Phil Starr

I don't buy cars very often and was amazed how that market had changed between purchases (about 10 years). There was no interest from dealers in negotiating. One dealer was more forthcoming "it's the internet". Everything is advertised online and if they quote a higher price than their rivals they simply don't get a bite. More recently they make more money out of the purchase plans than the sale itself. We've had trouble buying a car for cash with a VW main dealer pretty much refusing to sell a second hand car unless we used a plan. I've seen ads for new Audi's saying "this model only available through PCP"! The idea of a garage offering a guarantee has pretty much disappeared too, replaced by a warranty, which is essentially an insurance policy. Most used car places seem to be closing their workshops and farming out after sales to dedicated repair shops paid for under the warranty. If you are lucky the garage will help you with the warranty claim.

I think the general concensus is to be polite and fair. If I make an offer and thre is no counter offer I'd take that to imply that 'I'm not prepared to haggle'. Coming back with a counter offer means we are haggling but you need to offer a bit more. I'd never take it personally You can't really be upset at someone trying to get a good price. I'm not convinced the 'best price' question is rude though, people are often unsure about bargaining and it's a formulation they have heard over and again on the antiques shows. You have to allow for people being clumsy with words sometimes. I do have my pet hates though; no timewasters is one of them, the implication for me is that anyone not paying is doing so out of malice and that somehow their time is so much more important than mine. Another pet hate is people who make silly offers for something they haven't even seen, which happens a lot on some sites but not so much here. Overall though I think people are right, the stuff sold here is pretty specialist and we are all aware of the value of most of the things on sale, anyone who over prices will soon know by getting no response.

It's fine (and BFM's 2x power is good advice) amps and speakers are rated differently so there is no real equivalence. Expressed simply it works like this (there are all sorts of standards and practical issues and the engineers will be wincing at my simplifications) Speakers are rated by how much heat they can build up before failing. An artificial constant signal is fed into them and the power increased until they fail or reach a particular temp, it's nothing to do with music which has loud and quiet bits but it's easy to measure objectively. Amplifiers are measured effectively by the voltage they can swing before distorting, you connect a load to the amp and look at the waveform on an oscilloscope. Once they reach full power you can see the nice sine wave chopped off at the top and that is the amp's rms limit. So the 900 W amp can swing around 85V but those peaks will only hit the speakers for a few thousandths of a second and it won't heat that quickly and cools down in the quiet bits. However that voltage will move the cones a long way and 85V of frequencies below 100Hz will push most speakers beyond it's limits so how you get on will depend upon how much deep bass is in your signal. Fortunately there isn't much deep bass coming out of your pickups.

I think all my drummers have been really fussy about their sound, more so even than guitarists, and they all have had really good ears, or did before they started drumming 😂 They will usually care much more than you so trusting them is good, though you may need to negotiate if they want something that upsets the band mix. I've never had problems by taking what they say seriously. They/you sort it at rehearsals, we have the odd technical rehearsal where we sort out any PA problems. We put the PA up as far away as possible pointing back at the band and switch off any monitors. I've had drummers taking over an hour to be happy but save the settings (mark with tape on analogue mixers) and that's the mix you take to gigs. If they change things at home then just get them to warn you so you can re-mix. Once you have a stereo feed you just mix it as 'drums'. There are dedicated drum mixers out there and you can use the 'brain' from a set of eDrums to deal with triggers.

I think that's fair as is the ONO offer. If a seller makes it clear then that's fair enough.

What's the etiquette? I'm a regular buyer of used everything but never much on Basschat. Normally I buy locally and quite enjoy a haggle, I'll decide myself if something is worth the money and try for a bargain but I'll even offer more than the asking price if I think someone has grossly undervalued their stuff. Most people will add a small margin to the asking price to allow for a haggle so it's quite fun to guess what that is. I feel differently about BC though, it feels more like buying from a friend. Everything I've bought here has been well looked after, descriptions have always been scrupulously accurate and everyone polite and helpful. We have a real community feel. So far I've been reluctant to make offers and the odd thing I've sold has been at the price I'm happy to sell at. I've often had it for sale at a higher price elsewhere. I often watch offer prices falling so do we have an informal Dutch auction system? So buyers or sellers, how do you approach things?

