Phil Starr

I've never been completely happy with the ZS10's smiley face response. They are really remarkable for the money and the bass is outstanding but I sing as well as play bass and I need the midrange to be up there. Even with four band parametric eq my voice sounds unnatural and makes it difficult to control timbre. I love them for music listening where the 'enhanced' sound makes listening to rock a lot of fun. Full disclosure, I have some high frequency hearing loss and a bit of tinnitus. I also have unusually small ear canals and my left ear is very different from my right so fit will vary for anyone else. Recently my 15 year old Sennheiser's I bought to use with my iPod finally broke, I think they were CX somethings £20 from Sainsbury's, nothing special. I was browsing the Studiospares catalogue, as you do, and they had a special offer on IEM's. A few quid off Sennheiser IE100 Pro and I pressed the button to use for personal listening. They sound great, like a decent set of studio monitors, a bit forensic but you can hear everything and clinically clear. Bass goes down a long way and isn't emphasized at all. neither is the top end everything is where it should be and vocals sound great. The fit is great, they are small and light in my ear and the exit tube sits nicely up my ear canals, all my collection of buds fit so I had plenty of choice and the memory foam buds provided gave a good and comfortable seal. They are a bit bigger than my old buds, around the size of the Shure 215's and have a single driver. I stress these were bought for music listening but I tried them anyway at home for practice instead of my RCF monitors or my £200 over ears. I generally practice with the original songs so i'm learning the arrangements as well as the bass and vocals. Impressively I was hearing the same sound through the IE100's as the more expensive 'phones. Curious I turned them up and up and stopped when it hurt and turned them down 10db, at no point did they sound stressed. I tried some bass boost and they were happy with that too. These things go way louder than I will ever want and the isolation with the right buds is better than any in-ears I've tried yet, as good as ear defenders. I tried that on my ride on mower and with a chainsaw So I wanted to try them at a gig I gigged last Sat with the Sennheisers. An almost complete success, they are more comfortable than the ZS10's and didn't move all night, the isolation is a problem if anything because it is so good I can't hear anything other than the phones, so when band members start to shout at me about the PA and forget to use the mic I can't hear them. The sound through the 'phones was the best I've ever had. The vocalist in particular was the clearest she has ever been in the mix and the cymbals on our drummers e-kit were crystalline. The snare was lovely and crisp too which really helped with my timing. The only downside were my vocals but that was my my own fault, I handed the laptop to our drummers partner to mix FOH and forgot that I hadn't set up my monitor mix too. I should have set them up before relinquishing control. Bass isn't as prominent as the ZS10's but the volume went all the way up to pain levels and I turned them down several db so I know I had plenty of headroom. you do sacrifice a bit of bass compared with the ZS10 pros but I found it better not to be drowning in bass and if you sing the balance is much better with these. I'll report back after a few more gigs but I think the ZS10's are now relegated to be spares. Of course fitting my ears better won't be the same for everyone but with a single driver they are smaller and lighter which probably helps. If I get the same sort of sound consistently I might go for sleeves or get them reshelled. I'm going to live with them for a while first though.

Hey I think this is trying to get the debate back on track. Brown Sugar is probably a better example than many other songs. There's no doubt Mick Jagger liked and loved black culture and people. Brown Sugar is credited as being um, stimulated by his excitement at the time with Marsha Hunt. The song contains references which shows he had read a lot about slavery, as anyone that interested in blues and where it came from would have done. His and Keith's faces when they played with Muddy Waters and the fact they called the band Rolling Stones is about as clear as it can be. The song does objectify women and has some unfortunate lines in it. "Scarred Old Slaver..... hear him whip the women" and "just like a young girl should" being just a couple of examples. For me Jagger was telling a story and celebrating one particular person in his love life and if you are happy that well this is just story telling. I loved the song when it was first released. I'm sure it is not racist in it's intention. It's such a good tune. I still dance to it and sing along if I'm in the audience. I have no problem with anyone else playing the song. Would I perform this in front of my daughter or to my Jamaican friends? If so should I be playing it at all? I think as a performer you should probably think differently.

