Phil Starr

You are hooked If you'd rather do a 2x8 it's only a matter of recalculating the port and building a box double the size. Let me know if you fancy that.

Quick update, the drawings have gone off to be done properly. One day I need to get to grips with something better than pencil and paper, but that would mean less time with sawdust Fane have been fiddling with their speaker designs again but this time an improvement to the Sovereign 8-225. WinISD calculates sensitivity at 94db but there are some peaks in the mids which is how they measure 97db. The speaker should be capable of 116db continuous across the pass band, so very good for a little speaker. No doubt most manufacturers would claim 122db peak but that is ridiculous and I don't need to sell anything. However two of these would give you 122db which easily passes my threshold for a gigging speaker. A 2x8 version would be interesting.

Many thanks to James @Bassybert for the drawings. This is the new shape design adapted to be cut out of a 1220x610 piece of plywood readily available from DIY stores. Basschat-8-DIY-Cabinet-Plans-3.pdf

This is based upon the Fane Sovereign 8-225 8ohm, a nice little driver for bass, not least because it only costs £45. It has a good sized magnet for a little speaker so they manage to have good excursion and power handling plus high efficiency. the deepest bass is a bit limited but not by as much as you would expect and this gives a really satisfying sound in a small to medium sized room. The frequency response is 55-5,000Hz which pretty much covers the whole output from your bass without needing a horn. Red line is on axis and blue is 45degrees off axis Power handling 225W AES Excursion 5.5mm Efficiency 97db/W Response 55-5,000Hz Impedance 8ohms

This is going to be a design for an 8" 200W cab for loud home use/practice or use a pair for a lightweight portable gigging rig. It's clean sounding with a rich bass for such a small cab and I will get the design up over the next few weeks. This is just a taster. For those of you who play upright we have tried the cab and this cab pairs really well with a 'proper' bass. This was a covid/lockdown project and was meant to be a one off for @Chienmortbb to physically match his souped up Ashdown After Eight Combo. It was never meant for publication in this form. It's an unusual shape for a cab, almost a cube which is all 'wrong' acoustically but it looks really cute and sounds great so I'm publishing it like that. I may build another as a conventional shaped cab and put up both designs. The cab is 33x33x30cm and will probably cost you less than £100 to build. It uses the simplest construction method possible. I've added a couple of pics so you can see just how bijou this little cab is. @RichardH has kindly offered to do some proper drawings.

Well I've looked and can't find any pics, notes or sketches but I saved the file on WINisd and I have the dimensions of the Ashdown in a pm from John who I built the cab for. I'll be able to re-engineer the design though I think I built it out of 18mm ply off-cuts as it was a one off. TBH that didn't add an awful lot to the weight in a 20l cab. John still has the cab so we should be able to take a couple of shots. I'll start a new thread when I have it ready and tag you when it goes up. I'm feeling this is a bit of a thread hi-jack

I'll see what I have from the process, I think I took a few pics and John @Chienmortbb still has the cab somewhere. As he says it is an odd shape for a cab (almost a cube) and both shape and size were dictated by the need to match the dimensions of the Ashdown. I didn't break all the rules though, I'd had my eye on the driver for a potential 2x8 for a while and it is properly tuned and optimised.

How small do you want to go and what is your budget? For this very purpose I use a pair of RCF Ayra Pro5 studio monitors around £350 new. They are bookshelf sized 5" speakers but quite deep. They go up to 107db and in my 3.5x4m study that is too loud to be comfortable without plugs. I rehearse with my duo here, two vocals, guitar and bass +programmed drum tracks and get nowhere near the limits of these speakers. Other speakers are available but check the rated output. I note that the Yamaha HS5 and the Rokits only rate at 101db though Genelec make a 5" monitor rated at 110db. The sound is impeccable, way better than our PA and of course they will do as studio monitors If you want to do a bit of DIY then for around £70 you could build one of these https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/455858-house-jam-micro-cab/ Combined with a micro amp (Elf/Gnome/BAM) it will blow you away in a domestic setting if you want

