Phil Starr

[quote name='Paul S' timestamp='1448264700' post='2913945'] Above waist level? This fella used to, don't suppose many people pointed and laughed. [/quote] Right elbow clamped to the bass body left hand clinging to neck, I recognise that stance

[quote name='Twincam' timestamp='1448241649' post='2913927'] I'm wondering what the point of amps in the 50 to 100w? [/quote] I reckon that's a more reasonable question than the original one. 50W is 6dB less loud than a 200W amp and that is significant. If your speakers produce a fairly typical 96dB per watt then thats a total of 119dB for the 200W amp but only 113dB for a 50W amp. you need about 120dB as a rule of thumb to match a drummer and you won't notice 1dB either way. We don't always play with drummers of course, rock isn't the only music so you don't always need a huge amp and I have a 1x10 120W combo bought especially for just that use. I could imagine using something like the Roland Cube for the same job and a lot of upright bass players use small amps to just beef up their sound. Never say never. However a lot of manufacturers offer these small combo's and they are a con, too loud for home practice not enough for most gigs, driven by marketing to young bassists starting out (and parents who are often actually paying) who don't have the knowledge to know that 50W isn't twice as good as 25W.

i've had a look at that speaker from Thomann, it's not suitable and your bass will blow it in no time it's for backgroud music in shops and restaurants. If that is your budget you are going to struggle. You can't afford a WEM Dominator but the guitar versions speakers won't handle bass either. The Roland Cube is an interesting suggestion. A friend has the 50W guitar version and it has a fairly flat basic response which you need for bass and relies on the inbuilt simulation software to make guitar like sounds. A high quality acoustic guitar amp would do the same but without the built in SIM's. However few speakers designed for guitar will really handle bass except at very low levels and I don't think you want to be shelling out for replacements every few months. A small PA or single active PA speaker is a good idea combined with something that will give you guitar tones. The Zoom G1ON or G1XON are great value and fab little units https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiDu1Sa0ngU If you are going for a single combo rather than the PA idea I'd go for a bass amp with a G1ON or similar.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1447452557' post='2907834'] What is neck dive? I gig with a 1991 Gibson Thunderbird. I just put it on and play. Nothing is diving. Blue [/quote] It may not be a problem for you, and I'm happy to hear that. That doesn't alter the fact that the centre of gravity of a T'bird is well to the right of the centre point between the two strap buttons (in a right handed bass). It's also slightly forward of the centre line hence the bass twists. If you use a normal strap and walk around without holding your T'bird the neck will dive and eventually make contact with the floor. The number of T'birds for sale with repaired necks is testament to that and is one of the first things to check if you buy a used one. The forums are full of discussion about this and people (including eventually Gibson) have routinely moved the upper strap button to cure the problem you say doesn't exist. I'm sure you can get used to anything and I understand why people love this bass. Apart from looking cool they have a great sound, wonderful sustain a fabulous neck and weigh nothing compared to the usual culprits. I run the PA as well as playing bass, I dance and get the audience clapping along during our show so a bass that moves is no good for me at a practical level. I need both hands for my performance. Clamping the strap to the body effectively creates a new fixing point for the strap and the centre of gravity then sits on the centre line for the two strap fixings, problem cured.

Stop worrying about it. Bill is of course spot on, the current increases as you reduce the impedance and with it the heating in the output stages of your solid state amp. However they are designed with this in mind usually with lots of output transistors working in parallel and lots of heatsinking and often a cooling fan. On top of this there will be protection circuits which detect temperature rises and reduce the output power accordingly. Digital (actually switching but who cares) amps are often more efficient than traditional solid state amps so don't get so hot, but the same principles are used. My reservation is operating amps down below 4ohms. Some amps won't handle that current and that really is a lot of amperage for components to handle. At least check before inflicting this on your amp. Generally you'd just use a different amp and speakers or double up if you want to engineer that much sound and I can't think you'd need to go to 2ohms outside of a specialist PA application. Wear and tear isn't something to think about with solid state amps. there aren't any moving parts (cooling fans excepted) so nothing to wear. Components will degrade over time but they'll do this anyway even if you keep the amp in a box. Some degrade slower and some quicker with no use but basically I doubt you'd see much difference between a 20 year old amp with heavy use at 4 ohms and one used rarely at 8ohms.