The trouble is that most small 'practice amps' are just small cheap amps. Really they should be called starter amps. Your Rumble is one of the better ones so shopping around for something better is problematic the only suggestion I can make is that PJB make small nice sounding combos that are designed for producing a great sound at middling volumes so looking there might be good. At a high price AER make great sounding small combos too. There are some fairly compact giggable combos around too. Some nice 2x8's and some 1x12's are quite compact. If you want something really compact and designed to be neighbour friendly I've designed a cab you can build here It is designed to be crystal clear over most bass frequencies but the deepest bass that goes through the house is rolled off. It's really revealing for home practice which is what you want to improve your playing. Coupled with a cheapish pocket sized amp like the Gnome, Elf or BAM it is a formidable practice machine. The other option is to go for a couple of active studio monitors. The Genelec has been recommended but there are loads of good ones https://www.thomann.de/gb/active_nearfield_monitors.html?oa=pra I went for a couple of RCF Lyras but I'd happily have gone with Tannoy, Yamaha or KRK. As studio monitors they do bass really well at household volumes and a pair of 5" studio monitors are hard to beat for sound. they are room friendly too and will double as hi-fi speakers. You'll need a pre amp. I use a small mixer for this as i also put guitar and vocals through mine but something like a Zoom B1-Four would do the job. There's loads of used stuff available too as people upgrade. I'm still amazed at how loud they go and how good they sound and it's not a purchase I regret.

It's hard to convince anyone who has spent a lifetime buying gear in search of their perfect sound, who have spent hours dreaming up the perfect combination of amp speaker and guitar and years saving up to buy it to change. Don't be too hard on them. They've also got something that works and probably went through a long period when it didn't so a little reluctance to upset what they probably see as a delicate balance is understandable. It also looks like an unnecessary expense. You need to be gentle and tolerant, not my best qualities The big advantage is having less to carry and saving their hearing. They won't believe it will sound better or that they will play better because they can hear more. You are going to have to demonstrate that, but the first two are obvious. and if they aren't get them to carry their own monitors and make them stand closer to the drums Take it in stages, get them to try it out at a rehearsal and use ordinary over ear headphones which are generally nicer to wear and sound good out of the box. Most of us have done this quite happily in recording studios and if not have seen our favourite bands using them in a studio so it still feels rock and roll. This is going to show them how much better the sound can be through cans. If you can get it through cans you can get it with in-ears. If that goes down well then introduce in-ears, take time to get a good fit and they should notice a much better reduction of the drums in particular. I lent a pair of dirt cheap ZSN's to our drummer and he bought them off me on the spot. Once we were both using them (singer had her own from the start) the guitarist was the only one using the monitors and started to feel left out. Once it is normal and a couple of band members are using in-ears they all want a go. In ears are fiddly and often don't work first time because they don't really fit over ears are pretty fool proof as well as being less claustrophobic for some people so I found them a good bridge. Do a couple of rehearsals with them and it starts to feel normal and people will be ready for the next step.

I know the lyric, the point is that my conscience troubles me and that is the truth. If the singer wants to say that Birmingham supports the governor, he has no problem with that, his conscience is clear then it's a point of view. Watergate didn't bother many Republicans and neither does the storming of Congress. Hey guys it was only a couple of examples that make me personally think ..... maybe not. You are all free to draw your own lines. There's little point discussing that particular song, anyone who is interested can read the whole sorry tale in Wikipedia or the source of their choice and then make up their own mind as to what was meant. For most of us it is a well worn argument anyway. The point was not about the song it was that my knowledge of the time and reading of the song is my context. For me it would be hypocrisy to play any song I believe to be racist. I deliberately chose it as an example because I know other people hold a contrary position. I'm not judging anyone as a racist just because they disagree with me about the lyric of one song written by someone quite young at the time and who has in any case expressed regret. My point is rather the opposite. We all have differing experiences and viewpoints but I do think we all have a duty to our audiences and need to use a bit of judgement of our own actions. Morality is a messy process and we all come to different decisions and beliefs, that is as it should be.