It needs to be practical and to achieve your aim of being loud enough. Firstly you'll get an extra 3db from the extra power but you'll have to make sure the impedance matches your amps with a valve drive stage. That's an audible increase in volume but not dramatic. A second amp is quite an expensive way of doing this but has the advantage that you will keep the same tone, just louder. It may still not be enough, touch and go I would say. You may not need a splitter though. You could bypass the pre amp in the second amp and go straight in to the fx return. You might just be able to take the fx drive from amp one to do this but often it disconnects the pre amp from the amp so you'd need a splitter lead there. Ask Ashdown or check the manual. The second method would be to drive amp two with the DI out from amp one, you'd probably need to go through the pre amp in amp two but again the manual should tell you what level the DI out is. The advantage over an ABY pedal is that both amps will be controlled by the same tone controls and you wouldn't need to adjust them both each time.

At the SouthWest Bass Bash we tried out a few speakers with double bass. I'm quite keen to investigate the design challenges involved. I thought the BassChat 110T would be a good starting point, a clean but not extended or overblown bass and no nasties in the upper range and fair enough it sounded OK. My six inch 'House Jam' cab scored really well for note definition but the lack of deeper bass meant it was a bit unexciting. The surprise package was a one off 8" cab I'd designed with @Chienmortbb which did sound really good in a very compact package but the star of the show was the LFSys Monaco which shares the same horn and driver as the Monza. The notes really sang. Crucially the Monza and Monaco share a similarly tight bass response. They both have incredibly powerful magnet systems and as a result a highly damped bass response. There's an extended but lightly falling response that goes down a long way. The bass is really punchy and tight and that damped response should and did reduce bass feedback in an upright. Obviously the proof is in trying it out but I would think the Monza would be just as good in a much more compact package and with the proviso that I haven't heard it used this way it looks like it could be the perfect speaker for an upright player. Why not pm @stevie and see if you can organise to try one?

Has it ever been free of muddiness or is this a recent thing? There are two probable causes of this muddiness. Poor eq or a resonance of some sort possibly even giving you a bit of bass feedback. It's probably a bit of both. Floor monitors are often designed to have a flat response and few bass speakers are flat. Having any speaker on the floor reinforces the bass so floor monitors need to have the bass rolled back a fair bit just to get them back to the sound from the stack behind you. An HPF taking out the deepest bass will help too and boosting the mids will increase intelligibility enabling you to turn down a little. In this situation mids are your friends and bass your enemy. You'll also be hearing a lot of bass from the PA/FOH adding to the mush. Bass is omni-directional and the higher frequencies point in the direction of the speakers. Bill's example of the drumsticks is a good one. There are all sorts of resonances on stage and your riser may have it's own resonant frequency, the whole stage a different one if it is a wooden suspended stage and the air will also resonate. I doubt for example that you would have the sort corner traps to kill bass resonances that you get on a recording studio. Just moving your cab might shift these resonances so they are less troublesome or pointing it at a slightly different angle.

This

Politely, because I just don't get it. Don't you think she knows her voice isn't what it was? What I found interesting is all the changes she has made to work round her current issues in that video, a few years ago on a previous tour I saw some video where she hadn't made those adjustments and was really struggling. I think that what I saw in that performance was somebody who'd worked hard to make it as good as it could be for the audience in front of her. Over and over again I've seen interviews with huge stars where they reveal they are just musicians with the same insecurities as we all have about performing. Pushing yourself on when, lets face it, she doesn't need the money is kind of admirable. Live music has always been more about the people than perfection. Of course people go to see old bands because of who they are, they are all consenting adults who choose to be there. Isn't a performer keeping going and doing their best more admirable than one who can't be bothered. Should old people give up sex because they can't do it as well as they used to. I certainly can't

