Phil Starr

There's a lot of not too well informed advice here, well meaning enough. TimR has it about right especially with respect to earth. The important thing is to ensure all your equipment and the truck are at the same earth potential and that the gear you are using is all properly wired. An RCD will help but isn't foolproof. The size of the generator has been mentioned. Add up the total wattage of your gear including any lights or other electrical equipment. Add another 50% and that should tell you the size of genny you need. I doubt the total of your gear is much over 1000W and even a quite small generator will be 2k so you shouldn't have a problem. the only problem I've had is that the voltage will fall before you over load the generator and this could cause some problems, hence the need to add 50%. Generators are noisy, as are trucks, you might need more power to be heard than you expect. Without any reflecting walls and floors the bass in particular is lost, take your biggest rig for bass. You really need to be supported if the truck stops suddenly and your gear needs to be strapped down too. No point in being held steady if you are hit by a flying 20lb bass amp! There are regulations about all this and you should ask the organisers about insurance, public liability may not cover you if you are part of the event. In Somerset we have annual competitions for floats in all the local towns. PA systems are built into the trucks and tend to be rated in kilowatts. Anyone standing on the truck usually has a harness fixed to metal work and the floats are all inspected for safety, Marshalls ensure the trucks never exceed walking pace. You can see some of the cages and harnesses on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaBHwy0DAIE&feature=youtu.be

Good luck and don't feel bad. For most of them being in a band and some recreational playing was enough, you've probably ended that for them and you can't blame them for being fed up. You aren't responsible for their happiness though. I've been in exactly that situation with my previous two bands, pushing them into gigging which they quite enjoyed but weren't bothered about it being too often. I too took on the PA and all the other organisation as I tried to push the bands forwards. Gigging is a real commitment though, It takes out most of the weekend as far as the family is concerned and lot's of preparation and compromises on the set and many people struggle with performing in public. There's only so far you can push people and you gave it a good go. You'd be surprised at how popular a gigging bassist with a full PA and organising skills can be. I'm now with a band that gig twice as often as before and our diary is growing and I've had inquiries/offers from other bands. I'm grateful to my previous band members though, they lit the candle and put up with my awful bass playing whist I grew my skills. Most of us are still friends. Your guitarist might be a keeper too. Good luck

I use the B205 and it does the job. A friend uses the TC helicon and I have to say I wish i'd gone for that, lots of voice processing, i think a better sound and mounts onto the stand better. I think the Mackie is pretty similar to the Behringer, I've tried it in the shops but not gigged with it. If you want a used Behringer and can meet up in Exeter I suppose i could upgrade to the TC. PM me if you are interested. Either way the great thing about all these is you can give yourself as much monitor as you want without throwing the monitor mix out for the rest of the band, I've never heard myself so clearly

Looks like the one my 99 American Deluxe P came with.

You can use a single 12 for most gigs, I've been gigging with the prototype basschat 12 I've been developing and haven't really needed more than one cab. The proviso is that it has to have a decent long throw driver, the amp has to be well powered and I wouldn't want to use any bass boost. Two of these are killers though. One for small gigs, two for big and you are covered.

If you like the sound then go for it. The Cab is unlikely to shake itself to bits but if it is thin walled and unbraced then it the walls will vibrate and make a noise of their own colouring the sound, but the coloured sound was what you liked. Similarly I don't suppose the speaker had a huge magnet at that weight and that affects the sound too, but you liked the sound. I think what you are saying that this is the cab to beat for you, go on looking to check there is nothing in your price bracket you prefer but if this is your favourite then ..... Talk to Mansons, they are my local shop too and I've always found them really helpful, they may offer you a money back return or a chance to loan the speaker, it's worth asking, they can only say no.

http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/1002B.aspx cna be battery powered but is probably a bit excessive. Vox amplug thingy I went for the B1on, its neat and probably the cheapest option. Drum machine/metronome and tuner built in too.

I'd say give up trying to start your own band. It's hard to find one person committed to gigging who isn't already gigging, to find four or five is nothing short of a miracle. I'm the organising type and I'm reluctant to take it on again. The trouble is that so many people dream of gigging but in reality only think of themselves and their playing in front of a live audience. Once they've lived their dreams a few times it's enough. Gigging most weekends is a whole extra level and takes huge commitment. No judgement on those people for whom six gigs a year is enough though, but if you want to gig more than that then find people who share that aim. The best way to do this is to join a band who are already gigging regularly, because for every band who has lost a less than committed singer there's another who has just lost their bassist. Start going to the local gigs and start networking, just talk to the bands, let them know you play, male a note of what they play and make sure you could make a stab at the stuff you hear most of them play. If the call comes you'll need half a dozen songs or more to jam at an audition but you will probably only get a fortnight to learn the rest of their set. The more bands you see the greater chance that you'll find one that needs you. Scan the ads use the internet but there's nothing like first hand knowledge. Bands get so desperate that even I get to be the bassist even though I have very little skill, just Mr Reliable with a good attitude.

