Phil Starr

Probably too pricy and now hard to find but I picked up a hartke Kickback 10 for £125. The sound is great and just loud enough for gigging at a pinch.

Hey chaps calm down. This is a really interesting debate which I'm sure a lot of people are finding quite interesting. No need to be personal. Here's my two pennyworth. There's merit in both sides of the argument and some truth in both the argument for thicker and thin braced panels. A lot depends upon the design criteria and there is some muddling of two criteria here. Because of Barefaced and Alex's pre-eminent position here people have become muddled. I hope if i have this wrong Alex will correct me. Barefaced seem to me to attempt two things. To make lightweight cabs but also to engineer cabs that control spurious resonances. To an extent these two criteria conflict. To reduce the weight of the driver will save weight however you construct the cab. Using big magnets and long throw drivers means you can reduce the size of the cab due to better damping by the magnet and reduce the number/size of the drivers for a given sound output. Using neodymium means your powerful magnet doesn't have to mean heavy. Again this is all independent of the cab construction. To reduce resonances you need to add stiffness, mass and internal damping. In one of my hi-fi designs I used lead to make the cab, a great material for cabs but not appropriate for a bass cab. You can add thickness to the panels or brace them or a bit of both. this all increases mass. If you look at Alex's diagrams the bracing constitutes nearly half the material used. If he uses the same thickness for the bracing this will double the weight of the cab. Obviously this is about resonance and not weight saving. Build the same cab out of 18mm MDF and it would sound better but be too heavy to lift. If you want bracing this extensive you have to use thinner material. Alex has come up with a compromise of weight and rigidity which he has optimised to meet his own criteria of neutral sound and practicality as a portable cab. Stevie is correct in his Physics, All he says about thicker panels is true. Build a cab out of conventional 3/4" materials, add minimal bracing and you can have a cab almost as non-resonant as a braced cab for very little additional weight and a huge saving in costs. In addition you have to question whether you can hear the difference when you are talking about a bass being played in a live situation on stage. I've recently heard both a Barefaced cab and a 'thick walled' cab with the same driver at pub gigs, both bassists had a great tone. Equally Alex is right in all he asserts. as far as stiffness goes his cabs are the equal of a wall the same thickness of the panel plus the brace at the point they attach. This is how an I beam works. All that bracing will work fantastically well as Stevie has acknowledged. There will be resonances but they will be raised in frequency and reduced in volume, more importantly they can be controlled by where exactly the bracing is placed. There is nothing new in this, It was used in 1930's designs and more recently too. Celestion used it extensively in a lot of high end 1980's hi fi speakers. As to materials Stevie has a point, the commercial availability of panels in a wide range of materials is fairly limited and even fairly big manufacturers don't tend to design their own plies. For the rest of us the choice is limited to three or four types of ply, MDF and high density Chipboards.

At one point the company was called Rola Celestion. Those magnets were always pretty weak and lost what they had over time so they are more interesting as collectors items than as usable speakers. They are also liable to burning out because they date back to the time of paper formers and low temp adhesives, They always did burn out even when new. If they are working 40 year old speakers then they could be valuable to a collector.

