Phil Starr

You probably just need a new jack socket. The contacts inside are probably slightly bent or weakened in old age. Probably you need to take it to a bloke in a Guitar shop

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1336693903' post='1649767'] Don't assume you need to plug the bottom cab in. [/quote] This, I used to put my 4x10 on top of my 1x15 but used the 4 only as it sounded better. Looked impressive, sounded OK and was plenty loud enough.Bloody heavy stand though. You could always build an empty box the same size as your cabs to save weight and money it wouldn't be the first time this has been done..

For what it is worth I've used the Peavey Black Widow speakers and they are good. Replacing the baskets is really simple too. Alternatively the Fane sovereigns mentioned above are also good if you decide to go that route. I'd go for the 15-500. [url="http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?category=Speaker_Components&startprod=10&instockonly=&man_old=all&masthead=Loudspeaker_Drivers&subheadnew=15_Inch_Drivers&sort=pr&manufacturer=Fane&submit=Go"]http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?category=Speaker_Components&startprod=10&instockonly=&man_old=all&masthead=Loudspeaker_Drivers&subheadnew=15_Inch_Drivers&sort=pr&manufacturer=Fane&submit=Go[/url] the 15-500 pro has an aluminium basket which is slightly better. You could probably sell the old Black Widows on Ebay. Even broken ones will fetch something because fitting the new baskets is so easy. That's a generous offer from Balcro. Bass players are a good bunch.

There isn't really a 'sound' you can attribute to a particular size of driver. The size does affect the sound but so do many other features of speaker design. you can certainly have a bright sounding and bass light 15 or a deep 10. Don't obsess on speaker size or configuration and just go out and listen. Read the article on the Barefaced site you have been linked to above which should give you all the detail you want but it is all about how the cab sounds not how it gets there.

[quote name='guildbass' timestamp='1335784330' post='1635866'] a lot of valve HiFi stuff was class 'A' because the things were already so hot and drank so much juice cuz of the heaters and so on that it hardly mattered incidentally. As regards Bass.....Could one tell the differenve between class B (which is almost always really AB), and class A without much HF signal...Hmm...Not sure... [/quote] Originally a lot of valve amps were class A because of simpler circuit design and lower component count. Essentially every radio, just about, had a 5W classA amp built in. Usually coupled to a highly efficient but bass limited speaker. I think the hi-fi thing of the 90's for classA /zero feedback amps was a bit of nostalgia combined with a kind of reaction to the introduction of digital sources. Undoubtedly some of them sounded good though.

With the risk of being shot down in flames I'd say no difference in sound. At least not in relation to the class of the amp and with the proviso that you don't overload it. The design, construction and quality control do differ between designs and manufacturers, as ever. A lot in any difference in sound will be down to the adequacy or otherwise of the power supply. For example the designer of the Peavey IPR1600 has confirmed that it won't deliver its full power into 2ohms for more than a fraction of a second. Not everyone is so honest so don't think I'm being critical of Peavey, actually I went out and bought one of these for my PA and I'm delighted with it. AB amps almost always have under spec supplies anyway, always have had. Class AB amps are generally made from bog standard components and are well known territory for most competent engineers and repair men. Even the bargain basement stuff is generally well made and reliable. Class D and H usually have more exotic components in places and replacement parts might be more difficult to source especially in ten years time when the technology has moved on again. Switch mode power supplies are pretty well worked out technology now as they are almost universal for mobile phones and computers. Nonetheless they are intrinsically more difficult to repair than good old fashioned power supplies. Long term the new technology should be much more reliable though. It's all a bit like modern cars, better cheaper, more reliable but buggers to work on when they do break down.

I bought a Hartke Kickback 10 for rehearsal and for a semi acoustic act we have just started. It's got a good basic sound, the tone shaping is excellent and in small-medium rooms it is plenty loud enough to work with a drummer without them having to hold back at all. It's pretty good live but i wouldn't want to attempt any sort of rock with it, though it does have a DI out and the kick back feature means it is a great personal monitor. They don't make this any more but the 12 seems similar, same amp but bigger, similar speaker. It isn't much bigger than my old Peavey 20W practice amp easy to carry and gives proper bass. I'm sure other offerings are as good but I'm very happy with mine.

Well 900W into 8ohms is just over 10A. Since it is music and not a continuous current the 1.5 cable will handle this easily. If it is a short cable, less than 2m say then the resistance will be negligable and it will be fine, for longer runs use 2.5mm, which will also be fine for short leads as well.

