Phil Starr

I started with Rotos I hated the clank when first fitted, loved the sound week old ones gave and tended to change them every six weeks or so when I was gigging regularly, they just tended to go dead on me. This worked out quite pricey so I tried Dean Markley Blue Steels which I thought were an astonishing price but they lasted months and just fade over time 6 month old ones sound as good to me as 6 week old Roto's. A couple of years ago I changed the strings on my Jazz and at the same time put some Elixirs on my P-bass so I could compare them both aging. Two years on both still sound OK to me, though I've probably tweaked the eq. I'm going to change the Blue Steels I think to see how much they have gone downhill. You can't be too confident over your ability to detect gradual change so it'll be interesting to see how old ones compare with the new ones. Anyway in terms of value for money I'd be confident in saying either will last way more than twice as long as Rotosound stainless strings, maybe even more than five times as long, so cheaper in the long term.

[quote name='paul_c2' timestamp='1498781258' post='3327061'] It occurs sufficiently often in classical music that it has a name - hemiola. Its 6/8 but there's definitely 3 over 2 polyrhythms involved. [/quote] thanks for this, just had an interesting read of the Wikipedia entry on this. [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiola"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiola[/url] I found the only way to count this song was 1-2-3 2-2-3, for most of the song the empahsis was on the first beat of the triplet and you could almost class it as a quick 3/4 (you could almost hear it as a waltz or end up swinging it) but there were some ambiguities which is where the 3 over 2 comes in I guess. I love these ambiguous rhythms. Didn't know about hemiola but now I know why Bernstein's America is so catchy

I've also been told about the three injections thing. My belief is that it is about NICE guidelines rather than an absolute rule. Fortunately any problems I have are in my knees which don't affect bass playing. However can I recommend exercise as one of the few things you can do yourself to help out. I recently got a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Bit of a bugger because I'm a biologist who has followed all the dietary advice all my life and been fairly active and slim(ish). Anyway as a result I decided to lose a little weight and cut a lot of carbs out of my diet. I love my grub and cook a lot so decided I'd rather lose weight by exercise than going on a diet for the rest of my life. This was entirely about blood sugar for me but the result is that many of the little aches and pains that I thought were down to inevitable aging have disappeared. There's a lot of research going on at the moment into inflammation which is implicated in everything from dementia, diabetes, arthritis, depression through to cancer, what we do know is that exercise, especially load bearing exercise reduces inflammation and a sedentary lifestyle and overweight increases it. I know it's easier said than done and I'm lucky enough to enjoy activity but it's well worth knowing about. It's an iron rule of speakers that you can't have loud, lightweight and cheap, maybe there's one about being old, unfit and healthy.

6/8 http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0055856

A 400W amp turned down noticeably is a 200W amp. The only problem is noticing. Most speakers can handle the power from an amp for a long time before overheating, the real problem is more likely to happen in the low frequencies where speakers have problems with being pushed too far. It's just the deep bass that does that so listen to advice about watching your lows. Roll off the bass a little and certainly avoid bass boost including from any fx and you'll be fine.

If you are getting feedback problems then you have a simple choice, turn down or sound s**t, in this case sounds like your guitarist needs to turn down. There are a couple of things you can do to curb feedback generally. Often there are resonance spots in the room, so just moving to a different part of the stage can solve problems Also moving your bass as far away from the speakers will help. You don't need any deep bass in the monitors so cut the bass there. Try filtering any bass out of the vocal mic and the guitar. You'll probably have an 80Hz filter for each channel on your mixer

[quote name='Mykesbass' timestamp='1498669183' post='3326261'] Luckily, Ambient comes across as a good guy. Can't see him scoring out Agadoo as a cruel joke!! [/quote] Ouch!

Make sure it's right. My son works in Japan and obviously speaks Japanese. There's a trend for Western free spirits to have 'Free' tatoo'ed in Japanese. Unfortunately the tattooists aren't fluent and have branded them free, as in cheap/good value. The Japanese are of course too polite to comment, but have some fun at our expense.

[quote name='Danuman' timestamp='1498594471' post='3325795'] The technical nature of their specialisation I suppose leads some of them to be a bit set in their ways, but I bet bass players are no different! [/quote] Don't forget they have to deal with singers and guitarists too

Thanks everyone. I'd pictured the side fills on the subs and I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating so I'm going to give it a go. I'll take a floor monitor for the singer as well, just in case. I'll let you know how I get on. Any more personal experiences welcome.

