Phil Starr

I don't think you can use @stevie's crossover design as it was specifically designed for the two drivers he used. Without giving too much detail he desings by having a target frequency response for each driver so they can be integrated smoothly. Having designed them using theory he then measures to response and repeatedly modifies the high and low pass filters until both do exactly what he wants. He then runs more tests to see that they integrate the way he wants. The Eminence 3012HO has a very different response around the crossover frequency to the Faital driver he designed for. Having said that very few if any manufactured musical instrument cabs go to such trouble so you acn get a workable result by using a proprietry crossover or by building a crossover based upon classical theory. There are online crossover design programs which will calculate the values for you. I've been happy with the results of these designs in the past

OK balanced is usually connected by a mic cable with three connections, it's noise cancelling so you can run long cables without picking up any electrical noise in the room. It feeds into a mic input on the mixing desk. unbalanced has only two connections and is usually connected by a jack to jack instrument lead, if you run long cables then it will pick up electrical noises and generally you'd expect lower quality sound. Your DI in the amp is effectively just another Aux out or FX out and probably the sound engineer would take this output and use a DI box to convert it to a balanced mic level signal. Depending upon their skill set and how long they have for a set up that is. It's probably important to know whether this DI is a pre or post signal. The pre signal is straight out of your bass with no processing by the amp. A post signal will have the tone you set up but crucially means any change in volume you make will also change the volume in the PA and mess up the FOH mix. There may also be a switch so you can change between a pre and post output. I think you probably are going to have to trust your sound engineer to get on with things. You can't really have one band member being able to change the front of house sound even if it is the bassist Just show them your DI and let them choose whether to use it or their own gear.

I'd imagine that any decent sound engineer who is going to be sniffy about feeds will have a box full of their favourite DI's and will split the signal for you. If the Di on your GK is a jack then you need to know if it is a balanced output TRS or an unbalanced TS connection which will probably be too noisy to be ideal

I think going forward in stages is the best strategy. If you like the sound then why undertake surgery on the cab. If you do want to port it then I'd port the back not the front. The cab was originally 'ported' by those cutouts in the back of the cab and personally I'd go for building ports based on extending them if I wanted a reflex cab. You can make ports of any shape with papier-mache I'm conservative with projects like this, a bit like The Repair Shop I don't mind the 'unfashionable' mid century look of the old cutout and I'd be thinking in terms of how I might be finishing the cab before taking a saw to the front. Perhaps ironically it's the look Bugera were going for in your other amp there. The colours of the Bell and Howell and even the grille cloth are a bit reminiscient of the old WEM Dominator amps. What a fun little project!

Nice one @David Morison just the information the OP needs. @Bone Idol The graphs show the advantagesof porting the cab. Crucially the -3db point reduces to around 70Hz which means all the second harmonic down to E is reproduced strongly. You've also got an extra 3db from around 110Hz which is significant. The mixed blessing is that you have roughly a 1db hump in response centred around 120Hz. This will give an artificial warmth to the bass sound which many bassists like and a roughtly half of us don't. The long and short of it is that you are going to get more bass if you port it and it's more than enough for you to hear a real difference. Whether you will prefer the lighter sound of the sealed cab or the fuller sound of the ported version is to an extent a matter of taste.

Hi, from what you are saying you want a pretty competent PA with nothing weighing more than 30lb/13.6kg and the budget is limited. That's a fairly difficult thing to do Your only advantage is that you don't need it immediately so you can take your time and wait for the right bargains to come along. I've run my Behringer amp with a couple of passive Yamaha speakers and it was perfectly competent. I don't know of your Sampsons but there are loads of cheap and good used passive speakers out there so swapping your amp might be the best idea the Behringer might be a good choice. There are loads of other cheap class D PA amps out there too so you may not just be limited to the NX3000.The Thomann amp is not completely undesirable so you might get most of the cost of a used NX3000 back anyway. It might be worth seeing if you can sell it with the Samsons too as a complete PA. People buying their first PA quite like a package if it has leads and stands thrown in Do you want advice on lightening the load. Getting a competent PA speaker at under 30lbs is pretty difficult at any price. The old passive ones tended to have wooden cabs, often heavy Chipboard or MDF so that is difficult and for a 12" system to be loud and have good power handling usually means a fairly hefty magnet again making 30lbs a difficult target. They exist but usually at a price. The other approach to problems lifting is to use a sub or two. they are heavy but stay on the floor and smaller lighter tops become possible. Long term it might be worth looking into a digital mixing desk, you can then ditch the outboard gear. Basically though I wouldn't rush into swapping things around until you have a clear plan of what you are trying to achieve.