[quote name='PauBass' timestamp='1377263376' post='2185522'] Thank you all for your comments! I know these new cabs are very efficient and loud but, can a 2x15 or 2x12 match a good 412 in power/volume/presence? This is my main concern, I don't want to spend big money and then fin d out they can't. [/quote] You've stumbled into a question with a moderately complex answer. Firstly let's deal with the whole concept of 'presence', 'distortion' and 'sound'. Different speakers sound different, that's as true of speakers today as it was in the 1070's and is as true of lightweights and neodymium as it is of heavyweights. You can probably get the sound you want out of a lightweight or a heavy old school speaker but without psychic powers I can't judge what you are looking for. Even a word like distortion has many meanings, for an engineer is is anything that deviates from the original signal, for a guitarist the warmth, punch, presence or whatever might be very welcome parts of the sound they want to achieve. If you are choosing a new speaker then you have to try it out and love the sound it makes first of all. If you can get that from a light speaker and it fits your budget then you might be prepared to pay the premium. Like Stevie says there are two ways to save weight. Mass is one of the things that affects panel resonances, stiffness another and there are more, there is nothing new in making thinner speaker panels and bracing and damping them or even looking at alternate materials with different mass/flexibility/internal damping. Bracing any panel will reduce it's resonance and shift the frequencies involved. The lightweight cabs may use 12mm panels rather than 18mm saving 1/3 of the mass. Then use some of this saving to create the bracing, they may even then be more rigid and less resonant than a conventional cab. The next thing is to look at lighter magnets using neodymium. There isn't a neo sound. Neo speakers all sound as different from each other as conventional speakers except that neo is expensive so is only used in better speakers. One of the advantages of using neo is that you can make a more powerful magnet though. This extra power can be used in two ways, to increase the loudness/efficiency of the speaker or to increase the coil length at the same efficiency (or a bit of both). If you increase the coil length you can get more bass out of the speaker, double the length and you'll get the same bass you get out of two similar sized conventional speakers. A really good 12" speaker can sound as loud as a conventional 2x12. It has nothing to do with presence, it can be measured and calculated. The rarely mentioned downside however is that in practice you can't go on doubling magnet powers for a number of reasons so long throw drivers often need bigger amps to get the best out of them. This makes good sense to do as amplifier watts are relatively cheap. So to answer your question it is true you can buy a lightweight which will match a heavyweight and will make your trousers flap and cause hearing loss with its presence, but you pay for the extra design/material/build costs which is fair enough. The only way to see if you like the sound is to try them, just as it is with old school cabs.

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Stevie is right, try it out. Laney are pretty nearly budget speakers. Having said that even a middling 4x10 should meet your needs. There are lots of cheap 4x10's and 1x15's out there though as they are no longer fashionable. To be fair they are all limited by thee size and weight. Better speaker technology means you can now make a smaller lighter cab that does the same job so as soon as we can afford it most bass players look to upgrade to something easier on the back. This means there are plenty of cheap functional cabs out there, you don't need to buy the first unless you like it a lot. You can get a Peavey BX BW 1x15 for less than £100 and a 4x10 for just a little more. Great stuff but heavy. Take your time, if money is tight then spend it carefully.

You don't need to worry too much though avoid extremes. 400w into 8ohms is about 7amps current and 400W is a lot for a single driver especially as in practice this is a peak value. I'd use a wire that would carry at least this though which means 1 sq mm. [url="http://www.diynot.com/pages/el/el003.php"]http://www.diynot.com/pages/el/el003.php[/url] most speaker cables are 1.5 so you might want to keep the same cable throughout the chain. You don't need to worry about resistance with such short pieces of wire, or heating effects as the heating of the coil in the speaker itself will be much more significant. Don't go too big either, at one point I used 79/02 speaker cable and it ended up breaking off the solder tags because of the weight and rigidity, With any speaker wires it is a good idea to fix them to the speaker frame to stop them moving around too much and to avoid rattles. Don't worry about oxygen free or any other muck and magic specialist speaker cables either, if they are any better it is only because they are better made. 13A mains cable is fine but strip out the wires from the overall cable and use single wires as this lightens the wires and increases their flexibility.

Welcome, there's a sticky in this section about gain,volume and power which might be worth a read. Basically you are just using a bit moire gain in the input but then still using the gain and volume controls to control the overall sound level. It's possible that you might introduce some distortion but if you like that sound then go for it. There's an outside chance you might damage a tweeter horn by feeding a dirtier signal but that is pretty remote and would happen with any dirty signal

In an open arena bass radiates in every direction evenly. Normally it radiates forwards only because the rear radiation is reflected off the rear wall. You will also get some reinforcement from floor, ceiling and any nearby side walls. Speakers are directional at high frequencies so this is less of an issue for guitarists. You are going to lose about 6dB depending upon the exact conditions which means going from 500W to something like 2000W, so 800W isn't going to fix the problem. You reach a point where covering the distances, and reproducing your normal experience on stage from a back line amp isn't really practicable. If you are playing outdoors it is much more sensible to let the PA do the lifting and to use better on stage monitoring.

