Phil Starr

Speakers and cabs work together with the cab designed to match the speaker so most of the time you are better off replacing like with like. 8" is a nominal size most 8's are actually slightly bigger Eminence and Fanes are 8.25". Are you sure you don't just have an 8 with a generous sized frame? If you can't get a replacement then you can stick a piece of ply on the back of the baffle (screwed and glued) and mount the speaker inside the old cut out, you may need to enlarge this to fit the new speaker. Make sure whatever youdo is airtight and you should be ok.

You are using a Sansamp through the PA? If so the only real function of the cab(s) you are buying is for you and possibly the rest of the band to hear the bass. The audience will hear you through the PA. If you have decent monitors you don't need a bass amp at all strictly speaking. In fact the bass amp/speaker is your monitor. Why do you want a second cab? If the ratings are right (big if) then this one cab will go to just about 126dB (probably excursion limited at the very bottom end) more than enough to drown out the drums or to damage your hearing. Even with 40dB dynamic range you can maintain an average sound level of well over 100dB. One speaker will be more than enough and if you spend more on it because you are saving on a second cab you will be able to major on quality rather than quantity and have a better sound. This solves your car problem, you can take the girl and her boyfriend!

It's easier than it sounds, I'm working on it at the moment and i don't have a tab yet but basically it is almost all in E and has a series of riffs on the minor pentatonic all played at the bottom position. It also goes to C and B in a couple of places. This is definitely work in progress but it is something like. G|---------------------------------------------------------------------------| D|---2-2-0-----------------------------------------------------------------| A|------------2-2-0-------------------------------0-3-3-2-2--------------| E|----------------------3-3--3-00---0-0-2-3-----------------------------| Hope this helps. I'm learning a whole set for a new band at the moment but if I get time I'll put this up on UG. By the way Bamboo I'm looking at my Daphne Blue Jazz bass which is what made me click on this post. Snap

To lower the resistance you need less wire or thicker wire or a combination of both. Manufacturers use all sorts of methods and if you are a major manufacturer you can get all sorts of impedances made up. If you are a home builder then beware, Most manufacturers do their design work on 8ohm speakers and the magnet gap is designed to work with an 8 ohm coil. To make a 4 or 16 ohm option the coil is changed with the 4 ohm version shorter reducing the excursion the speaker can cope with before distorting. The 16 ohm coil is often longer giving more excursion but at the expense of having more of the coil outside the magnetic field reducing efficiency and decreasing the control the magnet has over the speakers movement. This doesn't have to happen but completely re-tooling is expensive and just changing the voice coil by adding or subtracting turns isn't. As BFM says you need to check before using a speaker in a design, the 4 ohm and 8 ohm models probably won't be the same.

[quote name='shizznit' timestamp='1326912854' post='1503719'] Okay...I'm fibbing a bit...I do disagree with one thing (sorry!). Having a speaker angled to improve bass projection simply doesn't happen. Bass works from the ground up because of acoustic resonance. That's why bass bins live on the floor and tops...well...live on top! Not once have I ever seen bass bins above or in line of the audience. [/quote] Because of the way we perceive sound most of what we hear as 'bass' is actually contained in the higher frequencies. We are so rubbish at hearing low frequencies and so good at hearing mid range that Lawrence is right, differences in tone are all in the mids. The information that makes say, picks sound different from fingers, Rotosounds different from flats and nearly all the differences you get from your touch on the strings are down what we hear of the higher harmonics. All speakers are directional at any frequency whose wavelength is shorter than the diameter. So bass players need to point their speakers at their ears just like other musicians.

just for balance I'm going to make the other argument. Because these are mass produced items they are often very good value for money. The 12" speaker is designed for bass frequencies so it is no more likely to fail with bass than a 12" unit in a bass cab at the same price point. In fact the bass unit is designed to crossover at 1.6-3KHz so in some ways it is a more specialist bass driver than the ones in bass cabs. Just like cheap bass cabs the excursion may be limited but not so in the better quality cabs. The biggest factor is the sound. PA cabs try to be neutral, flat frequency and low distortion. Some bass cabs do the same but some are deliberately coloured. You either like the coloured sound or not, it is a matter of taste. If you are using decent monitors then the chances are you also have a decent PA. If this can provide the bass that the audience hear then you don't need huge volume on stage to be picked up by the vocal mics. Having an angled cab pointed at your ears means you will hear yourself better too. It is win win. I've been amazed at the quality of cheap PA speakers. Recently I took apart one of the Maplin ones. There was a decent magnet on the bass driver, a proper dynamic horn driver, good quality crossover components and the plywood cab was well braced. It met the specs they gave as far as I could measure them.

