Phil Starr

Ha ha I read 8” too 😀 Crossover design done well is tricky so it depends on what you are trying to achieve. You can make a simple high pass filter to protect the tweeter which will add a bit of tizz at the top end. A simple capacitor will do that and that is all you sometimes get with commercial speakers at the cheaper end. At the other end you can carefully roll off the midrange of your woofer at a target rate and carefully bring in your tweeter to take over the upper mids, correct for phase irregularities and peaks in the response of both drivers. you’ll need to decide on the best crossover frequency, match the sensitivity of each driver and decide upon how steep a slope you want at the crossover. You can copy an existing simple filter as in th BassChat 110T or buy a commercial two way crossover and tweak it with listening tests which will work after a fashion and maybe give you a sound you like. Beyond that it’s a question as to how far you want to go.

I switched recently to the Lekato from a Line Six. Nothing wrong with the Line Six but I prefer the simpler form of the Lekato. Both sound better than a lead. I did have one gig where I was picking up some electrical noise. A private party where someone had set up some cheap led party lights next to the band. I switched to a wired connection but have had no problems using the Lekato since and can’t reproduce the fault. I could probably have switched channels if I’d had time.

Glad it is working, I’m still slightly surprised by mine when I crank it. Another outing for it tonight as it happens. I need to get on with the Eight and a finalised design.

Welcome to BassChat. Whereabouts in Devon are you.

Jefferson Archive are really very good

That’s a lovely offer John. They are fine drivers.

He's a lovely guy IME I'm really pleased he's stuck with it and he's great when you have a problem. Lemonrock is such a useful resource when it is strong in your area. I'd hate to see it go under. And yeah I'm sure you are right Sylvie. In the end the forum just got too time consuming and stressful.

That's the truth

It wasn't any worse than BassChat but there were a few heated posts when some of the venues cancelled gigs at the last minute or refused to pay bands. Mac was trying to get the venues to join at the time so he obviously wasn't comfortable with that. I offered to be a moderator and I may have 'volunteered' a couple of other people like @skidder652003 as others who might have helped. Coming from the not-for-profit sector I'm predisposed to think its a good way of organising a small venture like Lemonrock or BassChat. The people doing all the work can be paid the going rate for the job and volunteers can add value. The collective nature of the enterprise means that in difficult times people are more willing to donate to keep something they love alive and thriving. It also offers a way of the organisation surviving when the initiating group moves on.

I did get agreement from Ped and Kiwi to do something like this a while back but life and gigging have got in the way of my compiling all the information, it's quite a mammoth task and I've made a couple of false starts. Apart for the BassChat 112T Mk 3 they all use the same "easy build" construction technique so it makes sense to detail the technique once only. I was thinking that each cab would merit a couple of standardised posts, the first with pics and a description of the cab along with its specs the second with a set of drawings and a parts list and then a reference to a standard construction guide. The other complication is that some of the original drivers are no longer being made and even things like handles, corners, ports and connectors are changed, more crucially some of the horns are no longer available. This means a re-design and potentially further testing as all the designs so far have been thoroughly trialled before we release them. If you need some help then start a build diary and i'll give you all the help I can on there. PM me when you start in case i don't pick it up

Also good in Devon and Somerset where I think they took over another website in their early days. It’s a shame they’ve lost a bit of their ‘community feel’. When I joined years back it was because all the other local bands urged me to join and we all urged punters to join at gigs.

