Phil Starr

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?

I've been gigging with single 1x12's for years. Even with a loud drummer I've never struggled for volume except at open air gigs where I take a second cab. Looking at the specs on Mesa's web site these look to be very capable cabs. Their specs are really helpful and so specific that I assume them to be the result of measurements rather than made up figures. (375W @ 74.3 Hz is such an oddly specific figure to choose it must be a measurement) So 97.5 db/W and 400W for the Subway 112 means the maximum output should be a genuine 123.5db. That's a really loud cab and should be much more than you'd need on stage. Any more than that and I'd be looking to put bass through the PA anyway. All this assumes your amp can drive 300W into the cab at 8ohms. Have you tried doing a gig with just one cab? If not why not try it, you might be pleasantly surprised. If you need reassurance then why not take both cabs but only plug one in (preferably the one on top) and see how you get on. Obviously you'll have to turn the volume up a little to get to your usual volume but the cab should be fine. I'd be interested to hear how you get on.

Right I misunderstood. Obviously the physics remains the same in terms of impedance and power handling. I'm wondering why you need to be so loud? I've just upgraded from the LFSys Silverstone to the Monaco, I had two Silverstones and never ever used the second cab. The Monaco will go louder than the Silverstone and one cab was all I needed to match any drummer. In terms of on stage monitoring and/or your sound out front being louder than the drummer just creates problems because you'd then have to mic the drums and put them through the PA. Is this actually a problem with your over-loud guitarist I wonder? I'm also concerned that if you are pushing 600W through a Monaco generating peaks of 125db then your stage levels are high enough to damage your hearing. If space is at a premium then you wouldn't want to be carrying two cabs where one will do. Why do you want 800W handling? is this to match an amps quoted output? Who isn't hearing the bass? Is it you or the audience?

I’m going to be controversial and say that this is the result of weak, dysfunctional politics. The facts are clear, it’s possible to measure the power of an amp or a speaker at home with basic equipment but we allow manufacturers to lie about it in print all the time. Governments in the past have legislated to protect consumers. Germany with the DIN standards, America with AES, British Standards and so on. This is then identified as being “nanny state”, “red tape gone mad” etc. and funding for regulatory enforcement is slashed. The lies and disinformation then continue. We are complicit in this by voting for politicians who tell us we can have it all without having to contribute to a well run and funded society. So, getting back to the question ‘ they’ give you peak power because they can get away with it. Because everyone else is doing it. Because you can’t sell a 200W AES amp if you don’t describe it as 400 W peak, 800W music or 1600W PMPO. Mainly though because it isn’t illegal to try and deliberately deceive you. It should be the role of government to protect people from vested interests and not to be scooped up and owned by them.

I've used exactly your proposed set up. It works absolutely fine. The only consideration is that you get what you pay for and that bass guitar is fairly demanding on the bass driver so a single 10" cab is not probably not going to be able to fill a large room with bass. The really cheap brands will almost always compromise on the bass driver so sticking to the brands mentioned by @jrixn1 and going for a 12" or larger unit is probably advisable depending upon what style of music you intend playing. If you search for FRFR you'll uncover a lot of previous discussion of using a PA cab for bass and an increasing no of us are doing it

OK most of the answer is: it depends. So I'm assuming you are looking to drive both speakers on one side of the PA and close coupled, ie close enough that the wave front is entirely in phase. You don't say if they are active or passive If they are the power is doubles and the radiating area is doubled so you'd gain 6db, in practice if they are passive the amplifier will be limited by the current the power supply can er.. supply so the power won't quite double but a 1db difference would probably not be noticeable. In practice it's more complex because they won't be close enough to couple perfectly and you'll get some cancellation. If they are active cabs then obviously you have two amps each 'seeing' an 8ohm load, if you are driving two 8ohm passive cabs from an amplifier and you are wired in parallel then the amp is driving into 4ohms and in your example the power handling is doubled to 800W.

Completely with Bill here, tweeters in bass cabs are for midrange mainly. The trouble is that few designs take a lot of care over this and certainly on mid-price cabs the tweeter isn't properly integrated into the design and is compromised by commercial decisions. You need rigid and fairly heavy cones to produce loud bass. Moving these back and forth quickly enough to make sound at high frequencies isn't really possible and above certain frequencies the outside of the cone lags behind the movement of the coil and the cone starts to flex and the sound starts to distort and you can see this in the frequency response also, most bass speakers show peaks and dips in response above 1khz. Speakers reduce in output from the side once the diameter of the speaker approaches half the wavelength. If you sit at right angles to the speaker the sound from the nearest part of the cone arrives at your ears before the sound from the far side and the delay causes cancellation. By the time the sound reaches you from the far side the cone has reversed direction. you can see all this in the driver manufacturers data. this is the Faital 12PR320 You can see the cone starting to flex at 1kHz in the blue line and also (red line) how much less output there is of axis due to cancellation. Between 2k and 7kHz its down between 12 and 24db so that's almost all the top end of the bass lost at 45 degrees to the side. The trouble is a decent horn/driver and crossover add considerably to the cost of a cab and may cost as much as the bass driver, adding roughly a third to the materials cost of the cab. Early designs were also developed with very little science behind them. Crossovers are often little more than a high pass filter often a single component to protect the tweeter so a lot of high end is added to the midrange peak that you already have and you can see on the graph. Since you have the tweeter and woofer operating at the same time there are also a whole set of new peaks and troughs and off axis issues. Lower crossover frequencies also mean more expensive drivers so they are 'crossed over ' too high and not sharply enough and what you end up with is that horrible tizz that everyone hates. Even worse is the piezo tweeter which can be wired with no crossover at all and almost inevitably sounds awful. Not a surprise, they are only £2.50 retail. So properly engineered tweeters should be concentrated on improving the mid-range and directionality of the speaker cab. they should give you cleaner smoother midrange and better intelligibility on stage. too many are just added because you 'need' one to appeal to a bigger market.

I gigged one of these for years and I've probably never sounded better than through my old Hartke, though memory does play tricks of course. I loved having the graphic and the contour controls worked well too. It's still up in the loft I probably ought to pass it on to someone who will use it.

Just a thought, I used to have an old Behringer B205D personal monitor that the drummer borrowed and mounted on a mic stand at ear level. If you can’t get him to go in ears then getting the monitor up at ear level means it doesn’t have to be so loud and moves it away from the mics. It’s a compromise but it worked for him, he bought the monitor off me

It's hard to give you really specific advice, without knowing the venue and type of music you play please just treat this as tips to try rather than 'this is the way to do it' If you are going bass from backline and unmiked drums then the only thing you have that will trouble your speakers are the keys. Adding subs really helps the kick but not much in the way of bass even goes through the subs, nothing at all if your are using backline for that gig. Getting the low frequencies out of the PA will help them a lot with power handling reducing both over-heating and excursion and subs will help for this but if money is tight and you are prepared to compromise for this one off then rolling off the bass in the keys will help. In fact it might be worth looking at what your keys player is actually playing with his left hand. A heavy left hand and electric bass isn't a good combination and both musically and in the mix you shouldn't be competing for the same sonic space. It's a sticking plaster strategy but if you have a 50 or 80Hz filter on the mixer it might be worth engaging it on the keys channel and seeing what it sounds like or alternatively adding about 6db/octve bass cut in their eq which will protect the speakers. In what looks like a long narrow space with a low ceiling in front of you it looks like it could be boomy anyway. Rolling off the bass will thin the keys if he is playing full chords low down but will leave most of what they do untouched and will clean up the mix, the punters will probably not notice.