Phil Starr

Guilty as charged your honour. I am Lidl's secret shopper Anyway I deliberately choose to run everything off a single socket. The theory is to have everything connected to the same earth point. Any resistance in the wiring can lead to differences in earth potential and voltages appearing across betwen gear plugged into different sockets. I measured 47volts between earths once, after I got a belt off the mic of course. I re-wired some 6-way mains strips so I have two with 5m leads and one with a 10m lead and Ihave one with the bought 2m lead. First thing I do at every set up is to plucg in to the most convenient socket and run the cables so there is a 6-way at each corner of the stage. Everyone plugs into these and I won't say its idiot proof but it reduces the chance of miss hap. As John says you've got nearly 3kW to play with and that your PA is probably running at 20% load anyway. With LED lighting most of us could run off a 5A fuse never mind 13A

OK the 8" is the one I'm needing to work on next(!). We've a couple of builders over here who are going to have a go too and the prototype I built for a friend so I've never used it in anger. I like to thoroughly test cabs before I put the final design up. If you decide to go for the BC112T later then we've found other horns that work. The supply of the specified one has been difficult here too.

No pressure then, I'll need to catch up on writing everything up. I shouldn't have signed up with that third band. Playing bass is getting in the way of chatting about it If you need help with the builds PM me for suggestions, I'm not sure of what drive units you can source easily over there but I've helped out other people with tweaks to the designs. BTW @stevie designed the BC112 mk3 Welcome to Bass Chat

It depends upon location so much. I've tred to persuade Mac to reach out into the real world but he's happy to hope it grows organically.

If you are in Devon then it's a no-brainer. Devon is one of the areas where Lemonrock achieved critical mass early on. Facebook gives the impression of doing something but in the end people only go to your site if they already know you exist and you browse FB you can't really search it. Lemonrock is all about getting bookings in areas where it it strong many/most of the pub bands are on it so the music pubs ususally fill their calendar by simply contacting the bands there. If they need a band they can see who is available and if you've put up recordings and videos they can see and hear you before they ring. I've picked up 10 bookings in the last 8 weeks with no effort on my part and many of the pubs I play regularly started off as Lemonrock contacts. If you can convert your initial booking into regular re-bookings then each contact is worth £00's so the fee is modest. Lemonrock is also a gig guide so if I want some live music I can find gigs locally and LR messages hundreds of punters for every gig. You also get reports on activity on your pages, my duo had over 9,000 hits last year all either from punters or pubs looking to book. Lemonrock isn't perfect, the sofware is a bit clunky and setting up your initial pages or entering gigs won't be as simple as it is on social media but it is run by a gigging musician and has a lot of functionality. It also offers support if you need help

We did put some response curves up but I can't remember where. it was a couple of years ago so I'm not promising that I'll find them. John @Chienmortbb and I did most of them but there were a couple other people had done.

I'm completely with Bill on this one. Modern PA's have improved so much that this is what the audience should be hearing. Needing a 2x15 or a 4x10 to reach the back of the room is just not necessary and it has so many disadvantages apart form the fag of harrying to transport, store and carry a huge box or boxes. I have multiple cabs because it is my passion but the biggest cab I've taken to a gig in the last two years is a 1x12. Often I go ampless or the amp and bass speaker stay in the car. I think any serious gigging bassist needs their own bass amplification still as you never know what you'll find when you get there but a 300W amp and a good quality 12 (or 2x10) should be able to match the drumkit and why would you want to drown out the rest of the band? The guitarist can just turn down

WinISD is the program most of us use. It's free. You have to input the parameters from the manufacturers data sheets and once these are saved you can ask it to design a cab and it will print out the bass response of it's design. You can then change the size and tuning of the cab and it will show you what the changes do on screen as you do them. It's quite useful to set up two projects with the same speaker at a time and it will show you two responses, you can then tweak one and see exactly how that compares with the suggested design. The cab only really affects the bass response directly so that is all it calculates. It also shows you things like power handling, maximum output and so on. The sky (or your growing knowledge of cab design) is the limit but it will design a simple box for you too. If you get stuck there are lots of BassChatters here to help. http://www.linearteam.org/

Note to self: I don't need more speakers!