Just bought a kickback 10 and so far I absolutely love it. I really like the sound it makes with my Fender Jazz. No problems matching my drummer for volume, it is tiny and the tone shaping is pretty intuitive amd gives a good range of sounds. Gives a nice acoustic bass sound in one position. The kickback feature means you really get to hear what you are playing which takes some getting used to. I've kept my Ashdown/custom 2x10 for bigger gigs but the Hartke has become the 'go to' amplification. The rest of the band like the bass sound too. A bass playing friend has gone out and bought the 112 after trying my 10.

Wellington Timber and Yandles of Martock both in Somerset.

I'd really advise any bass player to avoid 4 or 16 ohm drivers. Most of the available ones were designed as 8 ohm drivers and then offered as a service to customers as 4/16 by simply adding a different voice coil. Because the rest of the speaker was designed to work optimally with the 8 ohm coil they are usually not as good as the 8 ohm version. Guitarists get away with it because they are not so interested in the bottom octave (two if you include the one we have that they don't). Changing the coil also changes all the speakers parameters so they no longer match the box. Stick to the recommended drivers, they were chosen for a reason.

Hi Lawrence, don't know which bit of Devon your folks live in but if it is near Chard I'm happy to cut a few panels on the bench saw.

+ in goes to the pin on your jack input or the + on your big speaker, often but not always a red wire. - in goes to the sleeve or - on the big speaker. There should be a terminal marked + on your tweeter (sometimes marked with a red dot) and that goes to T+. For reasons which are a bit complex the tweeter can be out of phase with the woofer at crossover and can sound better with the terminals reversed. You either get a small peak of a small dip at the crossover point. I always listen to both configurations before deciding. So long as your crossover is filtering out the bass neither way will damage the amp or tweeter. In any case when you test always start at low volume until you know you haven't made a mistake. Good luck

second the www.Lemonrock.com link particularly if you end up in W. Dorset. It will link you into the pub bands down here.

Hi Lawrence, you've probably cut your speaker holes by now but if you are stuck with using a jigsaw then you need a blade which is ground so the teeth are wider than the rest of the blade rather than a cheapy where the teeth are just offset. T101B is good or a T101BR which cuts on the down stroke. If you have to cut smaller than 10" holes then you would be better with a T101A0. Set the blade speed fairly slow and take your time. Use a new blade, I find old ones wear more on one side than the other and they wander off true as a result. Interesting you have chosen a PA driver for bass with an essentially flat response. I have done the same and I'm not sure of the results. Having true bass is interesting in a gigging situation as room acoustics become quite important. I almost always end up rolling off the bass, sometimes quite a lot. The relative absence of peaks in the 2-3k range means that the cabs lack character a bit. The speakers do what it says on the tin but I wondered if I might have preferred some of the 'inaccuracies' of the Eminences and the made for bass Celestions to the clean sound I have. It's all down to taste and I'm looking forwards to seeing what you think.

This depends upon how much twiddling you want to do and which drivers you have. As Bill has pointed out it is probably more to do with implementation than any inherent problem with the piezos. Most piezos act like a leaky capacitor in terms of load so you can trim down the volume by putting a capacitor in series with them. Try a 2uF polyester and see what it does to the sound. Bigger if you want even more cut and smaller if it is too much.. the other problem I have had with Piezos is that they don't have a very flat response and some are better than others although they all look similar. A lot of the cheap ones only have much output above 4kHz which leaves an empty gap between them and the bass driver. As Bill has said you'd be better with something crossing over at 2kHz or even lower for bass. My experience is that even fairly cheap coil based tweeters sound better than nearly all piezos though the absolute need to have a crossover makes them much more expensive

If it is in your price bracket the AER amp one [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/157525-aer-amp-one-the-best-amp-i-have-bought-evar/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/157525-aer-amp-one-the-best-amp-i-have-bought-evar/[/url]

You can run submixes in though you will need to match them, they might need to go to a jack or a phono input (line input) if the output from the submixer isn't a balanced (XLR) output. You might like to also think of looking at a mixer which takes all of your inputs and just feed the stereo output to the Stagepas which will act as an amp. The Yamahas have a great sound if you can put up with the relatively low sound output.

