Phil Starr

Just got back from a busman's holiday in St Ives, the Cornish one. Went with an old Uni friend and we took guitar and bass with us and did 4 open mics in a week. We had a really great time, the local musicians made us welcome, we even got invited along to jam sessions and we could have done more. In the summer there's music on somewhere every night. We heard some good stuff too. The audiences were really appreciative, a mixture of locals and holiday makers and we had a great time talking music and playing. My idea of a perfect holiday. Wonder how many others take instruments with them on holiday and grab the chance to entertain.

I really wasn't that impressed with the Yamaha's, they didn't sound great on vocals sounding harsh and lacking detail. The RCF's are so much better it is worth stretching to them if you can. There's an offer on at PMT http://www.pmtonline.co.uk/rcf-art422a-mkii-active-speakers.html making them just affordable. I say that as a bit of a fan of Yamaha and someone whose PA is mainly Yamaha. I just think the DXR's are a bit ordinary. Reliability is a given though. I'm another who would push for smaller speakers and adding a sub later. 15's can lead to problems in the crossover area which is often in the middle of what you need for great vocals and 15's are bloody big to be on stands,

iME metronome good drum machine better. You need to do some of your practice with a metronome/drum machine esp as a beginner. Seven years on I still use it to tighten up my timing every now and again or with a tricky run. I use them if we are recording too, just to tighten up and save wasted time and expense. the drum machines are much better, much closer to the real thing and metronomes are pretty boring. Get yourself a Zoom B1ON which is a dirt cheap multi effects pedal. It has a headphone amp built in and crucially a drum machine and metronome as well as a tuner. Runs for days on rechargeable batteries too. Great for practice with headphones or you can put it through your amp. I paid about £35 for mine

Hi Garry, the dimensions are here somewhere but I couldn't find them amidst the hundreds of posts either. I'm down in Cornwall this week on holiday. Playing music with an old uni friend mainly so I don't have measurements with me, but I did bring paper and stuff to do some sketches for you. So long as there aren't too many music pubs in St Ives I should have an update soon.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1438428084' post='2834439'] I think I know the answer to this already, but I'd be keen to find out which brands in particular have been tested. I often read about the cheaper 1u power amplifiers having problems delivering their rated power output in one way or another. Either that manufacturers are telling porky pies, or that under extreme load the amplifier doesn't have sufficient cooling in order to keep it running under load. - Output sags after sometimes milliseconds or anything up to a minute of having to work hard. So, I know that bass signal requires lots of power in the lows and I also know that just because we have a 1000W amp it absolutely isn't running at 1000W all the time (if at all) and the chances of a continuous bass signal for any more than 30 seconds is also very rare. (Unless I suppose the amps are being used for other instruments as well including bass synths playing long notes?) My question is this - I suppose it's all about headroom. If you have an amplifier that on paper is capable of 2500W RMS in to 4 Ohms and in tests it is only capable of peaks of 2000W in the real world AND under hard load it drops down to say 1800W RMS continuous, does that then translate to an 1600W RMS amplifier that will never have any problems with delivering a big fat signal all the time? To take it a step further - using a 3000W rated power amplifier that only ever has to deliver an absolute maximum of 1000W seems like a logical thing to do, especially as there are some 'cost conscious' models on the market. You could buy two of those and still have change for the cost of a premium unit such as PXN or Powersoft? [/quote] There are essentially three limits to an amplifiers power output. The voltage it can swing, the current it can provide and the heat it can dissipate. In any given amp one of these will be the important limiting element. (I'm ignoring any protection circuits or DSP here) There are lots of ways to measure and calculate an amps output even if you stick to rms. they range from just measuring the voltage swing and calculating the power that voltage would drive through 8ohms to connecting the amp to a dummy resistor and running sine waves through it for a week and measuring the temperature rise. Different amps work differently so can scre better in some tests than others. It's relatively easy to switch huge voltages so class D amps score well here. Since in most applications the power is only needed for a fraction of a second it makes no sense to put in a huge power supply so this is often the limit. With transistor amps high voltage devices are more expensive and the transistors are prone to thermal runaway so heat is the problem even if the power supply is big enough. Valve amps were usually limited by current, not least because all the power would go out through the output transformer. So, a watt is still a watt but there is a lot of room for confusion and even when standard tests and rms watts are used there will be amps that seem louder than others. The other aspect of this though is the speaker. There is no single drive unit that can handle 1000W continuously at all frequencies, and if you use 1000W through multiple drivers then the sound levels developed are going to be so high as to be unusable on stage. These sorts of powers are only useful for PA arrays safely suspended way above the band and audiences heads. To answer one of your questions. A 3000W rated amp limited by heat and power supply to1600W continuous could be treated as a 1600W amp except it could also put 3000W through your speakers for long enough to damage them. In fact real world speakers rated at, say, 800W rms 1600W peak probably can't handle 200W at some frequencies. We are are all going to have to get used to class D amp ratings. Affordable power is now effectively unlimited, there are a few problems with power supplies but we are going to have to decide to be careful about what powers we wish for.

