Phil Starr

There's a few grumpy old men on this thread aren't there? It's interesting that all the singers held up to be better are male and rock singers. I think people are missing the point, it's all about performance and engaging the audience with her. She was clearly so charged with adrenaline she lost it a little. She came on so fired up she did miss a few notes then she nailed it for a bit but overdid the jumping around and lost her breath and control at the same time. The audience clearly loved it. Do we have different standards for women I wonder? A lot of the acts lost vocal control towards the end of their sets, Roger Daltrey for one but I'd rather see an act taking risks and entertaining than just delivering and failing to engage. In the past I've seen sets where she has just nailed every note, remarkably so with some of the intervals she uses. There's a difference between not being able to sing for toffee and messing up. Who here hasn't messed up playing or singing live. OK the music isn't for everyone, I'm a sucker for a good pop song. I personally find most rock songs and rock bands dull and derivative, just not my taste, but I don't come on and slag off Dave Grohl for having an off day and going raspy and shouty at the end of a set. I guess I understand if people are criticizing because they didn't get to see the Foo's, whoever thought Florence was an equivalent act got that wrong, but it's hardly the bans fault. I'm a bit worried that we find it ok to criticize women more easily than men.

There isn't a short cut. The changes are in the growth of protein fibres under the skin, collagen,elastin and keratin. Essentially this is in response to damaging the existing matrix of fibres which the slapping and popping is doing. The best way to ameliorate the extreme effects are: to stop when it gets sore, keep your hands dry. Surgical spirit isn't a bad way of drying your hands more quickly as it evaporates more rapidly than water but it won't help you grow new callouses. Practice little and often, you want micro tears that heal quickly not great tears that take weeks or months to heal.

Glad it's worked out for you, the problem with cheap speakers is that they aren't too efficient at converting your watts into sound so their maximum sound level is limited even if they advertise at being 600W or whatever. The other limits are a limited excursion so loud bass distorts and a lightweight plastic cab which resonates like mad at high volumes. The basic sound at low volumes is often quite good. Lewitt's are new to me, if ever you get the chance to compare them with something well known like a Shure/AKG/Sennheiser I'd be interested to know how they compare.

Thanks for the offer, I haven't forgotten. I'm going to do some simple sketches by hand, which for me is quicker and also write up the design. I've had a couple of offers to turn them into drawings so I'll send them out to people to turn into something usable as soon as I can. I'll also build a last cab and photograph the process so everyone can see how it goes together. I'll pm you when I get further on with the drawings. We can publish the whole thing as a build diary.

I'd confirm everything Stevie has said about how they sounded. It was so good to have a second opinion after gigging them for so long. I had to check back to see what I said about the midrange, it does clean up the midrange and that made a difference using the roundwounds. It isn't a slap you round the face difference just a good cleaning up of the midrange sound, more detail. Since I suffer from vertigo above the fifth fret it wouldn't be as important to me. I'd describe it as being like the difference you get through a PA when you swap a decent dynamic mic for a condenser, like moving from a beta58 to a beta87. It kind of unveils everything. I have one final dilemma which people can help me with. The prototypes worked so well and were so easy to build that I'm tempted to call it a day and release the design. I was going to go for an even simpler to build design with a slot port and less elaborate bracing in 18mm 3/4" ply. The current prototypes are heavily braced 12mm ply with four tubular ports (plastic drainpipe). It's a simple job to cut the port holes with a hole saw costing less than £10 and once that is done it is an easy build, The slot port would be equally simple to build but could be done without any specialist tools. I don't think there would be a huge difference in sound or in weight as the mass of the braces would be similar to the mass of the thicker ply. So? Any feelings about thin wall/bracing or committing to a cheap hole saw?

Another one whose house of bass hasn't been built properly here Good luck with this, a couple of years ago I asked a similar question: how would learning scales improve my playing as opposed to just learning box patterns which is how I currently tend to think. I never did get an answer which convinced me enough to go out and learn all the scales. Time is short and I've usually got half a dozen songs I'm learning. I know the people who know scales learn much more quickly than I do but by and large they all also have formal music education and have been playing a lot longer so I've never been able to distinguish cause and effect. I'm not averse to learning music theory but I kind of need someone to be able to say this is how your bass playing is practically going to benefit from the hours spent learning scales over all the octaves, in all the modes.