Of course Bill is right about the mids and highs but as he himself has said on several threads the 80-120Hz region is pretty important when it comes to our perception of bass, so depending on the height you raise the cab there will probably be a subtle but detectable suckout. My experience is that this usually ends up cleaning up the front of house sound, but this of course depends upon lots of other factors with room acoustics being the most important usually. Just warning you it might sound a little different really.

[quote name='Caledonian_Enterprises' timestamp='1424729086' post='2699859'] Thanks for discussing with your band , its still early stages as you can see, all i can say is the setup will weigh no more than 24kg (possible 20kg) and the sound range will be between 94db and 113db. if you have any other contacts then id welcome their thoughts too. What band are you in?? [/quote] I'm a bit worried about the lack of any science here. Sound range doesn't have any meaning really. You'd need to be able to produce peaks of 120dB to keep the bass as loud as the drummer, a minimum requirement giving you an average sound level of around 100dB. If these were sensitivity figures @1W and 1m then you won't achieve 113db without a substantial horn design. The mass figures don't seem feasible either. The Eminence Beta 10 for example weighs 3.1 kg so that is 12.4kg for a 4x10. which leaves you with 11.6kg for the rest of the cab. The density of perspex is 1.16g/cm3 meaning your 4x10 will weigh 25kg if you make it out of 15mm material. the Youngs moduluus of perspex is between 1.8-3.1 GPa, birch ply 13.8GPa so ply is many times stiffer so you'd need to increase the thickness of the cab by using a lot more perspex if you want the same performance. Speaker cabinet sizes are matched to the drivers and your sketch designs are about 120l. This is reasonable for a 4x10 but huge for a 1x15 by modern standards, more like a 70's design. For a 1x12 it's silly. in any case you'd be looking to match your cab to the speaker you chose not starting with a cab size and looking for a speaker to go in it, unless looks count for everything and sound very little. Without wishing to damp your enthusiasm there's also the cost. A sheet of perspex is going to cost a lot. £721 for a 3x2m sheet of 15mm acrylic on eBay. You would get two cabs out of that if you are lucky. So a 4x10 is going to come in at £240 for the speakers and £360 for the perspex plus labour, distribution costs, and a profit for the retailer. You'd want the materials costs to be about 1/3 of the retail price at most so you are looking at a retail price of probably about £2000 for just one 4x10 adding in the cost of your lights. If you try to make these it will blow your student loan/whatever in no time, not to mention the 1000's of hours it will take you to prototype. Sorry this looks like a demolition job but I really wouldn't want you to risk all this time expense and effort on something that can't really be made to work. If this is a paper design exercise and it won't matter that you conclude the project is impractical

"It's dull and I'm lazy" are the only reasons not to do this from time to time. That's me guilty as charged Seriously I use a drum machine which I find much more engaging to play with. The Zoom B1ON takes care of that with some good basic patterns at a knock down price. I probably ought to use it more often but a decent session even once a month tightens everything up.

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1424911088' post='2701962'] I've tried those tilt back style combos a few times and have always struggled with them. Science probably doesn't say so, but it seems to me that pointing the cabinet at the ceiling instead of where your audience is creates a whole different set of problems to overcome. My experience of them is that they sound fine where you're stood but have a tendency to be a little muddy sounding and quiet when you wander out front to hear whats happening. Obviously, it's something you can learn to compensate for as you become accustomed to using it, but I'm a lazy git. [/quote] The science says the upper frequencies go where the speaker points, so this is right. The kickbacks are really most useful when you go through the PA for the audience and only need a 'bit more me' on stage.

It's a great idea, at small gigs I sometimes only connect the top cab in my stack and the bottom one simply acts as a stand. You'll actually get less boom as the floor acts as a kind of mirror reflecting sound into the room, moving the speaker off the floor lessens this effect.

It's explicit in my answer that the bass is already going through the monitors and this is for 'more me'. The OP said he is going through the PA and this wouldn't work without stage monitors feeding bass to the rest of the band already. If there isn't a monitor system up to this then he would need enough backline for the rest of the band to hear, obviously.

Is this a monitor for just you? How are the rest of the band hearing you? If you are going through the monitor line for the rest of the band and you just want 'more me' then you might be able to use the tilt back as it is. Pointed straight at your ears and turned up it should be plenty loud enough. Roll off the bass a little on the Fender to avoid excursion problems and you'll find the deepest frequencies are reaching you from the PA and the monitors. I use a Hartke kickback 10 in this way and it is my favourite set up.

Reach Out, The Four tops, Dad was out so I could use the forbidden fruit of the (home built) radiogram which was in new fangled stereo. I can remember the first glorious discovery of the bass you couldn't normally hear on the gear of the time. I even spent an hour with pillows over my ears trying to filter out the rest of the sound, all that unnecessary singing and guitar stuff! I'm afraid I got distracted by 40 years of speaker design but eventually I found my way. If I get Alzheimers then the last memory to fade might be James Jamerson.