We get a steady trickle of gigs from Lemonrock. I'm a big fan of the Lemonrock model. It was started by Mac who was/is a gigging musician and starting with local bands. Basically the model is that it is a gig guide for the public to find live gigs. No advertising or data mining it is paid for by bands and venues with gigs to plug and bookings sought and found. The thought was that if it achieved critical mass and most of the local live music gigs were on there then it would become the one stop shop for pub bands and local live gigs. Membership is £42 a year for bands, free for punters looking for gigs. For that you get a Web Page with mp3's videos pics and details of your band. If you fill in the calendar you turn up in searches when the venues look for bands and anyone can have a look at you and listen to what you do. Any local music fans get emails and texts etc about any gigs your do. If I'm bored on a Fri and Sat I can find a choice of about 20-50 local bands to go and see in this rural area. It's quite useful as a research tool as well, you can look for bands like yours and see where they are getting gigs and who is working hardest. Technical support is good too for what is essentially a cottage industry. It used to have a real community feel about it with a lively forum which probably rivalled the activity on BC a few years back. Unfortunately that was lost. it works well in areas where the majority or at least a sizeable minority of local bands have joined. It was growing steadily right up to the covid outbreak, gradually spreading across the country and building numbers. In areas like this chunk of the West Country or the area North East of London where it started it is pretty strong. There are enough bands on down here that many of the pubs only book through Lemonrock and a lot of others g straight there if they have a cancellation. I'd pick up about 6 bookings a year via LR when I did the bookings which if you turn them into repeat bookings is pretty much job done after a couple of years. I also turn down quite a few as they tend to be last minute . You get regular reports too on traffic this is this weeks report for my Duo Hits - all current gigs :0 Band page hits this week :71 Band page hits this month :204 Band page hits this year :9,835 Total Band page hits :12,194 We are a fairly new and I haven't a gig booked in the next couple of weeks. we've only done about half a dozen gigs this year and a couple last year so that's 1800 hits per gig which is extraordinary. With no gigs this week the 70 odd hits on the band page will be potential bookers . How effective Lemonrock is though depends upon presence, if every band in you area joined it would be perfect for you, all the punters would visit to find gigs and all the venues would look there for bands because all the bands would be there. It's a properly maintained site so the information is reliable and searchable unlike a lot of social media and as it is a subscription site it is all semi pro and pro bands. The down side is that if there are only a handful of bands and venues it misses most of the gigs so the punters don't look so it depends for growth on early adopters and a gradual spread out from the places it is strong. I think it made a mistake by ending the forum, it lost the community feel so there was no loyalty when covid struck and all the gigs were cancelled. £42 seemed like a lot of money and a lot of bands cancelled. I'd suggest anyone looking just searches for gigs near them this week, if it's only a handful then LR isn't strong near you, if there are enough to fill a couple of pages you are probably missing out on bookings.

In the years BC (before covid) we averaged £320 with our 4 piece covers band. We did a few cheaper gigs for a couple of pubs when it restarted in recognition of how tricky it was for all of us and we are back to a standard £300 fee now. My duo go out for £150. functions and NYE are double our normal fee. We are discussing a price hike next year to £320. With a different band we were getting £300 a gig 15 years ago so it hasn't really moved at all over that period of time.

You do understand the charts. That’s all a reasonable description of the Gnome we measured. I’d just add in that there is a reasonably useful bit of high pass filtering to whick removes the unwanted lows. The treble is boosted a lot. They are all sensible choices. You are probably going to use the Gnome with a modest speaker so HPF will protect speakers and let you crank the amp a little harder. The bass peak warms up the sound a little boosting the top gives quite a nice hi fi feel to the sound. In practice it sounds nice and airy with bass. A really clean sound. Yes it was the 200W gnome.

I confess that I'm going to two-time. I did try the P with my semi-acoustic duo and it's just a little too pushy and aggressive for a lot of our songs, though we did get a few bookings from that gig so maybe I'm wrong. I did swap back to the Jazz at the end of that gig and it did sound better to me, a bit fuller and richer. I can't see me using the American Deluxe with the full band much which is what I did in the past, the proper P sound works so well with a full band and sounds really tight when you tie it in with the kick

It's looking that way I'm with you though on not worrying about the brand name. This sounds like a P and plays beautifully so to me it's as real P as it gets and the finish/attention to detail is great. There are no rough edges anywhere and once I'd done a set up it plays really well. I've also gone back to passive, selling on the john East I had on the J for a while.