I don't get all the criticism of Debbie Harry. At the heart of it you have a musician who does her best for people who really really want to see her. Is the sub text that old people should give up and just crawl away or just people thinking 'I'm so much better than that'? Thousands of people were there having a great time watching someone who had given them a lot of pleasure over the years who they wanted to see live, no-one forced them to be there. Few of us will be as good at things we did when we were younger when we reach the age of 78 but if you have the energy and bottle to keep going and people keep coming good luck to you. I didn't think it was that awful either, I've heard a lot worse down at the Dog and Duck. I've played a lot worse at the Dog and Duck come to that

Love him too, wouldn't it be wonderful to play bass with those drums.

So taking the title of this thread literally I wonder how many of us do just this? My experience is that drummers fall into one of two stools (see what I did there) Either they lead and you can slot in behind them or they just sit in the pocket behind you.

It's an interesting question. Essentially about how cables break. First of all I've always had a system. Without organisation cables tangle with each other and set up time is considerably extended. Untangling cables under time pressure inevitably seems to result in a certain amount of tugging which is probably worse for cables than any frowned upon method of securing a cable from untangling. It's many years since I last allowed anyone to wind my cables for me I've always run the PA so I have a lot of cables probably £1,000 worth or more (actually a lot more as I must have a couple of hundred cables at least, OMG!) For at least 40 years I used the method shown to me by , of all people, Jim Marshall. Round my left elbow fed through a loop of finger and thumb on my right hand, so not held tightly and allowed to find it's own shape, then tied in a figure of eight with a couple of winds of the last bit of cable. No sharp bends and almost no failures of cables over many years. The few failures I've had have pretty much all been at the plug end and fixed by removing the last six inches/15cm of cable and resoldering/replacing the plugs. Its easily the fastest method and no tangling in the box. Once cheap cable ties became available I switched to those in the middle. so sort of hybrid of 2 and 3. Recently I've been playing with people who have trained in music tech, frankly it's been easier not to enter debate with them about cables and I've adopted method 1. It's slower and I now get more tangling in the box, but I look professional. Watching them wind their own leads they usually have the loops far too big, end up with a very loose coil and they tangle easily. I've realised they are probably being taught to wind for a studio or stage where cables are hung rather than boxed and tangling isn't an issue. I've found myself wondering why I don't go back to the quicker and less tangly method. If 90%+ of failures are of the plugs and I've had single digit failures of actual cables over 40 years then the thesis that arm winding breaks cables is clearly not true. I've 40 year old speaker cables that still work. Most of the failures have been of poor quality cables too. If a cable costs £15 and it's life is reduced by 5% then I've saved 75p, is that a good return for an extra couple of hours winding over the life of the cable? Honestly I don't think it matters much how you wind, buy good cables, be gentle with them, don't make them do sharp bends and don't let them get tangled.

I love these old designs dating back to before research and science caught up with cab designs and building cabs was as much an art as a science. The scoop horn on the back was really too small to make much impact upon the bass and the 'sound' of this speaker would have been dominated by the direct radiation of the speaker but we tried everything to lift the sound output of the cabs. Everything was suck and see, build a cab and listen, swap speakers around and try again. I still hanker after designing and building some of the more ambitious and impractical folded horns and hybrid monstrosities I dreamed of back then. Thanks for reminding me of where I came from and well done with this refurb. Please don't try to carry it on your own

Maplins used to sell Eminence drivers re-badged as Big Cat so not impossible that they were the replacements