I've not read the whole thread but well done for getting this debated. That we struggle with this as performers isn't a bad thing, it is a genuinely difficult area. I'm sure for some people there is no line, anything goes and for others the 'woke' agenda is just common human decency and cancelling people a valid political act. Most people sit somewhere between the absolutists of course and for us there is a genuine dilemma. If nothing else it affects our relationship with the audience, Offending one member of the audience is probably unavoidable, for some bands it might even be desirable, would we listen to an inoffensive punk band :). Offending half the audience or even 10% is probably going to spoil the evening. Is it a good attitude to have to go on knowing your set will offend and still play it, especially when you are playing covers and have thousands of alternative songs to choose from. As performers of covers we are to an extent endorsing the songs we choose and that includes the content, yet most of us probably never listen to the words. Context is all but is also impossibly nuanced, each of us sees context differently and so will every member of the audience. For us as performers there is a liability towards our band mates, should we cancel a song for the band because it offends us or pressure someone to play it because it a a 'good' song? I've been asked several times to play Sweet Home Alabama and I just can't. It is an outwardly racist song written at the time to support one side of the race riots in Alabama. (yes I know the arguments, but it specifically support the actions or the State Governor) It's a great song to cover, none of the people who have asked me to play it have been racists as far as I know or were even aware of the context at the time it was written, some of them weren't even born, the songwriter has disavowed any intention of being racist, some of his best friends etc... But, my context is that at the time it was a racist anthem. I don't think every cover band that does it is racist or even uncaring about it. My personal latest dilemma has been an ABBA song! Does Your Mother Know, goes down a storm and I can honestly say I've never thought about ABBA's lyrics but this is clearly a song contemplating paedophilia or at least under age sex: "girl you're only a child" Fortunately our singer comes from a musical theatre background and we sing the Mama Mia version but times were certainly different then. Ask Sting

Does your desk have a 'control room' out. Or a main to monitor button so you can use the monitor outs. Or use the headphone out. You may or may not need a DI box to match the impedances but probably not, my Zoom takes a line level input fine. Do you use back line? Recording just from the desk can be remarkably dispiriting until you realise it is adjusted to account for the drums and guitar amps etc. I've had singers want to end it all after hearing themselves straight off the desk. Stops them asking for "more me" for weeks

Lidl do them from time to time. From memory around 5metres with a socket every metre but that may be an inaccurate remembrance I have one somewhere which I used to use at open mic nights where I ran it across the back of the stage and could plug in a 4 of 6 way at any point. They do exist anyway

We rehearse in a small studio just outside of Taunton. It's a light industrial unit rented by another band and it's operated largely on a trust basis. Booking by email/messenger and a key safe in a private location nearby. It is £10 per hour with an expectation that you'll book a four hour 'slot'. It's fitted out with the bands practice gear, basic but OK. The drumkit 'works' and the bass amp is an old Behringer Combo but everything you need is there and we take our own gear anyway. They have a recording facility but we've never used it. It's not heavily used or advertised and I think they probably get just enough to pay the rent/energy costs so their use is paid for. It's not spotless but some local attended rehearsal spaces are a lot worse so someone is cleaning it from time to time. At best in terms of generating income was a studio just outside Exeter. it was an outbuilding in a rural area but near the city and owned outright so no rent. It was booked pretty much from 10am-10pm before covid, we had to look for times a couple of weeks in advance so the owner must have been grossing maybe £35-40k a year I've been idly wondering about doing this for our band so some quick calculations. Going on Zoopla light industrial units are renting around £6-20+ per annum, per sq ft with a 500sq ft unit costing £5-6,000pa around most of the country based upon location. London as you'd expect is crazy as are most of the big cities but Bristol for example has a few places at around the £12 mark. Doubling that to allow for other costs You'd need £12,000 per year to pay the bills so you would need to get 24hours a week of rental income to pay for the space and if you could double that you'd get £12,000 income. If you wanted to do this commercially rather than just pin money you'd need multiple units and to fill those you'd need to be in a big city where costs would be higher. Nobody is going to get rich this way. It's not much different from being in a band for most of us. A hobby that pays for itself if you are careful