Not really, it slightly reduces the size of the baffle. It is intended to make it out of thicker ply to keep the construction simple. However Its up to constructors to add whatever bracing they want, that's the joy of home building. There's already enough data here for anyone to build the cab if they already have basic carpentry skills.

The prototype back only has the 'vanes' shown in the photo, they line up with the other cross braces so could be braced against each other, but whilst prototyping I like to gain access through the back. Like all small cabs there isn't anywhere to brace to on the baffle as the speaker and ports take up most of the front

[quote name='alexclaber' timestamp='1438293691' post='2833425'] The on-axis plot on the data sheet does suggest it'll sound moderately midrangey, based on how 12" drivers with that kind of construction behave off-axis. Likewise it won't sound hugely trebly. Considering the relatively low inductance voice coil I think the cone itself must be relatively soft yet heavily damped for a paper cone. The other thing is the harmonic distortion - if compared to the norm it has more harmonic distortion in the mids than the lows then they'll sound more prominent, especially if it has more odd order distortion in the mids and less even order in the lows. [/quote] Thanks Alex, you are right about the cone. I set out to look for something well damped but soft enough to have a decent output at the top end. The trade off for using a single speaker I guess. You may be right about the distortion aspect, we simply haven't investigated as yet. The bass is very open sounding and with this tuning has no real upper bass hump. The 2kHz peak is fairly normal for most speakers and less pronounced than many Eminence units used for bass, at the top end this driver has more output between 3-5kHz than most of its competitors in the price range, something I saw as desirable. I wanted something which would give a flat response which would respond well to eq tweaks and sound good when used with amp modelling patches which people are increasingly using. At the same time I wanted to avoid a ruler flat response which without a tweeter would sound completely lifeless, as I discovered with an earlier design. The sound isn't unpleasant, it's very open sounding and the bass seems effortless. The midrange character is there but not overwhelming in my eyes, but I practice with headphones a lot so I'm used to having all my little errors right out there Played live it rewards digging in and I'm getting some Martin Turner/Wishbone Ash tones out of my American Deluxe P bass which startled me the first time it happened. My main concern is to understand what is causing the comments so I can design this in and out with later cabs. My feeling is that the comments lie with the comparison most people will make with the commercial cabs they are used to, but you have given me something else to think about which is really helpful. [quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1438292037' post='2833404'] Is it a 2KHz upper-mid peak that people are hearing, or does the mid-forward character happen lower down? Could it be down to the cab having a relatively even response, where the lack of a bump around 100Hz and the relatively well controlled upper-mids make the content around 4-500Hz seem more noticeable than on most cabs? Not having heard it this is just a guess. [/quote] Well this is my current theory, more or less. The cab sounds very much how I designed and expected it to sound with a flatter response than most commercial cabs which would open out the detail of what you play. With bass and top end resonances tamed in comparison to many cabs mids are bound to be more forward but I'm taking the comments seriously so I can make recommendations. Dood has agreed to try the 50Hz tuning which does have a bit of a 100Hz bump and we need to get back and take a few more measurements and experiment a bit more with eq.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1438288418' post='2833357'] Dood said "[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Engaging the bright switch and setting the passive tone stack to that classic scoop setting (all controls pointing up) tamed the cabinet. A little bit of excess cone movement - but I think the Kilo has absolutely no subsonic filtering. "[/font][/color] [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Do you think that and HPF should be fitted to al amps? The amp I am buiding has an adjustable one and the more learn about speakers, the more I am convinced they are vital.[/font][/color] [/quote] This is pretty much always sensible, the speakers excursion at frequencies below its resonance can exceed safe limits and distort heavily at a few 10's of watts.

