Phil Starr

[quote name='phil.c60' timestamp='1485281984' post='3222785'] Having this right now. Auditioned/tried out for an indie/post punk/some more general stuff type band and they asked me to join. Gave me a "set list" which I duly learnt some of, then some more, then started running into the "Oh you've learnt those have you, we haven't played those for ages (ever? - slight hint of sarcasm there) supposed to have the first gig in a month. Fingers well and truly crossed. Annoyingly I had a call just after I'd started rehearsing with them from someone who has what seems to be a much more together band that has just lost their bass player, but turned it down as felt I had to give these guys a fair chance (two bands is OK but three is not, for me anyhow).I'm having a bit of a sinking feeling at the moment. Slightly off topic. Apologies. [/quote]Hope it works out for you. My long layoff happened when I fell out with my band over their disorganisation.The guitarist and I had agreed we would give them a few months to improve and would leave together, or at least tell each other when we'd had enough. I didn't feel I should let him down and turned down an audition with a band I'd wanted to play with for a while. The band broke up after a big row a week later. I'm big on loyalty but now think I'd have been better off auditioning for the new band and then telling the old band giving them time to get someone else in to replace me.I think in your situation I'd go and see the other band and if it looks a better bet for you to just be honest and let the other band down as gently as you can.

What's Up Sweet Dreams It's raining Men

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1485217754' post='3222298'] I reckon these are good value for money... [url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00D7FIW7I/ref=pe_1963591_136811311_em_1p_0_ti"]https://www.amazon.c...1311_em_1p_0_ti[/url] We have two... [/quote] They are good, and there are other good floor monitors. I've re read the op though and there is some resistance in the band to upping the on stage volume which is why I think we've all homed in on personal monitors, because you have them close to you aren't likely to be loud enough for the rest of the band to hear. It might be worth talking to the rest of the band about monitoring though if they have the money for each of them to have their own floor monitor or IEM's as that sort of system needs planning as a whole band ideally.

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1485178507' post='3221775'] That's a very generous answer, and better than I deserve! The Wirebirds were pretty rough when we started, and I knew only one song they knew, but we managed to get something giggable pretty fast. I think the deadline of an approaching gig does a lot to focus a band's attention! [/quote]Oh God, I hope that I didn't come across as being sarcastic, I apologise if it did. It's just my recent experience has all been in start ups, I've found you can only go at the pace of the slowest, it has frustrated the life out of me when someone says let's learn 10 songs and then you turn up having sweated blood to find no-one else has them all nailed. In fact I've got a first meet up with my latest start up venture in a couple of hours fortunately we've got a fair few songs in common this time. I've listened to the Wirebirds in the past when you had Jenny singing for you, I wanted to get across to see you live but life intervened hopefully if you are playing anywhere near Reading next time I'm up there I can get across to see you.

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1485167456' post='3221624'] Three months of rehearsing? Seems a lot to me. I've played in bands where we have rehearsed once then started gigging, in fact we didn't rehearse whole songs, just intros and outros, and the gigs went fine. My main band still gets together once a week to work on new stuff and just play for the fun of playing, but again we started gigging after a couple of short rehearsals. Any band who expected me to rehearse for months before gigging would be looking for a new bass player! [/quote] It's more than possible you are better than I am I'd probably place a small wager on that. It's also possible that you are playing with more experienced musicians. Playing within a genre also helps, if you are all lifelong blues men then you are going to have a lot of shared experience to draw on. The current start up don't have any shared songs we want to be in the final set list, that's pretty much true of my last two bands also. I reckon learning three or four entirely new songs a week is par for people who work full time, but it depends entirely upon the song, some you can jam out straight away, some take longer.