[quote name='bassbiscuits' timestamp='1435561866' post='2809921'] I guess I'm hoping to prove to myself that great rock music isn't just made by old farts from the past - is it? [/quote] As a qualified old fart i'd say of course it isn't. You'll never stop talented young people adding to the list of great songs but rock music has had it's day as the dominant form of music. In the late 60's and 70's rock dominated the Western music scene even more than R'n'B/Hip Hop does now. On top of this music and popular culture has fragmented. In the 60's and 70's radio dominated how most people listened to music and there were very few stations so everyone shared a large chunk of musical experience. The only other way was to buy records or go and see your band. People were harder up and an album was a significant chunk of your income. We regularly used to gather at the home of the person who had lashed out on the latest Floyd album to hear it in it's entirety for the first time. 'Global Star' and 'Rock' are unlikely to be heard together again other than as media hype, there are just too many genres out there, the changes in technology mean music has fragmented. Rock is a minority sport, absent from the charts and only a matter of nostalgia for most of the public. Like Blues and Jazz it has had it's day in the mainstream but will live on and develop and have the occasional revival. That doesn't mean rock musicians won't go on and make great music however.

Well that explains Pete Townsend's comments about the greatest rock star. Rather than below 40 why not just stipulate that they must still be alive? Or still playing?

[quote name='funkle' timestamp='1435389651' post='2808277'] Do you feel the only cabs 'better' than your design would be Fearless, Baer, Barefaced, TKS full range cabs, etc? Those are of course all, to one degree or another, 'full range', and have prices to match... I'd be interested to know if you plan a version with a crossover to a 6" driver or tweeter. Great job, once again. [/quote] Interestingly enough we went off piste a little yesterday and tested it and a couple of other speakers with Stevie's 6" midrange driver, which he is going to build into a cab with a 15" Ciare driver, I think this will be shared at a later date. It did sound a little better with the midrange driver. It's not for me to compare cabs. First of all without a good collection of cabs to actually run tests on it wouldn't be fair or unbiased. Secondly a 'good' cab is one that creates the sound you want, so one person's good cab is another person's dog. What i'm trying to do is give an impression of the capabilities of the cab for someone who might want to build one, I suppose objectively I can say it's 40-5000Hz,(-10dB) 350W thermal, fairly neutral sounding with a more extended bass than many commercial cabs due to high Xmax. [quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1435392793' post='2808298'] Having started on an amp build I have had the same problems and it always takes longer than you think to get it right. However it is no cheaper to build your own amp but it is possible to get a self build speaker at close to half the price of a commercial offering. Arguably time better spent than my amp build. [/quote] But you learn so much doing these projects.

Love a happy ending

Hope this doesn't count as a necropost, but I'm a little embarrassed at how long it has been. Sorry people, especially those who have offered to help. Anyway there's some news. I spent one of the most enjoyable afternoons I've had for years in Stevie's Garage running tests on the prototypes followed up by a session with a bass or two listening to the speakers, family commitments meant it was too short a time actually playing. Basically we ran two tests, one was a simple frequency sweep and we then removed a driver and ran a check on the t/s parameters to see if the provided figures were accurate. The two prototypes were set up slightly differently, one tuned to 40Hz and one to 50Hz. Stevie will be along later to put up the actual data but the headlines are: Beyma's published data is pretty accurate, Qts was slightly lower than spec and Bl correspondingly higher, Vas was lower than spec. All this means is that the speaker is better suited to an smaller cab and a better match for the 50l cab we designed. Of course we only tested one unit so there may/will be a manufacturing spread but Beyma clearly aren't puffing up their figures. It's also a nicely made unit. Frequency response was pretty much exactly as expected, possibly less of a bass hump than expected due to the low Q of the driver. The speaker was substantially flat over most of the response with a noticeable but minor peak around 2kHz and the -10dB points were at roughly 40Hz and 5kHz.. There was a measurable difference in the bass between the 50Hz and 40Hz tuning with about 2dB more bass between 40 and 100Hz with the 50Hz tuning. If you remember we discussed this during the design process. I preferred the lower excursion at 30Hz of the lower tuning and Stevie preferred the extra bass and power handling of the 50Hz tuning. Well it showed up in the tests. Into the listening room and we tried out two very different basses through the cabs. Fender American Deluxe with Elixirs and Highly modified Yamaha with Flats) I won't say too much about the sound as I'm hoping Stevie will pull no punches but they produce some nice clean deep bass with a pleasant 'flutiness' due probably to the 2kHz peak. You could hear the difference in the two tunings with the controls flat but it was very easy to dial out with a touch of eq on Stevie's Little Mark III. I marginally preferred the sound of the 50Hz tuning and I think stevie had a small preference for the 40Hz tuning but I'd suspect this would change depending upon the bass you use and the room acoustics. Anyway, Stevie has the data and our conclusion is; the design does what it says on the tin, and the sound is something we'd be happy to share with other people, It's a better cab than most mid priced commercial offerings. I'm going to build the final cab and photograph the process and release the design.