Thanks for the review. I agree wholeheartedly with what you found though I'm wishing I'd sent you the warmer sounding 50Hz version as I think it might have suited you better. I think on the strength of this we will move designing a version with a horn further up the priority list. Remember though we did set out a speaker build that would be straightforward to build and at approx £150 all in, depending upon finish, I think we are thereabouts. I'm curious about the mid forward feel it gives, something I've noticed myself. Looking at the frequency plots (#291 and on) there isn't a pronounced mid peak until 2000Hz and that is a lot less than many commercial speakers. It's clearly there and like you I ended up rolling off the middle just as you describe as well as the deep bass, because there is too much bass in resonant room spaces. Yet the overall effect is of a mid prominent speaker despite the way it measures, and it doesn't ever sound bass heavy. Stevie and I will go back and investigate this as soon as we get time. It'd be great if you got time to put up some sound clips. Once again thanks

You need to research which cutters you are going to use. The Makita uses 3/8 shaft and has an adaptor for 8mm. Standard shanks are 1/4 and 1/2 so you'll struggle to find blades for it. I use an old ELU now sold as DeWalt 900W. I think of my 'big' router as the 2,200W 1/2" one I have. Both of these are small enough to be easy to handle. I use the ELU for just about everything so the 900W is plenty. Beware the cheapies, they work well but guides are often quite flimsy so accurate work is more difficult and some of them kick like a mule when you start them. As a minimum look for 900W, a plunge system with micro adjuster, A cast fence with micro adjuster is much better but you wont need that for working on guitars I wouldn't think. Check you can get a good range of blades with everything you might need readily available. That's 1/4" unless you need bigger cutters. Screwfix may have it wrong and the Makita may come with a 1/4 collet if not and you can't get one that is out IMO. I wouldn't look at the palm one. Double check this as Axminster have it (the Makita) with a 1/4" collet. They also have this which seems too good to be true at this price [url="http://www.axminster.co.uk/bosch-pof-1200ae-1-4-router"]http://www.axminster...00ae-1-4-router[/url] however the Makita is likely to be more robust if it can take standard cutters. They both have the BBOT fences though but better routers seem to be over £200.

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1438030609' post='2831105'] The easiest way to use IEMs and not feel cut off from the band/audience is use an ambient mic. Experiment with position and have as much or as little as you like in your ears. Much better than going deaf for the sake of some pub shows. [/quote] Just to make it clear; this is good advice. I probably should be using IEMs too but I'm not in a position to advise on something I haven't used. I have used a range of floor monitors and I can offer an opinion on these. Your budget won't cover the top quality stuff which is why I am pointing you in the direction of cheap but functional floor wedges.

The biggest problem with IEMs is often the feeling of being cut off from the band/audience. I've no experience of gigging with them so I'm keeping out of that one, others will give much better advice. For £600 you should be able to achieve something sensible with wedges, both with new or high quality used. Given that turning down is the most sensible thing. You are either looking at dedicated wedge monitors or using PA speakers. Either way I'd go for actives. Using PA speakers can work well if your PA fails as they can be swapped in. Wedges usually point in the direction you want without fiddling and the controls are usually on the front, which helps if you are doing your own sound. As far as sound goes there shouldn't be too much difference. We've recently spent a similar sum on monitors. I've two wharfedale Titan 12's for the instruments and backing vocalists and a Behringer 1320 wedge for the main vocals. The Behringer sounds fantastic for the price, just a little too bassy but otherwise excellent. It's loud enough that feedback rather than volume is the limiting factor. The Titans sound great at low volumes and go very loud but the bass makes the cheap plastic cab rattle like mad so I woulnt recommend them for keys. I wouldn't really recommend them but I picked them up for £130ea and couldn't resist. The Wharfedale EVPs are worth a look though Depends upon how you feel about Behringer I suppose. I've always had no trouble with them and they sound much better than the alto's mentioned. Most gigs we just have the Behringer as the only monitor with just a vocal mix. The drummer sometimes has one of the Wharfedales as a monitor. You could try one 1320 and then replace your existing monitors if you like them. If you are happy with used then most of the EV and JBL PA speakers have a 45 degree tilt back angle which works well. We also use three personal monitors for the vocals. These are great but aren't loud enough for the rest of the band to hear.

