Phil Starr

Thanks that will be really interesting to compare to the Warwick

On a cheerier note @Chienmortbband I are hoping to carry out some measurement of amplifier frequency responses. We'd like to settle some of the debates we've been having this year such as where is flat on the eq and do all amps have built in HPF/deep bass filtering. It would be interesting to see which amps colour the sound and which ones just amplify. One burning question is are the TC BAM and the Warwick Gnome identical and does the Elf have Trace magic? I have a Gnome but if you have one of the others it would be good to test them. If you have anything else it would all be interesting and hopefully we can tell you for certain your amps response and even what response you are setting when you eq. Should be interesting. Personally I'm bringing an RCF ART745, I'm trying to bring all the BC home build designs to try: the Mk1 12 and the 'easy build 12', other people are bringing the MK2 and Mk3. I'll have the 110T and the House Jam micro cab, a new 1x8 and a 1x15 prototype.

Thanks for saying this Mike, my wife is currently very ill and as a result is vulnerable. I'm going to have to isolate from her and test every day after the bash until I can be confident I haven't picked anything up. I was thinking of dropping out but this gives me confidence. It's a big airy room and there is no reason we can't all keep each other safe. Thankyou everyone else too.

You're a bass player what are you doing up there!!!!!

One thing we haven't mentioned is that the Gnome is very sensitive/has high gain. My very ordinary passive J drives it perfectly well with gain and volume at 10 o'clock . You can't really judge how many watts you are driving into the speakers from the gain positions. All you really need is enough gain to drive the amp flat out once you are doing that there is no advantage in extra gain or turning the volume knob any further. There is no real disadvantage in having too much gain but in a shop people often start with the knobs in the same low position, extra gain will make that amp appear to be louder so high gain amps might have a sales advantage

Expect a rash of people searching your posts to see what that was

10's with 15" subs are a fine combination and you don't need huge tops if you use subs. I've got 12's plus Subs which I'd use for outside gigs but the RCF 745's were my Swiss Army Knife purchase to be compact enough to do small gigs and with enough bass response that I could leave backline at home and have all the band using in ears for the gigs we do. The few times we play to more than 1-200 people we have always had a hired PA . Everyone is different but for our covers band, pub gigs with the occasional function 15" tops covers everything and lets us have a fully mixed sound without having to drag subs around and carry them into tiny spaces in 200 year old boozers. The really good tops worked out cheaper than small tops and subs so that was a bonus. I've never used the 15's as a bass speaker though they sound good with bass at home (you have to try them ) I also have a couple of RCF 310's and i have used them for bass, either as floor monitors or for small gigs just one as my bass 'rig'. They work fine but the problem is the floor reinforcement. On poles the bass sounds great but the extra bass reflected on the floor makes them very boomy and you have to roll the bass right off. I'd expect the same problem with the 15's as bass speakers but hey ho, you do have tone controls. We are moving using in-ears however and hope to lose the backline soon.

Without measuring gear I'd do the balancing of tops and subs with recorded music you know well. If you have good quality headphones then it's not a bad idea to compare the sound through the speakers with the headphone sound. you want your PA to be as flat as possible and then make choices about how the instruments balance. If your bass steps up or down at the crossover then it's going to give you a shelf in response. Thats going to make any instrument with a lot of bass content sound odd and mean applying conventional eq won't easily sort out the issues.

@LukeFRC you are a hero. im so pleased you got there with this project @glambass

True, in the development we listened to a lot of female vocals to check the midrange was honest. Sade did sound good. As did Dolores Keane

Would you need two? I've never taken two along to a gig and never needed to. The Faital 320 is a really nice driver, there are a few high end speakers using the Faital 300 and one or two using the 320. It has a really good excursion capability as well as a well-controlled frequency response. It can handle a lot of bass. On top of this the BC Mk3 uses a much higher quality Celestion horn driver than almost all other bass cabs and a sophisticated crossover so the mids are smoother, accuracy where you need it and no tizz. This is a top of the range cab There are a few issues with stacking any 2 way bass cab. This one has been designed to cut down beaming caused by interference between widely spaced drivers. As soon as you introduce extra drivers you get interference between them called comb filtering. You can reduce that by getting the horns as close together as possible so vertically You'd have the top cab upside down. Stacked horizontally you'd have the horns vertically aligned. That would reduce the problems but not entirely eliminate them. These cabs have been engineered to help you hear all the frequencies equally well even when close to the cab. To avoid that experience you get live of it being very loud but you still can't hear what you are playing. Comb filtering would remove some of those frequencies so wouldn't help your experience as the bassist. It would of course be louder for the audience. Are you coming to the South West Bass Bash? You can try one of the Mk3's there.