There may be a bit of confusion here, we never really settled on a naming convention for the BC designs. The Mk1 cab was a single 12 (112) with a single 12"driver in a nominal 50l cab using the Beyma 212 speaker. The mk2 was a 112T using a Celestion ceramic tweeter in a different 50l cab but was short lived because the Beyma SM212 was discontinued. The Mk 3 was the same cab with a neo Faital driver and a neo Celestion tweeter. I then built a modified 30l cab as a demo at a bass bash and as part of a project to design in a limited bass response to avoid room resonances in small spaces. That was originally with a Beyma SM212 driver but updated later with a Beyma 12CMV2 and that cab was basically used for the lockdown cab 110T in this thread. So, yes you can use the 30l cab for a 12" speaker including the Beyma SM212 and the 12CMV2. I've built and gigged both and if you are happy with a limited bass response in a trade off for a more portable 1x12 then the cab works well. I gigged mine for a while but now if I want a small cab its the lockdown 110T that I use. If you are buying a 12" speaker for the 30l 'Easy Build" cab then I'd go for the 12CMV2 which just sounded better in an A/B test to my ears and is cheaper and more readily available. If you have an SM212 it will work in the easy build 12 https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/324014-easy-12-cab-build/

Hi David, The bass is there and it goes low but there's little or no bass hump which so many headphones have. It's more of a studio monitor analytical sound than an easy listening/loudness boost sort of sound. Ironic as i bought them for easy listening. I haven't spent a long time with them yet and just used them for personal practice. I haven't got them to a rehearsal yet never mind a gig. I'm personally not bothered too much about bass so long as I can hear it, I kind of have all I need timing and expression wise from my fingers and some of the bass in the room always leaks through anyway. My favourite on stage monitor is my micro cab which only goes down to 80Hz but is flat all the way down. I also spent my 20's mixing live music so I'm fairly good at picking things out of a mix. As with all in-ears the bass response and leakage depends upon fit. These fit well in my ears, more securely than zs10's as they are smaller and lighter and a bit more me-shaped

OK that helps, on the feedback issue Russ is right that room acoustics are often the dominant cause of resonances and feedback but I also find that frequency anomalies in the speakers will add to that and you may get a couple more db of gain before feedback. It's a long time since I auditioned the ZLX's and it was the 12's I listened to but they did have a slight smiley face response and weren't flat through the crossover area. Certainly swapping my ancient Wharfedales for RCF's as monitors gave me a huge increase in available gain. Don't take manufacturers claims on spl's too seriously, they are largely fantasy. I've seen claims of 137db from Yamaha for a 12" speaker which is arrant nonsense. The amplifier claims are also nonsense. I've seen speakers admitting to 97db/W with 1000W amps claiming 130db. Now the thing is that no 12" speaker will handle 1000W, 300W is more likelyand 500W fairly exceptional so the DSP protects the speaker by limiting the power. 1000W into a 97db speaker is mathematically 127db, they get 130db by 'calculating' at a peak power of 2000W which the amplifier won't do and the speaker couldn't handle anyway. I was impressed by EV's near honesty. I'll stop ranting now So, I plumped for the RCF ART745's as the best value solution for me. They are building some really nice speakers at the moment and for me are the one to beat. Going for the models with the 3" and 4" compression drivers gives you real clarity through the vocal range as the crossovers can be at lower frequencies. If you are happy to use subs then I might go for 12's, the only downside of the 15's is size and weight and for most of our venues the 745's are probably overkill. Bass and drums are all though the PA with an all electric kit. Our previous speakers were QSC12-2's We are a pop/party band so not the loudest but pretty loud, these 12's never struggled for volume with feedback being the limiting factor rather than headroom. The 745's sound better and never break sweat in the pubs and clubs we play. What mics are you using, and what monitors? That may help your feedback problems

I just bought some Sennheiser IE 100 Pro from Studiospares which were on offer, just for listening to music. Size and comfort are better than the ZS10's as are vocals I didn't think they would be loud enough for monitors but with my phone or iPod (I know, I'll be back to cassettes in a Walkman soon) they are painfully loud without distorting so I'm going to try them at our next gig. They are a long way from bass forward though so if bass is your single priority I'd stick with ZS10's which do that so well.

