Phil Starr

It's good to see you and @GlamBass74are sharing tips. I can't tell you the number of people here who've helped me over the years. Most of what I build are prototypes, I like the design and testing process and I'm naturally restless. I frequently cut corners and many of my cabs start life with speakers just screwed in. I've had the odd screw loose (!) but never had a speaker come loose and rarely had a rattle. The idea is that I would always replace the screws with T-nuts but sometimes that takes months or years I tend to use 18mm hardwood ply though. Poplar ply is softer and if you have 12mm poplar then sticking a little square of wood for the screw to sink into would be better. I guess my 'official' advice would be why not screw the speaker in place so you can test it at home then use the screw holes as guides for drilling out to fit the T-nuts before you start carrying it around.

I cleaned out my titebond bottle and now re-use it with whatever glue I'm using it is a great design.

How's the build going?

''''''' Help yourself, I have plenty used and unused laying around

That paints a picture This is BassChat so I'll limit myself to bass. Look for another band, unless this one is gigging regularly you won't need to give up on this one. As my wife says 'don't put your dirty underwear out until you have clean'. So you are a reader, with a musical background who can also play by ear. You know enough about music to improvise and you can sing, at least enough for you to do backing vocals and maybe harmonies. You take what you do seriously and you want to work harder. You may not realise it but you are hot property. Stop apologising about your age too. I didn't start playing until I was 55, zilch/rien/nothing apart from a few guitar chords as a 14 year old. I've been between bands a couple of times and in multiple bands when it looked like a band had reached the end of it's development. Musically those gaps were the most fertile periods. I filled them with regular auditions which forces you to learn half a dozen songs quickly. I also teamed up with friends at open mics, depped for a few bands and just generally took anything offered. It forced me to learn a lot of songs and I hate making a fool of myself so even the open mic stuff I worked at. That's the way to get a lot of different rhythms under your fingers too, every genre has things that make it what it is and everything is a learning opportunity. I briefly played in a country band, how hard can it be? It had me screaming, playing simply and well with nowhere to hide is a discipline itself. The advantage of lots of activity is that there just aren't that many musicians out there and they will soon get to know you. Become part of that community and things will come along.

Ha ha, I don't think we'll ever run out of things to learn, that's part of the fun. Are you in a band?

Let's address a couple of technical things first maybe. There's lots of complexity in matching cabs but generally speaking a 300W RMS or AES cab will 'handle' the output from a 300W RMS amp in the sense that you can normally expect a long life without much probability of blowing the speaker . The only proviso is a real idiot can achieve damage in almost any situation Most of the time you can use a more powerful amp and if you don't use a lot of bass boost or distortion you'll also be fine so 180W at 8 ohms into your 8ohm 150W speaker is probably fine (but listen out for signs of stress) Don't worry about 4 or 8 ohms too much. The difference in sound output is unlikely to be huge but with 8 ohms you can add another 8ohm speaker later so I'd go there if it were a straight choice. But a 4 ohm 2x10 is just two 8ohm 10's in a single box. Don't even think about attenuators for bass. Size does matter, a bit anyway. A tiny speaker is not going to be loud enough to match a drumkit, unless you pay a fortune a 2x10 or a single 12 is about as small as you can go and even then some older gear can struggle. Old gear tends to be heavier so for someone 'rather disabled' a newer lightweight cab is a good if expensive solution. The Mag 300 is quite a weight too, maybe look at a newer amp too Do you have a budget in mind?

I wonder why you ask? I wasn't clear whether you are looking for something to work on in your skill set or if it the job you aspire to? Or maybe you are just musing? Let's be clear, the hurdle for a working session musician and a covers band are the difference between Olympic qualification and entering the parents egg and spoon race. You can already do much more than I can and I''ve been gigging in covers bands every other weekend for years. Learning 30 songs by memory playing four to the bar and the root note in the right places gets you an awful long way. Listening and responding to the rest of the band helps a lot too. I take it seriously and practice daily and try to be professional in my attitude but technically I don't offer much, fortunately I've not been rumbled yet Being in a successful touring band is a matter of luck, no disrespect but most of us here could probably learn the whole of the Rolling Stones (insert almost any band you like) back catalogue and go on tour playing it but weren't there when Keef and Mick were growing up. To be a session musician or a professional gun for hire you need to be good, either good at one thing which you will get hired for or with high level musical skills. Growing up my best friends father was a classical musician, he played French Horn variously for the BBC Symphony, Philharmonic and the LSO and incidentally for the Beatles (on Rubber Soul) He practiced lots, hours a day, every day, he treated it like a job! He probably had a lot of talent too, had studied since a child and was a really personable man. The big skill most musicians miss though is enterprise, you aren't going to join a band unless you get out there to find other people to play with. Look for the ads, answer the ads go to auditions, prepare for auditions, say yes to playing with other people. Go to gigs and talk to people. Advertise for people to play with you. Hang around places you know the local musicians hang out or find out where they go if you do. Start your own band. Be flexible too, the chances of you meeting three other musicians whose taste exactly matches yours is close to zero.