As everyone has said look at spl levels first, and unlike bass speakers you can usually find these out. Unless you have a pressing reason not to then I'd go for an active system preferably with some sort of DSP (digital signal processing) built in. With the amp and speaker designed to work together and a computer controlling the output so you can't damage the speakers you are going to squeeze every last drop out of the drive units. Incidentally this is why you get such variation in wattage ratings, basically a 12" drive unit can only handle around 300W (and not that much in the bottom octave) and produce a sound level of around 127dB. However if you limit the frequencies and only apply power for a few thousandths of a second and then compress all the frequencies that might damage the speaker you can kind of cheat by upping the average power and then trimming the signal all but inaudibly to cover the peaks. The DSP computer does all this automatically but sound engineers have been doing this manually for years. It then pays to fit a 1000W amp to a 300W speaker but the amp will only need to give short bursts at this level. Neither the built in amp or the speaker are really 1000W but that's a bit irrelevant, they go really loud and the DSP stops them blowing or even distorting too much, however badly you treat them. you won't notice a lot of difference between ones rated 300W, 600W or 1000W. I'm another who would go for RCF especially the ones with the 2" horn drivers. I auditioned most of the major brands a year ago and they really stood out in the way they reproduced middle frequencies and edged it over QSC's IMO. Much better than Yamaha, EV, JBL, Mackie and the like. However any of these can give you a good sound which will be more likely to be limited by the mic's you use and the lack of time, and often skill, a pub band has to set up and get a decent mix.

Good luck

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1447534959' post='2908455'] Is there an issue fitting in enough port area with that volume? I've noticed when playing around with WinISD that it can be a bit of a juggling act with smaller cabinets. [/quote] Yes, though at a practical level the potential length of the ports is at least as tricky the port can end up longer than the cab! i ended up with quite small ports which potentially give you a bit of port noise at low frequencies. It's all about which compromises you choose to make The proof of the cab is in the hearing

You need to completely bypass the tweeter. The easiest and reversible way to do this is as follows. Open up the cab probably by removing the 12" speaker. Locate the tweeter, main driver, speaker socket, and crossover. you should have a set of two wires going from the socket to the crossover and then one set going to the tweeter from the crossover and one set going from the crossover to the main driver. If not then don't panic but ask again. If you can solder then I'd desolder the main speaker connection at the speaker and the lead to the crossover at the socket. Then I'd connect the speaker directly to the socket with new wires. That way you can simply resolder the cab back to original and remove your new wires if you want to sell your cab. If you can't solder and don't mind bodging in a less than ideal way then what you can do is cut the lead/wires from the socket to the crossover a few centimetres from the crossover and the leads to the main speaker also close to the crossover. Now if you are lucky they will be colour coded the same way. Connect the cut leads together so that like goes to like. It is essential that the connection is completely secure and that the exposed joins can't touch and short circuit or you could blow your amp. It's messy but you could use connector block (chocolate box) or some crimp connectors as used in car electrics (I can feel Bill shuddering at this point). Don't trim the wires in case you want to reconnect them. If you get the wires the wrong way round the speaker will work but if you use it with a second correctly wired speaker you will lose all your bass. If this happens reverse the connections to the main speaker. Try the speaker at VERY LOW VOLUME whilst it is still out of the cab, it will sound tinny but you at least will know it is working. Finally tidy up all the loose wires inside or they will rattle once you start playing and put the cab back together. Alternatively take it to a tech who will do the job in 20 mins and only charge a few quid. It's not a difficult job but it has to be at your own risk. Do you feel lucky

Funnily enough you've caught me messing around on WinISD with smaller cabs. A 35l cab looks interesting, roughly 1dB up from 100-200Hz but 3dB down at 40-70Hz. I think if I really wanted to go for a lightweight cab then reducing the size and compromising on deep bass looks interesting, you'd lose about 3kg and the panels would be inherently more rigid. I find that size affects portability just as much as weight.