RCF have always done this, fairly constant marginal improvements. The Firphase improvements in the crossovers did tidy up the midrange which was already good by industry standards. They introduced that piecemeal at first and then rebranded everything as IV series. At one point they were selling mk2,3 and 4 speakers all at the same time. The latest thing is XBoost which looks to be DSP operating on the bass frequencies, hard to tell from the blurb on that link but it would seem to be some bass boost combined with some clever compression to protect the speakers. They did this already on the Mk4's so my guess is some more tweaking rather than anything radical. Expect Mk5 for the 9 series soon. I guess they just keep the design team working constantly to keep them together and with driver production in-house prototyping must be streamlined. The marketing is clever too, there are RCF's at just about every price point and you can always pay a few pounds more for something genuinely just a little better. All the sizes in all the colours The good thing is that last time they did this there was a sell off of the old Mk2 and Mk3 kit and I got some ART310 Mk2's for a knock down price from Andertons. I think Thomann had the reductions as well. If anyone is thinking of buying new it might be worth keeping an eye open.

Funnily enough I'm looking to buy a new car and the Skoda Superb estate was on my list. How are you getting on with the 945's?

I've had these for almost two years now and I wanted to put something down to help others make choices when they come to buy their PA. My experience with them over 30+ gigs has been generally good but there have also been a few issues so that what I thought would be my forever speakers certainly haven't been perfect so for me this is a chance to re-evaluate. I'm not generally too prone to GAS, I love my basses but regard bass amps and speakers as just utilitarian tools of the job. I've reached a stage in life when I have all the things I properly need and all my band money goes into a pot to pay for my music. For years my PA was based upon the old Yamaha S112IV and a Behringer amp, then I upgraded to a well used second hand Wharfedale EVP system. The last band I joined had their own PA using QSC 12A2's until the singer left and took her PA speakers with her. That gave me time to save and plan for my 'dream' PA speakers. I decided that what I wanted was one pair of speakers that would do everything. Everything a very ordinary covers band would be called upon to do anyway. Loud enough to fill any indoor space we were ever likely to play, to make a decent fist of playing outside but portable enough that I could pack everything into a decent estate and compact/light enough to make setting up manageable. Also something that could cope with bass and drums without being concerned or needing subs. I'd previously had subs but they only came out once or twice a year so I was storing stuff I didn't really use. I felt the QSC's just fell short of the last bit and that I needed 15's to get drums and bass loud enough without having to compromise. I auditioned speakers and thought the bigger horn drivers just sounded better for vocals and plumped for RCF 735's as being the best I could afford when a pair of 745's came up used and I pulled the trigger. OK the good stuff. They've been utterly reliable and plenty loud enough even in outdoor events with 250+ people. We have E-drums and I go out now with no back line so all the bass and drums go through the PA. We've used them for all our pub gigs too so the Swiss Army knife theory worked out. The sound has been outstanding, we've had punters and promoters commenting positively more than ever before and you kind of grow in confidence when you hear just how good it can sound. Vocals are really well presented. The speakers have behaved faultlessly. They came with covers that don't need to be removed which speeds up set up and break down. The down side is that they are huge. They won't stand upright in most cars and are too tall to go through most car doors upright, laying them on their sides takes up a lot of space and packing the car can be a struggle. They don't feel heavier than the QSC 12's but something that big is still an awkward lift onto the stands. That's ok on one off gigs but it gets a bit old after a year or so. Being big makes a one handed carry difficult and they bang your legs a lot. You don't need that much power for most pub gigs and big and heavy means less stability on the stands. They are also quite imposing/space hungry in some of the smaller venues and frankly are overkill in most of the places we play. The bass is prodigious too and is generally rolled of heavily at 50Hz in most venues. We don't often need the extra that the 15" drivers offer and bass is sometimes overwhelming on stage. The other thing I didn't consider is comb filtering. When the bass is coming from two different speakers separated by a few metres you get significant cancellation and the bass sounds unnaturally loud or quiet as you move round the audience area. With subs you can push them together but you can't do that when your subs are also your PA speakers. It's not noticeable indoors as the wall reflections are significant and you don't really get bass dead spots but it's been really noticeable in some of our outdoor gigs. It's a really boring conclusion to say that a couple of speakers costing £1135ea sound really good but I have to report that they do, it's also true that for most bands they are going to be enough to handle all your needs in a single pair of speakers without subs. TBH I don't think we've ever needed to drive them hard. The thing is though that we are carrying way more than we need for most gigs, in fact nearly all our gigs. With my duo we take a couple of RCF310's and they also sound good with a great vocal sound. I carry one in each hand and they pop up on the poles almost by themselves. I've started to wonder if a couple of slightly better 10's plus a decent sub wouldn't match the 745's, be just as quick to set up and more convenient more of the time. So in conclusion I'd recommend them but say ask yourself if you really need something that big. Interested to see what other users think and to see what anyone else's experiences are with other PA speakers

