Phil Starr

I'd wondered about re-finishing the cab also. It is made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene or ABS. This is a really tough plastic which can be made with various formulations but all designed to be hard wearing. Lego bricks are made of ABS Anyway it can be sprayed with enamel paint or acrylic paints. Tough Cab is the brand most commonly used for painting cabs in this country and is an acrylic paint. You can also get acrylic paints in rattle cans from artists supplies and most of the 'kitchen' and 'bathroom' paints and low VOC gloss paints are acrylic. My Cabs are also ABS and I've been looking at them gradually accumulating little bumps and scrapes and wondering if I could touch them up. At the moment under stage lighting they look fine so I've left well enough alone and bought some covers to stop them getting worse. Anyway here's probably more than anyone needs to know about spraying ABS here

You are quite right to be completely outraged by this. There is however little point in losing it with them. You either accept this as fait accompli or try to fight. Believe it I've been there as I supect have most of us. You could try telling the drummer that it is your band not his and if he wants to go off and start an entirely different band with his new guitarist friend then he needs to do so. Like @pickguard I'd be ringing the singer and asking if she is happy with the changes, make sure she knows you aren't asking her to change sides just whether she would prefer being in your band with the set list she agreed to or the new band with the extended guitar solos. She may be extremely unsettled knowing she is working with such devious selfish people but let her raise any aspect of how they've behaved. Be the nice guy. My prediction is that this band won't be stable with two big egos and no personal loyalty. With that choice of music gigs are likely to be thin on the ground. Anyway with the singer on your side you are in a strong enough position to recruit new people. One word of warning, guitarists who are willing to play anything other than some genre of rock/blues are unusual down here in 'wurzel country'. in fact if you play guitar I might have a proposition for you

Reading 1976 I went and saw Rory play there in 71. It pissed with rain and the Richfield Avenue site had not long been earthed over. All the rain and that many people meant we broke through the surface to the refuse dumped below. I can remember the smell now. I found a plastic bag which had covered a mattress to shelter in. The next week I was pictured on the front page of the Morning Star under the title 500 Hippies arrested what looked like drug crazed dancing was me fighting to keep the bag over my head. Very judgemental those communists

As above check the impedance of the Orange cabs. If they are 8ohm cabs then you can daisy chain two of them and you'll get a very noticable increase in volume. If they are 4ohm cabs your Gnome won't power them and will go into a fault mode when you play at any volume with a bit of a risk that you could damage your amp.

That's a great job, I need to find time to look at mine, bought when I was 14 and it was only 50 years old. It's a lot of fun fitting a real vellum, trying to work out just how much it will shrink to fit. My problem is that the frame of the back/resonator or wahtever it is called has softened and distorted so it needs a new back forming or some significant bracing. Making that ring would need me to steam some timber and make a former which is a significant task. I do love the sound of a real skin. I'm not sure I should admit to loving the sound of a banjo here though

Hi @Matt P, hope the gig went well. Sorry I was preparing for my own gig so I picked it up too late, I suspect others were in the same boat. Perhaps you could tell us what you did and how it worked?

You can't, not really. Any mic including any drum mic is going to pick up everything that happens on stage to a greater or lesser degree as well as picking up audience noise. If you have meters on your mixer you can see the background noise. That's the thing; you have two concerns about bleed, the smearing of your sound due to unwanted noises coming in through the mics and of course genuine feedback. Pretty much any mic on stage will be a directional mic and they all favour sounds coming straight at them. Cardioid mics have a 'dead spot' down the other end of the barrel and with super cadioids the dead spot is on the side. Anything pointing at the mics is going to reduce your gain before feedback and increase the cr*p coming through the PA. At low sound levels you can get away with monitors behind you in that you avoid feedback but you will still degrade the sound for the audience. It's a judgement call as to how much bleed you deem acceptable. It's possible it will be unnoticeable compared with room reverberation and audience noise. The one thing I always say though is that whatever works in practice is good.The science helps make good choices and gives you a lot of help when things aren't working but the human interaction between you and the audience is the important thng. The tech just gets you there. I sing a little, I've a strong voice but can be pitchy if I can't hear the monitors. My best happens when I can hear what the audience hears and the sound levels on stage are really well down. I love in-ears generally but somehow at low levels (ie no drummer) and floor monitors I find singing a lot easier. I can understand those who like to be in front of the PA even if technically it poses problems.