This could be read any number of ways, was this just you without the band playing bass through the PA? If so that would only tell you a little about your PA. It may have been down to room acoustics. An empty hall with no audience can be incredibly reverberant so this may or may not have been a fair test. I sympathise with your frustration though. I know the Mackies and although they are more than matched by modern rivals they aren't bad sounding speakers. You ought to be able to get a pretty good sound out of them. Carlsbro though have a pretty poor reputation and they look like they are in far too small a box to be effective subs. They could be an issue. HPF on a bass at 70Hz is way too high. Another thought is that you haven't said how you set the relative levels on the subs and tops. The temptation is to set them to give a good thump rather than match the output. The idea is not that the bass is louder than the tops without subs but that it is at the same level but with the lower frequencies extended downwards in frequency and power handling of the whole system increased. At the crossover point the tops and subs should be at the same volume. Unless you have measuring equipment try playing a recording you know well through the PA and adjust the levels to make the bass sound as natural as possible at low/medium volumes. If you can't reproduce recorded music well then you are only going to find it difficult to impossible to create a good sound from the band. Moving on to a possible speaker upgrade. Until recently we used QSC K12-2's for our PA. In typical pubs I could run bass through them at high enough levels to work well. These were providing all of the FOH sound but I had a little Hartke as an on-stage monitor. Since then our singer left and took her QSC's with her so I've recently bought a couple of RCF 745's They'll do most of our gigs including kick and bass at high volumes without needing subs or backline. I have subs but I've only taken them out once in three years. You just don't need them for the average British pub gig. I'm not sure that answers your basic question, whether you need to buy new PA speakers. I think that is probably up to you but you ought to be able to get at least a reasonable sound out of what you have. If you decide to upgrade then I'd probably spend on some really capable tops and only add the subs if experience says you are struggling at more than one of your venues.

We use a similar setup but with RCF310's for my duo. The bass sound I get out of the speakers on the poles is the best I've had playing live. The problem is that the speakers are designed to be on poles and the monitors on the floor have so much bass they are difficult to use as it drowns out the vocals. that is now solved by eq in the new mixer but the old passive mixer wouldn't allow different eq for the aux out. Thats with a duo however and a recorded drum track. I doubt you'd be quite there with a couple of 10's for FOH if you have anything but a very restrained drummer.

I've had recent success with Joinmyband. We advertised there and had 10 replies. two only wanted to dep and we auditioned five, the other three couldn't make it on the day but were serious possibilities. All had played with previous gigging bands. Two turned out to be exceptional. I've always struggled to find drummers in the past so maybe we just lucked out or maybe there are a shortage of gigging bands. Your problem is going to be lack of gigs, there aren't many drummers who just want rehearsals with a couple of gigs a year. I've never found a drummer who actually enjoys rehearsal but maybe that's unlucky. The trick I think is careful wording of any ad. Be clear in what you want and don't want, and what you have to offer in return. We have a six year history of paid gigs roughly every other week apart from covid and dates already in the diary which helps. We didn't want anyone without experience so we asked for links to their bands and video/recordings. We met some very nice people and it was a shame we had to choose just one.

I've gigged with my Gnome. It's plenty loud enough for the average pub and as an on-stage monitor if you have a little PA support for the bigger gigs. People forget that we used to gig with 100 and 200W bass amps. Or that volume is heard in decibels not watts. (at a given frequency if you want to be pedantic) Going from 200W to 400W sounds like a big jump but going from 117db to 120db sounds hardly worth paying for, though that's what you'd get with an averagely efficient speaker. I wonder how many of us would pay double for a car with an extra 3mph top speed. especially since we normally drive at an average 50mph on a good day.

It's good to know that the doctors don't give up on even old buggers like us. Good luck with the surgery. Hope it goes well and you are back to doing all the things you love.

I must resist……. Resistance is futile. Oh well! The cab is doing the heavy lifting all you need to do is make sure your cage doesn’t make a noise of its own. Anything you put on the back/sides just needs not to rattle. Glue your wooden slats in place well and they aren’t.going to make a noise or move independently of the panels, they may even stiffen up the cab which would be a good thing. The bars just need to be properly secured, I doubt whether the metal bars would be moved more than a metal grille so unless they rattle they won’t make a noise. The only problem might be resonance. They could act like the bars of a glockenspiel. You could kill that with exactly the same method you use to damp bass strings. Mute the vibration by resting something soft against them part way along their length. Frankly just build it and see what happens, I doubt you’ll have any major problems.