My first instinct was the same as everyone else, it's down to the room. I too like to start with a bright clean sound, it all calms down as the room fills up and the bodies absorb a lot of the sound. Remember too that 'bright' isn't an objective description and it may be down to too little bass or low mids as much as over the top high mids and tops. That final eq is just for that, correcting the sound to compensate for room acoustics. Ideally the sound coming from your mixer should be exactly what you want with each channel voice, guitar, bass etc eq'd as you want and sounding great through headphones (No I don't use them at every gig but good without any added room acoustics) Some digital desks will analyse the room and do the final eq for you but with an analogue desk it's a common trick/hack to play a recording you know well and do the final eq on the graphic to make that sound 'right'. If a track you know well is right then the chances are good that your band will too. You want to take your 'perfect' mix to every room and not have to re-do everything for each room.

That 4" driver is shocking but It's really good to see you have an outcome that has given you a better speaker. Kudos to @Bill Fitzmaurice for his help to you.

You might want to talk to the drummer about a sub-mixer /drum mixer that they control themselves. If you start to run multiple triggers and mic drums separatelyyou could easily out grow your mixer. It's also a lot to manage if you are mixing and playing bass at the same time. My experience is that drummers take more pride in their sound than any other band member so controlling their own sound and feeding you a stereo mix after they have mixed it themselves might go down well.

If you are an experimenter then you might like to try one of these as a 'bright box' . It wasn't waht it was designed for but I've tried it on top of a 1x12 driven by a PA amnp with a variable crossover. 180Hz worked really well and the beaming will be less, especially on top of a bigger cab.

If you want a rough idea of when beaming starts just divide 13,512 (the speed of sound in inches per second at sea level) by the diameter of the driver in inches. Your 4" speaker would start beaming from around 3378 Hz, the 10" from 1351Hz Treat this as a rough calculation though; beaming is also affected by the size and shape of the baffle (front of the cab) and by the behaviour of the speaker cone. Speaker cones aren't rigid and all of them flex by different amounts so at high frequencies only the centre of the cone will be tracking the electrical signal which will also affect the radiation pattern. Beaming isn't dramatic at first, these are theoretical figures you'd need measuring equipment to detect and speakers are routinely crossed over an octave or two above these points. You did ask Point the speaker you have at your ears using a wedge is great advice, there are other reasons why a 4" speaker might not be great!

I was going to say this but then thought 'that looks like a can of worms' there is absolutely no reason that you couldn't make a lightweight Barefaced style sub, the forces are slightly greater with the amount of air shifted but with a limited frequency range resonances easier to deal with if anything. As Bill has pointed out it is just a matter of bracing appropriately. Magnets need to be bigger on subs and big ceramic magnets weigh a lot but Neo is available at a cost. Make the magnet big enough and you can cut down on the need for a big cab too, again at a cost. For a pub band the amount of bass you 'need' is actually fairly modest, it's all do-able as some of the stick systems show

The RCF NXL 24-A MK2 do sound nice, the hire firm I bought my unused RCF 745's from (unused because of Covid) had decided to upgrade and was comparing the 9 series with the RCF NXL 24-A MK2 and had a rep from RCF there when I arrived, so I got the unexpected chance to audition them. They sounded so much better than anything else there that I almost rejected the 745's. Only double the price though. Spot on though about the mini arrays, they are fine and offer advantages and disadvantages but the downside is lack of efficiency meaning you need a lot of mid/top drivers to match a point source for volume and that pushes the price higher. My band don't sound good enough for more revealing speakers