I've heard Turbosound speakers and the band sounded great, the EV looks to be a bit more expensive than the others possibly justified by a 'proper' plywood cab but also down to the higher price of US products over here. EV speakers in the past have tended to have a slight bass and top end boost or midrange suckout giving them a larger than life sound but I haven't listened to this latest model. My personal preference would still be the RCF or the FBT but all of these are fine speakers and good value. A word of warning here, you can't trust the numbers in the advertising. As Stevie has pointed out most of these 12" drivers can only handle 300W and the 1.75" horn drivers 50W at most. Claims of 2000 or 1500W amplifiers are nonsense as are claims of 132db sound levels. The reality is that they all proiduce similar sound levels and even if the amplifiers inside them could produce 2000W (they cant) the protection circuits would limit them to no more than the speaker can safely use. Since the manufacturers or their sales team exaggerate by different amounts you can't use their numbers to compare them unfortunately

Welcome Guillaume. You started earlier than I did, I was 55 when I first picked up a bass and as a complete non musician. I've played hundreds of gigs since then and at 73 I'm still gigging regularly and putting together new bands. It's been a hobby which has paid for itself but most of all a joy. There's nothing better than a room full of people having fun dancing and singing to the music you make. You have plenty of time

Intermittent faults are the worst. You so often find that they disappear as soon as you get time to look for them only to come back at the least convenient moment. To be fair you've located the problem to the mains input so this time it shouldn't be too tricky or expensive to fix. Have fun

I think that's what it is, personal preference. I haven'd had a chance to stand the two cabs next to each other. I just formed an opinion over time that the horn/compression unit in the K12-2's had a few resonances roughening up female vocals a little and making cymbals sound a bit harsh in the mix. Nothing extraordinary and something I could have lost with a better mixer but this was someone else's PA. The QSC was the go to speaker at the time so I got to listen to a lot of other bands and that sound was always there for me. The midrange is important to me and getting a great sound for vocals and acoustic instruments is my thing and I think the 912's edge it in that area. If I already owned QSC's I wouldn't think it an upgrade but a sideways move and vice-versa. I'd spend my money on better mic's or a new mixer in preference, whatever was the weakest link in the chain. We risk sidetracking @Hamster in his quest for new PA speakers. I think the general message is that either of these speakers would do him proud and his band would sound as least as good as they do with a couple of tatty K2's. We are in danger here of splitting hairs in looking for differences, the QSC, RCF, FBT and also the Yamahas are all proper 'grown up' speakers and I wouldn't hesitate to use any of them.

I used K12-2’s with a previous band. Never gave us a moment’s problem. Sound was excellent but some slightly harsh upper mids. The two speakers we’re looking at would be of comparable quality. QSC make good kit but like a lot of US stuff it is not cheap over here.

Hi @Hamster I wonder what your old PA tops are? I'm a little concerned about the description of these speakers as 'budget' which would for me cover things like Alto, Thomann's own brand The Box and such like. I'd think of both of these speakers being in the well made family saloon bracket, the VW Golf of speakers if you like. I'd think of these as at least mid priced speakers for the average pub band. Both can sound magnificent in the right hands. The Jefferson Archive ( @skidder652003's band) are a great band with a wonderful vocalist and sounded fabulous through the FBT's, really loud too. I'd spotted the 1.75" horn drivers on the RCF, in theory this should mean they carry a bit more of the mid range and this would help the sound of vocals. In practice RCF have really sorted out their crossovers with phase correction applied so the midrange is especially good. There's no mention of phase correction in the FBT speakers so no assumptions about how they might sound. I believe in the past FBT have used RCF drivers and I would suspect these speakers would be very close in sound. I wouldn't expect a huge difference in toughness between the cab in practice, My 10 year old plastic RCF 10" cabs have a few scuff marks from being used as floor monitors and carried without covers but nothing structural has broken. Any wooden cabs I have of that age would have similar scuffs if painted or small tears in the vinyl if covered. FBT also talk about internal stiffening of their wooden cab which is encouraging, it isn't just a box and they have at least put some thought into it. I'd anticipate a slightly tighter bass from a well built wooden cab and a clearer midrange from the bigger horn driver but The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Hi Steve, thanks for that, they did sound great. Hope all is good with you 😀

No direct experience with this model but I quite like what FBT are offering. It’s nice to get a wooden cab at this price. If you are looking at this the RCF 912 is around the same price and has a similar spec. Definitely worth a look as well. Generally speaking I’d say RCF are the ones to beat at the moment, both make fantastic speakers. I think @skidder652003 was using FBT’s when I saw his band in Sidmouth a few years back but that may be a false memory.

I don't think Dan was talking about the relatively small differences in quoted power that you can get by using different criteria when measuring. For example you can inflate the power rating by measuring at 10% distortion rather than at 1% but it won't be hugely different. Wikipedia quotes a variation of 10-20% between power as measured to EIA and FTC standards. That's confusing for many consumers but not actually dishonest, especially if the measuremnt criteria are disclosed. I think Dan was simply warning the OP who is not a technical person that sometimes advertisers tell lies. A good example of that would be Bugera who rate their BV1001M at 2,000W when it actually measures in at just over 700W into 4ohms at the point it starts clipping.

