Phil Starr

That may be your problem. Compressors pretty much always cause feedback issues. I just wouldn't use them with a live band unless I was working just as FOH mixing. Even then I'd only use them rarely on vocals if at all. They are really something for studio use. Guitarists use them to increase sustain which is itself the result of a feedback loop where the sound from the amp makes the strings vibrate sustaining the sound.

A little bit of history. Fane's published specs around that time changed fairly frequently for the sovereign series. If I remember correctly they'd had some troubles and were effectively re-launching. The predecessor of the 10-300 was the 10-275 which had identical parameters but was rated 25W lower. The stickers on your speaker are almost identical from those on my Fane 10-275 so it may be the same speaker and from the same factory. I have a couple of spec sheets I saved from that era. My speakers were in a 2x10 which went very deep and had a pretty flat response at the cost of being quite a heavy beast. Modelling the two speakers gives a very different bass response. The old speaker is in green the new Fane10-300 in red The cab for the older speaker is 40litres and tuned to 60hz, it will also work with the newer variant but you'll get a bit less bass. It's a nice speaker but doesn't have the high end peak that the equivalent Eminence speakers have so might lack a bit of top end and need a bit of upper mid boost depending upon your taste. I think there is every chance yours is the older model.

Front to back is always tricky but side to side helps. The Peavey style vane braces on the rear panel help. It's good to try a test signal from an online signal generator through your bass amp and feel for vibrations in the panels with your finger tips. that locates the main resonances and tells you where to put the braces for best effect.

You said alongside so on the floor. I use ART 310's with my duo and bass with the cabs on the floor sounds awful, muffled and indistinct, put them on stands and they sound as good as it ever gets. They are designed to give a balanced output on stands not on the floor where the lowest frequencies are boosted by 6db. I've often wondered about taking a stand and putting the 310's at head height behind me but we are in-ears now so no backline needed and i don't take it to many gigs.

Whilst you have the cab apart have a look and see if there is any internal bracing of the panels. If there are large panels with no stiffening then even a thin strip of wood across opposite panels (side to side, back to front, top to bottom) will stiffen the box and reduce panel resonances. Something like a length of broom handle or a wooden batten fixed properly with screws/glue will do it.

These are really common, it's a really simple solution to protecting the speakers, mainly the tweeters. The bulb has a very low resistance when cold but as the current increases it heats up and the resistance rises reducing the current to the tweeter. In the quieter sections it cools down and full power is restored.

I run the PA, I have lot's of leads Upon reflection I mainly buy coffee beans from Lidl too.

Confession time, I'm losing my hearing, I've significant loss right down to 6kHz with some frequencies worse than others. I can still follow normal conversations and enjoy music but in noisy environments I can only follow someone if I can see them and only one person at a time. If I lose much more I'm going to be genuinely isolated from my friends and I'm going to have to give up playing altogether because I won't be able to hear what they are playing. All this talk about in-ears being isolating, that feeling lasts about 30 mins, then you adapt, you can still see the audience, still smile at the friendly couple in the third row. Any fleeting sense of isolation soon passes and will be nothing to the isolation you will feel when that thumping back line and trouser flapping bass finally rob you of the ability to year your friends and loved ones.

Congratulations, coincidentally we did our first completely in-ears gig a couple of weeks ago and we've been doing rehearsals with only in ears for a couple of months. We've kind of gently evolved in that direction. Every word here exactly reflects our experience and the critical thing is being able to properly hear each other and yourself. You can just play with more confidence and freedom, it's literally a revelation. the killer line though is: "However, the main revelation which should have been totally obvious but wasnt, was that for years it's been the amps on stage that have been the problem on stage regarding hearing everyone, rather than being a necessity to hear everyone.....But I'm now convinced it's the amps that were the problem. Just sound smashing around everywhere."