TBH it's probably uneconomic to repair unless it's something really simple. If you reckon the value as roughly half the new cost then that should give you an idea of how much you should be prepared to spend. If all the amp tech did was to try the effects output then it might be something really simple like an internal fuse or a dry solder joint. Your best bet is to get a quote/estimate for a repair and/or possibly to ask your Father in law to take a quick look. If there is no joy then sell it on and let someone else try. The trouble is that it is getting on for an hours work to take the amp out get it on the bench and then to put it back. Until that is done the tech will have no idea if it is fixable and what is involved.

[quote name='bassbiscuits' timestamp='1435091471' post='2805446'] Only ever tried Epiphone and Tokai versions until quite recently, and found them pretty hard work - weighed a tonne, fairly uninspiring sound and cumbersome to play. Looked immense tho. Then I got a chance to try a real thunderbird at the Midlands Bass Bash, and it was fantastic - slim, responsive, and actually pretty lightweight in comparison to the boat anchors I'd played before. I need to spend more time getting my head round thunderbirds, as secretly I still think they're epic basses and by far the coolest looking instruments in the universe. [/quote] For me this is the essence of these frustrating instruments, and the reason the Epi's don't work for me. The ergonomics of T-birds are truly awful. They neck dive like crazy and twist away from your body. Playing them for a lengthy time makes muscles you didn't know about start aching like mad. Even with a wide strap the weight goes entirely on your left shoulder and the bass feels unstable. the only time I used it for a full gig (2hrs+) my left wrist ached for days after. I find my fretting hand is holding the bass as well as fretting it. The joy is that the Gibsons are really light and have a superslim/fast neck, there's a tendency to chuck them about a bit when you are playing and that adds to the energy of the performance and the fun factor. The Epi's are heavier so you lose that, I guess if you are built like an ox then it may be less of an issue. I actually think the Epi's sound great and the QC is probably better than Gibsons but the extra weight kills them for me.

It's a bit Through The Looking Glass really, the question is, how widely do you define tone and perhaps, how important is tone. If tone is everything outside playing the right notes at the right time then technique probably is more important than the bass you play. Even if you define tone more narrowly as the sound coming out of the speakers then the speakers and the amp have roughly the same effect on sound as the bass you use, give or take. If I hand my gear over to a more experienced bassist they get sounds out of it I can only dream of. Even listening to two equally talented bassists playing the same gear will give you differences in tone. Equally playing at home My J Bass has a much nicer tone than my more expensive P-Bass. On stage with my current band I think the P works better but I don't suppose the audience notices or cares. Listening to live recordings of my band I couldn't swear to you which bass I was using in most of the songs. I no longer bother swapping basses at gigs for such marginal gains as the dynamic of the gig is more important. Of course we care about tone, if you want to play music you should take it seriously, but hours spent on the bass will improve your sound more than hours spent shopping surely? So to answer the OP it's all a factor but if you've got decent gear then most of how you sound it is down to you. If you have the money you can buy marginal improvements but narrowly defined tone is only part of how your sound.

[quote name='Zenitram' timestamp='1434621526' post='2801204'] Thanks, but I'm specifically not asking about an amp. Well I suppose I am, but not in the sense of a large heavy black box covered in carpet or tolex. The smallest simplest (cheapest) way to get a line level (NOT mic/XLR) from a bass into a (line) mixer. [/quote] Active DI is the cheapest most simple way. Might be worth looking at the Zoom B1ON at about £35, you could get an active DI for maybe £25 but this little baby gives you a whole lot more to play with (Amp emulation, pedal emulation, tuner, drum machine, metronome) You'll need a splitter lead if you want to feed it to your amp and the PA though.

