Phil Starr

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1448917178' post='2919217'] From talking to other musicians especially those over 40 it seems the drive to gig has diminished for many. Guys have other things going on in the lives, the business is tougher to get for most bands. Many of the ads I saw read like this; [i]"Bass player wanted, we are all over 40. We play classic rock. We rehearse once a week and gig once a month."[/i] I'm sure some will challenge my opinion. To me this is not really a band, but more of a "Boys Night Out". A chance to get the bass out again and get out of the house for a little "me" time. Not sure what you guys think about this. Take it any direction you want. Blue [/quote] [quote name='blue' timestamp='1448931521' post='2919419'] "Then why are you dismissing people for being in bands that you (dismissively in my opinion) describe as 'Boys Night's Out'. I'm not dismissing it, what I was looking for was discussion on the overall decline in live rock probably at the bar band level. Blue [/quote] You can see why you were misunderstood, I think describing another's band as "boy's night out" sounds dismissive even if it isn't meant to be. It may be something lost in translation, in the UK almost all our most cutting insults are understatements and it was you who introduced the term. To my British eyes it did look like you were looking down on people who gig less than you. Anyway, decline in live rock in bar bands. I think your ad is a good summary. [i]"Bass player wanted, we are all over 40. We play classic rock. We rehearse once a week and gig once a month."[/i] We get a load of these over here, though many specify once a week or even more. I suppose my heart sinks a little when I see these, especially if you add the words 'classic rock'. To me it is the music of the past, admittedly a good past, and my past but it is the music of the 60's and 70's, the music of the over 40's. In my teenage years the pubs were full of 50 year olds playing Trad Jazz, the same 20 songs played by most of the bands. Good musicians often, and good fun but people playing 40 year old music with the odd new song played in the style of the late 1920's. We'd moved on through the Beatles and on to Zeppelin and Hendrix and a burst of creativity. Good fun but out of touch. Now we see the 50+'s me included playing the 40 year old music of their youth wondering why more people don't come to see them. Don't get me wrong there is still an audience out there and people still have a great time but it is inevitably a diminishing audience. Why would you expect that not to be the case? Even on a personal level this 63 year old wants to see something a bit different when I get to go out. If a band advertises itself as classic rock they will have 20 other bands playing similar sets within a 20 mile radius. I've heard enough of them, so I cross those off the list and look for something a bit different. In my band I wish we'd learn newer songs with different musical challenges, but that's just me and I love the people I play with. We put on a good show with lot's of commitment and an hour spent in their company is an hour well spent.

One last post tonight, if you go back to post #479 you'll remember Stevie scaring me with a very significant peak at around 700Hz in the slot ported cab. We swapped drivers and it was definitely the cab. Well the peak is tamed pretty much with wadding especially on the top edge of the port but I'm going to make a new baffle and move the speaker off centre which I think will help further. I'm happy we know what is going on there and have a solution. However I'm now pretty happy with the basic design of a 18mm cab with four pipe ports tuned to 50Hz so the slot port won't be a problem as we won't be recommending it. The availability of cheap hole saws means cutting the holes for the ports will be easier than forming the slot which was the only reason I went that direction. I found the wooden slot was tricky to form if you don't have plenty of clamps to hand.

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1448895807' post='2918936'] I have a question about tube ports and their lengths. Am I right in assuming that standard downpipe means the 68mm stuff? I've noticed that winISD and a couple of online calculators come up with quite different lengths than the ones used in the prototype cab, quoted below. The exact figure varies depending on the end correction selected (I used "one end flanged"), but WinISD is suggesting a length of 298mm for a 50Hz tuning in 50l, rather than 190mm. That's with four 68mm diameter ports. I'm trying to figure out if I've missed something in the process. [/quote] You aren't going mad, first of all the pipes internal diameter is 64mm the outside is 68mm. secondly it depends how you enter the parameters into winISD as sometimes the manufacturers don't always use the same techniques for measuring as are assumed by win ISD. Then the box isn't exactly 50l as I built it oversized to allow for the volume of bracing the ports and speaker and any modifications I would make as the design developed, I didn't use all the extra volume I allowed. We also found two sets of data for the SM212 out there and then took our own measurements of the basic parameters which differed slightly from those published. If you go back to post #291 you'll see we actually measured the tuning of the cabs and the port dimensions are measured from the cabs we tested. Well spotted though, and I had to double check all this so you are keeping me on my toes Ultimately that's why you try and build prototypes and test them.

A couple more suggestions. I had the same problem with my HA3500 of the dodgy era. There are a number of fairly big electrolytic capacitors in the power supply circuit to the pre amp stages that are just soldered to the circuit board and are unsupported. Sure enough the joints had gon on one and the track was being pulled away from the board with a couple of others. I just resoldered them and pushed the leadouts through far enough for them to rest on the board. You could use some neutral cure silicone as well for support. To find most intermittent faults get a freezing spray. by spraying individual components the contraction will often recreate the fault or temporarily cure it as the components and joints contract suddenly. Good luck, always worth saving an old Hartke

I rather think the technical 'faults' of the Ampeg cab are what makes it sound great to a lot of people. All that beaming of upper frequencies/comb filtering/mid bass peakiness/cone break up/lack of true deep bass gives you a speaker that delivers sound to the bassist if they are in line but gives a sound that is warm and sits nicely in the mix to the audience. Lot's of cheap speakers gives you high efficiency so the amps don't work too hard and all that cone area means you aren't going to run out of cone excursion. You live in Surrey and like Barefaced so why not take a trip down to Brighton with your SVT and see if they can give you a sound you like as much as the fridge before you start parting with any money.