Speakers just don't do anything by themselves. They move because they have an electric signal of some sort. Pop when you turn on is usually a power supply issue and in old amps is often a result of ancient capacitors wandering off spec.though it could be something in their charging circuitry. Most components in amps can produce some sort of white noise which the amp will amplify as some sort of hiss. I can't think of any real reason why it would happen in one speaker and not the other. It may be that the 15 has more bass so the pop is simply louder and more obtrusive and may have a little speaker resonance that makes the hiss more obvious. Most power supplies store a second or so's worth of energy in the supply caps. so they will go on making sound for a second or so after you turn them off. If you turn off the amp and get a few seconds of 'clean' sound then the power supply is the prime suspect, but it isn't likely to be user fixable unless your electronics is pretty good, there are simply too many possibilities to eliminate. It's off to a tech I'm afraid.

I'm not clear from your description what you have but in the UK we have something called blockboard, it's strips of wood about 2-5cm glued together with the grain reversed in alternate strips, then laminated either side with one or two plies. generally it is made for furniture manufacture and is stiffer in the longitudinal direction than ply so you use it for load bearing structures like shelves. I've used it for my kitchen cupboard carcasses as they are supporting a granite surface and were available with high quality veneers. you can also come across laminboard with much thinner plies which is also stiffer and more stable but finishes better than blockboard. http://www.design-technology.org/Blockboard.htm The stuff I have has a hardwood core.

There was an article in New Scientist a couple of years ago, if I can find it anywhere I'll post a link. It was re-reported around the rest of the British press so if someone else finds it feel free to put up a link. Some researchers had simply run chart music over the decades through some software that analysed frequency and volume. It showed certain frequencies appearing in the 50's then coming and going with peaks and troughs. A whole batch of frequencies disappeared in the 80's reappeared in the 90's and have since faded away again. When the researchers correlated it with what was happening in music it was the frequencies of the electric guitar. That's probably as near as you will get to an objective assessment, and yes it is way less important than it was. Music goes through cycles as each generation creates their own music. You'll never kill off human creativity, or probably young men showing off. The Jazz age would have been dominated by the sound of brass and drums. I'm old enough to have started with Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly running through the Trad revival, Folk revival, Blues revival, British Pop, Rock, Punk and so on. Even within that there were fashions in music. It's left a huge inheritance of great music which the kids can dip back into, hence they can sing most of Queen's back catalogue, or indeed enjoy the wrinklies in the cover bands strutting their stuff. Things move on though, as they should. The charts are dominated by female musicians and a lot of singer songwriters at the moment, as well as hip hop. Both reference what has gone on before but are applying things in new ways. Isn't that a good thing? I just don't get hip hop/rap but that's probably just my reluctance to engage. There's stuff out there that uses all sorts of unusual modalities and rhythms and some of the drumming is bloody fantastic. The good news is that bass and drums seem to be immune to changes in musical fashion. There's plenty of work for us all yet.

If only there was a simple solution. I'd love to be mixing for a bassist (or guitarist!) who came to me with all their fx sorted out along with amp and speaker sims. In practice they often come along with a collection of separate fx, don't even think about how they interact, have any idea about gain structure or even which of their interconnects was the dodgy one last week. Even with multi fx they can set thing up so the tone is what they want but the noise levels are horrendous. Not a problem with a band you work with regularly but in one of these multi band things you've got minutes to decide whether you are dealing with a sublime technician or a flaky ego. Miking up a speaker isn't ideal, ever. Moving the mic even a couple of cm across the cone will change the tone I'm picking up, I'm not going to get much sound from the ports and the mic itself will alter the tone so it's never going to sound the way it does to you. Even once I've got the tone close I've watched the musician who can't hear the PA decide they know better and move the mic, or just trip over the stand! Every mic on stage adds to the general noise floor and the risk of feedback from some weird resonance so most engineers try to keep mic's down to a minimum. The biggest problem though is always the human one. Drummers who will move an overhead to put in their favourite cymbal, guitarists who soundcheck with one guitar then use a different one for the gig, singers swapping vocal mics. People wandering off stage without a soundcheck. It's all a bit like herding cats. So, if you are happy with a generic (vanilla?) bass tone you're probably best served by a DI. If you use a variety of tones tell the sound engineer and offer them a post eq DI. Most decent engineers will be perfectly happy with that. Personally if someone has programmed in all their patches I'm going to be fairly confident they know what they are doing, if they are doing it on the fly with a load of gaffa taped stomp boxes then less so.

You probably need to choose between a dedicated floor momitor where the controls are on the front or an active PA speaker which will give you a greater range of choices but those knobs on the back can be hard to reach when the bass is strapped on. Not a problem if you have a separate feed from the mixer of course. I felt the easy access to the controls was important so I went for (embarrassed cough) the Behringer 1320. Sounds good if a little hi-fi and hasn't let me down in three years. Plenty loud enough and could double as PA speakers at a pinch. In fact don't worry about volume. I've yet to come across monitors which won't drive the PA into screaming feedback way before full volume. You did say cheap

You do know the audience are going to love this! There's a perfectly decent set list here most of us could be gigging in a week with re-bookings guaranteed. I do wonder if we cover bands over complicate things sometimes. It's entertainment after all.