I loved the sound or those old Mackie's one local band was still using them last time I saw them and they sounded absolutely great. Mind you the sound of any band is down to who is using it as much as the kit itself. One of the ideas I'm playing with after a post by @zitherman is a column speaker. He was considering building something into a set for his band that looked old school (perhaps over simplifying but you get the idea) I contemplated and modelled a 4x6 and a 4x8 using a high sensitivity BMS compression driver for the horn. The sound pressure levels for the 4x8 in particular were extraordinary. 10db more than my RCF 745's. The bass response was usable too but crossed over from a sub @120Hz you'd have a terrific system and with good control of dispersion. The 4x6 would have worked better with a higher crossover but the stick systems like the RCF Evox do this routinely. I'm committed now to completing the design of the BC 8" ultra portable bass speaker though and my own PA is active and works well so I'm not really looking to go back to passives for my own use. The 4x8+sub remains a thought experiment.

Is it time to bite the bullet and go for a digital mixer? If light weight, and I'm guessing portability is the issue tou could dispense with the rack altogether. Compressor and graphic would be built in and with 18 channels you could dedicate 6 to the drums and mix them as a subgroup (or make your drummer carry their own sub mixer) You'd have so much more besides with a digital desk. That of course leaves you still needing an amp if you want to stick with passive speakers. Thomann do a four channel class D T-Amp and Behringer do a four channel amp too, there may be others. If not I have my two Peavey IPR's mounted together in a simple wooden sleeve which gives you 4x300/500W in something you can carry one handed, with a single finger if you want. Alternatively you could think about upgrading your speakers. Used PA prices are pretty strong at the moment so you might be able to trade in a complete PA for good money. I know you bought the GR Bass cab so I'm assuming generally light weight is important to you. Ditching the rack and having everything on board with the mixer might be a better long term solution. If not the Crown XLS1502 would be a great amp at 3.9kg The Behringer NX3000 a budget alternative (ignoring Behringer's over inflated power output claims v's the Crown's rms ratings) You might find some of the Crown amps used here as they are a recommendation for people using a pre/power combination for bass.

Goldilocks speakers I suppose 15's are defiinitely too hefty and 10's are too small. !2's are just right. However not all 12's are the same. We used to use QSC 12's and they are decidedly hefty when you hve to lift them onto poles. In this case small v's hefty was just a throwaway comment to mirror @warwickhunt's dilemma. I haven't used heft for a long time though. Will it pass BC's profanity filter However separately a couple of us are asking ourselves what might be achieved by going with designing a 2+1 system with conventional point source tops and sub. It would be a little like one of the 'stick' PA's but with something like an 8" or even 6" based top instead of the stick. Freed up from the need to handle bass you could get quite a lot of sound out of an 8" speaker and we are looking to modify an existing 8 to get higher sensitivity. I've actually played with a 2x8 PA with just vocals and guitar and it's surprisingly capable. The conventional sticks with an array of 3" drivers do struggle for volume so whilst you lose the directional control of a line array you could have the advantage of no heavy lifting by using a really small top and crossing over from a sub. Don't forget my other hobby of designing speakers I'm constantly toying with all sorts of ideas.

Great idea, funnily enough we are looking at the possibility of one down in the West Country. One of the questions we want to resolve is Small speakers with a sub v's a pair of hefty PA tops.