He's fiddling with the controls on the bass altering the balance between pups and varying his picking a bit too so it's a not very scientific test, but interesting nonetheless. I bought a 2003 Gibson a couple of years ago as it was going cheap. Monstrous sound and such a fast neck but I was playing a lot of acoustic stuff at the time and sold it on. Since joined a rock band and was missing it so I tried the Epiphone Pro's . Much heavier, and a more chunky neck than my old Gibson, a bit like moving from a J to a P-bass. The sound was different too as shown in the video. I've since bought a Japanese made Burny (Fernandes) T-bird. The necks a delight, same dimensions as the old Gibson but much better finished. The bass weighs less than the Gibson and a lot less than any of the Epiphones It's got a hell of a thud but slightly less top than the Gibbo. It sustains well just like the Gibson. I suspect very overwound Pups used. You don't really get that aggressive edge the old Gibson had. If I gigged it a lot I'd probably change the Pups but the moral is that if you want a cheap but good T-Bird then it's worth having a look at the Japanese copies.

4x vocals, what else is going into the desk? If you are putting drums in then a separate drum mixer is always good anyway as you get the drums balanced properly but then set the level them in a single channel. If not get an active DI for one of the other instruments or look to run off a DI from one of the instrument amps, most bass amps have a line level output. You can often use the effects output if there isn't a dedicated DI out. Some vocal monitors also have a line level output.

[quote name='stuckinthepod' timestamp='1434539495' post='2800524'] We play it and people love it. Don't worry, play it. [/quote] funnily enough we were discussing this last night. There's a bit of humbug here from both sides. Bands play BS because punters love it. They don't play the song to educate people or 'keep the issue' alive. Most bands and audiences would have no more idea of what the lyrics say and mean than say, Lady Marmalade where ironically the only bit they get is the French Given the rest of the Stones output at the time it was probably just meant to be a sexy song, I don't suppose Jagger would write those lyrics now. Fortunately they wrote a load of great songs so there is no need to look at it and I wouldn't play it, but wouldn't get in a huff if someone else does. Most singers in cover bands have no idea what they are singing about anyway. We were talking about Blurred Lines and Rockstar as being a bit too dubious to do when BS came up as another example of songs we'd think twice about. Leader of the Gang anyone?

I'm surprised the speaker ever worked well if you used an instrument cable. They are screened cables and only suitable for very low currents. 1W would be too much 65W far too much. Get a speaker cable, please.

Hi Jenny, there could be a number of problems. Getting your volume right should be fairly simple. You have volume controls on your bass and on the amp. The trick is to match the drummer in volume, if you are louder than him then obviously the band can never sound in balance as he/she doesn't have a volume control. The second thing is that you may be having trouble picking yourself out of the mix when playing live and turning up or just pulling harder on the strings when you can't hear yourself well. I have a problem of increasing volume by simply picking harder as the adrenaline kicks in, so I set my levels well back in the soundcheck. I think you haven't been playing long and it takes a while to get used to hearing yourself in a live situation. EQ is always problematic for bass, the acoustics are different in every venue and some venues accentuate bass a lot. You need to eq at every venue I find, The 'gutless' thing may also be down to eq. Our ears are more sensitive to the frequency extremes at high sound levels, so you need a bit more bass added as you turn the volume down. This is a function of how our ears work and nothing to do with particular amps or speakers [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%E2%80%93Munson_curves."]https://en.wikipedia...3Munson_curves.[/url] Reset the eq when you turn down. I don't know where you are in Dorset but we play a lot of small pubs. I'm 200m from the Dorset border. I use a small combo for those venues. You can use the full rig but why bother carrying in all that gear if you don't need it and stage area is often tight so a smaller amp is useful. You have great gear and I'll bet it sounds good at home when you have the time to set it up properly. I don't think you need to change it but to spend a little time to set it up to get the best out of it. Hope this helps.