The plans are all there in the original thread. Unlike Stevie I didn't get round to putting up all the relevant bits at the beginning of the thread. Bass playing keeps getting in the way.

Completely off topic but in old Black Widow speakers the glues tend to break down over time. The glues are used to hold the dust caps on and fix the corrugated surrounds to the speaker frame. It's a simple repair to ease tehm off then stick them back with a latex based glue like Copydex. just be careful not to pull the cone off centre when you glue the surround.

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As someone who ran sound for years before learning to play I'd say try to see it from both sides. Multi band setups are a real pain for the sound guy. You usually don't know what you are getting and often are told one thing by the promoter only to be faced with extra band members or additional instruments at the last minute. Half the band members won't tell you what they want and others won't stop telling you for long enough for you to actually go about giving it to them. No chance to sound check usually and you want to turn the bands round quickly so the audience get a good show. Add into that the adrenaline/nerves fueled short fuses a lot of the performers are running on and the sound becomes the art of the possible. Then there's a difference in perspective. My priority is the [b]band[/b] sounds good, not just one individual band member. If I've got twenty mins to turn the band around then just getting everyone on stage with a feed to the desk, checking everyone is making a sound despite half the band turning up with dodgy leads and intermittently working gear can sometimes be a job in itself. I want to give the band everything they want and I personally love the rush and the problem solving but there's a limit to how much is possible. Forgive me if sometimes I seem a bit harassed. If you as a band are organised you'll get more of what you want. Appoint a spokesperson for the whole band so I only need to have one conversation, tell me what you want, keep it simple, preferably have a short list and try and talk to me well before the change over, preferably when I'm less busy. Be prepared to compromise, multi band, one off gigs are never going to be perfect.

I don't think you need to agonise over the solder/connector thing. I always used to solder because it was what i had to hand and I preferred a permanent fixing. However I've some Yamaha speakers that are well over 20 years old with push on connectors that are still working faultlessly. You can simply decide on the basis of what is convenient. Again you don't need to worry too much about speaker wires in the box. The runs are very short so the resistance is going to be low compared with the resistance in longer external cables. Although the currents in speaker cables are remarkably high the duty cycle is low and they are unlikely to burn out, just think how thick they are compared with the wire in the voice coil. I tend to go for something about 1.5mm. More than enough to handle the power but flexible enough to be convenient. Make sure it is fixed in a way that won't allow any rattling.

You're right, we did try the 40Hz tuning for the MK1, the 50Hz sounded better and had better power handling over the important frequencies.

MDF sounds better because of the extra mass, the lack of voids and the fact that it is less resonant than ply. However it is less tough, heavy and as has been said can't cope with moisture (beer at a gig) so isn't really practical for a gigging cab. If it is just for home practice go ahead. I'd probably go for 12mm for a single 10, 15 will certainly be enough.

If you want a BV mic then it's worth thinking for a second whether you want a cardioid or super cardioid. the difference is in the pickup pattern but a cardioid is generally much more tolerant of poor mic technique. The super cardioid is better at rejecting feedback. If you are a loud singer that jumps around a lot as I am then the cardioid is the one to go for. If you are quieter and prepared to keep your head still whilst playing bass and singing at the same time then go for a super. The mic to beat is definitely the AKG D5, much better sounding than the SM58 but it's a super cardiod, however they also make a cardioid version the D5C. I've two D5's so I really trust them. The Samson SM58 clone is the Q7, really cheap and incredible for the money, slightly more top than the one it is trying to copy but with a bit more handling noise. The Behringer XM8500 is ok but there is some poor soldering on some I've seen. Easily fixed if you are handy. Don't go for the cheap Shure's, well made enough but the sound isn't good. I've also used the Sennheisers and they are another good sounding rock solid mic but the E835 isn't up to the same standard as the AKG D5 and the 900 series are pricier. If you did want a Shure the Beta58 is a nice thing. Big upgrade on the 50+ year old SM58. Wasting your time, buy a D5

There are two types of people on issues like this, those who want a practical solution to a problem and those who like to tinker and use it as a learning experience. Swapping drivers poses a number of problems, though none of them fatal to the idea. The driver might not be a good match for the cab and you might end up with frequency response of power handling issues if not. A new driver might not match the output of the 212 and contribute little to the sound or it may have a different frequency response and you will lose the character of your TC setup. If what you really want is plenty of power with your sound intact I'd seriously consider selling the 112 and buying a second 212. Tinkering with the 112 will reduce it's value if you cannot restore it to original condition afterwards. Putting the £160 of the quality driver together with the used price of the cab will take you to the used price of a 212 or thereabouts, you'll end up with a matching look and no compatibility problems. Ha ha, just read Bills comment