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1448631941' post='2916994'] That's something I've often wondered about in the interminable valve vs SS discussions that musicians often enjoy. While I understand that with the right voicing, compression and perhaps a touch of soft clipping, a well designed 100 watt solid state amp [i]could[/i] perform in the way we'd expect a 100 watt valve amp to perform, I'm not certain how often this is actually achieved in practice, especially at the more modest end of the market. [/quote]I guess it wouldn't make much sense in one way, the cost would be in the design and development so you wouldn't then build a budget amp that way, and since extra watts cost so little in SS designs you might as well have them. With switch mode power supplies there isn't any weight saving by going low powered either. There's lots of other differences between the two technologies as well, so compression alone won't give you a valve sound. However digital modelling techniques are getting better and cheaper all the time so there will be a time when we won't be able to tell the difference. Listening to some of the plug-ins studios use we are pretty nearly there probably. I'd say the AER amps do a pretty good 'valve' sound but they aren't cheap. The other thing that occurs to me is that a really good valve amp and a really good SS amp would have the same characteristic; of all the sound and none of the distortion, so they would sound quite alike. Maybe what people like is the sound of a cheap valve amp. Just a thought.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1448619225' post='2916844'] My thoughts were that anyone only needing a 200 watt amp must actually only be using 100 watts. [/quote] It's more extreme than that surprisingly. You play a note and it sounds loud than fades until it is lost below whatever else your band is playing. Obviously we also play louder and quieter depending upon what the music demands. You might have a dynamic range of 40dB between your loudest and quietest bit of bass. Your 'normal' sound level might be half of your loudest level and maybe even less. If it is half then this is 10db down or 1/10th of the power so you are probably only using less than 20W (with a 200W amp turned up to the distortion point) most of the time. If you had a bit of compression or a limiter then you'd reduce those peaks and a 100W amp would be plenty. That's why valve amps have the reputation for being louder, they kind of naturally compress the sound at the peaks and you can run them closer to the overload point without worry about headroom.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1448584776' post='2916716'] Phil, I'm not disagreeing with you. But some people seem to be questioning the use of more powerful amps and observing you don't need more than 200 watts. My view is that if I was using 200 watts I'd have a 500 watt amp just ticking over and not a 200 watt amp running flat out. [/quote] No, I didn't think you were but genuinely didn't get what you were saying Having a technical background I'm happy to have an amp that covers me for all my needs and I don't personally fret too much about Power ratings, Amplifier watts are so cheap nowadays that no-one really needs to go around with too few watts. Most bass amps seem to cluster around the 300W into 4ohm level and that really is plenty to keep up with the band. The difference between 200W and 300W isn't really significant either so if I was looking for a new amp and it sounded great but was 'only' 200W it just wouldn't put me off. If I played a five string and used lots of bass boost and knew my speakers were inefficient if might be an issue but like you I wonder what situation people are playing in where they 'need' 500W. On a pure technical level the just over 1dB increase in going from 2 to 300W just doesn't make the difference people think. Equally amps come with a volume control so if it costs little different you might as well go for a powerful amp and turn it down a little. My advice has always been to choose based on sound not the specs.

[quote name='mr zed' timestamp='1448276966' post='2914036'] I seem to recall a string manufacturer (Dean Markley?) Cryogenically treating bass strings. Did anyone try them & if so did this process help to keep the twang for longer? [/quote] Yep their Blue Steels. They certainly last much better than Roto's without that initial zing, which I don't like much anyway. I'm running a set of these at the moment on a Jazz against some Elixirs on my P. I preferred the sound of the Blue Steels at first though the sound is similar to the Elixirs. I'd say the Elixirs are sounding a little better now after 6 months so the BS's must be degrading a little. I love the sound of month old Roto 66's but found I needed to change them after 3 months when they ent dead, I reckon year old Dean Markley BS's sounded better than three month old Roto's if that helps, so worth the extra cost IMO.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1448561604' post='2916508'] Are you suggesting that is 200w out of a 200w amp? [/quote] Sorry i don't really understand what you are asking 200W gives you 23dB over 1W. So 200W into a speaker that gives 97dB per watt will give 120dB so long as the speaker will handle 200W, which is roughly the same volume as a drummer. That's all I was saying.

