Phil Starr

Probably the best advice you have had

I think you can tell that for bands this is an immature technology; just by the sheer range of differing approaches. I was listening to an RCF demo on Monday and that one had four 10" drivers in the column plus horn and 15" subs. it sounded fabulous but was around £6k. This if you are going all the way from 2" drivers to 10" then you are having vastly different engineering decisions and results. I'm really attracted by some of the theoretical advantages of this sort of approach, @stevie and I were discussing a bass speaker design along these lines before Genzler brought out their version. One thing we haven't mentioned as an advantage is that you can cross over much lower than you have to with most compression drivers in the typical 12/15 plus horn PA cab. Human hearing is most sensitive in the 1-4kHz range so having a crossover away from the frequencies we are most discriminating in is a definite gain. I think where we are at these systems have great potential and they look good, save the need to lift a heavy speaker onto a pole, offer a simple set up and can offer superb sound in a convenient package. However the cheaper systems are struggling to get to high sound levels and pound for pound you still get higher sound levels out of a conventional two way speaker. I've looked at these really hard recently for my own use and was really tempted by the Evox but to get the sort of sound levels which would cover all our possible gigs that meant the Evox 12. I've gigged with a pair of Maui's and they sound good but can't be pushed. That's £3500 for a pair of Evox 12's. Thomann are offering the ART 710 plus 705subs as a package for £2500 and would have a similar performance. In the end I picked up a couple of used ART 745's which was my first choice before I started looking. I think it's fair to say that for like for like performance there's probably a 30%ish increased cost in going for the columns. I guess it still depends upon matching your kit to your needs.

The moral of the story is don't believe the store guys or You Tubers. There is nothing magic about these line source/column speakers They've been in existence since at least the 1930's and knowledge of them since pretty much the invention of the loudspeaker. It's part of the physics of sound that any sound producing object starts to beam the sound as the radiating diameter approaches the wavelength of the sound. Basically low sounds are omnidirectional and high sounds are beamed. That's one of the reasons why tweeters are little and why some purists don't like conventional 4x10's. Putting lots of tiny speakers in a long line means that they are collectively small in the horizontal direction and the mid's/ highs will disperse evenly around the room, and because there are lots of speakers they can be loud. In the vertical plane they cancel off axis and behave like a big speaker. The net effect is that they radiate a predictable flat but wide beam into the room. For most venues that's pretty ideal. Horns work differently but basically they can be shaped to funnel the sound in a predictable way and you have a lot of control of direction. there are long throw horns with a narrow beam and short throw horns and every shade in between. A typical PA speaker will have a 90x60 horn, fairly short throw and fairly wide angle horizontally but more restricted vertically, you don't want to waste sound bouncing off the ceiling. Beaming is a thing, but it isn't good or bad, just appropriate. If it's too narrow you will only hear a decent mix in line with the speaker, too wide and the sound disperses quickly and you get multiple pathways to your ears and muddled sound. If your mic is picking up the sound from the speakers it will always eventually feedback, the question is when. The early Bose systems just weren't very loud but their ads made a feature of being able to put the PA at the back. Like the 'drink 2l of water a day' some daft advertising campaigns just take off. Drink when you are thirsty guys! A wide flat dispersion and a smooth frequency response helps avoid feedback but keeping the speakers away from the mic helps more.

Yandles in Martock have stocked it. Might be worth a ring.

It's interesting isn't it about how people can get the sound so wrong. Especially in a world where you can get degrees in music technology as opposed to the world I started in where the blind led the blind. The first job of setting up a PA was to build the speakers! The thing is that whilst there is science or engineering and it is certainly useful to know your theory there is also skill and care involved. A couple of years ago in Hyde Park I heard the Killers, Elbow and Tears for Fears all using the same PA, Elbow sounded great, Tears for Fears out of this world and the Killers awful. Killed (sic) by the kick, distortion from the subs being overdriven, bass mud and the guitarist barely audible. This went on for the whole of the gig with no-one apparently noticing at the desk which must have had half a dozen people there. Meanwhile on a side stage a young band came on, no sound check. The young engineer (sorry John) in his very early 20's started with the overblown kick and one note bass but tamed it about 60secs into the first song. 5 mins later the sound was just glorious and he stopped twiddling and sat back to let the band do their thing pretty much. All this achieved with easing the sliders into position so that no-one would have noticed the gradual changes as he made them. He can't have been more than 23 but it was a total joy to watch/hear. I'm sure age/experience helps as does learning about sound systematically but you can't teach a good set of ears and an understanding of music, or a willingness to listen and an understanding of how musicians work.