Just looked at that cab which looks to be about 90l, assuming it is tuned to about 50Hz it should work well with the 3015HO. I don't think you will save quite as much weight as you hope, the speaker you have is probably about 10lbs heavier than the Kappalite. There's still a heavyweight box, however you will notice those 10lbs.

Please don't. In the olden days speakers had paper voice coil formers and the coils were held together with lacquer which melted when the speakers got hot. The power handling was really low. The WEM columns I repaired years ago had Goodmans drivers in, good for the time but this was 1970. They were designed to work with the WEM amp which was the first commercial solid state amp in the UK AFAIK to produce 100W, this was 45years ago and I don't suppose they would handle that now. It may be sentimental on my part but it would be a shame to destroy something that has survived that long.

Fair enough if keeping a look is important If cost is not an issue and you want light weight then the Eminence 3015HO is still one of the best out there. [url="http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Kappalite_3015.pdf"]http://www.eminence....palite_3015.pdf[/url] Your statement about matching box and speaker isn't quite right, people get away with it because manufacturers do a lot of 'me too' products so most boxes and speakers fall within a narrow range but there remains the possibility of expensive mistakes. This is a sorry tail of what happens [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/218436-warning-kappalite-3015-not-designed-for-bass/page__hl__blue%20aran."]http://basschat.co.u...l__blue%20aran.[/url] there's some pictures of the damage caused by mis matching on the second page to save you reading the whole thing. I've no idea of what your technical level is so forgive me if I'm teaching Granny to suck eggs . Nothing wrong with the Kappalite in this story just a mis matching box. It's also true that you can shape the bass response of a cab by fiddling with the design of the cab, just putting a speaker in a box is just like plugging a bass in to a new amp and leaving the eq untouched. I'm happy to look at what you'll get if you aren't comfortable with win ISD. You need to say what a better sound is really. We all like different sounds. What are the shortcomings of your current cab? Which Ampeg cab is it?

Probably not old enough to be a classic but one of those surprising albums good all the way through, just a joy to listen to Decemberists The King is Dead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDO4bzFWewk&list=PLC1ADF3E3825BFE8A

Why do you want to do this? If it is to get a better sound then it's probably not the best way to go about it. Generally speakers are matched to cabs for best results. the Ampeg probably won't be the cheapest way of buying an empty box. Selling it unmodded and buying what you want may be the quickest way of getting the sound you are looking for. If it is broken and you want to mend it then putting the same speaker in will give the best result in all probability. If you just want a project then I'm sure we can suggest something that will work, you'll be taking a gamble on the sound, it might be better and it might not. What's your budget? Jocelyn Peabody

Welcome, I'm a sound engineer pretending to be a bassist. Takes all types Do you have a budget in mind?

Guitar speakers are designed with short voice coils, because they don't have to move too far and because it makes them louder (don't we know it) Bass involves moving further to move more air and this is what damages the speakers. Whether your HB's will get damaged depends upon their detailed design but this is all volume dependent, the speakers in your clock radio could probably handle 1W of bass. Feel free to play through a guitar cab at low volumes. If you roll off the bass a little then 3dB of roll off will allow you to double the power you can use, then cutting some of the top will make it sound bassier and you might get a decent volume, any bass boost and you'll probably lose the speakers. There are plenty of speakers that you could try in a cab like this which would handle bass better but will all cost £200 and upwards as you surmise. Most will give you an old school style bass hump in the upper bass and little low bass, the cost of putting speakers in a cab which is too small. If you want to build a project then great, we'll help you, but honestly you are probably better off using it as it is, controlling the volume and bass controls. £200 will buy you a decent second hand cab especially if you are prepared to lug something like a 4x12 around.

[quote name='gjones' timestamp='1423429873' post='2684714'] I used to have one of these cabs. It's rated at 250w. It was great at low/medium volumes but turn it up loud and it farted like crazy (large crowded venue with insanely loud guitarist). But saying that the next week I brought my Ashdown ABM rated at 400w and it did the same with crazy loud guitarist. The moral of this story is don't get rid of the cab.......get rid of the guitarist. [/quote] If a cab is farting out it's a sure sign that it is exceeding it's excursion limit. The cabs have Eminence drivers in them, even the very basic Eminence Alpha is rated 150W so at 250W for a pair so these probably aren't going to be good at handling high power deep bass. If you like the sound then get a filter or you are likely to get more problems.

That's it really, it just needs an adjustment of attitude. On a big stage you are really much more 'on show' so you need a stage act and everything has to be bigger or you don't engage the audience. That's hard if you've had no training and few of us get to do it very often. I was terrified the first time. On the plus side you can move around much more and interact with other band members. Dad dancing with bass in hand looks slightly less odd than doing it with air guitar, or at least that's what I kid myself On the plus side I normally run the sound and a lot of bassists do, being able to concentrate on just playing and not worrying about the sound is very liberating.