1.4dB which is only just noticeable. You really need to double power to get a noticeable difference. Don't worry about it. I use the 3500 with a 2x10 with no problems and you'll be slightly louder than me.

This is dangerous and you have to have it checked. All the parts you touch should be at earth potential and they aren't so something isn't connected to earth that should be.That's a big link missing from the chain that keeps you safe. A mains shock may be just round the corner, it probably won't kill you but it just might. Better to get it fixed

Here's my two pennyworth. I think you've asked the wrong question. The size of the speakers is one of the least important factors, how they sound and how that compares with the sound you like is much more important. Speaker area isn't insignificant in the design process but there are compromises all the way like cone design and magnet size that equally affect the final sound, not to mention cabinet design. It's a bit like deciding your dream car must have 6 cylinders without looking at handling, power output, weight etc. What you need to do is to set priorities and more importantly start auditioning cabs. it looks like you are looking for something portable/compact and maybe lightweight. but you are also liking the 'room filling' sound of your old 1x15, which I guess had a fairly traditional 'warm' sound. you might well find a 2x10 that gives you that but you might also find a modern compact 15 that does the job just as well in the same sized box. !2's might do it as well of course. I realise that this isn't helping you narrow anything down at all, your problem is probably too much choice but go and listen to some bands and see what people are using that sound the way you want to go. Plan a couple of trips to the bigger stores and try out a few cabs and home in on the sound you like.

Bassist are generally good people it seems.

If you like the sound then buy a matching Peavey speaker TKO 115, anything else will change the sound.

As you say with a new capsule it is effectively a new mic (in a shop soiled case though). the beta is a much better mic than the SM. Only you can decide what it is worth to you.

There's a slight difference of opinion here about mixing drivers. It's certainly an added complication but not necessarily a complete no-no. In any case you need to think about matching it to your 15, do you know what that is? the Beyma is a personal favourite of mine and will work in your cab. It is slightly unusual though in that it has a pretty flat frequency response compared with most bass speakers and a more extended top end than some. Useful as in this area it won't be competing with the 15 but if the old 12 had the usual mid peak you may miss it by using the Beyma. Because the cab is sealed it will work with a range of speakers including cheaper ones, equally if you want to spend a bit more you might have the option of just using the 12 at some gigs. I had no difficulty in keeping up with the drums using a single SM212 for example. What is important to you? Just getting the old cab back into use, keeping your old sound or looking for improvement? Getting as good as you can or saving money? what sound are you looking for?

I replaced the pups on my action bass, first with Wilkinsons then with Kent Armstrongs, both were much better than the stock pups.

I had the same problem and all the usual things you have tried were suggested. In the end i changed Pups and the problem went away.

I don't see why this shouldn't work extremely well. For a while i used a little harke Kickback in the same way as you propose using your monitor and it was all positive for me, I could hear much more detail with the speaker pointing at me and the rest of the band could hear themselves better as the overall stage volume decreased, We had much less bleed through on the vocal mic's. the downside was for the drummer who likes lots of bass flapping his trousers and disturbing his stomach contents. Mixing speakers is often overstated as a problem in these forums. It has implications but they aren't extreme, In this case with the speakers well separated and pointing in different directions it won't cause a problem for you.

This is very simple, Go and play your bass through them and choose the one you like best. Don't give a seconds thought to the size of the drive units, just the sound.

An ideal power stage wouldn't colour the sound of course but there are always going to be some limitations. I doubt that in practice you would hear a lot of difference between say, a new 400W class AB power stage and a 400w class D one. In this case you are talking about an old amp that will have a lot of components which will have drifted out of spec over the years so it won't be sounding like new and you might well hear a difference. A lot of old amps had big capacitors to decouple the speakers from the power rail and this limited the bass response, In the end the power amp will contribute less distortion than the pre amp stages but that won't mean nothing at all.