Really interested in your experience. Declaration here: @stevie is a friend and we've shared ideas on the home build designs we've published on Bass Chat. Two or thre years ago at the SouthWest Bass Bash I took along a pair of new designs of my own for people to have a look at. I'd been following a discussion here on amplifying double bass and I thought one of them in particular would work well for DB. I ran live sound for a couple of years a very long time ago so I know all about the problems. Well I grabbed a DB player and got him to try my 8" design which did work well reinforcing the sound without overwhelming it and making it sound like a double bass. I was fgeeling pretty pleased with myself but we also had a prototype Monza there. Effectively the 10" version of the Monaco. I knew about the highly damped bass response and all the care that had gone into the crossover design and horn and driver selection and been there when some of the frequency plots had been made so I suggested we try that with the DB. It blew my little 8 out of the water, absolutely gorgeous. I know the response of the BB3 too, it isn't as flat as the LFSys and the drive units aren't as sophisticated. Keeping any resonances controlled and reducing them by 3db will give you 3db extra headroom. I'm not saying how much the difference will be in practice but I'm not surprised from the measurements that you've found it works that way. Equally the magnet systems in the Faital drivers Stevie uses are unusually powerful and keep the cone movement well damped reducing the bloom you get in a lot of commercial bass cabs which contributes to bass feedback. The price difference is irrelevant to the performance. The Monaco uses better components than the Barefaced and is a bit of a secret bargain if FRFR is what you want.

First of all I agree with Dan. I'm not sure quie what you expect to gain from this, a few more details would help. £130 isn't much money so you are looking at used or possibly building something yourself which is a nice project. I've a collection of small cab designs which have been published here on Bass Chat if you fancy a build project. BC 110T would be within your budget and they sound great.

😮 They should last a while but I hope we both out live them

Happy retirement. I quit my covers band of 6 years last autumn, I was a little bored and wanted to chase other projects and the band was gradually winding down as well. I kind of miss the regularity and the friendship though. As Joni said "you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone". I hope it's all sweet for you.

Good to hear it's working out. I wish a few more people would let us know how they get on, it's a learning curve for all of us and we tend to hear more about problems than when it goes well. I guess with 10's, 12's, 10's with bins and 12 with bins you've got most gigs covered.

Reading between the lines it sounds like the mates and working together was a big part of the fun, being creative too. So far you haven't mentioned gigging. I've never been a bedroom player so I get that playing along with records or acquiring new skills with no end point doesn't work for you. No judgement on bedroom players there, I've friends with way more skills than me who love nothing better than to go off on their own and improvise over increasingly complex chord sequences. Playing alone just isn't for me, it's the joint enterprise and playing for an audience that hit's my particular spot. If I'm 'between' bands the enthusiasm evaporates and my personal practice time just withers away. If metal is the draw for you there are loads of sites where people are looking for metal players. You need new people to go with your new bass. Or you might find that the band itseelf is the stimulus you need, the joint enterprise, the shared feeling. maybe try joining a band even if it isn't playing exactly what you want and trying that on for size for a few months.

I've had exactly the same thing but probably worse, we've played the first number and finished to no applause and puzzled looks from the audience and then "we can't hear the singer" The sound for the band has been magnificent, loud and crystal clear in ou IEM's but I've forgotten to un-mute the FOH! The only thing the audience have heard is the guitar which is miked up before feeding to the PA. One of the things I love about British audiences is that ironic cheer when sombody c*cks up I've earned that twice so far! That's the hazard of decent IEM's, you forget they are there.

Confusing isn't it? The simple answer is that most amps nowadays are using pretty much one of two or three power amp circuits and just about every manufacturer offers a class D amp which gives 300W into 8ohms and 500W into 4ohms. They don't all sound the same but all of them will be loud enough into almost any but the smallest speakers and most speakers will be able to handle that power. The straighforward answer is that you can choose from any one of those amps and you wont break the 4x10's you are using in the rehearsal room. When you get to gigging any one of them will do the job with 90% of the speakers on sale. If you are using a Peavey 4x10 you don't need to use a Peavey amp, any brand will do. I like and own a Peavey Minimax whch has a good range of sounds but the best thing you can do is try a few of these amps out and see if you like them. We all have different tastes. If you want a simple version of the technical stuff then try this. Some speakers are much louder than others with the same amp. This is measured in how many decibels of sound you can make with one watt. Most bass speakers will vary between 90db/ W (not very loud/efficient) to 103db/W (loud) Each extra watt can only add to that sound level, ten times the power adds 10db and doubling the power adds 3db, so a 100W amp with add 20db to whatever the one watt figure is and 200W will add 23db. To work out how loud a system will be you need to know the power of the amp and the efficiency of the speaker. Either on its own won't tell you anything, you need both numbers.

That's brilliant, I hope it works out for you. The perceived wisdom is to always have spare channels but sometimes a tool is just right for the job. Behringer are a funny old company. They still make a lot of stuff they've been producing for years and I think the Flow is made to replace their analogue desks but it does knock up against the X12 price wise. The X Air 12 does offer a whole world of extra capabilities but has the same learning curve as the x18 mixers and the same lack of physical controls. Not everyone will want to develop the technical expertise to run the X-series of mixers and I suspect that there would be a real market for replacing all their small analogue mixers with a Flow version. I think there is a lot of merit in simplicity and it is one of the joys of playing with a duo or trio to go in with a simple set up and just get on with playing.