Brief bit of modelling and I didn't enter the BP102-4 manually trusting the WINISD figures. The eminence is Green and the Celestion in Red. Both with a 33V (roughly 200W) signal as the Celestion is 8ohms. The Celestion is more sensitive (louder) despite being 8ohms with the Eminence giving more output below 50Hz. The eminence has a smoother response but only a little that I wouldn't worry about.

This is brilliant, you have a plan and the best reason for doing it. I'll have a look at the Legend later but you might want to look at using the Celestion Pulse 10 also available from Thomann and considerably cheaper https://www.thomann.de/nl/celestion_pulse_10.htm. The Eminence speaker has a distinctive midrange suckout which you might like but the Celestion has a slightly brighter tone. More importantly we've tried the Celestion in a 30l net volume cab and it has been gigged. We also have a design for a simple horn and crossover so you could potentially add that later.

Hi John the cab is fine at 150W which is what the amp is rated at.

I think that would be a great solution. Your problem is that the ports will then be quite small and you'll have problems with wind noise in the ports. If you can fit in two drainpipe ports that will help a lot or use a single 10cm port. Two ports 13.2cm or a 10cm port 14.4cm long.

Bad luck. I'm afraid MarkBass amps aren't really repairable at component level and MB don't supply any technical data to repairers making things doubly difficult. Their service, such as it is, is done by Real Electronics https://www.realelectronics.co.uk/repairs.html who essentially just do full board replacements at upwards of £200. To be fair their fees are stated up-front and you will end up with everything inside replaced so effectively a new amp

You may be over thinking this, by blocking just one of the ports you will reduce the tuning down to about 50-55 Hz. (I'd rather they left something bigger than a 1cm gap at the back but you've said you dont want to do major surgery) That gives you a 2db peak in the upper bass and a -3db of around 60hz, both acceptable if not exactly neutral sounding. There are commercial cabs worse than this. Give that a go and see what you think of the sound and let us know. This is the sort of bass end response you ought to get this way

Warwick Gnome or TC BAM with the Barefaced would be great. I have the Gnome as a backup amp but have used it for gigs and rehearsals. The fan is quite quiet too which helps with home use. Around £130 new Generally I don't like the little practice amps, they don't have a very satisfying sound and a proper bass sound is far more likely to encourage your daughter to play more often. Also consider getting a Zoom B1-Four for headphone practice at some stage. Great sound, built in tuner/metronome/drum machine and you can mix in mp3's etc if she likes to play along with backing tracks or the originals.

Congratulations on the birth of your baby cab. It looks gorgeous. I hope the noise keeps you up all night

One of the effects of the cab is to damp the movement of the speaker cone. That is a function of both the volume/mass of air in the cab and the tuning if the cab is ported. If the cone flaps around at certain frequencies it can reduce the power handling of the speaker to a fraction of it's rated power. However it isn't that bleak in practice. Speakers designed for bass tend to hover around very similar specifications and often 'work' in a wide range of cabs. As said above you may not get the best out of a speaker but that doesn't mean nothing is possible or that you cannot tweak. As a broad guide a volume of around 30litres will suit a number of common 10" drivers. Indeed we have offered one design on BassChat BassChat 110T If the internal volume of this cab is around 30l then you could simply use your box as a ready finished cab and try out your idea with little risk of failure. If it isn't 30l then measure the internal volume and we can calculate any tweaks for you. If it helps I've gigged that cab for a while during testing and it is great for small venues (up to 100 people) and rehearsals. It's a good match for your amp too. You have to decide first of all what your aims are, You could just build our cab and use it with your Blackline which would make a fine solution. This could be done to improve the sound, to squeeze a little more out of what you have or as a fun learning experience, like me you could get hooked on building so look out. The only thing we can't guarantee is what it will sound like when it is done, you only ever really find that out when you finally plug in your completed project, but that is half the fun

The 4x8 looks an interesting buy for someone. If I was down there I'd definitely give it a punt at £110. It was called Son of Henry, made between 1994-97 with Henry VIII being the 8x8 speaker. Famously punchy apparently but looks to be becoming a collectors item.

That's the one I spotted. @SuperSeagullmay be able to put you in touch if you aren't on Facebook.