Out of curiosity I checked and Faital have used the same length of voice coil in both variants you used and the specs are very close, they have gone to a lot of effort to keep the impedance as the only variable. They also give the same sensitivity at 1W/1m. Unfortunately they don't state their method so this could be with a 2.83V input which is the usual method which gives 1W into 8 ohms but 2W into 4ohms which would give you an extra 3db. You don't say how you did your listening tests; if you have two cabs for example so the test was done quickly or of you simple removed the driver but kept the amp settings the same. The latter would of course mean you were testing the 4ohm speaker with twice the power. There's an old trick used a lot by retailers that when demonstrating sound systems you set up so that the one you want to sell is the loudest, people universally like the louder sounds and we are very sensitive to changes in volume which we perceive as a change in tone. Listening tests are notoriously difficult to do well. Moving a speaker or you head position even a few cm can create a perceived change in sound because of room acoustics. Faitals own data suggests that you probably wouldn't hear any difference between these two at the same power, even at full power so long as the amp was capable. It's a good choice of driver though, I'm increasingly looking at Faital first when designing cabs and this gives me even more respect for what they are doing.

They are fabulous but really quite heavy. I wouldn't want to carry one by public transport.

I think you have found the two best options. GR are new to the block so not many people will have tried them. There are lots of people here who have used the Barefaced 110 so much more personal experience. They do sound good and they regularly comne up for sale here used so you could pick up one for less money. I've listened to one of the GR 2x12's and they are remarkably light and they do sound good. The only downside is that the case material is brittle and there are some reports of them getting damaged easily, that may be an issue on public transport and you'd probably want a properly padded bag for it as a minimum. In the end these are both great and will do a job for you but you can only get so far with a single 10" driver. Any single 10 is going to struggle if your drummer turns out to be a loud one but these will be as good as it gets and better than your PJB. There are tricks you can use to squeeze extra volume out though. Filter the deepest bass with an HPF, https://www.talkbass.com/wiki/high-pass-and-low-pass-filters/, use a compressor/limiter to protect the speaker against any peaks or just turn down the bass on the eq. It's worth knowing that the TC BAM, Warwick Gnome and TE Elf pocket amps all have some HPF built in. I'm amazed you didn't get more suggestions for the Barefaced to be honest. Alex Claber used to be a regular Bass Chatter and has a lot of fans here. His cabs are about as light as a wooden cab can be and he uses quality drivers in his cabs. The only other suggestion I can make is that LFSys are about to bring out a 110, I doubt it will be as lightweight as the other two but it will be a one handed carry and will sound exceptional. They are only in prototype at the moment but it might be worth sending a pm to @stevie

This is an additional problem. The voice coil would be changed to achieve the change in target impedance; effectively the motor driving the cone has then been changed. In practice manufacturers often use a standard voice coil for any particular variation on a design, and since they sell almost exclusively 8ohm units the speaker is often optimised for that. To make a 4ohm coil you need either shorter or thicker wire in the coil and the tendency is to either shorten the voice coil or use fewer layers. This in turn changes the maximum excursion of the speaker and the efficiency as well as a number of other parameters. You can end up with a reduced maximum output from a 4 ohm speaker if excursion rather than amplifier power is the limiting factor. Each case will be different as each manufacturer will make different decisions about how to make a 4ohm version. You may well have heard a small change in the sound between the 4 and 8 ohm versions of the speaker for this reason. If the 4ohm coil was just a shorter version of the 8 then it may have raised the efficiency enough to hear on an A/B test. Loud sounds give the illusion of more bass. Subjective listening tests are never really definitive either. I do a lot of listening and still manage to make a fool of myself with the acoustic version of placebo effect

Welcome to bass and welcome to the world of cover bands. The glory is that you get to play lots of gigs and lots of songs but that is hard on your fingers as is getting a set list of 30 or so songs. You are allowed to use a pick for bass It actually works better for some songs so being able to do both is a useful skill.

I use a Warwick Gnome in my gigbag and a handheld 1x6 for this purpose. The 1x6 is about the size (but not the shape) of a briefcase but is home built. The design is here - BasschatHouse Jam Micro Cab I've also built a 1x8 for a friend which was remarkably competent. I could put that up as a design if you were interested

Honestly do you really need a 2x10 to do what you want, unless it is a dual purpose unit you will use for rehearsals and/or small gigs. I've got a 6" unit that will deafen not only me but the neighbours which sounds great in a smallish room. I also built a 1x8 for @Chienmortbb which goes louder and deeper. and is not much bigger than a bookshelf speaker. I'm currently using some 5" monitors (RCF Lyra, but there are plenty of other brands to choose from) for practicing at home, they are really completely at home with bass at volumes which are more than enough for home. The bass goes flat lower than any bass speaker I have used. There is a dearth of truly dedicated good sounding cabs for home practice but a good 1x10 should be plenty.

