Phil Starr

My post was really meant as a bit of fun and a stimulus for debate but I think at least four people have responded to it and it's lunch time for me I'll confess to being a biologist, born 200yds from where the Origin of species was written so I probably have an oddly literal view of evolution. Have these changes amounted to a speciation event or is this just an example of genetic drift? Have the newly evolved species moved into different niches which they dominate or displaced the old species? My main birthday present this year was a set of noiseless pups for my J-bass. Very nice Is changing the pups for humbuckers changing the bass or just am improvement? Is adding a fifth string a dramatic change which made all 4-strings redundant? If I go to see 100 bands how many will have a version of the P or J or a very close copy? Which is the bass that has totally replaced them? Don't get me wrong I love threads like this and hearing other peoples opinions always sets me thinking, usually about spending money I'd love a bass with all the bells and whistles but like so many I still take the Precision to gigs especially the bigger ones. I don't sing through an SM58 though or play through a 2x15 or use a valve amp which does make me think that the design of basses has been stunningly stable over the years.

QED

Light the blue touch paper and retire eh? I suspect all Barefaced are trying to do is to protect the horn drivers from their customers so they don't have too may repair claims from crazy amp mis-matching. Playing with a heavily distorted sound passes much more energy to the horn so Barefaced seem to use OEM Eminence drivers. Nice speakers but still subject to the laws of physics. The driver is rated at 250W as the result of a test where filtered noise is driven through a sample speaker for hours at 250W. If it can take the heat it passes. That doesn't mean it can handle all the power at all the frequencies. For the bottom octave of a 4 string I doubt that there are many (any?) 10" speakers that could handle 250W and indeed Eminence state that their 250W Neo bass speaker should be de-rated below 80Hz in a medium sized box. That's because those power levels at low frequencies ask the cone and coil to move beyond their excursion limits. Let's be fair about this, giving advice on reasonable use isn't simple for any manufacturer as you have no idea what a customer is going to do with the speaker. Since the amp is only rarely going to get anywhere near it's peak output which will only be for a fraction of a second the heating limit of the speaker will rarely if ever be reached. Fortunately most bass guitars don't pump out much fundamental so the excursion limits are rarely breached. Bass guitars don't have a lot of top end to trouble the horn driver either so you can usually get away with an amp which is higher rated than the speaker. Obviously the seller has to balance the extra sales appeal of calling their speaker 500W against the chance of somebody actually doing that and making the speaker fart out by boosting the bass or blowing the tweeter with lots of distortion and having to deal with returns and a reputation for failures. The clincher is usually that you can't sell your speaker if you don't make the same claims as your rivals so in the end they all give in to over-claiming

Am I the only one thinking that the remarkable thing about the electric bass is that it hasn't evolved? Leo did a good job and Fender style basses are still the dominant species.

It looks like you may have solved your problem. If not then your question is about whether the 130W from the TC will be enough. I use the similar Warwick Gnome for rehearsal. For me it is enough. We aren’t as loud at rehearsal as we are live but our drummer is still fairly energetic. For me having an amp that fits in my guitar case just makes life so much easier.

Facebook is hopeless for things things like this, their search engine is utterly useless turning up open mics in India and down in Southwest England but nothing in Wales. There are a couple of dedicated open mic sites turned up by Google but neither of them do any maintenance so they are advertising OM's in pubs that closed down two years ago. I did find one FB group but the last post was 2014. Round here I know where to look because I know most of the local musicians and can tap into that network. It's their individual pages that are useful not FB as a system. I'm hoping someone here has a bit of local knowledge. On the plus side this is living proof that the metaverse has no idea of what I might be interested in

Anyone know of any open mics down in the Swansea area? We are down for a long weekend staying in Mumbles and I'm being allowed out on Thurs night. Inevitably all the internet is serving us up are pubs that closed down their open mics two years ago.