[quote name='stevie' timestamp='1447511926' post='2908204'] On the matter of cutting the holes for the port tubes, I bought an adjustable hole cutter recently for less than a fiver which may not be the last word in pro tools, but will do the job perfectly well. It might take a few tries on some scrap pieces of wood to get the size spot-on, but it's not too difficult to do. [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Handy-Adjustable-Metal-Hole-Saw-Round-Circle-Cutter-DIY-Tools-Accessory-/252069704389"]http://www.ebay.co.u...y-/252069704389[/url] [/quote] I use one of these http://www.toolstation.com/shop/p45494?table=no either look good for the job. Building the slot port design was slightly trickier than building the tube ported design so I'd agree with the decision to go that way. I'll offer notes on how to build the slot ported design as others may prefer to build that. It does look very nice IMO but I'd rather go the trouble free route.

Don't buy a bass amp. Clean is a subjective term, what you are asking for is flat. The sound of the bass DI'd into the PA, though when you hear your bass through a ruler flat system you may decide you did want subjectively 'clean'. Your best bet for the DI'd sound is a PA amp and speaker. For that budget you could buy something like a single RCF or similar. Maybe a good quality floor monitor. I'm guessing that you have monitored through good quality headphones? If not I'd try it just to check that this really is the sound you want. Don't go for a cheap quality PA though, the bass drivers often won't handle high levels of bass due to limited excursion on the bass driver.

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1447357499' post='2907082'] forgive me for daftness - and maybe it's something simple - but maybe the ports and 15mm are a better method of construction? (and lighter) [/quote] Not daft at all and I'm trying to modify the design by absorbing people's comments so they are all welcome I've given details of both so people can make a choice if they want to construct one of these. I'll include notes of both in the final write up too. Personally I prefer the 18mm construction with the tube ports, but I have a proper hole saw to cut the ports. Both cabs are an easy carry anyway.

[quote name='Thunderpaws' timestamp='1447353666' post='2907030'] What type of woodwork joint did you use for the slot port at the sides and with the bracing? Could it be vibrating at certain frequencies? [/quote] I think it's probably a standing wave problem as explained above. The joints are all reinforced butt joints, chosen to be easy to replicate for a home builder with limited tools.

[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1447363858' post='2907161'] Taking a simplistic approach, the wavelength at 750Hz (which is where it looks like the resonance peak is) is about 46cm, so are there any bits of the cab that measure 46cm apart, or possibly 23cm? [/quote] Not simplistic at all. The baffle is about 45x40cm with the shelf of the port at the end of the baffle, so that is the simplest explanation and that critical point had no damping material at the time of the test so that will be my first port of call. I think we have set up some extra standing wave resonances in the changes we made to this cab. It's a problem with small cabs with biggish drivers that you end up with all the dimensions determined primarily by the need to get everything in and not by acoustic considerations. I'm also gong to put in some simple cross bracing into the 18mm cab. I had particularly wanted to compare an unbraced 18mm cab with a fairly heavily braced 12mm cab. Interestingly the 12mm cab vibrates far more than the 18mm cab and you can both hear it and feel it with your fingers. A single test on similar but not identical cabs proves nothing of course but I've always argued that mass is an important factor in panel resonance. What I've found so far bears this out.

Yes, the 18mm slotted which is the green one on the graph. Stevie's initial thought was that it was the driver, since the volume of the box and the tuning were the same. It now looks like it is something about the box which is creating the resonance. Frustrating but I'm glad we found it before publishing the design. We are investigating..... I'm hoping it is something simple.