[quote name='aDx' timestamp='1484488133' post='3215800'] Been trying for ages to find others to play with but no luck!! Where do other peeps here find others? [/quote] It's mostly about networking, a little about music and a lot about you. I can't tell anything about you from this post. I don't know where you live, how old you are or what sort of music you want to play. If I wanted to play with you I don't know what your level of commitment would be or how good and experienced a musician you are. My point is that if you are serious about finding people you need to share as much as possible. It might be that someone on here knows someone who lives near you looking for a bassist. Start by thinking what level of commitment you can offer. That needs to go into any ads you put out and any conversations with potential band members. If the only music you are interested in is metal/folk/reggae or whatever then you need to realise that whatever your choice it is very specialist and you need to say so, and accept that opportunities will be more limited. If you just want to play with other people and genuinely don't mind at this stage what you play then just saying that will open up possibilities. You say you've done the semi pro thing before, and it is hard work. I'm involved at starting up a new covers band and I'm looking at least at three months or weekly rehearsals to get a 30 song list together along with an hour or two of personal practice every day. Once we get going it's going to be 8hrs out of every weekend per gig, plus continued rehearsal and practice. There are plenty of people though who can't give that time but just love playing with other people. You know where to find them, they are hanging round music shops suffering from GAS and probably scanning small ads on the board, they go to watch mates playing the pubs, do a few songs at the open mics and probably have profiles on Bandmix that they've put up at idle moments. Seek them out in those places. Decide what you want from this, the clearer you are in your own head the more likely you are to find a fellow traveller. Then put it about that you are looking. Talk to the guy/girl running the open mic, the person running the guitar shop, the musicians in local bands, because they are the people who know most of the local talent, it's going to be a small community and you need to be part of it. If you go along to open mic/jam sessions then you'll soon realise they play the same songs every week, it isn't too much effort to learn a few and to join in. If you are any good people will want you to play with them. The internet is great for small ads and tracking down the missing part of your band but there is no substitute for talking to people especially at the early stages of getting something together. There are plenty of people out there IME who want to be in a band but don't have the time for a regularly gigging band. Why not try to set that up yourself? Start by looking for one person to work with, as a bassist that's probably a singer/guitarist. Most bands don't come together as a whole, they tend to coalesce around a couple of people who are already making music, but if you come across a band who need a bassist be open to that too. I've always looked for the singer first, without a singer there are no songs. It's amazing how quickly after you start something other people come along who will want to join in. I've often played in a duo and as someone has said you have to beat musicians off with a rolled up newspaper once you start performing. Good luck

i know nothing of those Brook tops but judging by the price I saw in a quick search they may use decent branded drivers. I'd open them up and have a quick look to see what they are, If you the horn drivers are a well known make you should be able to find new ones, maybe even a repair kit. If not then as said Blue Aran will probably be a good bet for suggesting a replacement. Laney would be worth approaching about a replacement driver.

[quote name='Tullfan' timestamp='1409992027' post='2545172'] Hi i saw them at Ilminster. The bass player on this tour is Alan Thompson ex-from John Martyn. I thought he played very well as it was only his second gig with Martin. I was talking to him during the break and he said he had signed up for the whole tour, I presume he was at the gig you were at, too? [/quote]Ilminster! why didn't I know this?

[quote name='3below' timestamp='1484862420' post='3219294'] I managed to destroy a B/W 15" speaker very rapidly in one three minute number. Cause was failed glue where the cone meets the cast frame. There was a 'buzz' which rapidly became a terminated speaker. Not even playing at any serious volume. Further inspection revealed widespread glue failure. I suepect the cause was age, speaker was about 33 years old, well used by me from new. [/quote] this is common with the old BW's (Black Widows), it also happens where the domed dust cap joins the cones. I've stuck a few of these (surrounds and dust caps) back down with Copydex a latex based adhesive, The oldest repair is about eight years old and the speaker is still going strong. I'm not sure if the Sheffields use the same original adhesive but there's no harm in checking.

It's probably just a little resonance you didn't know was there. All speakers have lot's of little resonances and if you hit certain frequencies the can seem to jump out at you. It may be that it is just bad luck that it coincides with something the amp or your bass is doing and emphasizing something that was there unnoticed all the time. Without hearing it it is difficult to say. The fact you only hear it head on suggests it's quite directional which you'd expect with a 4x10. Actually a lot of older cabs are more efficient than modern ones and your amp will be fine with 4 ohms.

It'll help anyone below but won't make too much difference otherwise.