I didn't save the simulations but you are of course correct, excursion is greater in a larger cab, directly in proportion to the extra bass. I think 'tears itself apart' might be a little too strong The power handling is reduced might be a bit fairer and of course this is true universally for all speakers in over-sized cabs. The thermal power ratings remain the same of course and since we haven't specified an amp or what the signal looks like the speaker might be perfectly happy. The actual reduction in power handling is dependent upon the mechanics of the speaker itself too and may or may not be significant. I was aiming for something simple to understand without saying anything that wasn't misleading. The truth but not the whole truth maybe

What do you use your PA for? Is it just or mainly vocals or are you putting more through it. Specifically kick drum, bass and keys which is more demanding? Also how loud is your band? That makes a huge difference as to your options. For anyone buying new nowadays I'd say the practical solution is pretty much always active speakers, quick and simple to set up and with DSP almost impossible to destroy in normal use, even the cheap stuff is reliable. With built in class D amps they can be pretty light too. Unless you really cut corners they are probably going to sound better than your Samsons, which you are happy with anyway. I've got the Behringer iNuke whic I think is the NX3000 in a really ugly case, same electronics. From memory it is 250W a side into 8 ohms 350W a side into 4ohms and 700W+ bridged. The same amp as is in the Bugera Veyron I suspect. Anyway it's a perfectly decent amp and not far off my Peavey IPR1600 amps

Without going into the maths the bigger the box the more bass you get from any given speaker. This isn't just offset by the additional problem of transporting something big and heavy; the 'wrong' sized box brings problems withgettinga flat response. Typically an over large box gives a droop in the bass response and is difficult to make flat, a too small from ideal cab will have a much higher resonance and less deep bassbut will give some bass boost around this raised resonant frequency. This happens with all cone speakers and in both reflex (ported) cabs and sealed cabs though the details differ. These are the calculated bass responses of a 10" bass driver in a 40l cab (blue) 20l cab (green) and a 5l cab (red). The medium sized cab in green gives the flattest response and a practical size. The red cab is way too small and -3db (the lower dotted line ) is 150Hz ish way to high to be useful. The large cab in blue has the response gradually falling from 500Hz and clearly isn't flat but crosses the -3db line way lower than the smaller cabs. Generally speaking cheap speakers with weaker magnets work better in huge boxes. A lot of old cabs tend to be large because speaker magnets in the day were weaker and powerful magnet systems were extremely expensive. Cheaper manufacture and better manetic materials have allowed box sizes to be reduced but big old boxes can still be fun and have a sound of their own.

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That's interesting to see inside the cab. for a commercial cab it has a lot of bracing, It would be difficult to adjust the tuning for most people but the folded port isn't unusual in small cabs. No damping material in the cab though? I'll try and get the calcs done this weekend.

I've had a quick look and the cab is roughly 25-28 litres and my guess is tuned to 50Hz. If you want to measure the internal dimensions of the cab and the port dimensions I can check that for you. That is typical for a 10" cab so probably a range of speakers will fit and work OK. I can do a quick check and identify any complete mis-matches with the drivers suggested if you give me those dimensions

Yep those are the ones, I had some 12's Mine had aluminium voice coils and the aluminium wire corroded creating a dry joint leading to speaker failure. Your BN10-300 is a much better speaker and quite expensive hence recommending the Pulse 10. I've used both. You can get all the specs for these speakers so if you want to fit anything like these we can do the calculations and you can potentially tweak the cab to match the speaker

I had some failures of that generation of Eminence drivers (which hasn't been true of the current range, I'm not knocking Eminence generally) I think they are from the late 70's early 80's so too long in the tooth to buy as a replacement

The Celestion Pulse 10 Ashdown recommended is a great little speaker, it's the driver we recommended in the BassChat 110T @stevie designed a couple of years back.