[quote name='stevie' timestamp='1446054831' post='2896570'] I would have posted this a lot earlier but I hit a snag. When I started measuring one of the cabs I have here, it didn’t measure the same as the one I had had here a few weeks ago. I spent hours trying to figure out what was going on. I even started recalibrating all my measuring gear. Eventually, I pulled out a speaker that I know measures flat and tried it: it was flat. The penny dropped and I put the second cab on the bench and measured it. There was a problem with one of the Beymas. This makes a bit of a mockery of our comparison test at the Bash. This is how they measured. I’d say one of those was definitely not to spec. The red one is the good one, by the way. More to follow shortly. [/quote] Quick update, we swapped the speakers last night and the plots stayed the same so the big 700Hz ish resonance is a cabinet problem, not a problem with the drivers. A bit more investigation needed but it was partially tamed by a bit more wadding in the cab. There's also a big peak in the output from the slot port though it doesn't coincide with the resonance we were investigating. A little more work on damping materials needed before I release the final design. I'm also going to order up a couple of better quality grilles to give a better impression of the finish you might achieve.

[quote name='Phil Adams' timestamp='1447260179' post='2906224'] Helium filled balloons tied to the headstock will cure it as well, look nice, and if enough are used can give the player an aerial view of the audience. [/quote]Is this why your location is halfway up the stairs?

[quote name='Lw.' timestamp='1447239627' post='2905959'] I can't believe just how many people play with only one hand; are you not limiting yourself a bit by just playing E,A,D & G? [/quote] Not a problem with my band [quote name='Norris' timestamp='1447239361' post='2905958'] I had to read it a couple of times, but I think the OP has clipped his strap to the top of the bass as it rises from the bridge strap button, near the elbow of your plucking hand. I can see how that might prevent "top tilt" but not necessarily neck dive [/quote] That's it, and yes I did it to stop the tilt but it seems to have sorted the dive too. The bass sits against my body a bit better I suppose. [quote name='pfretrock' timestamp='1447236439' post='2905929'] I found the best cure for a Tbird neck dive is a P bass. You can thank me later [/quote] That's the solution I came up with. A lovely American Deluxe. I only gigged my Gibson for one gig. The sound was monstrous and it turns you into a real poser as you haul it back upright but after about an hour I found I was getting really sore lower arm muscles from adjusting for the twist, halfway through the second gig I had to abandon it and sold it shortly after but I missed playing it and went for a Japanese copy. Now I have the delicious problem of choice for gigs and a pang for the one that got away. It sounded so good.....

Hoping to go into the annals of fame with this one. All sorts of solutions from thick straps to hanging weights onto the bass but none work without problems. Playing the other day, wishing I could get the sound without the dive, when I looked down and thought 'if only I had a third point to attach the strap to the body of the bass' (where the lower part of the strap emerges from behind the body). I looked across at my skinny string and the light bulb went off. I removed the capo, clipped the strap to the Tbirds beautiful but flawed body and hey presto! The out of body experience of a Tbird I didn't have to struggle with. No more twisting in my hands and no neck dive at all. with the business end of the capo being the only bit showing it didn't look too bad either. I'm sure I can work out a better clip but the T'bird is going to get a lot more use now. you can thank me later

Don't accept compromise, but play fair. Insist on trying cabs, and buy from a shop which lets you try. You've found your amp and you want a matching cab which narrows down your search. Buy the amp and take it with you when you try, then it doesn't matter if the shop doesn't stock Orange. The only way to get a sound you like is to try because one persons perception of clean or filthy won't be the same as yours. If we all buy on the web then the shops will disappear. Many shops will match internet prices anyway within a few quid and you should get decent after sales so it's good financially in most cases. If you know the after sales is poor then the shop deserves to fail but that is another issue. (rant over) There's loads of good shops that carry a range of cabs, how about a trip to Brighton to try Barefaced. There are bass shows around and of course the bass bashes which give you the chance to try and to listen. Personally I'd rather take months and buy what I want than rush into something I'm only 60% happy with. Have loads of fun trying though