Gorillaz were right. "its all in your head". I used to be a biology teacher for what that is worth. All your ears do is turn the changes in air pressure into electrical disturbances in the nerves which get transmitted to the brain where the real work starts. If the air pressure changes made by a speaker were the same as those made by an instrument then the nerve impulses would be the same and we would hear the same. Hearing involves learning as well as just nervous transmission. We learn to associate certain patterns of vibration and hence patterns of impulses as certain objects. We work out how far away they are by the small difference in time between arrival by one ear and another and by things like reverberation decay and how loud they are. A lot of sound perception depends upon learning, I doubt most of us could tell an oboe from a cor anglais playing the same note but would have no difference telling the difference between a J-bass and a P-bass, for classical musicians it would be the other way round. The signal processing is complex but similar to the sort of thing we do when the echoes from an ultrasound scan are processed to make a picture of a baby in the womb. If you could hear or see the ultrasound it would make no sense at all but the information is all there. It needs a lot of computing power to extract it is all. Hearing works the same way. Notice that we constantly 'hear' sounds that aren't actually there. If you ever record your gigs or even a conversation the mic picks up everything and the background voices bangs and clinking of glasses etc all seem incredibly loud even compared with the PA. This is real sound. You hear the band as being louder because your brain filters out sounds it doesn't think are important, the ears are still picking them up. Remember the brain is still more powerful than any computer we have built and this is the sort of thing it is doing all the time. I could give a much longer answer but, you know, your brain has other information to process and I have a bass to play. Hope this helps

You've touched a nerve here and everyone is saying the same thing: just do it. I was a late starter, began playing with a band after only a few weeks, playing paid gigs after a few months and I'm still only a basic player after 5 years but in two bands and having a whale of a time. Why didn't I start years ago? The point is that a band is a team, it may have it's stars but it needs the journeymen too. I see a lot of pub bands, there is usually one decent musician, one or two who can play a bit and one or two who can do a job. there is usually little correlation between the number of top musicians in the band to the audience reaction. The band can't function without a rhythm section and for that ace singer/guitarist/whatever you will be making their performance possible. So long as you don't bullshit anyone about your ability you won't be letting them down. My band have taken on two beginner drummers in the last four years, they improved rapidly and we couldn't have continued gigging without them. For someone you will be a godsend so long as you are prepared to work at learning the stuff. I'd absolutely back the idea of open mic/jam nights, you need to meet people who play and get a taste of playing with them and you won't need to be on top of 2 hours worth of songs to perform.

You won't need more, seriously. I used to take out a full stack but never needed the second cab. I used to use the bottom cab as a stand for the top one without ever plugging it in. Looked great but otherwise pretty stupid. The thing is you are in a band so making everyone else sound good is pretty important. If you are too loud you'll drown out the drummer who will have to play louder and with less feeling/touch/dynamics so now your rhythm section is ****. You are also very loud so you will be picked up by the vocal mics which will be in front of your bass stack, so the vocals are also ****. If you are louder than your drums then the drums will need to go through the PA and be miked up. They never sound quite as good miked as heard acoustically. If you are miking drums then you should DI the bass meaning you should just use the bass amp as your monitor. (did I just rant out loud there?) The point of 2x10's is two fold. Most of the time one cab is enough, and space is an issue at nearly every gig. Adding a second 2x10 gives you the volume of a 4x10 but you can choose when to use it. From a technical point of view 4x10s are rubbish because of the way the speakers interact. They create different path lengths to the listener so they cancel some frequencies and reinforce others and this changes depending upon where you stand. They also beam the sound out in a cone which bypasses the bassist and half the band making the bass inaudible on stage but overwhelming for the audience. Putting two 2x10s up as a line source creates a broad flat fan of sound reducing unwanted reflections off the ceiling and helping the rest of the band and the audience hear the bass at a decent volume. Raising the top speaker to 4-5 feet off the ground brings it to ear height and means the bassist hears the bass clearer than everyone else, wouldn't you prefer that? The worse way of arranging 4 speakers is in an equal sided square. They only did that because amps were so expensive that speakers just had to be loud in the early 70's, hence the 8x10. Oh, finally if an old fashioned 4x10 costs a similar amount to a 2x10 how much do you think they spent on the drivers? The only reason for choosing a 4x10 nowadays is because you like the sound of a certain cab, something no-one has talked about very much. That is a good reason for choosing any cab, the idea of substituting a Marshall with an Ashdown suggests you haven't thought about sound yet, they are very different. 4x10's and 2x15's are really cheap second hand because people are getting rid of them so if cash is tight then by all means go and listen to a few. Please don't buy a new 4x10 though, you can do so much better.