you've had some great responses so no point repeating them but a bit of recent experience. I've never used a click track live but recently my duo have added programmed drums. Where the drums come in late you absolutely need a click track and we have left the click track on for a lot of the new songs whilst we get used to playing with backing tracks. Playing to strict tempo is a revelation. It's total liberation for the bassist where too often we are left trying to hold tempo when everyone else is slipping. Actually it has shown up how lazy we all are, slipping the tempo constantly to keep the band together has become my norm when the singer and drums get out of sync. We all do it so naturally we think it doesn't notice and I habitually follow the guitarists time in solos, the singer when they are singing and the drums the rest of the time. That's with the band, the click tracks with the duo mean we are so tight all of a sudden and much to my surprise it all sounds so much more natural. I can relax knowing exactly where the next beat will be and can put in a bit more variation into my playing as result. I've started to play a stricter tempo with the band too and the drummer has responded to that. Strict tempo is more natural, who knew?

There re two problems here. not only are they the authorised agent but they are the only agent , a monopoly. Certainly for Mark Bass they do not provide circuit diagrams or spares It seems that TC are offering the same deal. I would imagine that Real are paying licensing fees to be the 'authorised' repairers and the manufacturers save the entire cost of support or their products in the UK. You can't go elsewhere because the normal repair shops won't really touch something for which specialist parts are not available. As stated the only real repair is board replacement, there isn't a lot of testing and diagnosis going on and there have been reports on BC of gear being returned with the original fault still there. An hour's labour charge to 'diagnose' isn't of itself unreasonable as just opening up the amp and closing it can take a lot of that time. Since just about everything is on the board and they don't repair boards the diagnosis is inevitable. The board replacement is £280 and the amp costs £199 so you are effectively being charged £35 to be told to buy a new amp. You can pay an additional £18 to have the amp returned but at that point it is just junk. The manufacturer can claim an after sales service is provided whilst accepting no responsibility. Real have a monopoly and are under zero pressure to provide a better service. The second effect is environmental. If cost effective repairs aren't possible then every am becomes disposable. To an extent that is our fault, we all buy by price and modern amps are cheap and by and large super-reliable. Mass producing with specialist chips and surface mount components certainly cuts costs. Ironically Music Tribe who own TC do provide cheap spares for at least some of their own Behringer gear. I bought a replacement amp board for one of their active speakers for around £70. When it came it was already mounted on it's heatsink and the repair took under an hour. Behringer may well have made 100% on the 'board' but I repaired a £200 speaker for £70 so I was happy. It can be done. It would be interesting to see how this is managed in the States where I think monopolies are not viewed as lightly as here. The EU are legislating to make manufactured goods economically repairable on environmental grounds. It'll be interesting to see what the UK govt. does. Not much on recent performance I expect.

You might want to get this moved to Amps and Cabs where the more nerdy of us hang out Before we can advise you I think you need to indicate a budget. Tell us a bit more about the band (line up, commitment funding etc) If you are a bunch of well off 40 somethings for whom this is a serious hobby you have a lot of choices. If you are the only one with your hand in your pocket you might make different choices. If no-one else in the band is interested or prepared to work collectively then your choices will be limited by their co-operation. If i was starting from scratch I would love to start with all of the sound being properly mixed and going through the PA with minimum sound on stage. The band will sound better, you'll all hear everything better and you'll avoid everyone ending up with hearing problems like yours and also mine. If everyone else is committed to their own personal guitar amps and you have a drummer then you are probably condemned to 100db plus on stage, congested sound and having to buy a bass amp that will match the drums in volume as a minimum. The good news is that the headphone monitoring means at least you will be able to hear and not get too much extra hearing loss. There are any number of amps that push out 300/500W and these with a decent 1x12 or 2x10 as a minimum will be loud enough to match the drums as a rule of thumb anyway. One of the first things to consider is a mixer for your band's PA. If you are wearing headphones you'll want your own mix, as you've already realised. You can do this with your own mixer as you've suggested but I'd strongly advise not to go for what is a bodge solution. All the modern digital mixers will give you the option of every member of the band having their own monitoring mix (unless you are bigger than a six piece) Bought new that is around £350 your own sub mixer will cost probably over £100 and you'll have other expenses in splitting the signal to the PA. Someone will still have to buy the main mixer so it's probably going to cost more. As to PA most of us have a pair of powered 1x12+horns on poles which cover most small to medium gigs. So tell us the budget etc and we can give better advice. No point telling you what you can get for £1,000 if your budget is £500