Hi, Dad has been giving you great advice, mine might be slightly different but it is probably due to different interpretations of your needs. You start off asking for budget monitors. What is your budget? The Mackie speakers are pretty ideal but woudnt fit my budget. Your questions are good by the way. A fully mixed sound is ultimately the best way to get the best sound off and on stage, as are separate monitor mixes, but expensive and complex to set up. I'm imagining you are a pub band moving from one venue to another and playing in a few cramped and sometimes difficult spaces. It is often simpler and cheaper to use a back line of individual instrument amps and a front line of wedge monitors feeding mainly vocals but adding in anything else that might be getting lost. You mention feedback and not being able to hear yourselves. The first thing is to see if you can turn down. When the levels are high your ears protect themselves by restricting the vibrations going through to the inner ear which would get damaged. Turning down lets more detail through. I'm a little surprised you are micing the drums by the way if you are drowning out the guitars. The second free trick is to rearrange your back line. The amps are all really directional, much louder when you point them straight at you. Imagine a torch strapped to the front of the cab. To hear anything you need to be in the light from the beam. I'll bet the guitarist is pointing his amp at the back of his knees and not at his ears. Lift it on to a stand and angle it and that should solve some of the problems. Let us know your budget first of all. Then we can give more detailed advice.

I have an old 115BXBW in the rehearsal room. Sounds as good as anything really. I just woulnt want to carry it up a flight of stairs and I'd have to leave the PA behind to fit it in the car. Look out for the BW Black Widow speakers, good quality drive units.

Anyone else noticed the tendency of guitarists to try and reduce songs back to verse,chorus middle eight even when the interest in the song is in the structure? Drives me nuts, I've no problem with rearranging songs but dropping the so called tricky bits because you can't be bothered to learn them then justifying it by claiming to put your own spin on a song. Grrr

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1437783128' post='2829108'] Still a tried and trusted workhorse, though, as is the 'P' bass. [/quote] Don't get me wrong. They were great mics back in the day and even back in the late eighties, thirty years after their first outing they were still competitive. Great reliability even now but with fifty years of advances in materials technology, plus the doubling of knowledge every ten years we can do better now, and it shows when you do an A/B test. The 58 sounds less life like and rather dull compared to almost any other mic in its price range. P basses are made mainly of wood and wire so advances in technology have brought the costs of production down but until we have a better tree we aren't likely to improve much on the instrument. The only reasons to hang on to your 58 is if you have had a lifetime learning how to get the best out of it. Change your mic and to an extent you'll have to re learn your mic technique. Why change if you are happy with what you have? But, I woulnt advise anyone to buy a mic when there are better sounding, less feedback prone and cheaper alternatives around. Even Shure offer a 58beater in the Beta58 if you want to hang on to the Shure brand. I'll stick by my car analogy, if you like me are a man of a certain age and are happy to drive round in a much loved split screen beetle then no one is knocking that. If you are telling an eighteen year old it's technically the best car ever designed......

[quote name='FuNkShUi' timestamp='1437729794' post='2828520'] We do try to make the vocals a priority. Might i ask, what is the issue with the SM58? Im not a singer, so have never had one, but i assumed they were highly thought of? [/quote]the SM58 dates back to 1962, so a bit more than 30 years old. It has quite a heavy diaphragm and a relatively weak magnet system. The beta58 sounds a whole lot better and there are a whole range of cheaper competitors from European manufacturers like AKG and Sennheiser. The VW Beatle was a great car in 1937 but you wouldn't run one as reliable transport now. One big advantage of the 58 though, apart from reliability, is that it is a cardioid mic and relatively undemanding of good technique, singers who grew up on 58's find it hard to use modern miss with tighter directional patterns. However there are still a few undemanding cardio ds out there like the Sennheiser 935 which also sound much better than the rather muddy 58. There's no issue really they are just superseded, as you would expect 50 years on.

Is it good for metal?

I've seen the previous incarnation of Hooked a couple of times. If this version works as well you'll have great time.

some really interesting stuff here, if you've skipped all or some of the original articles or Bill's JBL article then I'd strongly recommend you have another look. The two views aren't that different though. Put simply a clipped sine wave can be described mathematically as a sine wave with added harmonics. Hence we talk about harmonic distortion. To be fair this simplification is there mentioned in the JBL piece. Once you start using words rather than maths to explain these issues you inevitably simplify and resort to analogy. The practical reality is that distorted/clipped sounds contain more energy than u distorted sounds and crucially this will go through the crossovers. As musicians we regularly use distortion, whether by 'overdriving' amps or adding effects and this will imperill tweeters. The dynamic range/compression thing is informative. Generally the dynamic range of live music is greater than recorded, one of the reasons recorded music rarely sounds like live music. The original articles make it clear they are referring to hi Fi speakers and refer separately to professional high power drivers, the stuff we use. All my articles use a dynamic range of 40dB or a difference between average and peak power of 20dB and this is also the assumption I use in my speaker designs. For the longevity of the speakers I'd advise never using an amp rated for more power than the speaker with your bass. For PA I wouldn't advise anyone to go for more than an extra 3dB of power or double that of the speakers, but only if you are going to run with no clipping, which means knowing exactly how to use your desk and its meters! The trouble with all advice from techs to musicians is that we are dealing with simplifications of multiple variables, the greatest of which is the slushy organic bit operating the knobs and buttons. That's why the advice that people like Alex and Bill give can't be definitive and sometimes seems contradictory, they don't have the power to see everything you'll do with that advice. Good articles though, thanks for putting them up.