Bill's answer probably says enough but if you want a little more about amp classes written for musicians then have a look at this. I adapted it from an answer to an earlier thread in BC. [url="http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/the_guide_to/a_guide_to_amplifier_classes.html"]http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/the_guide_to/a_guide_to_amplifier_classes.html[/url] cheers

According to my 1966 'How to Build Loudspeaker enclosures' there was a 1950's trend to build in large resonant columns/tubes under the floors of houses which would be coupled to speaker cabinets and excited by certain frequencies. Only for the rich and foolish of course. The idea was that in a time when there was very little bass content certain notes would boom out in a rich and satisfying way which BC'ers will understand. It wasn't hi fi but it was bass. The problem was only certain notes would boom out. Karlson thought by tapering the opening in that pretty way he could make something which would resonate at all the frequencies. He was effectively trying to make a non resonant resonator! Well, you can see the problem here. A quick look at the dimensions will tell you it was far too small to affect the frequencies he was targeting even if it had worked. There were a lot of nutty designs in those days as well as some incredibly innovative ones.

I'm probably not going to give you the advice you hoped for. Why have you chosen this set up? Is it on price, recommendation or sound, possibly for looks or the badge. You say you like Peavey so why not a Peavey? If you are choosing because you've heard them and love the sound then that's great. Always buy the sound you want. If it is recommendation or other reason then you absolutely have to try out the system before you buy and try out rivals at the same price to check. This can take some time but should be fun. I personally wouldn't go for a 4x10 at all. They really are [b]very[/b] heavy and not needed for most gigs, you really aren't going to need to be twice as loud as your drummer. If you do need the extra speaker area then two 2x10's are easier to transport and will sound better stacked vertically and take up less performance area which is good in pubs and clubs. Modern 2x10's will put out as much sound as a 4x10 although they usually need a more powerful amp to do so. Amp watts are cheap nowadays though. The only reason to buy Marshall is the sound, unless this is the main factor look around and get better quality for the price.

The obvious thing to do with this is to run it from a car battery. In other words make a portable battery amp. You'll need to knock out the filter too. The speaker is not going to be useful, they are terribly inefficient compared with one designed to do what is a very different job. You'd probably want to add a pre amp at some stage but decent battery powered amps are fairly rare and quite expensive. Really the value in any project like this is the stuff you learn and the fun you have doing it. Have fun.

Compressed isn't a clear description, Do you mean quiet or that the sound is lacking in other areas? In the end though it won't really matter. Contact Hartke and find out what replacement drivers would cost. Then you have to decide whether to replace the speakers yourself or take the hit price wise and let someone else replace them. So long as you don't advertise the cab as perfect I'm sure someone will take it on at the right price. Don't be tempted to replace the speakers with non Hartke models this will cost you a lot but not add value to the cab.

For keys you need pretty much the full frequency range and a flat response. I'd suggest using PA cabs and unless you already have an amp then use active cabs. They are usually pretty good value for money too. The bass could then use a sansamp or similar. anything more specialized is likely to work out pretty expensive

[quote name='Dandelion' timestamp='1333925722' post='1608444'] I found a pint of this stuff at TKMaxx. Is it any good? [url="http://www.parkerbailey.com/index.cfm?pid=10249"]http://www.parkerbai...x.cfm?pid=10249[/url] [/quote]Yeah I bought some of that, It won't do any harm as it will be easy to clean out. I use Dr Ducks and the bottle I have looks like it will last 20 years so i don't know when I'll get round to the lemon oil. It's good on furniture though.