Just found them https://www.amazon.co.uk/TheTransporterUK-Isolating-Replacement-Silicone-Earbuds-Black/dp/B06WP97FL3/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_img_13?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=ZJJ02JF93TGWS55SX170

I've pretty much run out of suggestions. Hope you find out what it is.

I always liked those old Mackie's and one of the 'older' local band still uses some. It's hard to think of anyone who does a three way design now. If you want that clarity of midrange then getting the crossover point down with a high quality compression driver is where the effort is going, that or one of the 'stick' systems. I've probably said this before but the weak link in most PA systems is usually the person setting it up, and for a pub band with no-one on the desk anyone has an impossible task. You can get a great sound out of those ZLX15's so the uplift is not going to be stupendous unless your budget is huge. I'd happily gig with them though uplift might be an issue, they ain't lightweights. You need to have a spec in mind or to at least know what you want to achieve. Are you after better sound, the big RCF compression drivers will sort your vocal issues. Anything with a 3 or 4 as the second number (735 or 945) means they have a 3" or 4" horn driver taking care of most of the vocals. Then do you want to lighten the lift or reduce the no. of boxes you carry? If you are always going to take subs then you won't need to be taking 15's as tops, depending upon your absolute volume you might get away with 10's. If you want to fill most venues, put kick and bass through the PA and not use subs then a couple of 15's are probably your best bet, but decent 12's will do most pub venues. If tidy and professional looking is important and you are doing function work where they don't want rock band volumes then at a price the better 'sticks' are worth a look. Then there is budget, how much are you wanting to spend? I see that the EV's are still around @ £500ea so £1,000 isn't going to get anything dramatically better unless you buy used.

OK doesn't sound like I've managed to move you forwards then. At this point it feels like you are going mad Is it a single pickup bass? How close is the PUP to the bridge? How close are they to the strings? Where do you pick the strings? I'm sure you've covered all these things but worth asking? The only other thing I have to offer is that although the odds of any one new part being faulty is low there is still the one in a thousand chance that you could be the unlucky one in a thousand person to buy two faulty versions. The number of times I've convinced myself a lead is working and stripped down an amp only to find the two leads I was using were both faulty....... Good Luck, there will be a rational explanation I'm sure

This is weird, isn't it? With my physics teacher hat on that sounds like you are getting some high pass filtering. Certainly something moving at either end of the string would do that, the seating at bridge or nut, but you seem to have investigated that thoroughly. Two other possibilities are resonances in the structure of the bass where something is moving out of phase with the strings absorbing energy but over limited frequencies. The other is something electrical introducing some stray capacitance or inductance into the circuit. That in turn could be affected by changes in the impedance of your amp and leads. You've tried several amps so it's unlikely they would all have the same input impedance unless you've found one or two amps to be a lot less problematic than the others. Is this an active or passive bass? Have you tried a range of guitar leads, they can introduce capacitance and change the response of the bass, most modern cables have a carbon sheath inside which stops electrical crackling but they shouldn't be earthed and if this happens accidentally can make the bass sound really thin. None of this sounds very likely to me unless this is an active bass, in which case I'd try a new battery first. If it were mine I'd temporarily disconnect anything wired to the pickup and take an output direct from the PUP to an amp, but that would assume you are happy to use a soldering iron so you can put everything back.

The potential problem is that pre amp outputs and PA power amp inputs aren't properly standardised. Some power amp inputs need 1.5V or more to drive them and may need a balanced XLR input. Fortunately the Behringer needs a 0dbV input of 0.775V and has a combi socket so you can use a Jack or an XLR. Pre amps vary hugely the output can be microphone level of a few mV, a few 1/10ths of a volt which is what the fx circuit in an amp usually needs or several volts. Line level is usually 0db or just above, it should be standard. The other factor is your bass, if it has a low output you'll need more gain in the pre-amp. You'll need to check yourself what the output of your pre-amp will be, anything above 0.775V will be fine. I wonder why you are going for the Ampeg rather than a multi effects modelling pedal which would achieve the same but give you much more than just the Ampeg sound.