Have a look on Facebook marketplace, There's a Hartke 2x10 and Warwick 15 both £75 near you. An Eden 4x10 £225 and another Eden 4x8 for £110.

I was surprised how good the Wharfedale after sales service was. I had an idiot sound engineer and a dicky lead, in combination it resulted in one of my EVP subs being turned up full and an almighty thump from the phantom power not being as phantom as it should have been blowing the speaker. Replacement arrived return of post for £85 which I thought pretty good for a 20 year old model.

I just found out that Richer Sounds are offering the Wharfedale A15 mk2 Sub at a decent price. I went into their shop in Exeter today and had a chat and it seems they have a deal with Wharfedale who will deliver direct via Richer Sounds. this Sub is about £70 cheaper than other suppliers in the UK. Looking over his shoulder it looked like they also have access to supply all or most of their PA range. I've had great experiences so far with Wharfedale gear (I own a complete EVP PA) and it's pretty budget in prices for genuine pro quality. I've also had good service from Richer Sounds for years. It's an unlikely place to buy PA but I thought it worth putting out there. I've no vested interest in this but I'm just curious. I guess they are selling Wharfedale hi fi so it's not much of a jump to sell their other stuff.

As a practical solution go to Ashdown. Any other speaker is going to change your sound and devalue your amp should you ever want to sell. Ashdown bless them have the best after sales you might’ve ever get. The only reason to go different is that there is something you want to change about your amp or if after sales is not available.

This is a very simple set up and I suspect a copy of the Hartke Kickback which had the same arrangement. The speaker will almost certainly be 4ohms so you can't add another speaker with a splitter to any real advantage. However if you have other cabs they might be more efficient than the inbuilt one so you could just try unplugging the one in the combo and plugging the other cab in. Certainly in my Hartke that gave extra volume. If you like fiddling there might be the possibility of changing the internal speaker for an 8ohm one and then adding an external 8ohm cab and it might be fun to try but if I just wanted more volume I'd probably not start with what you have but move the combo on and start afresh as that would probably work out easier and cheaper.

I use the Line6 G30's No problems at all bar when i dropped them. The plastic case on the transmitter isn't the toughest but a replacement was fairly cheap so no long term issue. The sound is better than using a long lead.

It's always hard to judge how much detail people want. The way we measure output of amps and the power handling of speakers is entirely different and separate and power handling for the speaker isn't the same at every frequency. On top of that the input you are using is music and not a test signal. All music definitely isn't alike. Another issue is sound level: you can drive a 12" speaker to it's limits easily with 200W and few of them are thermally rated above 300W so why make a 600W speaker if it is no louder? You can give it a bigger coil which increases power handling and then trade some of the extra power for driving a heavier cone of having a stiffer suspension but you rapidly get to the point where you are trading a lot of expense for marginal gains in performance. A lot of the boutique modern 12's have drivers chosen to be around this point to get the most that is economically sensible out of a single 12. They will probably not handle 800W if you run everything flat out with loads of distortion and bass boosted and won't be much louder anyway than if you use them within their recommended limits but if you are running any normal sort of signal into them and have the volume and bass anything other than maxxed out then you'll be fine. In any case you'd be running them at levels which would be damaging your hearing and overloading the vocal mics long before they reached the point of failure.

Hmm, Tuff Cab is water based, and smells like an acrylic emulsion. I wonder if it would take the pigments they use to colourise emulsion paints. Out local shop will have a go at colourising pretty much anything. I wonder if you got a lighter blue or grey you could get near the colour you want by getting someone to add in more pigment. Obviously that risks wasting a can of paint. The base paint they use for dark emulsions are the same colours as the grey undercoats you use for for dark paint. Damn you @Pea Turgh you have me thinking

Duratex and Tuff-Cab seem to be the same thing. Great to use and you can get anything from a linen like finish to a heavy stipple by changing the rollers. It's unbelievably easy to use and stays open for a long time so if you don't like the effect you can flatten it and have a second go. It's really tough and easy to repair if you do manage to wear it down. I've use all sorts of cloth coverings back when I had no money. Natural fibres seem to soak up glues and varnishes better as they are more absorbent, They are easier to work with than Tolex as they are more pliable. They'll also take stains well. I did a lot of cabs in Hessian which is cheap and strong. If the cuts are well glued to the cab then they shouldn't fray. If you use corner protectors the joints are mostly covered anyway.