How are the Ayras? Have you played bass through them yet?

Well I blame you for all the spending on things I 'need' Al, why shouldn't I blame you for other peoples thoughts 🤣😂🥰

Combining this with the pic you sent of the PA set up at your recent gig makes the problem pretty clear. That's a sizable PA which could easily produce sounds well over 130db and is way too close to the musicians. If we take a median 33db of isolation that means you are still getting probably 100db sound levels getting past the in-ears. given you want the sound level from the in-ears to be audible over the spill then that's way over what is safe. We also know, and you allude to this that the isolation is frequency dependent and that low frequencies pass more easily and on top of that are radiating 360deg from the bass bins. Truly we risk drowning in the low frequency backwash. Even worse if the sound engineers are mboosting the lowest frequencies. I don't think you can do anything other than blame the PA for this. Pulling out the IEM's and replacing them with ear plugs isn't going to change the isolation either. You are still stuck with 33db of frequency dependent isolation Moving the subs away from the stage, considering cardioid subs and using judicious eq and HPF would be more to the point.

I think all this comes down is that you can eff up any system. No good having the perfect system if the fleshy bit between the ears isn’t working. Im never one to tell anyone that they have it all wrong. If the music sounds good and the audience are having a good time then there’s not much wrong. In years of mixing however I can say you can’t give all the musicians what they each want using backline only or even with floor monitors. Anything you do in one corner spills over the whole stage. You can’t have a p***ing area in a swimming pool for the same reason. Only in ears let’s you give everyone more me. on a personal note thanks for sorting my sound. A SansAmp gives me a little magic to feed into the PA.

Still not time to actually play with WINisd and I'm looking at a few drivers at the moment but the 6FE200 is looking favourite at the moment and possibly better than the original Fane. I have to say I'm impressed generally with some of the offerings from Faital at the moment. The price is wicked

I've had this message a few times, it is worth checking the units when entering the values. the default values are often not the same as the units used on the manufacturers spec sheets using m instead of mm for example. Clicking on the units lets you scroll through them to get a match. I also sometimes get WINisd 'losing' the box tuning when I'm recalculating. Going back and starting again usually clears that fault which may be down to operator error

Gigging on NYE and recovering today. I had a Quick Look at the Faital 6FE200 and it looks like a nice little speaker. I’ll report back on alternatives to the Fane when I get some time

Stick with it, once you get it working properly it is a revelation. Getting studio quality sound in your ears with a mix which is individual to you is just so good for your playing. Feels odd at first but you soon get adjusted and it becomes normal. The music itself becomes a bigger part of the performance once you can hear everything. You'll be much tighter as a band once you adjust. I'd never go back

£150 is a good budget. There is a choice of aluminium stands by K&M within your price bracket. I’m still using my cheap starter stands but the K&M mic stands I have are great.

It's not surprising that different manufacturers design things so their own brand tops work best with their own brand subs. There's no cash disincentive to do things this way as they hope you will stick to their brand for all your speaker needs. From a design point of view you can only optimise for a particular combination of top and sub as there are small but significant differences between speakers that might determine the ideal crossover point and filter slope for any given combination. In most cases you can make a sub work with any top but it's nice to think manufacturers wouldn't release a line of speakers without squeezing the best out of a combination. Putting the HPF part of the crossover into the tops makes a lot of sense for Alto. It's the tops that are most likely to blow speakers if you get the crossover wrong and nowadays all the speaker protection circuitry is combined with the crossover in the DSP. Relying on what is in someone else's sub does increase the chance of something going wrong over having all the protection built in. Another combination you might come across is the active sub with the power amps for passive tops built into the sub. A lot of the stick systems use this arrangement and I think Turbosound are offering 2+1 systems with conventional passive tops with all the power amps built into the sub.