Just looking at this from a technical point of view 200W through a speaker that gives you 97db/W is going to give you 120db maximum output which is what you'd need to be playing along with a drummer. A decent 12" speaker will give you around 97db/W so that would just about be 'enough'. Your amp and the Elf will only give that power through 4ohms though. Doubling up your amps power will not give you double the sound just an extra 3db (3db is noticeably louder but not by much) Adding an extra speaker gives you around 5db more on average. so 200W through a single 12 is borderline enough and an inefficient speaker might mean the amp isn't quite there. A loud 12 probably would be. Add an extra 1x12 of the same type and you'd probably be happy with a 200w amp. A 2x10 would sit between these two options. FWIW I have a Warwick Gnome the same power as the Elf and with an LFSys Silverstone it will do most pub gigs, but I also have 2 1x12's and a classD 300/500W amp for the odd big gig or outside gig. Basically all this boils down to is that you can get away with a small amp if you have a loud speaker system or a less efficient speaker if you have a big amp but probably not both. In an emergency or in a smaller venue your current combo might be enough. If you buy the Elf I'd be looking at a 2x12, 2 1x12's or 2 2x10's if I wanted to cover every situation. Alternatively one of the many 500W amps around at the moment would probably cope with half that speaker complement. You probably want to choose on what sounds good though, probably more important than sheer power. Maybe if you give us a budget you'll get more suggestions

You've been lucky in that you've bought a little gem at a good price. You probably paid a lot less than it is worth so look after it Because it is a valve amp you just need to be careful about connecting other speakers. It has a transformer which matches the amps output to the speaker exactly and switching it on with no speaker connected will probably damage the amp. It would be possible to mod the amp with a jack socket which switches out the internal speaker when you connect an external one but you'd need to do that properly or you could end up accidentally switching on with no speaker connected. You'll get lots of advice here if you need it

OK you shouldn't have a problem in most of the Eurozone but we do get people on here from places where there isn't a thriving used market. Ireland has a thriving music and arts scene so going used is good. Particularly with this sort of thing people move on from a practice amp very quickly so they are often sold in 'as new' condition. I'm a techie so approach this with that point of view and if you want to play guitar and bass through the same amp/speaker it needs to have a flat response and you need some modelling. It's worth your while knowing of the existence of the Zooms https://www.thomann.de/gb/zoom_b1four_bass_multi_effect.htm for under 100Euros They model loads of amps and have dozens of effects and tone shaping including reverb and the ability to download patches so there are ways of getting good guitar sounds out of the bass model and vice-versa. They'd be a way of getting good guitar and bass sounds out of whatever amp you have. It would free you up to choose the best sounding amp as the modelling would be in the Zoom The nearfield studio monitor idea was just a suggestion too. They are just computer speakers but designed for music and will handle bass easily at reasonable volumes which normal speakers wouldn't be happy with. If you get round to making recordings they are an essential and all you'll need to add is an interface or small mixer, so that might save you money further on whilst giving you a better sound than you'll ever get out of a cheap practice amp. Anyway I wish you luck finding what you want and can get on playing and loving music

I'm just wondering if you couldn't experiment with HPF by using DSP. In the digital domain it isn't hard to find 24db/octave filtering or variable slope and frequency tone controls. My M18 mixer offers these as does one of my PA amps. I'm sure you'd find this in most DAW's too. That would let you experiment with dual HPF fairly freely to create the sound you wanted or at the very least to try out ideas without having to make multiple purchases. For me the main use of HPF is to protect speakers from over excursion and to clean up room resonances but doing everything in the digital domain would let you experiment to your hearts content and minds benefit.

A lot depends upon your attitude to a project. If you fancy a bit of DIY then building a bass cab to match your combo and uses the combo amp would be fun and could sit under the combo so not take up a lot of space. Who knows the right speaker might take you up to 11.

Generic Chinese ones off Ebay in the smallest size they do.