First of all my gut reaction is that I think you'd be better off spending the extra on the mixer rather than speakers at this price level, that's if if cost is an issue. The A&H is going to add so much more for the extra money and more than the difference between what would be two very good speaker systems. 2xQSC 10 + 12" sub = 2xRCF 932's? That looks like a fairly balanced equation to me. Really hard to choose, they'll both be good sounding, equally capable sytems. They'd sound different, but which would be better? That's like asking me to choose my son or daughter if a bit less emotionally charged . The bigger horn drivers in the RCF range give a lovely vocal qualitybut the QSC'c sound good too and you already know how they sound, The two 12's in a pair of 932's will give plenty of bass (moving from the 7 series to the 9 series is mainly about a better bass driver BTW, plus a slightly better cab) but the 12" driver in the sub is a specialist with a bit more excursion so wouldn't be far behind the two bass/mid drivers). As Bill has pointed out putting it on the floor will reinforce the single driver. Could you drag your two QSC's down to PMT in Newcastle and try them with a sub and then have a listen to the RCF's at the same time? I managed to audition a lot of PA stuff at PMT in Bristol when I was buying a few years back and were really helpful ( I went in on a quiet afternoon) Without you listening to them I think it comes down to how you feel about spending £1600 on the 12" tops which probably won't need a 12" sub or £750 on a sub to go with the speakers you already have. Incidentally I bought a pair of RCF 15's, the 745's as a Swiss Army Knife solution, they really work in the sense that they sound great and so far they have been up to everything they've been asked to do but they are so big and over the top for most gigs. Not sure I'd go that big again.

Re-visiting this I think you probably need to tell us your budget and maybe what sort of spec. I'm picturing something that will give a reliable 300W rms into 8ohm per side, 500 into 4? If you want reliable then Crown, Yamaha and QSC all offer bullet proof offerings. At the cheaper end Thomann's own brand the T-Amp look good value and users on BC have given good reviews in the past. I'd also stick with Behringer as a recommendation from my own experience.

I've pretty much tried all the tips in all the sizes with all the main culprit headphones. I've a box at home with maybe 40 pairs of tips that I try with each new in ears. In the end I used some triple flange tips I pulled off some earplugs and thay worked really well for me with the original ZS10's I then bought a box of mixed size triple flange and the small ones fit ted well and still do with the pro's. They go right into my ear canal up to the first bend and sit fairly tight, so much so that I've been to the local small injuries unit for them to pull them out when they get stuck. I now carry tweezers with me to gigs

To lose one W-Audio amp seems a misfortune, to lose two seems like carelessness OK, it's a fair cop, I should have said some cheap power amps can be reliable.

I think we nearly all feel this. The price hike from no in-ears to moulded customs is just so huge for a covers band going out for £300 a night shared 5 ways. £500+ is a year's income from the band once you've paid for fuel and other incidental expenses and a lot to risk if it isn't quite right. On the other hand I've never regretted taking @EBS_freak advice. What to do? So I'm going to take one for the team. I've been in touch with Snugs who make moulds largely for bikers and hunting shooting people. Very West Country They are quite near me and I'm going out there to get my ears scanned. They make custom moulded ear buds for a limited range of headphones but I've been talking to them about making customs for the KZ ZS10 pro's. Also possibly for my Sennheiser IE100's. The deal is that I have to leave the 'phones with them whilst they work on them. I have two ZS10's so that isn't a problem. Crucially this costs £169.95 for a pair of custom buds so potentially giving me ZS10 based IEM's that seal reliably, and don't need pushing back in all the time, for just over £200 rather than the £500+ you'd pay for a fully custom IEM of unknown sound quality. I know Russ is going to tell me I'm potentially wasting even more money and will end up paying for full fat in-ears but I'm curious and happy to take the hit. If it is noticeably better than I have now it might be an affordable move for a lot of people. At the moment I'm getting great sounds out of my ZS10 pro's at the beginning of the set but that deteriorates as the evening goes on and they start slipping loose so just playing the whole set with them sounding their best is well worth £200. So the only question is.... Which earphone should I try? Are people going to shift to ZAR's or the latest iteration of the ZS10's. Once they've made one for me Snugs will offer them to anyone who wants them so it would make sense for them and me to start off with the most popular model. I'm happy to pay out the £50ish cost of buying yet another iteration of the ZS10.

I had a Behringer EP2400 for years (old heavy amp) with no problems and bought an iNuke (class D) off someone on BC with no problems other than being as ugly as sin Not 4,000W but 2x500W and now with a neutral looking black case and sold as the NX series. I've also got a couple of Peavey IPR3000 which have been 100%. Probasbly not much help other than to say that cheap PA power amps seem to be generally reliable.