracing. It'll match most commercial cabs. Stevie and John wanted to push the envelope further and I cant wait to hear the results. There's no reason why you shouldn't build a mk1 and add in more bracing at a later date or a mk2 without a horn and crossover. Between us we can guide you through the process if you want. Our intention is to demystify speaker building and what is going on inside your commercial unit if you don't.

I think we are homing in on something here. You already have good gear and shouldn't have trouble getting a good if not great tone and being able to hear yourself without stressing the speakers. Mixing speakers aren't causing the problems you describe BTW. With the sort of budget you have you can expect to get pretty much a top flight set up which matches with the tone you want. I think you need to sort out the problem you have now, and then only upgrade once that is solved if you still want to change your basic tone. I'm suspecting some problems with eq here and maybe some with how your band set up their sound, either of those cabs alone should be loud enough for you to play without stressing them, so both together should be a breeze. With your bass strung BEAD I'm guessing you are aiming for a deep,dark sound. How do you have your tone settings? I can only think that you are boosting the bass if you are getting popping noises from your speakers. Update, I've just seen you are getting a great tone in standard tuning, have you simply down tuned to B or did you change the strings?

If you want to get the right set up for you then people will help if you give them an indication of a budget. I have to say that those people who start adding extra cabs to adapt the sound they already have end up changing gear for a very long time and spend a lot of money. It really is a better approach to start with a cab that sounds how you want it and then double up if that's the sound you like but you need more volume. You say it sounds muddy and you've heard your speakers in distress. I'm assuming this is playing live?

[quote name='28mistertee' timestamp='1488398510' post='3248669'] Probably another amateur question but what figures are the most relevant when researching into cabs. Frequency range, SPL etc??? Basically I've been looking for a 115 or maybe a 410, I've been advised to look into 15s as I use the low B a lot. I was looking at Orange OBC115 or 410 or Ashdown ABM115 when I came across Ashdowns Foundation 410 which according to specs the frequency goes as low as 30hz. How accurate are these figures? My other surprise is the Eden 410xlt which I've heard is renowned for its bottom end yet the spec frequency only goes as low as 50hz. Am I missing something here or should I be more interested in the SPL figures. Thanks in advance. [/quote] I'm not as cynical as many over manufacturers figures but it does pay to be sceptical. In general the figures they give in the manuals often vary from the claims in their advertising so if you want to look up their specs go and see if there are downloadable manuals. In the end though you need a lot of techie knowledge to interpret the figures, which aren't all measured in the same way, and even if you can they will tell you little about what the amp or speakers in question actually sound like. You simply can't make a sensible buying decision based on figures. Having said that an understanding of the numbers is probably something we all acquire over time and no knowledge is a bad thing. Let's have a look a the low frequency response first. Rounded off 30Hz is low B and 40Hz is bottom E. However we can't really hear those frequencies very well and unless you had the pickup on the 12th fret it wouldn't detect them very well. Roughly speaking only 10% of a bass note is fundamental and that is buried beneath what we really hear, which are the harmonics. Bassiness is often just as much about the balance between the different harmonics as the actual note played. The crucial area for a bassy sound is generally around the 80-160Hz area. So stop worrying about frequencies and whether your system needs to change for your low B and start trying out speakers and amps with your own bass. If it sounds good it is good. On the techie side that frequency response graph for the Ashdown is just like a thousand others give or take. They'll all be the same shape more or less, the hills and valleys will be different heights and in different spots and that will affect the sound but few people will be able to guess how they sound from that info. What they will all do is droop down at the bottom end and at the top. That's why a frequency range of 50-6000Hz doesn't tell you much. Speakers don't cut out frequencies they just droop! Hi fi speakers usually give the response at -3dB and that is the figure used when you are designing speakers. Most bass speakers don't tell you where they measure the lowest frequency from but 10dB down is a common figure, that's what I used in a design I published here. That Eden may have a perfectly decent bass and the Ashdown may be better or worse, without more information you just can't tell from a single number. Finally the bit you are missing is that we can't really hear deep bass, almost nothing below 50Hz and it is routinely removed from the PA and in studio recordings as unwanted noise. You'll come across high pass filters like the Thumpinator that are used by bassists to kill everything below a certain frequency, they usually report that they can't hear any diffeerence in the low notes other than that everything sounds cleaner.