I went down that route for a while, I started with the B205D and then upgraded to the TC VoiceSolo. I also tried the Mackie that the Behringer copied. On its own the Behringer sounds like a loud transistor radio, the Mackie sonded identical. The TC had a much better sound but the Behringer at a gig actually worked much better, it's the mids you need so that boxy/tinny sound worked way better than you expect. The Behringer is so top heavy on a stand and I ended up with it on a separate stand. The TC was better but still clumsy. Aterr this I bought my own floor monitor which was better but you need to figure out how you will mix, that three channel mixer and feed through on the B205 and others is really useful. In the end I went in-ears and couldn't believe how much effort money and time I'd wasted on what is a way inferior sound.

I think a few more details about how you want to use this would help, and maybe what you mean by 'cheap' which you mentioned later? How small is small? What's the budget? Where will this be used? Does it need to be battery powered? As the designer of the House Jam Cab I would say that it is the perfect cab for jamming with a few friends at home or as a practice cab at home. It was originally designed to match an acoustic guitar for volume with a 15W amp so a small battery amp is simple enough to organise. Standard amps in car stereos give 20W so 12V amps are really cheap. What I didn't design for was running 100W out of a micro amp (Gnome Elf) It handles that with ease and then becomes an incredibly compact portable amp for open mic nights and the like. However I use a couple of Studio monitors at home (I use RCF Lyra but the Yamahas above are just as capable) Obviously using the separate cab lets you swap amps around for home use or battery use if you need it

I didn't spot this earlier but we've been doing some measurements on frequency responses of amps. We specifically started with the micro amps; Gnome, BAM and Elf. It's on a thread here somewhere. None of them are flat with the controls at 12.00 though you can tweak them to be more or less flat. They all have differing scoops at 440Hz but all three have the mid control at 440Hz which makes eq simpler The Gnome and Elf all have decent HPF keepint the subsonic frequencies under control which will help protect your speakers, ideal for small amps which might be used with smaller drive units. The Elf has a classic smiley face/old school eq with everything at 12.00 the BAM is similar but slightly less pronounced and the Gnome is also scooped but with a more lively top end which gives it a distinct 'hi-fi' sound. In listening tests at the last SW Bass Bash the Elf got a lot of love with everything set to 12 but all three are tweakable to give a flat sound if that is what you want. In other tests we found the Bugera Veyron M to have the flattest response we measured rolling off the frequencies that a bass doesn't make only. It is a 700W amp though so you'd have to use the volume control judiciously. The Gnome in our tests is mine, bought as a back up when my MB Tube started having problems. It is now my go to amp much to my surprise, for what you want it is ideal but the Elf or BAM would probably do the same job for you. It's a silly price too. If you genuinely want a flat response amp with lots of tone options the Bugera is a great option and on the basis of the tests and subsequent listening tests I bought one which I use in preference to my Peavey and MB. I'd be careful about people's subjective opinions about how an amp sounds. You should see the range of terms we see in descriptions they give of the same amp or speaker we collect in out shoot outs, mine included Miost amps withan fx loop are flat beyond the fx input though. Oh DC resistance 5.9 ohm is typical for an 8ohm impedence speaker as you surmised

This is the sort of experience I've tried to give people at the South West Bass Bash for the last few years. Over the years we've tried all sorts of things to try and make it a fair test but in the end it's just a bit of fun, there are too many variables to control. So, yes please to the mic being well back from the cab in the 'audience' area, directly in line with the cabs and in as non-reverberent a space as you can manage. Outdoors would be good and as far away from any walls as possible. Then think about amplification. Most bass amps are highly coloured so we take the bass straight through a desk and a PA amp. The problem is that any frequency irregularities in the amp are going to flatter some speakers more than others. Any peak in the amp that lines up with a peak in the speaker is going to make that bit of the spectrum really jump or if the speaker is weak there the amp will fill in the gap. Come to that some speakers will work better with some basses. So many variables Finally you need to think about volume. Some cabs are going to be louder than others, fundamentally we prefer loud sounds and due to the way our hearing works louder boosts the bass and treble we hear more than the mid-range. At the bass bash I've tried to make sure the sound levels are the same from each speaker turning the amp up and down to match the sound levels, I've even tried using sound level meters to match volumes. Just swapping speakers with the amp settings unchanged will tell you mainly just how loud they are, if you wnat to know how good they sound then you need to set the amp each time for equal volumes. Or do both as two separate tests I think this is going to be a lot of fun for all of us, don't worry if it isn't the most scientific study ever done, there's far worse on You Tube and we all still lap it up. I'm sure you and we will all learn something. I can't wait to see what you do