[quote name='stevebasshead' timestamp='1434324430' post='2798693'] Been double booked a few times and even triple booked once! One pub told us we got double booked because they kept two diaries, one upstairs and one downstairs. There are lots of good ones of course who know their job and are very band friendly, but there are some where I wonder how they manage to dress themselves in the morning... [/quote] Bad luck Modman, we've had the usual double bookings but never actually on the day. Pubs closing down and not telling anyone is really common too. I've not had a rant about just how badly run a lot of pubs are for a while. Unbelievable really. How many pubs ever publicize any of their events at all. I used to go round pubs for bookings to find the majority of them had no internet connection at all, never mind a website. When was this distant time? Three years ago. When you do find a website will it be up to date? They usually have a blank events page, even if you know you are booked there, contact details are often incorrect, menus five years out of date, and so on. Try and find out which pubs locally have a quiz night on, good luck with that! For most pubs advertising a gig is down to a board outside and a single poster inside. The only people who see it are their regular customers. It's great for them to spend £250 entertaining a few regulars but given the nature of their business financial suicide. I've invited friends to see us when we play in their local and most of them were completely unaware that there were regular gigs there. Most pubs seem to want to keep their plans secret until after the event. One local pub has bands every other week, they never advertise so no-one knows if it is a band week or an empty lifeless pub week. Why? There's never much in the way of creating an event either. Happy hour or a meal deal, to get people in for an hour or so before the band, perhaps a drink offer on gig night or whatever. Simple things like considering where to put the band, clearing a space, having a power point, access for moving gear, safety issues around heavy speakers and trip hazards are completely unregarded at most venues. There's often no consideration of the music. Why book a dance band if their is nowhere to dance? Why book a rock band into a pub which normally has quiet acoustic acts or a pop band into a bikers pub. A bunch of 20 year olds playing screamers to a bunch or 50+ drinkers doesn't work too well either. Who are you trying to attract with your £250 investment? Which bands would best serve that aim, not a question ever asked in my experience. Also look what is going on in other venues around you. One of my bugbears is towns where all the pubs have a band on Sat nights and inevitably share the limited audience, but no-one does anything on a Fri. Now I've sympathy for a lot of landlords, they work long hours and there's no training. Why should they know about promoting music events? But a pub running bands once a week is investing £13,000 in a year. they wouldn't do this without thinking it through in any other area of their work, so why not talk to people about music if you don't know enough. So many pubs are failing to attract enough customers to survive. Bands are running low on venues and audiences, but people are always looking for things to do and the standard of pub bands has never been higher. Pubs that stick with regular music and do it well are usually rammed on a weekend. Internet sites that will promote your events abound and are cheap or free, there's no excuse for running a secret event, if in doubt then ask the bands for advice. Why don't breweries and Pubco's offer training? Grrr

Quacking I can do, lol. that's the problem . Thanks for your help everyone, any further advice welcome.

[quote name='roman_sub' timestamp='1434033225' post='2796140'] FromFrFr It sounds like it could be an issue regarding relative pitching. Good singing is largely a mental process (no doubt, some will disagree...), and if you've heard yourself back through the monitors to be able to pitch correctly initially, you should be able to retain the memory of the relative pitch.... If, on the other hand, you could not "align" yourself to start with (i.e. you were not sure where the note you were singing "should" be pitched), then it sounds plausible that you will be off-key when you can finally hear yourself, having not previously established a link between your vocal pitching and the other instruments. I guess just to add to that, securely knowing where the pitches without simple reference is hard and may take years of practice!! [/quote] Hmm, of course that could be going on as well. I've only recently realised that as in all things practice is important. I'd assumed because so many people can hold a tune with little or no effort and I can't that no amount of practice could help. I now know that is wrong, but even so my inability to sing without monitors makes practicing pretty difficult, singing in the car for example just reinforces bad habits. Something else is going on though which is about my hearing, whether by ear or by brain and I'd love to know if anyone expert in this can point me in the right direction. You're right though in pitch security being important.

I'm hoping someone here teaches singing or knows enough to suggest some reading I can do. The temporary fix is a personal monitor like the little Behringer or Mackie ones. I've no pretensions of ever singing a whole song but various bands want me to do more backing vocals.

All my life I've been told not to sing. Recently however I've accidentally stumbled upon something that has completely thrown me. If I sing through monitors I can sing in tune. If I turn the monitors off it sounds hopelessly out of tune to me, but in tune to everyone else, turn them back on and my voice is still in tune. What the hell is going on? It seems I can't hear my own voice properly. It works the other way too, if I start singing without monitors it sounds in tune to me but the monitors (and the rest of the world) show it is way out. Please, please if anyone has an explanation I'd love to hear it. If I understood it there might be things I could do to find my way round the problem.