Phil Starr

Remember that these are only a small step down from the LFSys Silverstone which is a £600 speaker and which outperforms the Barefaced BB2 in our Bass Chat shootouts.

I was also going to suggest an elf/gnome/BAM also but a BD1 21 offers a much cheaper option and will sound really quite good. (aha see you don't like the BD121) In between those two options is the Zoom B1-Four which also offers cab and amp simulations and a tuner amongst other things. If you can't get a good sound out of these then something is wrong.

They do add a little bit of magic to your sound don't they? A bit like salt and pepper they are an all purpose seasoning, not changing the dish dramatically but just making your bass tastier I don't think there is a straight answer to your question of a best fit. I use the DI out straight to the PA, that is what the audience hears and a flat response/FRFR speaker (LfSys Silverstone) for my monitoring if I need it. my theory is that I want to hear pretty much what the audience is hearing. I use in-ears when I can and that also gives me a clean sound. I quite like the clean sound coming out of my bass and the SansAmp does all my tone shaping. I use the blend control to just add a little seasoning to my sound so it's quite subtle, just enough to get me into the mix.

There is probably no other rational place to be. Morality or even taste aren't subjects for objective measurement or double blind testing, there isn't an objective right or wrong so people who are 'certain' that no song with the sexism/racism/whatever 'ism you choose is acceptable if it is a good 'toon' are displaying no more insight than those who wish to cancel those who offend their personal creed and sense of decency. It's only reasonable to struggle with this and the interesting bit of this debate are about where the lines are for each of us who are also wondering where to set our personal lines. Playing in a band means compromise. No two people share the same moral space IME so the chances of four or five band members who have nothing in common other than music agreeing on every song are pretty long odds. There are very few artists or songs that are completely repugnant amongst thousands that are wildly popular and fun to play so it isn't a big issue. It is interesting though to discuss with those who like me are 'indecisive'.

I'd completely forgotten about this cab. It will be great to hear what you think of it when completed. Good luck with the build.

I can't remember what the cable was that you sent me for my guitar lead John but it is super slinky and reeks of quality. I don't know how i can have pride in owning a bit of wire but it is lovely.

I played until quite recently, village cricket which is the lowest level but fun. Vicious game really; that ball is hard and it's a legitimate tactic for the bowler to intimidate the batter by aiming at them. I'm a modest bowler but still sent people off to the minor injuries unit at hospital every now and then. Had a few injuries to my hands too so I played Sundays to avoid having to play bass with recently bruised or broken fingers. Funnily enough Cricket is what brought me to bass playing, I wasn't very good but the team won when I played and not so much when I wasn't available. Now I'm the musician that fills a hole in the team, and they can't do it without me either

All of the above, plus a bit more. When you turn the volume up our hearing changes the way we hear different frequencies boosting our perception of bass (and also the extreme highs which aren't relevant to bass) so to keep the same sound you need to roll bass off when the volume goes up. Being close to most bass speakers means you get less of the midrange than the audience as the mids and highs are directional. If you go out front you might be pleasantly surprised at what the audience are hearing. Tilting your speaker and pointing it at your head will help as will raising your speaker to head height. If you can then push the bass out through the PA and just use mid heavy on-stage monitoring for yourself. In terms of sitting in the mix and occupying the 'correct' bit of your sonic space have a listen to some of the isolated bass tracks in You Tube. It's quite a shock to hear how tinny some recorded bass can be yet still sound good in the final mix. And don't worry, we've all found this out the hard way and welcome to Bass Chat

Love the band Al

A lot of us use the Zoom B1-four https://www.gak.co.uk/en/zoom-b1-four-bass-multi-effects-pedal/924373 £80 runs on batteries or USB, sounds great, mini jack input for playing along, cab and amp emulation, tuner, metronome, drum machine etc, etc. and of course it is a multi-fx unit you can use at a gig. I've been using my B1ON the predecessor pretty much every day for years

They lost me a bit when they talked about the "air between the amps and mics" being responsible for the change in sound. That's too fairy dust for me. I persevered and it looks like this is just the guitarist and with the amps he's running stereo but with the modeller in mono. Um it could be that guys To be fair when you look at how they mic'd the cabs you are going to get different tones as you move the mic around and mics aren't flat response and they had to change mic's at one point. Then they talked about mids and bass (on the guitar) and the different eq they were getting. Um, no eq available in their modeller? This was comparing apples and pears and yes, they are different! the other thing is that this is a touring band with not just one sound person but separate mixing for FOH and monitors and probably a team of engineers, I can't see any stage monitors so presumably they are still using in-ears. Come to that the bassist didn't seem to have a bass amp and they didn't talk about that or what the keys were using for amplification. They still had the on stage problems with the volume of the guitar amps and this was "outdoors and on large stages" not the Dog and Duck.