You only need a single resistor and as it is in series it doesn't matter where it goes. The big resistors are heavy enough to break a soldered connection so use a cable tie to fix it to something convenient, usually one of the tweeters. Make sure the connection between tweeters is + to - . plus to tip minus to earth if you are using a jack socket. + connector to resistor to +tweeter- to +tweeter- to -connector is one way

By and large broken speakers buzz and broken amps crackle, Intermittent faults are often the hardest to find and by sod's law the most common. A crackle can be anything electrical from the mains socket to the smallest component in the amp. Having said that the 'sensitive' tone control has something going wrong so that is prime suspect. The trouble is that the bit that is causing problems is most likely to be the connection between the slider and the carbon track deep inside the pot and you need to get the switch cleaner inside the works to do anything. Modern pots often have few holes to stop dust getting in and causing this problem which makes them difficult to clean. Spraying the outside or just pulling a knob off (ooh-er) won't do any good and you'll need to take the amp out of it's case at least, be aware of the risk of electric shocks here. Another useful trick is to get hold of a can of freezer spray. If you spray one component at a time the freezing and shrinking will either remove the fault or make it dramatically worse and you have your culprit.You might find this helpful [url="http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/gear_maintenance/a_guide_to_fixing_intermittent_faults.html"]http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/gear_maintenance/a_guide_to_fixing_intermittent_faults.html[/url] good luck.

[quote name='guybrush threepwood' timestamp='1333839910' post='1607333'] Sorry to potentially hijack the thread, but I've been thinking about knocking up a cheap tweeter box using piezos, and I'm just wondering about the wiring... I'd wire 2 in series, as my amp is 525W, but I've heard about adding a 20-30 ohm resistor in series to kill any frequencies above 20kHz that could potentially damage the piezo. Does anyone know what power would this resistor need to be? [/quote] The resistor is about protecting the amp rather than the piezo . They present a capacitative load to the amp which makes some of them oscillate and their impedance falls with increasing frequency which some don't cope with either. I use 5watt resistors and haven't lost one yet. Some piezos have the resistor built in. Check with the supplier if you can.

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1333757196' post='1606244'] Have you gigged it yet? That's when you'll find out if it's doing the job. Home volumes (even turned up a bit) are not gonna tell you if you need a 2nd or not. [/quote] [quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1333757489' post='1606248'] Putting it in a higher place will tell you if you like one of the advantages of a second cab. Might save buying a second cab to find out. [/quote] there you are we're all agreed

If you've only just bought it then live with it for a while. Your cab will sound very different in different rooms depending upon their acoustics. Try it in other rooms. Play with your eq a bit and you might get the sound you want. A 15 is going to have a very directional radiation pattern for mids and highs. If the speaker is on the floor it is probably pointing at your knees and you aren't hearing the sound the way an audience will. Try pointing it at your ears and see what it sounds like then. If after trying everything you still don't like the sound then you might be better of selling and moving on to something new but give your cab a chance to please first.

You could also try one of these [url="http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=SKT902490&browsemode=category"]http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=SKT902490&browsemode=category[/url] which unusually do have a L/C filter built in. They'll need a horn which you can buy for about £5 but they are standard screw in units. They don't need a series resistor like many piezos and an 8ohm resistor in series will give you a 3dB cut in sensitivity if there is too much fizz. They have the advantage of going a little lower as well.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1333629354' post='1604514'] It's not that simple. First off you need at least two piezos series wired to withstand the voltage swing, a single unit won't do it. And while piezos are advertised as not needing a crossover that's not actually the case, for professional use they most definitely require filtering, and there are no 'off the shelf' filters for piezos, you must construct one yourself. True many manufacturers do just toss in a single unfiltered piezo, but only because that's the cheapest way, not because it's the right way. The right way to get better high frequency response without tearing into your cabs is the fEarful headcase. [url="http://greenboy.us/fEARful/"]http://greenboy.us/fEARful/[/url] [/quote] "logical advice gets you in a whirl" I wouldn't disagree with the factual basis of anything Bill has said but with his conclusion that it isn't worth making the attempt. Piezo's aren't great, They usually lack sensitivity, their frequency response isn't very flat and crossovers need a lot of knowledge not least because the manufacturers don't give out much/any information so you have to test the things to know things like their capacitance. But and it is a big but they are cheap as chips and you don't need a crossover for them to work. For less than a fiver you can try out a couple and see what it sounds like. They vary but will handle between 20 and about 35V which equates to 50-150W so two in series is a good precaution. If all you want is a bit of tizz then this is a cheap way of getting it, I'd put them in a separate box, no need to spoil your cab. The Ashdown route is going to sound better and Bill is right that if you want to change the sound of your bass markedly then look to a mid-range unit, Though this is going to pose much more in the way of design problems than a couple of piezos.