There's three warning signs

It happens. I'm like you I suspect, not the greatest but work hard and take it seriously. The trouble is that you don't always know the whole story with a band. They may be a start up band or one that hasn't gigged for a couple of years (especially now). There may be some churn with new people coming in who aren't up to speed or people who have promised lots but won't deliver. I did one audition where they had five guitarists andfive bassists and they auditioned us in pairs! Bad luck if your guitarist was poor. I've had auditions where one of the band members had decided to leave but the departure of another member let them off the hook of telling the band leader they'd had enough, When the new bassist comes along they just aren't committed and leave as soon as you are recruited. I learned that bands whole set after the audition and never met with them again as the drummer left. I've also been band leader and let down by people in my own band not taking auditions seriously. Auditions where I've turned up and they've played in keys other than the one they told me or where they've all learned different songs from the list I was sent. I hate being 'between' bands. There are so many musicians who are deluded dreamers or just plain lazy. Bands where one person has all the energy and the rest are just passengers. The trick I've learned is to research bands before I audition. If they are a working band or even working musicians they leave a trace all over the internet. If there is no video or sound recordings then you can pretty much assume they aren't serious. If they say busy or gigging bands you should be able to find some publicity stuff for at least some of the gigs. I used to undervalue myself a little, grateful for anyone who would look at me as a bassist but 'reliable', 'organised' and 'hard working' are in short supply so add those to 'steady and reliable'. Really target what you want in a band and do some research before wasting your time on someone else's dream. I'm not one of life's pessimists, I've met some great people as well as some of the examples above but there is a world of difference between the genuine semi-pro gigging band and the bedroom dreamers and you need to spot the signs. Good Luck

I have a vague worry about how hard it is to learn this stuff nowadays. Like most of my generation I leaned most of what I know from practically tinkering with stuff and building my own gear from projects in magazines like Practical Wireless and Wireless World. There were also loads of books popularising electronics and DIY was a real hobby with loads of support. All of this stuff is now on the internet but so is a lot of poorly written and incorrect information. To be honest there is way more known with human knowledge doubling every few years. When I started it was all valves! At least BassChat is full of people trying to be helpful

Oh, what the hell. First of all don't worry about an amp which is designed to work in bridged mode only. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, nobody is asking you to redesign the amp and you can't undo or alter the way the designer/manufacturer has gone about making the amp. Just play bass and don't worry about it. If you have a stereo amp which is capable of operating in bridged mode then you do need to think twice about how you use it. Power goes up with the square of the voltage so theoretically bridging which doubles the voltage gives you four times more power through the same speaker. That's theoretically, but in practice the amps power supply and maybe other components won't give or be able to handle the current. Probably the speakers won't either. Not all amps or speakers are created equal so at this point you need to go to the manual and hope the information is available, correct and in language you can understand. If you understand and are confident in what you are doing then all will probably be fine but if you aren't a technical person why go down this route? If you are trying to understand this genuinely then it isn't complex but you need to know a few things. Electrical Power is Voltage x Current Ohm's Law is that Current is Voltage/Resistance (for speakers resistance is more accurately impedance which is partly frequency dependant but ignore that for now, assume an 8ohm speaker is 8ohms) These two formulae can be joined so that Power = Voltage Squared/Resistance or Current Squared x Resistance In bridged amps the two amps are wired so that as one amp goes negative the other goes positive so the voltage the speaker sees is double the power supply voltage. Most amps are limited in the amount of current they can supply and run hotter at high currents. This is where the manual might help but probably won't. It get's more complex than this when you go into detail but this is the basics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power

Well done for seeing this through, the SM212/CDX! 1445 combination is a lovely one, and as you've spotted really revealing. I'm actually about to order up the last remaining parts so my SM212 will end up with the same pairing. I have too many half finished projects. Yours is looking great.