If you are asking will it work, so long as you build the cab to match the speakers then yes, it will make a noise and may sound OK. Is it a good idea? first the Eminence Delta has a huge midrange peak and a limited excursion, so isn't the best speaker for bass on the market and it won't handle the thermal limit of 400W before it starts to distort and starts hammering on the back of the magnet. I've had the idea of pointing a speaker at the drummer too. There's a kind of logic to it if the drummer struggles to hear you, and a lot of them suffer from high frequency hearing loss if they don't wear ear defenders. In the end I decided it makes more sense to build two cabs so you can put one behind the drummer or pointing sideways or any other combination you might want to try. Building them both into one cab will limit you to a single option. If you are building a cab for the hartke then copy the dimensions of the original cab, use winISD to determine the best cab for the Eminence Delta or get someone here to calculate it for you. Alternatively Eminence have cab designs for all their speakers on their web site.

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1437307747' post='2824962'] Well if we say that the average failure rate of amp is once every 10 years (a completely made up guess admittedly) then the odds of having 4 consecutive amps all going wrong for random reasons in year or so is about 1000:1 so it does suggest some common factor, or your just very unlucky [/quote] Or The chance of this happening is 1/1000. There are 33,000 members of Basschat. It had to happen to someone and there are probably a couple of others this has happened to also. Bad luck but I hope the next amp lasts forever. This is probably just coincidence. Actually I think the general rate of failure of electronic goods is nearer 5% in the first year and rises in subsequent years so there are probably quite a few people this happens to. No consolation of course but I genuinely hope the next amp works out for you.

I'd definitely go for the passive desk/active speakers set up. You say you are not experts, the big advantage of the active speakers is that designers can closely match the amp to the speakers for you, This improves reliability and if you get DSP built in then you won't overload your speakers so won't have to worry about distortion, or even setting the tone controls to the room with some systems. Ignore the comments about not getting the quoted power, if you are buying something in this price bracket then most of the class D amps are pretty well designed and will drive the speakers as hard as they can be driven anyway. For sheer sound quality at this price I'd look at the RCF 700 series as the one to beat, The set up Ghost Bass mentions is pretty much what you should be aiming at. You may need more channels if you go out with a lot of brass

[quote name='stevebasshead' timestamp='1437049783' post='2823130'] <p><br /> </p> I love the idea of that test and I know they acknowledge its not a substitute for a proper test with an audiologist I guess I'm saying two things here: If anyone is relying on the test to give an indication of the state of your hearing - be careful, bear in mind my experience of it above, don't take the test too seriously. Don't be an idiot like me - wear ear plugs from the start and don't assume you'll always get away with it just because your hearing hasn;t been damaged yet, one day it will! [/quote] [quote name='stevebasshead' timestamp='1437057200' post='2823260'] True indeed, the actiononhearing site only tests discrimination and because of that I don't think it's a complete enough test to be able to put out a message at the end saying in essence "don't worry, your hearing is fine" when clearly from my experience that would've been an incorrect assessment And may be for other people too. [/quote] I think the truth is somewhere in between as far as this test is concerned. It's from a reliable source and put up for the best of motives and I'm assuming it is a well developed test with statistically significant results. The results can't be totally reliable because who knows what headphones people will use. Not everyone has a set of top of the range Sennheisers to hand. I'd guess (maybe guessing isn't enough if your hearing is at stake) that it is a bit like going to your GP for a test, you'll get a lot more detail and reliability from an audiologist but it's a decent bit of initial screening. I'd absolutely agree with the advice to wear earphones and only take the test as an indication, but the test ain't bad and I would say a whole lot better than never having a test until it is too late, which I suspect is the alternative for most of us. I'd hate people to be put off trying it and missing early symptoms, even that drummer