I sympathise with you if you are running FOH sound, playing bass and trying to keep your band happy with their IEM mixes. Your own monitors always come last and I've usually just got mine in when someone has logged themselves out of the mixer, logged in to someone else's mix or has a flat battery in their headphone amp. I have to unplug to listen to their problems and then no time to do any last minute tweaks to my own mix. You have to sort isolation. If you get that right then in theory once you have a good mix it will be the same everywhere. It's external sound leaking in that messes up your mix. I use triple flange tips with my ZS10's pushed right into the ear canals. It is a bit intrusive at first but the isolation is great and you get used to them.

That's encouraging then, glad that much worked out for you

Oh I'm not recommending abstinence 😂 Maybe I should sell some stuff on though, make space for the new.

I hate to break it to you but what you were looking for doesn't exist and probably never will. If you look at the output plot of an amp it may have half a dozen irregularities, the frequency response of a speaker may have hundreds, some of these are very narrow peaks and others covering more than an octave, you'd need hundreds of frequencies adjusted and variable Q on most of them. Even if you had 12th octave tone controls your ears would still detect a difference 3 band eq isn't going to cut it. That's just eq too. Do you know of any hi-fi system that is indistinguishable from acoustic instruments? Our science just isn't up to realistic reproduction of anything that will fool our ears. Then there are room interactions to think about, your cherished sound will only work in one spot in one room, put it in a bigger, smaller, more reflective, higher ceilinged space or any of a hundred variables including how many people in the room and the magic will go. The sims are getting better all the time and AI may eventually be able to design something to fool us, we may eventually replace the loudspeaker with something better but for now you'll never be more than close to a sound in you head being reproduced accurately in every venue. Sorry just read these later comments, you've already got there The only thing I can help with is the woolly mush. If you are putting bass or drums through the PA then remember the bass from them is 360 degrees and the upper mids and treble maybe 60 or less and probably louder than your backline. You'll hear all the bass from the PA and almost none of the top end the woolly mush is the result of bass from the PA flooding the stage. You can only remove this with earplugs or in-ears but it's helpful to filter all the deep bass out of your stage amp and just pass the frequencies you need to restore a balanced tone.

I gig around 30 times a year and also run the PA. I carry back ups for pretty much everything especially when we are further from home. I carried a spare bass for pretty much the first 10 years but I've never had a failure of a bass or broken a string so in the end I've stopped bothering unless I take my active bass. I have spare batteries for that but never trust batteries completely so a passive bass keeps it company.

Let us know how you get on with that, if the return process works smoothly then you've lost very little and AliExpress remain a viable option in the UK

It's a difficult thing to manage. You don't talk about a band leader but if one of this couple are the band leader then you have a problem. I'm also suspecting that up in Barnstaple there aren't huge numbers of gigging bands so if it got heated you'd be pushed into the wilderness. On the surface it's simple, you clearly don't want to share bass playing duties and why should you? You've learned all the songs and taken part in all the rehearsals and everything else being in a band entails just so you can be the bass player. It's the only reason you are there and committed to the enterprise. I actually think it's a really rotten thing to have asked you to step aside even for one song. In terms of the band if she isn't a decent keys player she could put her efforts into improving her keys for a better return for the team. I don't know the people, it's maybe she is just keen and naive, not thinking about how it would affect anyone else and innocent of band dynamics. Maybe just saying you really care about this and how being the bands bassist is really important to you will give her pause for thought. We've a young singer who is really enthusiastic and fires off ideas all the time, it's hard to know when to kill off the slightly loony ideas and when to indulge the enthusiasm. I think killing this off early would be my approach. The situation can only get more tense if nobody is talking about it. How does your fourth band member feel? Maybe the drummer can intervene. Who should you talk to first? Just be polite and say politely that you just aren't going to share bass duties. If it's a happy band they will understand, if not then do you really want to be there and steadily undermined?

I don't use mine much nowadays as I've gone in-ears and no back line for most gigs. However it remains an amp which kills all the reservations/fears/superstitions about class D. It has a great sound out of the box and a really solid warm bass as full as you like and a match for any amp. The tone controls are really flexible and the fan noise is the only obvious minus point.