I think you've answered your own question. If one cab is making a noise and the other identical cab isn't then it's the cab. That wasn't what you were asking though. Farting out is usually the description for a bass driver reaching it's mechanical limits, often the rear of the coil banging on the back of the magnet but it can be other things. If the speaker reaches this stage it's also likely to be over-heating and producing high levels of distortion. Asking too much is about too much power or excessive bass content. @stevie has posted whilst I've been typing and I was going to say pretty much the same. The one qualification is about eq, even relatively light bass boost can more than double what you are asking of your amp and speaker and an HPF halve the demands so a lot depends upon the sound you are going for. It's always wrong to drive your speaker to audible distortion levels disconnect it and see if the distortion goes

Still have mine. Fugly as charged but it's just entirely practical. Bass gear full PA and drumkit can be swallowed plus three people in the front. A few years back I made the decision to spend £1000 on a new subframe on it, probably the same as the value of the car at the time. I've had four years motoring out of that decision and it is still going strong. I dread the day when it finally goes and I have to find a replacement.

Yeah the bridge is in the wrong place and needs moving back Looking at the pics the rough windings at the end of the string are sitting on the saddles which isn't right. The saddles on my basses are about 1/2" from the end of the screw adjustment which gives me roughly an inch of potential adjustment for intonation which i check each time I do a set up or change strings. You'll have to take the strings off to move the bridge, I'd be running a straight edge along the neck to see what i've got. a slight bow along the neck wouldn't worry me and I'd check I could adjust the truss rod while it was easy to get to it, you might need to loosen and clean and oil it all easier at this stage. If it is straight when there are no strings it will bow into a concave curve when you tune up the strings. What you are aiming for is a slight concave bow. There are loads of YouTube videos of how to do this. Once you've set the relief (amount of bowing) you can then set the string height so that the strings just manage not to buzz when fretted all along the neck. I then set the intonation with an electronic tuner. If its E on the open string it should be E on the 12th fret and so on. Again all of this is on YouTube. It's just about working methodically and going back to double check as adjusting one thing may affect what you've already done. There are useful gauges for setting neck relief and string height which only cost a few $$ This is also a skill for a guitarist to know

I think what I find amazing is that singers often miss out on what the lyrics mean. I love a clever lyric especially in a pop song. How can you tell a story or sing an emotion if you don't know what it is you are singing about. I love little moments like the Nina Simone version of Feeling good where she changes one word (from you to I) and turns a song from a musical into a civil rights anthem. Stars when you shine, you know how I feel Scent of the pine, you know how I feel Oh, freedom is mine, and I know how I feel

Welcome to BassChat You might be asking in the wrong part of the forum. The real experts on this might well be stuck over in the build diaries where a number of luthiers hang out There's not much you can't fix on a bass so long as bit's aren't physically broken or the neck is twisted. So start with a simple look down th length of the nec and see if there is any sign of twisting. A bend isn't alarming if it is slight. as the truss rod is there to adjust that. I'd be suspicious of that bridge if it is a replacement. You can check if it is in the right position with a ruler first. the distance of the nut to the 12th fret and the bridge saddles to the 12th fret should be the same. The octave is halfway along the string so this has to be so whatever the instrument. If it isn't they've put the bridge on in the wrong place, though as you can see the bridge has allowances for slight adjustment. So if you've no twisting it isn't going to be expensive to fix and far from impossible to do yourself.

Can you clarify the speakers in the video aren't the Beta 12A's but the BP122's which are at least designed specifically for bass. Are you retrofitting the Beta's? These are entry level speakers but I'm a little more optimistic about them, they are the sort of drivers fitted in a lot of mid priced gear, nothing special but not awful either and they have a very enhanced top end so will give you a lively sound a lot of people like. The cab looks to be around 100l which is very much on the small side to get the best low end out of them but that does improve power handling. Even so a high pass filter would help a lot. You are going to get a bit of a rise in the 100Hz region which will give them a bit of a thump and smiley faced eq built in. Again this is common in a lot of mid-range gear. I think personally there is a lot of nonsense about the 'is it good for low B' question. Most of the fundamental is filtered out simply because of the positioning of the pickups right down the bottom end of the strings which means if the speaker isn't overloaded across the frequency range it shouldn't be overwhelmed at low B, not to mention that not many songs have you play a continuous low B or even anything below E. Unless you are going to use a 500W amp absolutely cranked with lot's of bass boost I think you'll find it will be OK. The cab is going to have a strong sound of it's own though so give it a good listen before buying. Lot's of love for Poland over here at the moment btw. Eminence Cab designs