You might find this interesting [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f15/replacing-blueline-speakers-ashdown-abm-combo-563934/"]http://www.talkbass....m-combo-563934/[/url] I use Deltalites at the moment and they do sound nice. The Kappalites are as good as it gets and do work in a cab like yours. I wouldn't use the alpha/beta/delta 15's though it might be worth looking at the DeltaPro's if you want a cheaper speaker, I'd go for a Celestion in preference. If you want a very neutral sounding speaker with very controlled bass these look interesting [url="http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=BMA15MI100&browsemode=category"]http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=BMA15MI100&browsemode=category[/url] If you can scrape together the £200 though go for the Kappalite, you won't be disappointed.

Not tried the Jazz pups but replaced my P pups with Kent Armstrongs and they were great.

I thought someone else would have answered this by now. Just swapping drivers is a bit hit and miss for two reasons. Technically cabs and speakers form a tuned unit and fitting a mismatched speaker into the cab won't get the best out of the speaker. It's like dropping a car engine into the wrong car, connect it up properly and it will go forward and back but things like handling will go to pot. Secondly you can't really tell what a speaker will sound like in a cab until you try it, by which time your money has gone and it is too late. An experienced engineer will be able to make a stab at prediction but even that will be an approximation. We also don't have very good ways of describing sound, so often end up talking at cross purposes, for example the 'thud' you talk about to me means the sound of a poorly damped speaker fitted to an undersized cab with the characteristic 100-150Hz 3dB+ frequency hump which most low-mid priced commercial cabs exhibit but could mean good clean bass extension to someone else. The sensible thing would be to sell the speakers you don't like in an unmodified form, as this gets you the best price and then use the money to buy a speaker you do like and which you can try before buying. That's all the negative stuff out of the way. If you are a gambling type, just like fiddling or even want a learning experience then you'll go ahead and take the chance despite the good advice, but the advice[b] is[/b] good and will be the cheapest way of getting sound nirvana. You may in any case want to retain the look of your rig or just want to self build without all the woodwork. If the Celestions you used before sounded good to you why not just use those? Celestions bass speakers generally have high resonant frequencies, so no deep bass. They have only moderate excursion and need a big cab to avoid the hump I mentioned, usually they display the hump. They usually have a bit of an upper-mid peak in frequency response so sound quite lively. The Fane Sovereign and Celestion Pro Audio speakers are mostly better damped and go lower and lose the upper mid peak. They are much cleaner in the bass frequencies, produce more deep bass before farting out and sound very neutral, unlike most commercial cabs. Eminence have a hell of a range so it's harder to generalise but they tend to make underdamped, humpy speakers and they usually have fairly dramatic upper mid cone break up so can be very lively/shouty. the other thing is budget, there are some great speakers and you could try fitting the Eminence Kappalite [url="http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Kappalite_3015.pdf"]http://www.eminence....palite_3015.pdf[/url] in the 15 cab. It's £200 ish but one of the best speakers around at the moment, you could then probably do any gig you wanted with the one speaker. Skidder of these pages made just this change and it sounds great.

If you are going through the PA you probably aren't as boomy as you think. If you are behind the speakers you will only hear the lower frequencies as the higher ones are directional and only go forwards from the PA, the audience are probably hearing much less boom. I only tried bass this way once at an open mic and i had no idea what I was playing until I stood in front of the PA speakers. Now I take a little kickback combo with me and control my own tone. If you have control of your sound then move your speakers away from reflecting surfaces like rear and side walls and even think of lifting them off the floor, each reflecting surface gives you an extra 3dB of deep bass so having your amp/speaker in a corner gives 9dB bass lift, pretty much the same as full bass boost. Also think of using a little more bridge pickup and a little less neck pup.