Ha ha, you've all got me wincing at some of the woodworking suggestions, ouch! Plywood is such a flimsy material, those plies are very thin and weak individually, and only held together with a fairly weak resin. Break away any glued panel and you inevitably come away with some of the outer ply attached, anything stuck at the cut edge is extra weak as that flimsy outer skin is only fixed on one side of the joint. Biscuits and dowel are made of compressed wood designed to expand inside their joints to make a tight fit running them into the plies further weakens them. Pocket joints are incredibly weak into thin panels as the screw tips barely pentrate the panel [url="https://woodgears.ca/joint_strength/pockethole.html"]https://woodgears.ca...pockethole.html[/url] In any case most cabinet corners need the edges of cabs rounded off to fit, you really don't want metal screw ends sticking into the place you are going to run a router bit. Honestly I suspect plain butt joints (just sticking the panels together with no extras) will be as strong as using dowels/biscuits or pocket joints, the weak spot is the outer skin on the cut edge. What you have in your favour is that a box is an inherently strong structure. Stevie has rejected the reinforced butt joint for the perfectly good reason that it would make his bracing more difficult especially in a prototype. The bracing itself will itself stiffen the cab mechanically and increase the glue area. It's a good design, just a bit harder than the mk1 to make. Putting in a 3012LF would work but the crossover is optimised for the drivers Stevie has chosen. I'd put the Eminence in a smaller cab probably, this cab is optimised for the SM212. I wouldn't put in a really pricey driver like that without optimising the cab for it. Porting to the rear is fine, if you keep the volume of the cab and the dimensions of the port the same the cab will have the same resonant frequency and the same damping on the speaker. There will be some minor changes and you won't get exactly the measured results Stevie gets. The cab will be sensitive to being pushed right up hard against a rear wall, port resonances venting to the rear will be less noticeable and a number of cabinet resonances always change with even minor changes of the internal structure of the cab. None of these are likely to have a major effect upon the character of the cab

Haha I said you'd end up being Gottastopbuilding gear I'm really pleased about what you say about the 3/4 ply with batten design, it won't be perfect but I found it was pretty good too. I'll stick with the woodworking questions here, my posts tend to be too long. All speaker design is compromise and I'm really pleased what you've said about my '18mm with battens' (actually reinforced butt joints) design. I chose these for two reasons, mainly using screws to draw the battens/panel joints together means you don't need any real extra clamping making it an easy build. I wanted everyone to feel this was something they could do at home with no real woodworking experience or special tools. Secondly the battens double the glue area and double the strength of the cabs. I was aware however that 18mm panels are pretty rigid at these sizes and the battens do stiffen and damp the panels as well. A compromise which means you can get away with no extra bracing. That's not to say you couldn't improve things with bracing but you should get a good result without that level of complexity. Lot's of other joints are available to you, dovetail, finger joints, dowels, biscuit joints and plain butt joints as Stevie used. Dovetail and finger joints double the glue area but won't be as strong as a reinforced joint and need to be clamped whilst the glue dries, crucially you need to have specialist tools to do the job. Biscuits and dowels are marginal for me putting a dowel into the sawn end of a 18mm panel isn't a strong thing to do and if you have to fit corners that means rounding off the panel weakening the joint even more. They may hold the joints square whist the glue sets but I still feel you'd need to clamp everything. Plain butt joints are just too weak for me, though Stevie's bracing will considerably stiffen and strengthen the cab I still think there is a good chance that the corner joints may break given any force applied at an angle, like dropping the cab for example. That is especially true of a cab made of 12mm ply. Finally the reinforced butt joint is more forgiving of any mistakes in measurement or cutting, you are more likely to end up with an airtight cab.

Bill is right about the dispersion and the best practical solution. I'm going to suggest something to think about. Old 8x10's were technically a bit of a dead end, They solved a lot of the technical problems at the time. Power handling, reliability, plenty of efficiency all sorted but were highly coloured, too small a box for that many speakers and comb filtering problems. However because something has technical limitations it doesn't mean it is bad. It may be that the comb filtering with it's off axis rolling off of the top end is just the old school sound you are looking for. If your sound is just as you like it and you can pick yourself out of the mix then I wouldn't go in for speaker balancing. Get a long lead and go out into the audience area to see how you sound. If you are struggling to hear yourself on stage then Bill's advice is the best way to go.