No it serves no porpoise Yes , I know but I'm having a whale of a time

If you are happy to go separates then it might be worth looking at the LFSys Monza a 10" cab by @stevie of this parish. It's a 10" version of the Monaco which we tried with DB at the South West bass bash. Both cabs have a tailored response called a shelving response in the bass region. This is used sometimes in the design of large touring PA systems. The bass starts to roll off early but very gradually and the overall bass response is extended. This is countered in any cab you put on the floor and bass lift by ground reinforcement is the cause of boominess in a lot of cabs. Of course it is also the cause of a lot of bass feedback in amplified double bass. In the midrange and all the way up the cab is dead flat. Stevie worked at KEF and for Yamaha so he knows a bit about crossovers again feedback issues are reduced because there are no nasty peaks and the sound we got at the bass bash was the sound of the strings. The Monaco was the best cab we tried with DB but as a 12 it's quite large, the smaller version might well be the perfect cab for DB. @TheRev was the person who tried the Monaco It might be worth contacting @stevie he has a cab doing the rounds for people to try and if you look in the affiliates section he has a reduced price for BC members at the moment.

People forget sometimes that our hearing isn't linear. Doubling the power always increases the sound levels by exactly the same amount, 3 decibels. So going from 1W to 2W you'll get 3dB, from 500W you still need to double so you need an extra 500W to get the same 3db increase. 3db isn't much either, just going up a notch. to double the sound you need 10x the power so that 40W Fender is equal to half of a 400W amp. You obviously know your stuff, backing off the bass reduces the power demand a lot maybe a 1/4 if you put in a 6db cut and adding in the low mids gives the audience the impression of bass. An extra little hack is to push the tiny combo hard back against the wall or even better into a corner. Each surface will reflect and reinforce the bass and make it sound like a much bigger amp. For an open mic I use a single 6" cab not much bigger than a handbag, volume has never been an issue so long as I can get into that corner

Ha ha fair point, I was deliberately keeping it simple. Obviously it depends upon where you measure the note which decays over time, the bridge PUP is weaker than the neck PUP, how hard you pluck and how many windings and what sort of magnetic material is in the PUP. I've double checked (surprisingly hard to find actual measurements) and I think it would be fairer to say 10's of mV but peaking in the range you say. This is a single pluck of an open E on a P PUP Peak voltage is actually 320mV, 76mV rms across the sweep. Bit surprised at that!

OK well I've been on a bit of a journey. When @stevie and I started designing the Bass Chat cabs we differed a lot. I liked voiced amps and cabs that I could plug and play with someone else sorting the sound for me. Stevie always wanted a completely clean sound so that the starting point was clear and he could add in with a blank slate to write upon. I suppose I wanted ChatGPT to do the work for me From a science point of view I was interested in the psychoacoustics what was causing the perception of heft or even 'bassiness' given that we are so poor at actually hearing the bottom couple of octaves. The result was that Stevie was more results driven and I've been more 'experimental' My wife would say I never concentrate So I've come round more towards Stevie and now go out either with PA cabs or his FRFR cabs and use an fx box for my sound. Mainly because the voiced amplification only sounds glorious in some rooms, in difficult spaces the voicing can make it really hard to sound good. So coming to my experience with FRFR. I use a couple of RCF ART310's (recently discontinued) with my duo and with the band I go straight to PA and use in ears unless we have a dep drummer with an acoustic kit when I use a Bugera with an LFSys Silverstone. The only problem with the ART 310's is that they are only flat on poles. I've had the best bass sound ever (for me) with a pair up on poles. As floor monitors the bass is overwhelming on-stage and ends up feeding through the vocal mics. That has been solved by shelving the bass about 5db in the mixer and filtering everything out below 50Hz. The Silverstone has a lovely warm tone, the epitome of clean, but again on stage the bass is a bit too much and a tweak of bass roll off is needed. The other two LFSys speakers have the bass shelving built in and at gig levels sound really good without tweaking. Finally playing bass at really high volumes through plastic cabs does show some limitations and you can hear the cab resonances. There are advantages in a built for bass wooden cab. Incidentally I use the Bugera because it is flatter than most, I have a Peavey MiniMax and an MB Tube but the Bugera works well this way.

Do you have a speaker you intend using with this amp or are you looking for a combo or possibly an active PA speaker?