I think living with the OBC 112 for a while is a good idea, you'll soon enough know if it just isn't enough for you. I don't know that LaVoce driver they use but it looks to be a decent quality unit. It may just be a case of fiddling with your eq for a bit until you get a sound you really like. If a used OBC 112 comes up at a price you are happy with you could add it at any time. looks like Orange don't make the 2x10 any more and the only historic one I found was isobaric. Somebody else may make an old school 2x10 that sounds right to you or you might be able to track down one of the older 2x10's that you liked whilst the 112 does the job for you. The English language is bloody useless at describing sound so that warm, deep, punchy clean sound might just be the sound of an old 4x10, or not of course I'm good on the technical side of things but useless at brands. The best advice I can give is that if you have something usable there is no rush, take your time and listen to a lot of stuff and only buy the one that gives you all you want when you audition it. The other thing is that if portability and weight are the issue then go through the PA, if all your bass amp is doing is being an on-stage monitor for you and the band then you can have the sound you want behind you, the audience get the PA and the band are carrying the PA anyway. Happy days.

You seem confused. As far as I can see all the Orange 2x12 and 2x10's you mention are isobarics. None of those will be any louder than a 112 as the second speaker in an isobaric doesn't radiate into the air, it's frankly bonkers for a portable cab to be isobaric. you have all the weight and expense of a second driver with little or any advantage and crucially none in volume. There is also nothing very special about Orange speakers, they are well made and look distinctive but use some very ordinary drivers and generally old tech. If you like the sound and the looks then that's great. Did you like the 112 when you tried it? If so then go for that. The 115 is going to have a different sound and is going to weigh more, the driver is an Eminence Kappa which is OK but has a very strong peak in the upper response which is a bit marmite, you certainly need to have a listen before changing to that. If you go for a 112 and it does for 80% of your gigs your bandmates will thank you and if you do need a second cab get an identical one. If you aren't in a rush then you can look out for something used and if you do sell you'll get most of your money back.

New Mk3 Build @chyc is currently building a mk 3 over in build diaries if anyone is interested.

You can see by how many 'likes' this post has that this is the key to unlocking this design for most people. That crossover is a pretty scary thing for people who have never soldered before. This is a great sounding cab, beating pretty much any commercial 1x12T and if this gives a few more bassists access to the top level of equipment then that's a great thing to do,

You have made a great start. You are right about the difficulty of building this way, @stevie did produce a 'flatpack' kit for the first 10 or 20 people to build theirs and that's what all the pics show. All the parts were CNC routed. All the other BC designs have cabs I've deliberately designed to be 'easy build' in that they need no clamping or specialist tools other than a Jig saw. I always use a reinforced butt joint screwed and glued inside the cab, which is stronger and needs no clamping so is easier for people without woodworking skills. It was my intention to build a Mk3 using this technique and to publish the simpler cab but that never happened. If anyone wanted to there is no reason not to build this cab using any method they want so long as they keep the internal dimensions the same. Now he tells me

If you don't like soldering you could get one of these for £12 from Blue Aran, they also do a kit for £6 or sell the bits at a reasonable price.

I'm not sure that you have given a budget for this, no sense in recommending something you wouldn't want to afford. I've had the RCF Lyra 5" monitors going for a few days now and for my practice they are more than good enough. They certainly handle uncompressed and unfiltered bass for me at any volume I would use at home. I would imagine the 5" Rokit's would be just as good as would the 5" Yamahas and probably the 5" units from any of the well known brands. I've done the usual thing of turning them up to see how loud they will go and in this room it is uncomfortably loud. Even turned up there was no sign of distress and not a lot of cone flapping so I'm guessing there is some sensible low frequency filtering going on. I'd also imagine with any active speaker there will be protection programmed in so you won't be able to destroy your speakers. I've then turned them down quite a long way to get the levels I'm looking for. In my practice room I'm playing with a 3m lead so I'm between 1.5 and 2m from the speakers if that helps. Of course what constitutes 'plenty loud enough' and 'uncomfortably loud' is completely subjective but these things go way louder than most hi fi or television sound bars and in a room this size (8'x12') would be louder than you'd get at a cinema in the loudest bits. Unless you are practicing in a huge room I think 5" speakers would be plenty.

If they start sectioning vocalists there won't be too many bands left

Right Thumb. On the plus side I don't use a pick but I wished that day I had worked on a floating thumb. Fortunately it was a good gig and the adrenaline kicked in, best pain killer there is but driving home was no fun.