Many thanks to Alex and Bill for their contributions. To be fair the choice of the Kappalite as our example driver wasn't completely accidental, it's one of the best drivers widely available and both of them have either used it in their designs or recommended it, for good reasons. Ironically when we were developing our own 12" design I was the one gung ho about Xlim being the limit and drivers being designed so that the suspension would prevent the coil hitting the back of the magnet. Stevie has always argued that operating a speaker with the coil outside the Xmax limit isn't a good thing to do. He also pointed out that whilst I asserted that any driver designer worth their pay would put a suspension designed to progressively soft limit excursion into their speakers I didn't have any actual data as this isn't freely available on any of the published data sheets. This thread wasn't really aimed at those who already understand all this, though I'm really genuinely grateful to have everyone's input. So I'm going to try to sum up this little bit. I've also tried to be very careful in my language, apart from my over the top headline for the thread (sorry ) I hope that in any statement where I've been summing up complex data I have qualified them with words like sometimes, often, possibly and so on. I'm a science teacher (now retired) so I ought to have got that right. So, the summary so far Speakers fail, not often but they do. Bass players, by the nature of low frequencies push their speakers harder than most people. Most speakers when they fail do so by overheating, a few by physically exceeding the limits of travel. Whilst the coil is working within the speakers magnetic field the way it is designed to do it is pretty unlikely that you will damage the speaker. If you try to go beyond the limits where the manufacturer says you will damage the speaker you will damage the speaker. In the nether regions between Xmax and Xlim the speaker will heat up more quickly and depending upon how long it stays in this region and the chances of failure increase. Different models of speaker will all have slightly different characteristics and their reliability and the details of their failure modes will vary, though you are unlikely to know the details before they fail. However all ported cabs will exhibit a curve broadly like the one here (with two hills and one valley) the danger areas are the hills where excursion is highest and the biggest danger, unless the speaker is really poorly designed, is in the subsonic area, where all you would hear is unwanted crap. In the hilly areas of the curve your speaker won't be able to continuously handle it's rated power and will start to overheat. Finally if you know this you can avoid going near the limits of your speakers with a few simple steps. Knowledge is power (handling) If you want more reading then this is worth a look [url="http://sound.whsites.net/articles/speaker-failure.html"]http://sound.whsites...er-failure.html[/url]

To be honest I'm not sure they will be that much louder than your guitar amp. So much of the output of the guitar is concentrated in the frequencies of the human voice. That's where your hearing and that of your neighbours, is at it's most sensitive. Guitar speakers are more efficient at converting watts into sound anyway so that the overall effect is that a 20W guitar may well subjectively be the same volume as a bass amp of 200W. The only negative thing is that bass will pass through walls doors and windows better than high frequencies. Just limit your loudest practice to the sociable bits of the day and talk to your neighbours about when it won't matter so much to them. Then do the rest of your practice with headphones, which once you get used to it is better than playing through an amp. Playing at low volumes shouldn't affect your tone too much, use the volume on the bass to trim down as well as the amp. In any case you are probably practicing notes and timing not tone so it shouldn't restrict your bass playing, just the fun of making a loud noise

[quote name='ped' timestamp='1484745669' post='3217993'] To be honest I had no idea the email would go to everyone regardless of the setting. It's the first time I've used it - and probably the last! Anyway you know where I'll be on the 4-5th of March if you want to offer some physical resistance ped [/quote]by now you know what the concensus is but I was perfectly happy to be emailed. If it was four a week I might think again but once every four years? I think I can cope.