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1448548250' post='2916360'] Discussion of amp requirements on bass forums always seems strangely unrelated to the world I tend to gig in! I have never owned a rig capable of more than 200 watts, but any time I've lacked volume or headroom it was as much down to the speakers as the amp. Out of the gear I've owned, a combo doing around 130 watts into an undersized sealed 1x12" often ran out of steam, and a 200 watt SS head into a ported 1x10" could also be underwhelming in some contexts (but great for others). I started playing with a 50 watt valve head into a sealed 1x15" and that was often dirtier than I wanted it. But a 100 watt valve head or the 200 watt SS head into a reasonably efficient ported 2x12" seemed enough for pretty much everything I've done. Some of those bands have been with drummers who in my opinion are quite loud, though I've never played in the heavier rock or metal genres. Have I just been extremely lucky with my bandmates? [/quote] Not really, just look at what you are comparing. 130W into a single sealed 12 with 200W into a ported 2x12. Now even if the speakers were identical you are comparing chalk and cheese. I'll explain A ported cab will give you an extra 3dB of bass, 3dB is like turning from 10 to 11 200W will give you nearly an extra 3dB as you have nearly doubled the power so now you've turned to 12! Doubling the speakers you've now got mutual coupling, so better efficiency and you've possibly halved the impedance to 4ohms, so you've got between 3 and 6dB extra volume. Add all this together and you've potentially added 12dB but at least 10dB. That's twice as loud, which you'd need to use 10x the power to achieve with your sealed 12. Good luck with putting 1300W through a single 12. But, you are right about the strange powers people seem to think they need. 120dB is going to get you to the volume of a drummer. You don't need to be louder than the drums. 200W through a decently efficient but unexceptional speaker will give you 120dB.

[quote name='SPHDS' timestamp='1448478778' post='2915801'] Now...there's an idea.....! ;-) Cheers for all the advice! To be fair, we are making a point to try and play at as low a volume as possible in practice - small room, so trying to be able to 'hear' ourselves (Vocals and Axes) trying to minimise feedback through the PA etc....one of our guitarist's amp is being run at about 25W (Vox Valvetronix with some weird variable power jobbie on it......) so the Ashdown is hardly conscious, let alone breaking a sweat.....even when the drummer is 'on one......' (you try telling an Italian to calm down......) So would something about 50W cope in the mix? [/quote] Well it depends upon just how low they turn down. You are going to lose 3dB, which is the equivalent of turning it down a notch. If you had super efficient speakers you'd get away with it but smaller speakers tend to be less efficient at bass. If you then went for a 1x10 you'd lose at least another 3dB. If you go that low what you gain in amplifier weight you'd lose in needing bigger speakers probably. Coincidentally I'm looking for a lightweight, compact solution for the odd practice and open mic and semi acoustic gigs. It's the combination of wattage, speaker efficiency and tone that determine whether something cuts through or not. My single 12" cabs I use for gigs would go loud enough with 50W but you don't get speakers like that in most combo's. Another solution is to look for a lightweight cab and a lightweight amp. I'm looking at a Little Mark 111. If you can spare £1000 then there's always the AER Amp One

Get the drummer to carry the amp for you Seriously, if he is going to go at gig levels then you are pretty much forced to play at gig levels. I rehearse with a 1x10 Hartke kickback with the bass rolled off and the mids forward, but unless you are going to go for something a lot higher in price than the Ashdown anything much smaller is going to struggle, unless you can get them to ease off on the volume. Which you should for all sorts of other reasons of course.

Here's my experience. Playing an instrument as a beginner is boring once you get over the original burst of enthusiasm. There are only a few things you can do so unless you are OCD constant repetition of a few riffs, scales or simple songs just isn't very rewarding. Keep going and of course one or two songs expands to a dozen then much, much more. Now your practice isn't boring and it's easier to do more as a result. At this point you can start looking for other people to play with and that brings its own pleasures. When I was younger I never had the staying power to stick with an instrument long enough to cross that hump. Coming back to it I just managed to get to the point where I could contribute to a band, started gigging a few months later and I can't imagine ever being bored again. So, choose an instrument and stick with it. Learn whole songs, nothing wrong with scales except they are so dull. Playing along with whole songs is fun. Bass and drums aren't really solo instruments so get out playing with other people as soon as you can. Intellectually you know that but realising it emotionally the first time you play in a band and it works is a whole other level.

Maybe it's a velcro jacket

As a gigging covers band we also only need a slightly more polished version of what we do live. I've always just gone in recorded a few live takes and then overdubbed the guide vocal from the original take. Cost is a factor when you are probably only getting £250 a gig. All three of my bands have had a very similar experience. You go in and spend a couple of hours setting up, mainly on the drums. Then we run through a song, record a take, listen and go again if we aren't happy. Then singers go in and record the vocals. We've only needed the second take once luckily enough so generally we've comfortably got 5 songs down by lunchtime, and usually just the three best are mixed down by the end of the afternoon. When I'm looking for a studio just some examples of the engineers work and a guide to price is all I need, and someone who'll ring back promptly. Surprisingly some studios still don't offer a very well maintained web site. The first time you have no idea how efficient the process can be so a cost per hour can look daunting. A special offer of say four hours recording with a mix of the best three songs looks a lot less scary if you haven't done it before. I'd go on the local music websites and do a 'special offer' there. Round here Lemonrock would reach just about all the local gigging, and hence semi pro, bands but I don't know which cover your area.

[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