[quote name='Naetharu' timestamp='1487926133' post='3244119'] Humm that was my worry with the Hartke amps. I did get to try a 3500 when I popped into GAK in Brighton last year, and I loved the sound. However, I've heard a lot of anecdotes about their being unreliable. [/quote] To be fair mine was used when I bought it and I've had it ten years, it only failed once in that time and they are eminently repairable. I think the recent ones have had the problems with the power supply cap mountings addressed probably 15 years ago. Now I use the LM Tube out of laziness as much as anything. I do like a graphic though.

[quote name='visog' timestamp='1487883895' post='3243945'] Right chaps I know this whole HPF and LPF gets pretty gnarly quickly and goes into sub-sonic filtering for speaker efficiency but what do we think to this? [url="http://www.tech21nyc.com/products/effects/qstrip.html"]http://www.tech21nyc...cts/qstrip.html[/url] Sounds good to me... gets a 'Rick 'o' tone' out of a P-bass... [/quote] There's no indication of what frequency the HPF works at, since it seems to be designed for guitar it may be set at 80Hz or higher which might be too high. Actually I wonder if the popularity of pre amps like this might be partially down to some HP filtering and cleaning up the sound. If you like the sound go for it.

The truth is that the amp repair business is not far removed from getting your car fixed. Anyone can wield a spanner and call themselves a mechanic and may do a perfectly good job of changing a tyre. Charges range from not much more than minimum wage to £130 an hour (and upwards probably). Unfortunately the way cars are manufactured makes them harder and harder to fix and if the electronics in your car don't display the correct fault codes there are very few who know what to do next. (bitter experience here) Amps are going the same way, there are a lot of non serviceable parts now, so a new circuit board is increasingly the 'repair', often these are unavailable and cost close to the price of a new amp so even a simple fault can be uneconomic to repair. With so much gear being produced in China even something simple like a non standard jack socket can hold up a repair due to unavailability over here. On top of this component counts are going through the roof as more features are added to even quite modest gear. This goes right through the consumer electronics industry. Who nowadays takes in a broken DVD player or five year old TV in for repair? So put yourself into the repairers shoes. He has to make a living, a few hundred quid a week to pay the bills. You walk in with your dead amp and say, 'can you take a look, it's something simple it was working yesterday' He plugs it in and nothing, no clues. He knows from experience that it's going to take a couple of hours to open up and investigate and he has a 50/50 chance of finding a repairable fault. Then it is going to take him an hour on the phone tracking down a part. If he takes it on he's faced with telling you parts and labour are £200 and you'll go and buy a used one on ebay or replace it with a new amp for just over £300. If you are lucky it'll just be a broken wire and he can resolder it but there's no way of telling without opening it up. When you make what seems like a reasonable request to 'have a look, tell me what's wrong and how much it will cost' you are actually asking 'please give me an hour's free labour' with a 50/50 chance you won't go ahead anyway. I'm afraid an upfront fee with no guarantees is pretty inevitable.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1487847003' post='3243444'] Do you have a picture of the plastic part. I have used the ,K&M version before but now have financial constraints. Ido have a good workshop though and could probably kno I ups metal part to replace the plastic part. [/quote] Hi, I think the plastic part he mentions is the sleeve that allows the legs to slide up the stand for storage. It has a retainer for a nut that the screw clamp uses but that screw bears upon the cast metal base. I haven't broken one yet, my one failure was the handgrip on the extending upright which cross threaded, unfortunately on one that I'd taken a saw to to make a small stand so I didn't feel it was worth returning. Spares for K&M cost as much or more than the Studiospares stands. If I ever get across to Stevie's I'll bring a stand with me. These stands aren't perfect and I can see that if you had roadies throwing them around they wouldn't take it. If you handle your own gear they are unlikely to break very quickly, spares are available and you can afford to carry spares in a band.

Oh dear, I was in a grumpy mood when I last responded to this I Just felt the OP's frustration. A couple of people have picked up on some things I said. I think I was the first person to mention contempt for the audience which others have repeated. For me standing up in front of an audience is still something special, my 'contract' with them is to do the best I'm capable of, never to say 'oh well that was good enough, the audience won't notice'. I'd be the first to say there are people way better than I am, whose half committed efforts would surpass my bass playing by quite a distance but I still think it is disrespectful not to do your best. Ambient made the points about the quality of the musicians and the difficulty of the music and there have been plenty of comments about not needing rehearsal for gigging the same songs you did last week. All true of course but most of those bands will have rehearsed at some time in the past. There's a balance between rehearsal, personal practice, regular gigging and the skills of the musicians. There's no point in rehearsing if people haven't learned their own parts at home, you can't stitch things together if they are full of holes. There's no point in rehearsing stuff you are already on top of and did last night. Better musicians may need less rehearsal, though I suspect they are better because of lots of practice. Simple songs need little work other than perhaps the starts and finishes. Sometimes for weekend warriors you have to reach a practical compromise between music and the rest of your life. But, I don't suppose any of us couldn't improve what we do with a little bit of intelligent time together in a rehearsal room. Sure the Rolling Stones would have been rehearsing in session men, staging and lighting and so on but shouldn't we all if we can? It's OK for me, I enjoy any time together with freinds making music and I enjoy the social side but I don't buy the claim that 'me and my mates are so good nothing could be improved by rehearsal' either. The rest is just about compromising between what you need to do and the practicalities of how to achieve it. As for the OP I think with a new band member I'd want to have a run through, just to check starts, ends and any odd bits of arrangements rather than do that in front of an audience, if at all possible.