OK, I thought WinISD ought to have a way of programming QL and it does. Select 'Box' on the menu bottom left and click on 'advanced'. Default on mIne is set to QL=10. Vance Dickason in the Design Cookbook has Ql=7 as median with values of Ql=3 and 15 as low and high. I've always assumed Ql =7 would be the default. As I said I've never bothered to measure Ql and only regard WinISD as a way of getting close and then something that will need tweaking.

I've also found that. So if you are doing something wrong then it's more than just you There are a number of reasons, the TS parameters can be hard to measure and there are manufacturing spreads but one of the problems is that there are other parameters of the speaker and cabinet that aren't accounted for in the calculations like QL the damping/quality factor due to leakage in the cab and inherent to the speaker. We have double checked most of the published BassChat designs and @stevie measured the TS parameters himself. Even so the WinISD port length is just a starting point for us. It's one reason we haven't gone for shelf ports where changing the length is more of a problem than just cutting a few different lengths of drainpipe.

It's a funny old world isn't it? Whenever this debate starts there are always two groups of people who dive in. Those who read proper music and demean those who can't and those who play by ear and look down upon anyone who can't pick out a bass line, note perfect from just listening. The implication is always that people who rely upon tab and chord sheets aren't 'real' musicians and really shouldn't be trying. Surely tab is just a shorthand way of writing something down so it can be widely shared. A way in which we can say 'I don't know how to play that bit' 'how do you play it? I think it's great that someone I've never met has laboriously listened to a song over and over, written down what they think it is and then wants to share it with me. I've even put up a few tabs myself and I'm kind of delighted that despite the mistakes in them over 300,000 people have used them. (I had no idea until I just checked). So the question is Why are tabs always wrong?". Well are they? Always? Does that matter? What does wrong mean anyway? Is it wrong because there is a note missing, a root/fifth that is just written as a root? A bass line correctly transcribed from a live version because the recorded version is so heavily processed you can't really hear what the bassist does? How about when the bass is double tracked? Actually on that issue the sheet music if often 'wrong' even though it is written in conventional notation. It is frequently a simplification of something that has multiple tracks overlaid. Actually I'm kind of sad that Ultimate Guitar is getting so good with the official tabs. I quite liked looking at four or five different ways of playing an approximation of a bass line. I pretty much learned to play with tab and looking to see what other people have done with a song is still a really helpful way of getting a working line quickly. I've always played in bands and someone always wants me to learn something yesterday. I've not got a great ear and for me a short cut is something I use when I can. The band aren't interested in how I get there and they don't notice when I cut corners so long as I hit a root on the one and keep the rhythm going. Tab is just a useful way of writing stuff down. It helps some of us, if you are lucky enough to have had lessons and can read that's great, I wish I was one of you but I'm not and nor are most of us.

Someone will say this so I might as well be the first. It isn't all about the watts. Extra power will make you louder but so will more efficient speakers. doubling your amp power doesn't give you a lot of extra sound just 3db but doubling your speakers will usually give you 5-6db. That being said most bass amps are of the 300/500W into 4/8ohms and that is going to be enough for most situations, nowadays amp power is almost not a worry. Enough in this case is enough to keep up with a loud drummer. Again not a strict law but a good rule of thumb is that a decent 1x12 will do for a rehearsal or small gig and two 12's will pretty much cover anything so a lot of us go for a couple of 1x12's. So yes the Ashdown Mag 600 plus the Eden cabs look a decent option. Ashdown's after sales service even on used gear is great which is a bonus. Going used is sensible, you'll never find the 'one' first time and you can get most/all of your money back if you decide to change things around.