Velcro Cable Ties packs of 30, 200x20mm Black or colours £1.99. The quality is OK, they won't last forever but should work for a few years. I'd prefer a 30x200mm but at this price I can have a cable tie on every cable for the price of a large Americano. There are also packs of 20 300mm ties

You will probably need to get some kit to do in ears, it needn't be expensive. The standard set up at the moment is a pair of KZ ZS10 Pro headphones and a Behringer P2 beltpack headphone amp. There's all the details and more in this thread https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/389429-the-iem-in-ear-monitors-bible-thread/ For discussion on mixing desks https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/468782-compact-mixing-desks-what-are-you-using/ might be useful

Getting a drummer is problematic for your PA unless they use eDrums. At that point everything gets so loud on stage that three things become issues; monitoring, picking up unwanted sounds in the vocal mics and potentially acoustic feedback. Even that leaves out the big one, your hearing becomes threatened by the sound levels on stage. I'd strongly suggest you plan for this from the outset and you say: Hold on to that thought and plan this from the start and let it guide your purchases. I use an RCF M18 but Behringer, Soundcraft and Zoom all make great digital mixers with plenty of aux feeds. The Behringer mixers and some of the others offer multitrack recording also so you could trade in your R24 to part fund a good mixer. We run rehearsals with all in-ears, no PA or floor monitors needed. for gigs everything just goes via the PA. our guitarist still uses his guitar amp but turned down and miked up. I'm hoping to get him to go through a modeller and lose that too. Buying a digital mixer is key to everything. Your sound will be in-ears and you'll need to organise that. You can each adjust your own monitor mixes right from day one and that will remain your personal sound whether you are on stage or in the shed. You can keep your programmed sounds and a click track or lose them at will when you add a drummer and send a balanced mix to the PA which means you have complete control of your band sound. The PA then just functions to make everything loud enough for the audience. I think your Yamaha 400 should be good enough at least for a while. Yamaha claim 129db and whilst I think that must be peak level that will make a lot of noise. The 400/600 series are much more competent than the 300/500 series that were it's predecessors. Ultimately I'd probably replace it with some more capable active speakers but I doubt you'd need to do that quickly. With no backline amps and currently no drums to drown out you can just turn it up to the volume you are happy with. There aren't many pubs down in Cornwall or the rest of the West Country you won't be able to fill with sound. Concentrate on finding the right mixer and all the in-ears and headphone amps first of all and get that bit right.

Well on the strength of this build I dug my 110T out dusted it off and took it to rehearsal last week. Our band have gone in-ears so none of the cabs get regular work recently but we had an old school guitarist with a 2x12 Marshall (with hearing problems, I wonder why?) so it was an ideal opportunity to play with a 'proper' amp. I have to say the 110T sounded bloody lovely, just right for the room and the set up and no trouble keeping up. Also a joy to carry in and out, it's a proper featherweight

Hi Russ. @EBS_freak So the $64,000 question is whether there is a difference in practice between the pre's in the sorts of mixers that bands are using live and the ones in the 2in 2out interfaces that most of us start off with? I've been using a very basic Alesis mixer as an interface at home, just for practice, and swapping an interface in for that gives a whopping improvement in sound plus a noticeable drop in latency when recording, I've used the Alesis for rehearsals where we've also used a Yamaha MG series mixer and the Yamaha pre's are just so much better. Swapping my bigger Yamaha MG for my RCF M18 digital mixer has given another very noticeable improvement. I ought to compare the M18 with an interface for myself but the M18 is always packed up for gigs. Subjectively I suspect the M18 and the interface would be comparable in sound quality. There are very definitely big differences in the quality of mic pre's that are clearly audible even to my very worn hearing. We probably don't pay enough attention to that when choosing mixers. So the question, are the pre's in digital mixers like the Behringer and Soundcraft in the same league as the sort of Focusrite Scarlett type interface that most of us use at home?