That's great, It's worth knowing that running high levels of distortion will usually end up with more energy going to the horn driver and this is often why they go. Having the second horn repaired then turning the top end down might be worth consideration. Pleased you got a happy ending.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1484147758' post='3213040'] I have just done a plot of the cone excursion of a well known, well loved driver the Eminence Kappalite 3012HO. The box is 50L and the tuning frequency is 50Hz The power is 400 watts, the stated power of the 3012HO. The red line is Xmax, the maximum excursion at which the voice coil is under the influence of the magnet. It is not dangerous to exceed XMax by a small amount. However the Xlim or XDamage (12.5mm) [url="https://flic.kr/p/R8Gr7e"][/url][url="https://flic.kr/p/R8Gr7e"]Kappalite3012HO Cone excursion 400W[/url] by [url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/149986878@N08/"]chienmortbb[/url], on Flickr [/quote] OK Tea break again So.... our computer model shows a typical curve which pretty much applies to any ported cab. Which isn't saying sealed cabs have no problems by the way. Cone movement increases as the frequencies go lower but the port controls any over excursion at the tuning frequency and gives you an extra 3db of bass. The problem for the cab is that there then isn't much to control the cone's movement below the port's area of operation. Below 40Hz or bottom E in this cab and at this power the speaker is at risk. +/- 9.5mm or 19mm of travel doesn't leave a lot of room for error. You won't destroy your speaker instantly but unless your the sort of wierdo like me that does calculations in your head during a gig it's a worry you don't want. So, what can you do about it? Well all the trouble is caused by too much power, so turning down is an option, turning down 3dB will halve your excursion but only be a little quieter. Better still add an extra speaker. With a solid state amp that will give you an extra 6db or thereabouts, that reduces your excursion to a quarter. Actually if the speakers run cooler you won't have that thermal compression effect either and your amp won't have to work so hard. Looking at the graph it's plain to see that all the nastiness is below 40Hz, If you don't know the frequency response of your amp it may not be filtering that out so get a high pass filter. We don't really hear most of the subsonic stuff so it won't make as much difference as you expect. Watch your tone controls. If you have a traditional bass/middle/treble set up then they usually give you about 12dB of boost. Just turning it up a notch to 2 o'clock will probably double your excursion below 40Hz. fine if you are bubbling along at 100W, not so good if you are already caning it. If you turn down by a notch of course you will halve your excursion. If I turn up to a venue with justone speaker and it needs a lot more volume than I expected that's what I'll do. Watch any octavers too, they may have subsonic filters in but you really don't want to boost the output down there without complete confidence in your rig. Push your rig into a corner or at least against the back wall, the reinforcement from each surface will give you an extra 3db in the bottom octave and you can then cut bass but retain as much of your tone as possible. Tea break over, I'm bound to have forgotten something so I'll wait and see what people add and then update that second post to save anyone from having to read the whole thread through.

I'm another who thinks that if the audience enjoy it then it's a good song but my heart sinks if the band want to do Seven Nation Army especially as they think they are doing you a favour with such a 'great bass line'. Never had the heart to tell them.