Those three are all good brands, also consider Yamaha, JBL, QSC K12's. Of all these, and I've auditioned them all, my current favourites are the RCF's. Get along to PMT or somewhere with a range and take along some decent recorded material and try them out. Concentrate on those that do the best vocal sound, any lack there will affect your bands sound most of all, you are doing PA not disco! Don't obsess over 1000W, mainly that is advertising hype, the amps in question can usually only achieve peaks of that level, which does help at cleaning up the peaks but that is all. Few 12" drivers are going to be able to handle more than 300W continuously and the difference between 500W and 1000W is barely noticeable. Most PA speakers will specify their maximum sound levels and anything over 128dB is going to be enough for most bands. Mackie used to be the go to PA speaker, they've fallen out of fashion since they stopped using RCF drivers and moved production to China. There are rumours of reliability problems but I've no direct experience of that. I'd go for the RCF's or K12's, Yamaha stuff is pretty bomb proof and a lot of people like them a lot. I just didn't think they did vocals as well as the RCF's. Hope that helps, you'll get plenty more opinions.

Hi Phil, funny how you feel closer to somebody with that name. Really you 'ought' to be able to hear perfectly well with a 2x10. I gig with one and in a room with up to 200 people everyone can hear the bass perfectly well. Being neo should mean your speakers are more likely to be louder rather than quieter. It simply makes stronger magnets, though so many factors come in that there is plenty of overlap in performance with ceramic magnet speakers. I'd say the perfect way to use these is back against a wall and leaning so that they point at your ears. A £15 stand will arrange that though it means your amp will slide off. Raising it onto a chair will lose you some of the bass reinforcement having it on the floor gives so you could end up boosting the bass and running into distortion. Back against the wall means the bass is boosted even more so you can turn down the bass and use more of your speakers power. If the amp/speaker combination isn't loud enough I wonder about your eq. Room acoustics are so important, are you using the same eq you use for personal practice at home? Cutting bass and boosting mids will help you cut through anything and allow you to turn up without distortion. Sorry if that is teaching you to suck eggs. I didn't take your half-deaf statement literally and 70% hearing loss was meant to be a joke, but if you play in a band you will have some hearing loss. It isn't what most people think, you don't lose sensitivity largely you lose frequencies as you selectively damage tiny areas of your inner ear each time you are subject to a loud noise event, those areas don't grow back. Eventually enough frequencies are lost that it is harder to separate sounds in noisy environments even if you hear a pin drop in quiet times. you can check your hearing here if you have a decent set of headphones https://www.actiononhearingloss.org.uk/your-hearing/look-after-your-hearing/check-your-hearing/take-the-check.aspx Your 2x10 can reach peaks above 120dB, that will be as loud or louder than the drums, anything over 100db will damage your hearing in a fairly short time the HSE say 15mins http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/hsg260.pdf That is about the level you are probably currently rehearsing at so any increase in volume will cause hearing loss. Honestly I think you should investigate using in ears or decent earplugs (not the solid foam ones), getting a little more out of your 2x10 or even getting everyone to turn down. If not you will get permanent hearing loss.

My gigging amp was a Hartke 3500 still sounds better than anything else I use but it is getting a bit cranky and is on the heavy side. I bought an MI bass and sent it straight back. Just couldn't get a sound I was happy with. I've settled on a Little Mark Tube which sounds absolutely fine. The Tube input isn't a dramatic change from the standard Little Mark but I've gradually settled on an all tube pre amp sound so I guess it must suit me. Having added even further to the Mark Bass love I'd say try the amps through your speakers before you buy if at all possible. It's your sound.