We've toyed with the idea of a BC 1x15 cab and I have one here using an Eminence Deltalite, not quite the spec you are looking for though. I'm afraid Covid rather interrupted our plans as all our designs are tested playing live as well as being measured in the 'shed'. Limited playing opportunities and other more personal issues have meant not getting out most weeks. There are a few technical problems with your scheme. Availability of a suitable driver being the biggest issue. If you want a single 15 for a bass cab it has to have reasonable output up to roughly 4000Hz. For a 15" driver that means it is operating under cone break up for a lot of it's range and the cone breakup has to be well controlled. Because the high end is bound to be compromised most 15's have a bit of a peak in the kHz range which kind of compensates for the early roll off at the top end. Almost all the commercially available 15's are designed to be used in multi-way systems and to extend the bass downwards rather than the treble upwards so they have heavy cones to lower fs and make them pistonic up to the crossover point. This lowers their efficiency. If you want 600W handling then you really need a 4" voice coil so you are now in the realm of pro-audio bass drivers. The other limiting factor is excursion, a speaker might be able to handle 600W of electrical heating but if it reaches it's excursion limits at 300W then there is nothing to be gained by using a bigger amp and more expensive, heavier driver to achieve the same output levels. Similarly if you go for 4 ohms to get more power out of the amp the same physical limits on excursion mean that you gain nothing in sound output. There aren't many if any drivers that meet all your design parameters. Few meet the 100db/W even on the manufacturers spec, most are dedicated bass drivers so won't have enough high end to be usable as a single bass cab. I'd probably opt for the Eminence Kappalite 15HO as the best all rounder and now priced fairly competitively in the UK. That's not news, Barefaced used them in their first cabs and BFM recommends them as do many others. It's 450W and sounds good with bass but excursion is only 5mm. You'll achieve sound levels peaks of 125db+ though which is plenty enough to destroy your hearing. The other possible candidate is the Faital HF520 a bit more expensive and heavier but with an acceptable looking top end, that is 600W but lower quoted efficiency than the Eminence. It does have better excursion but I haven't modelled the two against each other so I can't really say if you would gain much at this point. A Kappalite in a box is a good solution and would come in at around £300 as a self build. It would need a port

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This is the best place I've found so far Grillcloth - KLDGuitar tube guitar amp amp kits grill cloth and vinyl tolex http://www.kldguitar.com/Home/SearchBranch?keyword=Grillcloth I did track down the factory that makes them too but can't find the link. You can get most of these on Ebay or there are shops that stock some of the grille fabric. A lot of the stuff on Ebay /Amazon is for domestic/hi fi speakers and isn't tough enough. although the shop is in China I've had no problems with them

It is, I bought my first two basses there and a few bits and pieces over the years and it was always a bolt hole for an hour .when a day out ended in clothes shopping.

I'm not sure whether we will see it again, the only place I ever saw P-Audio was Blue Aran so if they aren't importing them this could be a permanent issue. The B&C is a reasonable substitute. It's a problem with these designs that they have a shelf life. Even Celestion bring out new models. Eminence seem to have the most stable range but until recently US speakers were more expensive than the European produced ones and Far East production like P-audio is frequently changing. That's one reason why I've stopped specifying the pre made tuning ports. Building materials have to fit standard fittings so are reliably sized and black waste water pipes are easy to find. If I ever get time I want to revisit these designs

What amp were you using? We did a lot of testing with recorded music and i didn't notice a veiled sound particularly. I have had some issues though with phones running into a mono input. I've tried these at home with my hi-fi, they don't sound as good as my hi-fi speakers but of course they aren't designed for that but the Silverstones give my RCF PA speakers a run for their money. That horn (the Celestion No Bell) is the best horn we have found for this size of driver to date, it is more expensive than the recommended one and slightly heavier, the other horn to look at is the B&C ME10 if you want something as cheap as the P-Audio.

I wouldn't have thought that you'd be hearing more treble after breaking in the speakers. The BC 112 mk 3 is essentially a proper FRFR bass speaker. The bass driver and wooden cab will handle bass better than almost any PA speaker and the frequency response has no nasty peaks or troughs. That makes it very different in it's sound from most bass speakers which will have a peak in the upper mids which is in the top end of a bass. You would need to re-eq for this speaker in all probability. I suspected the 110T would be good for DB, the extra volume and extra low frequencies are going to lead you potential feedback resonance problems but the gentle early roll off of the 110 would help with that. Try rolling back the bass on your amp with the Mk3 and see how that sounds. We've all got very used to the coloured sound of our normal bass speakers and when you first listen to the clean sound of your bass through a flat response speaker it is somewhat underwhelming at first. You will really miss the artificial colour of a traditional bass speaker. Then when you hear the extra details you'll start thinking 'OK yeah I get that' but you will still miss what you have lost. For me it was only when i realised i was in charge and started resetting the tone controls that I gained confidence and started enjoying the flexibility. I'll be interested what you think in a months time. you probably need to gig and rehearse with it a little On the other hand the 110T is a little gem, I've not fallen out of love with mine and it is such a practical solution for my needs so long s ultimate volume is not the issue. I still use it a lot.