We seem to have wandered off your problem @Lozz196 Sorry to hear about your back problems So the on stage sound? Is that just as a monitor for you and maybe the band, or is this to fill the room because sometimes you can't go through the PA? I suppose I'm asking how loud you'd need to be. Also what is your potential budget? A lot of the active PA speakers are quite heavy. I've gigged with an RCF 310 and that's about as small as you can usefully go but they are over 12kg, most are bigger and heavier than that.

If it helps I use a Warwick Gnome to power my Silverstone it's not ampless but it is pocket sized and fits in my bass case along with mains and speaker lead. Your BB2 is pretty close to being FRFR and the same sensitivity as my Silverstone so I know it is going to be loud enough as a stage monitor. The power amp section of your RM500 is flat too so you are pretty much using FRFR already. The sound isn't going to be an issue for you. You say "have to" is this a back problem? I can't think of a PA cab as capable as the BB2 which will weigh less. To be fair Barefaced really are the ones to beat on weight reduction.

To understand this I think you need to divide FRFR theory into two parts; full frequency flat response, and then using an active PA speaker to do that. Most bass amps and speakers are coloured, the frequency responses aren't flat and there may be other distortions too. That colouring has become part of what we all expect when we listen to a bass. Initially it was there because the amplification at the birth of electric bass just wasn't very good but generations of bassists used the colouring to their advantage to create music and sounds we all want to hang on to. The downside is that if you have rose tinted bass amps to listen to your bass is always going to have a rose tinted sound. Rose tinting is lovely of course and some people want to stay in that rose tinted world, but you might fancy a change. FRFR gives you your bass through clear glass spectacles. Multi effects units, emulators and so on will then let you add in whatever colours you want, you can buy in a ready made tint or mix your own depending upon your own creativity. It's really hard to get that exact rose tint to copy a particular amp and speaker but the fx have been good enough for as long time that you probably couldn't tell the difference once all the band are playing and the audience really won't. And that perfect P-bass Ampeg tone on you favourite record? That was probably recorded straight from the DI into the desk and fx applied afterwards, possibly mixed in with a little bit of what came out of the speaker. So then the question is whether to use a PA speaker to get your FRFR sound. FRFR is nothing new as touring bands have used floor monitors for years. The advantage of using PA speakers is that they are produced in huge numbers, more is spent on their design and there will be a cost saving because of mass production. If they are designed to put the bass and kick through they will handle bass and buying a box with the amp in means they will be perfectly matched and the internal DSP will protect everything inside from even the most idiotic use. The down side? All speaker designs are compromises, there isn't a perfect speaker out there and PA speakers are jacks of all trades. In cheaper PA's the bass driver will be quite limited, but that is true of cheap bass cabs. There is an issue with plastic cabs, a well built well braced wooden cab will beat a plastic cab every day, but the moulded cabs get better all the time. Portable PA cabs are designed to go on poles so their size and weight becomes an issue and some bass may be compromised to achieve portability. So my experience? The best bass sound I have ever got has been out of a couple of RCF ART310 speakers on poles. On the stage floor they sound completely over blown. I also have some ART 745's for PA. The bass through them on poles sounds like it does through studio monitors. On stage on the floor I don't like them much without a lot of eq to reduce the bass bloom. For gigs I use a bass speaker designed to be FRFR the LFSys Silverstone with my bass amp set flat and a SansAmp doing the colouring in. For me the wooden box and exceptionally good bass speaker combined with truly flat response (I've seen the measurements) works really well. What the audience get though is through the PA. Hope that helps?

I carry spares of everything and always have done, though that means the floor monitors would have to double as PA. The exception now is the mixer and in 17 years of gigging I've never had a mixer failure. In fact the only problems we've had with the in ears have been other band members forgetting or not changing batteries, so I carry spares for them too. Equipment failures are rare nowadays, I haven't had anything fail for over 15 years other than the odd mic lead.