i used my Hartke HA3500 for the first time in ages on Saturday for a gig in a really difficult hall. I'd forgotten how useful that graphic can be, and what a nice sound it makes. I'm afraid it is nicer than my LM Tube, it just is.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1484147758' post='3213040'] I have just done a plot of the cone excursion of a well known, well loved driver the Eminence Kappalite 3012HO. The box is 50L and the tuning frequency is 50Hz The power is 400 watts, the stated power of the 3012HO. The red line is Xmax, the maximum excursion at which the voice coil is under the influence of the magnet. It is not dangerous to exceed XMax by a small amount. However the Xlim or XDamage (12.5mm) , the point at which the voice coil is in danger, is exceed at 36.7Hz, 5 Hz above low B on a 5 string. Indeed you have to reduce the power at 31Hz to under 200W to avoid exceeding XDamage. [url="https://flic.kr/p/R8Gr7e"][/url][url="https://flic.kr/p/R8Gr7e"]Kappalite3012HO Cone excursion 400W[/url] by [url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/149986878@N08/"]chienmortbb[/url], on Flickr [/quote] Apologies to those who got all this already but it seems a few people are struggling to under stand the graph so I thought i'd use a tea break to try and explain what it shows. The grey line shows how far the speaker cone moves backwards and forwards at different frequencies with 400W of signal passed through it. The speaker itself is rated at 450W so it shouldn't burn out with this sort of power. The horizontal red line is the limits to the excursion of the speaker called Xmax. If you look at 100Hz on the bottom line (kind of mid bass) you can see that the excursion at 400W is 6mm. At this point the speaker cone is going 6mm forward and 6mm backwards a total of 12mm travel. Below this frequency the speaker just exceeds it's Xmax limit, a teensy bit. At this point the speaker coil will just be leaving the magnetic field and distortion will start to rise. If the coil is outside the magnet for any length of time it will also start to heat up excessively because the magnet conducts a lot of the heat away. Going over Xmax isn't good, though it is not going to instantly destroy your speaker. Now if you look at the grey line at 50Hz you can see it has dipped down. That's the effect of the port, the air in the port is resonating and making most of the sound the energy to do this is damping down the movement of the cone which is now only moving just under 2mm Now if you go and look at 40Hz (roughly bottom E) the movement is 9mm well outside the magnetic field and at 30Hz (roughly bottom B on a fiver) it is 19.5mm which is beyond the mechanical limits of the speaker. At this point I couldn't tell you what is happening without dissecting the speaker. Some of them are mechanically limited by the suspension and some of them hammer the coil on the back of the magnet, Some of the experts will tell you that going beyond Xmax (6mm in this speaker) is dangerous to the speaker some will tell you Xlim (12.5mm) is where the damage happens.. I'm going to sit on the fence a little, you might get away with 10mm for a short while and don't mind a bit of distortion but don't go near 12.5 if you want your speaker to last. Now most people who play bottom E won't be playing it at 400W even if the rest of the sound of their bass in total is 400W. Most of their sound is made of higher harmonics but the damaging deep bass will be greater if they use the neck pickup, much greater if they use and octaver or they use a lot of bass boost. All of these are the booby traps which cause some people to blow speakers when most of us don't. Protecting us in the other direction is the natural bass filtering caused by the positioning of the pups and any filtering built into our amps. Playing 400w bottom B into the speaker and you can see you are asking a 6mm limited speaker to travel 19mm. Put another way at this frequency it can only handle 6/19ths of 400Watts, about 125W. There's another little booby trap here too. If you are pushing 400W through your speaker then it will get very hot, heating the coil will increase it's resistance and make it quieter, if you are struggling then you might be tempted to turn it up to compete with the rest of the band, which in turn heats it a little more. If you'd brought a second speaker you'd be pushing less than half the power (because two identical speakers are more efficient than one) and you wouldn't be getting any of this thermal compression. Anyway tea break over and I hope the graph makes a little more sense now.

Thanks for that link Bill, when I was experimenting with piezo's I had to work out the capacitance and impedances myself. For the OP the capacitor resistor circuit does work and takes out some of the harshness. Start with a 5uF capacitor in series and a 10ohm resistor im parrallel with the tweeter. I had some of the old Motorola piezos which sounded OK. Bill will know but I think CTS may have taken on the Motorola plant when they stopped production. They weren't widely available over here when I checked quite a few years back. The cheap Chinese made piezo's are definitely inferior both in sound and reliability. I decided in the end that a conventional horn driver and crossover were always going to sound better.

It's just a result of changing technology and an immature industry. Class D is new, the watts you can get for a £1 have increased and the new power supplies mean you can still carry the thing. Because it is new we all want it, if that's you in your avatar then you are probably old enough to remember when all cars had to have 100mph+ on their speedos even if they would only do it downhill with a following wind. It was about sales, bragging rights and customer demand. Now no-one probably knows how far their speedo goes up to. This is the first time in amp history that we can have as much power as the mains socket will supply for less than an average weeks wage. We'll get used to it, we will grow out of it, something else will come along.

[quote name='Lw.' timestamp='1484237779' post='3213865'] Whilst the numbers & that graph look great - I don't understand what any of it means. So - are we damaging our expensive ported cabs or not? [/quote] That deserves a serious answer. This was the whole reason I started this thread. Some people are damaging speakers, usually people who can ill afford it, others are using their gear well within their limits and won't ever have a problem. Some of us probably sail nearer the wind more than is sensible but get away with it. We get quite a few questions on BC about matching amps to cabs and sometimes the advice is better than others. There is an inherent problem with all ported cabs and most bassists will be unaware of it. If you know the problem of subsonic over excursion is there then it's easy enough to avoid. Basschat discussions tend to be pretty measured and by sharing information most people on here get to know their technical side pretty well. As a result the advice newbies get on BC is usually pretty spot on. Simply if there is a point beyond which you shouldn't go it is better to know where it is. It's also true that an educated customer will ask questions when making purchases and the makes manufacturers cough up more information about the design compromises they inevitably make. I'm sure the whole lightweight movement has been sped up by BassChat and TalkBass. Wouldn't it be great if amp manufacturers published details of any high pass filtering in their manuals and then started making a feature of it. That'll only become a selling point if we all start asking questions. So, the simple answer is a few people are blowing cabs, but it is easily avoided if you know what you are doing. I'd be pretty happy if I thought even half a dozen people avoided the heartbreak of a blown speaker as a result.