Noooo

Exeter has a fairly lively covers band circuit and there are bands that gigged 100+ a year before covid. Although I live 25 miles from Exeter I've played in Exeter bands and the gigs are better than those where I live . There are a fair amount of gigs going on in Exmouth too. Further down in Torbay there is a lot more going on. I know nothing of the scene for original music, my idea of a good night out is to be playing myself I'm afraid. There's also a good number of open mics and a bit of a folk scene. Exeter has good music shops with Mansons the stand out. There are a few originals bands that have done well on the covers circuit but they have to play a recognisable genre. Average fee for a band is around £300 so you won't get rich There are differences down in the West Country. Population density is lower so pubs tend not to be so rammed and the money isn't as good or the gigs quite so closely packed. Distances to gigs are further and it isn't unusual to travel 25 miles to a gig, the upside is that the roads are emptier so travel time stays similar. The population is older too, lots of people turned 40 move down here for a better all round life Audiences are largely going to be older too, hence all the covers bands. Lemonrock works quite well down here so tracking bands is fairly simple. I've played with a lot of people who have moved here, genuinely good musicians who were pro before moving down. There's adjustments to be made in lowering expectations, fewer big gigs not enough work to go pro without doing a bit of teaching and very few big pay days. You often don't get four pro standard musicians in a band and big egos don't find it easy. I enjoy the music scene down here. I've met a lot of positive supportive people and most of my friends I've met through music. I've never been between bands for long and tend to play roughly every other week. I'm not going to get rich but it pays for bass strings and the odd meal out. Let's face it you are moving down for a better lifestyle, cheaper housing, beautiful countryside and so on. it's not a musical desert but you might need to play Sweet Caroline more than you would wish

That's actually quite a good set up if the stage monitors are up to the job, if they are at the budget end the sound engineer is often reluctant to put enough bass through for fear of damaging their speakers. I pretty much always take my own back line to a gig where I have no control over the PA. If the engineer gives me enough then I turn it right down but if I and the drummer can't hear what I'm playing I'm not left stranded. I guess that's what you want to achieve. A single 12 or a 2x10 is about as small as you can go for this and your budget looks good, very good if you go used. The trick is that you want to match the gig volume of the drummer. One of the critical things in good stage monitoring is the directional response of the speakers. Speakers without a horn are like sonic flashlights sending out a beam of sound in the mid and upper ranges. They need to point to your ears if possible. A horn gives the designer much better control of direction but ideally the horn needs to have a low crossover point. Many older and cheaper designs have poor crossovers and horns which add a lot of tizz and hiss without adding much to what you need to hear. Better modern designs really help but these are the FRFR designs. The other way is to get the speaker pointing at your ears so very tall speakers or stacks are great in this respect as are kickback designs otherwise get an angled speaker stand. If the PA is really large and loud then there is often a problem with a muddy sound. Bass is omnidirectional so you'll get all of the bass from the PA and none of the top end. You can counter this by rolling off the bass frequencies in your monitors and boosting the mids to compensate.

I don't use vinyl very often but I've been building cabs for over 50 years so I've tried all sorts of glue. I started with 'hide' glue: animal protein bought in pearls and melted in a heated pot, PVA and aliphatic glues and latex based glues. in the end I've settled on impact adhesives as the best solution, though PVA is fine for the body or the cab I always use impact adhesive for the edges as maintaining pressure on the edges which are always trying to unfold is a complete pain. If you do use Pva then one tip is to use a hair dryer on the vinyl as it goes floppy when warm. Too hot and it melts though, nobody at all will wonder how I found that out Not long now, well done so far.