[quote name='ivansc' timestamp='1447155155' post='2905277'] Depends how you interpret "dud". Presumably you did look at the bass when you bought it but assumed that you could fix the bent neck. Unfortunately in my book that would imply that you were aware of there being a problem and accepted the instrument warts and all. But I would still go back to the bloke, show him the issue and see if he is prepared to make an accommodation with you. Good luck! The sad thing is, he probably sell it like that in good faith. [/quote] this is about right. By examining the bass there is a fair argument you accepted it's condition, or at least that's what he might argue in court. I think he probably did sell it in good faith but it is hard to know. You can't really prove he knew of the fault and he can't prove it was sold as seen, unless he had something written in his ad on ebay. In that situation the best thing is to try and resolve the thing by talking. I had a similar situation when a Takamine I bought through ebay arrived with the pre amp not working. I contacted the seller who insisted it was working when it left. I got quotes for a repair and he paid £100 towards it. It turned out to be a broken connector in the pre amp which I repaired myself but by talking we avoided any dispute. I've also been through the ebay dispute resolution process which was painless and I got my money back from ebay. I assume they then got it from the vendor but that was their business. I got the impression that the right is assumed to be with the seller. Check what ebays conditions are though, there is probably a time limit. Good luck, it is horrible to be in that position.

[quote name='dave_bass5' timestamp='1447081469' post='2904656'] As xgsjx said above, i too always just thought 8 ohms was 2/3 of the full output, but obviously thats not the case. [/quote] It was a good question. obviously the power can be 2/3 or 1/2 depending upon the power supply. I think my old MAG600 was about 2/3 and it isn't a bad rule of thumb but that's why it isn't a fixed proportion. theoretically double but a bit less in practice.

Hi Dave, you have the answer already from Chienmortbb. I'll see if I can explain differently. An amp can only produce a certain maximum voltage into a speaker and that determines it's power output. However if you reduce the ohms the speaker will take more current and more power with the same voltage, so if you have an amp that produces 100W into 16 ohms it will produce 200W into 8ohms. Theoretically this means the amp could go on doing this so 400W into 4 ohms and 800W into 2 ohms. The problem is that this needs more and more power from the amp and the current demand keeps rising. Eventually either the amp gives up and goes up in smoke, automatic protection kicks in, or the power supply inside the stops making extra current. Usually the power supply is the limiting factor. Power supplies are often expensive and if they are transformer based really heavy. This is why most amps don't like 2ohms and why they can't produce twice the 8ohm power into 4ohms. In practice I doubt you'd notice the difference between say 350W and 400W so it doesn't matter. That's another story though. So the answer to your question is 'because they have differing power supplies.' On a practical level I don't think you need to choose an amp on the basis of 25% more power, you just won't notice it. *Valve amps work slightly differently as they have a transformer to adjust to different speakers so they will produce the same power if you have an output for that ohmage speaker.

[quote name='chrisanthony1211' timestamp='1446887181' post='2903127'] I know this will depend upon the size of the speaker, but is there any generalisation about how much lighter neo speakers are? I'm thinking about picking up something like an SWR redhead and making it a little lighter! Would swapping out the speakers make much of a difference? [/quote] I'd think you'd be looking to save a couple of kg per speaker looking at Eminence 10's, actually about a 50% reduction, somaybe 5lbs overall. The Redhead weighs in at 96lb so it is still going to be pretty heavy. The other problem is that speakers may not be a direct swap, in fact probably won't be, so you will get a different sound from the original Redhead. In an extreme case you may even get a sufficient mismatch between cab and speaker for the bass performance to be so compromised the speakers could be damaged. If you decide to go ahead then ask someone here to check for you.