Don't know if this might help, there are other related articles as well, though you might need to go via my profile page to track them all down [url="http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/gear_maintenance/a_guide_to_live_sound_speakers_and_amps.html"]http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/gear_maintenance/a_guide_to_live_sound_speakers_and_amps.html[/url]

If you are in a covers band playing pubs, like a clean sound, and storage is a problem then take a look at AER's amp one. It's a tiny combo and it achieves a remarkable sound by the equivalent of an optical illusion (auditory illusion?) It compresses the bass end of your signal to reduce the demands on it's little speaker. At the same time this makes the bass sound louder and more 'in your face'. Compression is why the ads on telly sound louder than the programs. It also cleans up your sound. Because of the way our brains and ears work we can't really hear that this isn't genuine loud bass. Honestly I wouldn't have said this until I heard these things at gigs but the little so and so's work really well and if you are the sort of player that just likes to plug in and play then they are unbelievable. You'll love them or hate them but you really should have a look.

The Chain, Fleetwood Mac or Pump it Up, Elvis Costello or Psycho Killer, Talking Heads Oh, and I once played Tobacco Road with our new drummer who responded with "I used to play with the Nashville Teens" so that's now out.

Modding cabs isn't worth it in most cases unless you view it as a way to teach yourself about speaker design. For any given speaker there are sizes of cabs that work best and changing speakers means changing the cab (usually) or putting up with less than optimum results. Swapping speakers round without doing the maths is rarely successful. Your cab is worth something as an original but will lose cvalue if it doesn't have the original drivers so it is usually cost effective to trade up rather than add the cost of two new 10's that may or may not work well. I too use a Black Widow but when i checked found the original Peavey cab designed in the 70's was too big, I built a smaller cab coincidently the same size as my 2x10 and it sounds much better than the original Peavey cab. Peavey still make the Widows and sell new cones that will restore your speaker to original (at a price). If you were keen you could look to make a new cab for the Widow. You'll need to know which one it is though.

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1318943772' post='1408047'] [b][font=courier new,courier,monospace]STOP PRESS: Money changes the laws of physics.[/font][/b] [/quote] [quote name='LawrenceH' timestamp='1318948712' post='1408109'] Speaker management incorporating multiband limiting can accomplish quite a lot, though...which is why as I say I've wondered whether these units use it. Apparent loudness of bass in recorded pop music played through any cheap-o PA is way higher than what you can typically achieve with a live instrument for similar reasons. Of course, I don't actually know whether they do use it but having heard the AER stuff the amount they pump out does seem rather more than what you'd expect from the somewhat puny specs. [/quote] Clearly they do obey the laws of physics. There has to be some explanation and i am quite curious as to how they do it. I suspect Lawrence may be right. For those of you who are not techies compression 'squashes the difference between the loud and quiet bits of music. If music has a 40dB range then the 'average' power of a 200W amp is 20dB below the peak or 2W, compressing the dynamic range to 20db means the 'average' power can be moved up to 20W without distorting on peaks. Compressed sound is also a lot louder subjectively which is why the heavily compressed sound used in ads on telly seems so much louder than the programmes. If you use compression on your bands vocals you'll know that it helps them cut through the mix. Our brains also are pretty easily fooled into hearing things that aren't really there. If you filtered the bass frequencies and applied extra compression to them making them louder in the quiet bits then the overall balance might well seem bassier but without the need for extreme excursions at the high levels that only happen for a few thousandths of a second anyway. All this is guesswork though, I wonder if anyone (Alex) has taken one of these apart to see how they do it?

I have to say these are remarkable. I went to see a pub band and the bassist had one of these. It really filled the pub with sound and I assumed the bassist was DI'ing, but no just the little AER. Great sound too. Unbelievable.

Peavey IPR 1600 (530W a side) is currently on offer at HTFR [url="http://www.htfr.com/p/377623/peavey_ipr_1600_530_watts_per_channel"]http://www.htfr.com/p/377623/peavey_ipr_1600_530_watts_per_channel[/url]

Interesting question. We don't know from your post how the subs crossover to the 10's. If the bass to the 10's is filtered you have no problems. Your cabs are tuned to a particular frequency, by changing speakers they may not match the new speakers. Filling the volume with blocks will raise the tuning frequency of the cab. Having a tuning frequency which does not match your speakers will affect the frequency response low down and if it is particularly bad might cause you to suffer over excursion of the speaker cones at lower powers than if it were tuned properly. You'd hear this as a farty rattly distortion that wasn't there before and it would be a warning to turn down. If you are not noticing it you probably don't have a problem though you are carrying around a cabinet which might not be getting the best out of your new speakers and which could be smaller. When you get time you can feed the new speaker specs and the box size into winISD and see what size the ports should be and try these out. you obviously don't mind a little fiddling.

If it isn't working it is a complete gamble. It could be just the valves gone and replacing them will re start it. You'll then need to replace a lot of the other components to get it working properly but it would be worthwhile. If the output transformer is gone then it is a major and expensive repair. Sniff the transformers and examine them for signs of burning or any malted goo/resin seeping out. Old valve stuff like this is valuable when working though.