Showing how deeply uncool I am I'm on my second Fiat Multipla. With the seats in you can carry 6 adults reasonably comfortably. Take the seats out and you have a van, I carry two bass cabs, a full PA including bass bins and 15" monitors plus the lights. It will still seat three people with that load in. the 1.9 diesel engine is a real workhorse but I think it's common to a lot of the other van based people carriers like the Citroen. The only downside is all the rubbish Fiat plastic trims that don't last and the people laughing at the weird car as you drive past. They've both been reliable and incredibly cheap to buy. Generally though all the van based vehicles are a good way to go if you cart a lot of gear. The estates are always a little more difficult to pack as they don't have the height I find.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1484147758' post='3213040'] I have just done a plot of the cone excursion of a well known, well loved driver the Eminence Kappalite 3012HO. The box is 50L and the tuning frequency is 50Hz The power is 400 watts, the stated power of the 3012HO. The red line is Xmax, the maximum excursion at which the voice coil is under the influence of the magnet. It is not dangerous to exceed XMax by a small amount. However the Xlim or XDamage (12.5mm) , the point at which the voice coil is in danger, is exceed at 36.7Hz, 5 Hz above low B on a 5 string. Indeed you have to reduce the power at 31Hz to under 200W to avoid exceeding XDamage. [url="https://flic.kr/p/R8Gr7e"][/url][url="https://flic.kr/p/R8Gr7e"]Kappalite3012HO Cone excursion 400W[/url] by [url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/149986878@N08/"]chienmortbb[/url], on Flickr [/quote]Thanks for putting this up. The point for those that don't know about all this is that the curve is the same for all speakers in a tuned cab. Excursion rises steadily as the frequency falls but the tuning of the cab dampens the cone movement at the tuning frequency. You can see the dip in excursion at 50hz really clearly on the graph. At this point the port is doing all the work and the cone movement is damped because it is working hard to pump air through the port. The Kappalite was chosen because it is about as good as a driver gets, and has been recommended by several designers or used in their cabs. There's every chance your speaker wont behave as well unless you use very expensive cabs. Now moving beyond Xmax/the speakers limiting point doesn't mean instant destruction any more than running a cars revs into the red means the engine will blow up. It does mean you are taking a risk though. What happens next depends upon the exact circumstances but at this point the built in safety designs aren't necessarily going to protect you, and there is no red light on most speakers. More later, I have to practice

[quote name='Lw.' timestamp='1484151958' post='3213093'] Depends on the musical style you're after but some places to consider: Purple Turtle - local/unsigned stuff every wednesday. Gigs of slightly bigger bands on at least every other Thursday. Various genres. Oakford Social Club - weekly gigs of sometimes really good artists, other times more of the same unsigned local stuff. Pavlovs Dog - Fri/Sat they often have a band on for a bit around 9-ish. Does mean you have to go in 'pavs' though. Facebar - weekly gigs. Nearly always metal/heavy alternative stuff, occasionally D'n'B. Sub89/Bowery District (I think it's two venues in the same building) - your generic signed music venue, tickets about £15. It's either the bigger cover bands/tribute bands or older artists that are a bit down on their luck, Alien Ant Farm played in there the other week. The Butler - I think it's every Friday, generic rock covers bands. The Rising Sun Arts Centre - couple of gigs a week. Newish music or just band the promotor likes. There's a place called Global Cafe on the same street that I think is somehow related but does more world music or jazz type stuff. The Queens Arms - it's the local UKIP/Britain First/NF pub but is available to hire on the cheap so often has gigs completely unrelated to the normal clientele on. You can only really find out about gigs in there if you know one of the bands, even then it's a bit of a trek from all the other pubs. There are a few other less regular places that sometimes have gigs on but those ones should keep you going for now. [/quote] Thanks