I suspect you hadn't mic'ed the drums or that the mix was wrong for you. Isolation and excitement were my concerns and I did feel that way at first but I stuck with it. It fades as a feeling and disappears at the first good gig. I was prepared to mic the audience so that we could hear them in the mix but it never happened. In the end what you gain is more connection with the drums and the rest of the band because you need to hear them better and honestly getting studio quality sound through your ears is what you really need for that. No more straining to hear the guitarist on the far side of a narrow stage and the kick crystal clear every time. In the end you have more spare capacity for feeling the music and engaging the audience because your monitoring mix is perfect every time. To be fair there is a problem when the band forget they are wearing in ears and shout something across the stage instead of using the mic.

I plumped for the RCF M18, it's gone up in price since then unfortunately. For me it offered all I need in the simplest package, rock solid router connection and in two years not a glitch in the software which is simple and intuitive. The pre's are good too so it sounds great. The Behringer offers a lot more in the way of facilities and flexibility but with a steeper learning curve. I mix from on stage apart from a quick soundcheck so I'll never use most of what I have, nothing on the M18 is more than two clicks away. Basically it is idiot proof which suits me

You don’t need to get too carried away with power. It matters but is only part of the story. What you need to do is to be able to match the sound levels of the loudest instrument in your band. Probably the drums. A drummer will typically produce an average sound level of around 100db @1m so for a 40db range you need to be able to produce around 120db. Bass speakers vary in their efficiency/loudness but 97db/W is fairly typical so for 120db you need a gain of 23db which is 200W. For many years people used Trace and Peavey amps of just that power and we seem to have forgotten that. There’s no harm in going bigger than that but ‘need’ is a bit strong if everything else is right about your choice. Make sure it gives that power into the speakers you choose. Having said that the bog standard for amps nowadays seems to be 300w into 8ohms and 500 into 4ohms so you’ll have a lot of choice of those. Choose based upon sound. btw that 180w Ashdown is close enough to count as a 200W amp paired with something like a 2x12

Having lived through the whole period this is spot on. It was done that way because the other options weren't feasible at the time. Once people have a system up and running they are going to be reluctant to change to something which might be difficult for them, expensive and until they try it a potential problem. For me what has made it feasible for your 'average' band is the advent of affordable digital mixers. A couple of years ago I paid just £330 for an 18 channel mixer and sold my old Yamaha analogue for £200 (If I'd bought it that week it was still made for £400 so going digital was cheaper). I lost the snake and the new mixer is only the size of the old stage box. With the old mixer I'd have needed a separate monitor mixer to offer individualised monitor mixes and a host of outboard fx ideally for front of house. Just physically carrying all the kit to do on-stage monitoring was a bind. Even the Yamaha stayed at home a lot of the time because it physically wouldn't fit in the venue space. On stage I had to referee more than one volume war with each band member turning up to get 'more me' so they could hear themselves over the rest of the band. So now I have six monitor outs for four band members. They don't need buy any kit to do their own monitor mixes as they can do this on their phones. Once the singer and I were using in-ears the drummer said "I'll try it" then wouldn't give my spare buds back, the guitarist realised he was missing out and ordered in ears from the rehearsal room. They can have as much 'me' as they want now and having control has upped the confidence. The final thing which hasn't been fully explored is the damage to your ears of traditional back-line. Average sound levels on stage with a drummer and matching guitar and bass are going to be over 100db for most of us and you need that to reach the back of any medium sized venue. The permitted exposure to 100db is 10min and anything above this is known to permanently damage your hearing. It's too late for my generation almost all 60 year old musicians are deaf to some extent and it isn't due to age, it's due to noise exposure. It's due in some respect to 'more me' and the desire to feel 'your trousers flapping' I'm not telling anyone they are wrong, the old school generation of musicians have invested so much time, money and love in getting to where they are with music and sound to be proud of. If you are out entertaining people you want to concentrate on the music and what works is hard and seems risky to give up. I'm never going to knock people for doing what works for them but my goodness you don't know what you are missing until you try it.