Then I'd have to confess to a Thunderbird as well

I've never played a Precision, not a proper one. Let me explain, I decided when I first played bass that Fender just meant you were paying for a name on the headstock. Started off with a Cort, then on an idle day long ago when guitar shops existed I wandered into Mansons in Exeter and tried just about everything in the shop. I have small hands and thought the P's were awful but fell in love with one bass in particular a Highway One with Fender written plainly on the neck with MIA in little letters. I had to admit Leo knew more about guitars than I did. Full disclosure I later bought an American Deluxe P Bass and I'm in love with both basses and we are very happy together, me and the two genuine Fenders I swore I would never buy. However, there are so many people out there playing those simple straightforward P basses who sound so good. Could it be that a real one would be different from my fancy Deluxe??? Well like many of us I saw the big discounts on the Squier 40th Anniversary basses and for £250 I scratched the itch. I've had it a few weeks and 'oh my giddy Aunt, it's good'. I've been running through the set this morning for our gig and oh the sounds it's making. I swear it's not me playing it sounds too perfect. Tone controls all flat and straight into the mixing desk. Of course I play covers and I guess most of the covers I'm playing along with were originally played with P's so there is an element of 'rightness' but it also sounds so right when i'm playing with the band; the damned thing just sits there sounding spot on tucking in behind the kick but sitting nicely in the gaps the rest of the time. Playing it is gorgeous too, the neck is much wider than I'm used to rather than maybe the full on block of wood that some P's have but it's wide and flat and has a piano like feel about it, if that makes sense. I feel like I'm playing notes rather than fretting. It also plays fast and has terrific sustain, mainly though it is that gorgeous sound. OK it's a Squier and it has a C neck but to me it's a proper P and I'm in love again. Why did I leave it so long. Have I left my poor Highway One Jazz forever? Will I get distracted by the next flashy American I see? Oh the joy of P!

The same thought occurred to me. I’ve ended up with the original and it’s my default cab of choice. It sounds good in a really unspectacular way. You just dial in the tone you want and it just gets on with it. It’s loud enough for any stage monitoring or rehearsal room and I’ve used it at gigs with 50 punters. I built the first cab in well under an hour at a bass bash and the whole thing is wired up with some chocolate box connector and some crimp terminals so no soldering required. It’s a really easy carry too

Despite gigging more or less continuously at 20-30 gigs a year with a covers band I’d probably describe myself as barely adequate. Far too lacking in confidence to even try out gear if it means playing in front of other bassists. It can take me weeks to learn some songs and I rely heavily on tabs and chord charts. If it’s not in ultimate guitar I’m lost. I know my limitations and work within them. I’ve along list of skills I want to accomplish so s*** hot? I’m not. I’m sure bass playing is like every other human skill, normally distributed: 20% of us are truly skilled, 20% are awful and 60% of us are intermediate. A little story, I came to bass via cricket. I have one skill, I can throw straight. I can’t catch and I definitely can’t bat. I’m not big or strong but at my best I can bowl accurate line and length and I’ll happily run round a boundary all day. I can do maths as well and realised we won more matches when I played than when I didn’t. Some of my team were in a band and they needed a bassist. However crap I was they would be better with me than without a bassist and I let myself be persuaded. I could hold a beat and hit a root and mostly that was enough. I’ve played in bands with people with genuine talent and skills but sometimes in life, music and cricket a good line and length, holding down an end is all you need.

I hadn't come across the Nux Mighty, it looks a really good system. I do almost all my practice with headphones and I use a Zoom B1ON now superseded by the B1-Four. Mine runs off a set of rechargeables for around a week but it will run off a power supply or USB. Music in is via a minijack. It gives you the widest possible range of tones and metronome/drum machine/tuner in a nice little box.

You're from Cumbria make your own pencils or go to the museum 🤣🤣

You couldn't make it up could you? you'll have to start collecting them at the end of the lesson (ahem gig) I was a secondary school teacher. When I used to teach bottom sets I would count in the pencils and pens at the end of each lesson and give them out at the beginning of the next. I even bought in a load of cheap pens and 'sold' them to the kids so they wouldn't get into trouble in the next lesson with teachers who hadn't worked it out and started their lessons with stress and chaos.

I've got a Shark I don't use, it was bought for the same purpose you propose to use it for. It kind of works but once it's knocked out all (12) of the problem frequencies it can cope with it does affect the sound noticeably. I needed it for the lead vocals so that wasn't acceptable and it isn''t something you can programme manually and play bass at the same time. For me the solution was to improve the set up and some of the PA kit plus manual tweaking of eq. It does what it says on the tin and can give you fairly extensive DSP options but it certainly isn't a magic bullet. It was simpler to rethink and move monitors around than to fully explore it's capabilities for me. I mainly used it on the monitor feed. Funnily enough i was thinking of digging it out seeing if it might be useful on my bass signal. It offers some quite nice HPF and compression options for bass.

Did you go for the Turbosounds in the end Dave? Wondered how you got on with them?