@Chienmortbb and I have had these two on the test bench and I use the Gnome myself; bought as a backup and for open mic/jam sessions I probably use it a little more than my gigging amps. The TC BAM is also very similar. I go through the PA so my bass amps nowadays are used for stage monitors at gigs and rarely get a run out at high power levels. The Gnome (hence all of them) is loud enough for most small gigs with my 12" LFSys Silverstone and for stage monitoring with my 10" cab. With a couple of 12's the extra 5db means it will cover all my volume needs and would fill a decent sized venue. In terms of measurement power output is the same for all three and as advertised. The voicing is different and somewhat surprising though with one similarity between all three. Set to 12 o'clock the Elf has a smiley face response with the bass and treble boosted and hence a mid cut. That's very nice sounding at low/medium volumes and effectively a 'loudness' boosted sound. The gnome has a small bass peak another mid suckout at around 400hz and a climbing treble response which makes it very clean sounding. the TC is the flattest response somewhere between the other two. The striking similarity between them is that the mid tone control works at exactly the same frequency in all three and the mid dip in all three is at this frequency. This means you can pretty much dial up the same sound in all three. The Gnome is more or less flat with bass at 2.00 mid at 1.00 treble at 10.00. You could happily buy any of these, I only bought the Gnome because the BAM was out of stock and though I preferred the colour it wasn't enough of an issue for me to wait. I think most of us would prefer the voicing of the Elf but whether you think that is worth the extra money is your choice. You can get almost the same sound out of all of them mine has been 100% reliable and has the blessing of a nice quiet fan.

My first instinct would be to see if TC/Music Tribe would supply replacements. I've tracked down spares for behringer before now and they were reasonably priced. Replacing with recognised parts keeps the cab 'original'. If not as @Balcro has pointed out a 30l cab for a 10" driver is fairly typical so 70l for a 2x10 won't be hard to match. something like the Celestion Pulse 10 would work and is available from Thomann If you wanted you could copy the BassChat 110T with 2 drivers and add in a high quality horn. It would no longer truly be a TC cab though

As well as a collection of the BassChat speaker designs and the shootout John @Chienmortbb and I should be running some frequency response tests on amps this year. If you want your's tested then make sure you bring it along.

I didn't start playing until 55, and from a much lower base than you musically. I've had a guitar laying around which I still can't play and had never played a whole song on anything. Within a year I was gigging and I've literally played hundreds of gigs since then with a collection of bands. Bass makes more sense when you play with other people and for me the stimulus to keep practicing and improving. I've no idea about grades on bass but my kids both reached grade 4 on piano and my son played the Moonlight Sonata at a school concert. I'd think that grade 6 would put you way above anything I could do technically and solidly into "intermediate" in terms of skill. You don't say if you are with a band but if not it is time to get out there. You almost certainly have the technical skills and it won't take you long to be a useful band member. Whether it is the thrill of an audience dancing in time with your fingers or the fear of messing up in public there's nothing like live performance to sharpen up your playing. I'd be jealous of you starting up but I'm having too much fun with an unexpected late life passion

I've just made this move with my band, I think no-one who has done this and cares about their sound would ever willingly go back. There is absolutely no way on earth that you can get a clean sound out front when the guitar, drums and even bass are significantly louder on stage than the human voice. We spend fortunes and invest hours in getting our sound and then can't pick ourselves out of the mix so no-one on stage or in the audience ever gets to hear that perfection. (the sound, not my playing ) There's a thrill in sheer volume of course, feeling the stage vibrate, trousers flapping and all that adrenaline flowing but the cost is permanent hearing loss and early retirement from music far too often. People stick to what they know and what they can get to work and cling to backline and vocals through PA. It's like driving a vintage car though, fun on a summers day but you wouldn't use a model T to commute into London every day. @Downunderwonder makes a good point; you'll need to carry some backline for a while yet, but if you are in an established band what are you doing?

Now Celestion has confirmed the speaker was mid 70's (1976) it seems probable that they didn't publish TS parameters at the time. I think they stopped production of that model around then and I assume the speaker was designed earlier than that. Thiele and Small didn't publish their research until 1970 and it took a while to become widely known, it took maybe 10 years for the music industry to catch up. In 1970 most powerful amps were big, expensive and unreliable valve amps and speakers were mainly general purpose. Thiele and Small developed a model that could be used to mathematically describe the movement of the speaker taking into account a number of the electrical and mechanical properties of the speaker itself and also the cabinet and repeat the calculations at any frequency. In 1970 I was programming computers with punched cards and pocket calculators and home computers were yet to hit. Speaker design was indeed a craft skill at the time. I built and tested a lot of boxes with hours of very subjective listening tests. Science is better