I haven't read all the posts so someone may have already given this answer. Why not contact @Ashdown Engineering? They are just the most helpful people and they will know. I love Bass Chat but really; arguing about how flat 'flat' actually is probably wasn't helpful.

Yeah I've wondered if there isn't a little bit of HPF filtering of the lowest frequencies as I've not had the low rumble at any of the venues I've played recently. I'm hoping to do a bit of response measuring of amps at the SW bass bash in a few weeks' time so I'll check it out then if possible. Ha ha it does look a bit silly perched on the 112, just about acceptable on the 110T I suppose it could go on a pedalboard

Oh well, I've bitten. The Gnome is my preferred amp nowadays. It sits in my hard case and I'm increasingly appreciative of its solidity. I've changed the way we do sound too with bass pretty much always going through the PA. I've also gone over to using cabs with a tweeter alternating between a single 110T and a single 112T which is slightly louder. I also carry a Peavey MiniMax 500W amp which is what I mean to use. I almost always end up using the Gnome though, it sounds better. It's just a flat neutral sound without all the tonal options of the Peavey but I'm using my Zoom B1ON to do tone shaping so I don't need the Peavey's bells and whistles, or the super noisy fan either. The Gnome has the least noisy fan of any amp I've tried. The Gnome so far has always been loud enough. Last week we auditioned 5 drummers, all different levels of aggression with the sticks. I took the Gnome (no PA just floor monitors) with the 112 turned up high and immediately turned it down where it stayed all evening. No problems at all. Not 'shortly' but .... The Gnome gets warm in use, even at home practice levels though it doesn't get much warmer at gig levels in summer heatwaves. The metal body acts as a heatsink, helped by the fan and there is a limit to how small you can go. The inside of the amp is fairly crowded too. If you doubled the power you'd need to think about doubling the amps surface area to maintain the internal temperature

OK that sounds good Ive just bought some RCF ART745’s so how about an FRFR versus others comparison. I’ve two identical PA amps so running four speakers against the RCFs would be simple. Alternatively I could run four amps through the most neutral speaker I can find to do an amp shootout Your call

Do we want a shootout this year? In past years it hasn’t been great in the side room where the acoustics are awful. I’m thinking of trying a shootout in the main hall for maybe 20-30 mins. We could compare speakers or amps. It could then involve everyone but would disrupt normal proceedings. I could do it after lunch when you’ll be to full to move anyway 😊

I went through this process a few months back. I decided for me I wanted a tool for the job I had in mind rather than a mass of bells and whistles I wouldn’t use. I play in two bands, a four piece and a duo and I’ve never played in anything bigger than a five piece. We play small venues and mix ourselves so it is set and forget. We rarely tweak front of house once we’ve got a reasonable mix. Space on stage is always an issue. Going digital was the first decision. A small footprint stage box solves a lot of space issues and speeds set up. Being able to save settings for the next gig is brilliant and I have saved settings for both bands and for rehearsals where we have a different set up. With a four piece we needed four vocal mics, three instrument mics and we rarely mic drums but would use a three mic technique if we did. Spare channels are great but I’d never used the ten channels on my old analogue mixer in six years. Biggest issues for me were convenience, reliability and ease of use. We also wanted to go in-ears so plenty of aux channels were must haves. I went for the RCF M18. It’s tiny, has a great router unlike rivals and stunningly intuitive software. More features than I’ll ever use at a gig and it sounds good. It’s not as versatile as the Behringer, only recording in stereo but there is almost no learning curve to operate it. The software is seamless, no glitches and the things you need to hand are just where you need them. The menu structure means nothing is more than two clicks away. I looked at the Behringer X18, sound raft and Zoom as well. They all have pluses, the Behringer is seriously flexible and I liked the physical controls on the Zoom but for functionality with a small live band the M18 is a great practical solution. I like things that just work.

I’ll show you mine 😏

I'm not sure, but JBL are ridiculously overclaiming to be honest. You can't get 137db out of a 15" driver, 127db will cause permanent hearing damage in 1sec at this level and is about what you might hear close to the runway with a jet aircraft taking off never mind 137db which would involve 10x more acoustic power. The compression unit on the horn is 1.5" and power handling is going to be around 35W so the amp might be 750W but the one driving the tweeter is throttled down to 50W at least. That being said JBL are a reliable brand and make competent gear. I doubt they are much better sounding, if at all than the better Yammy's or RCF's but to be fair I haven't heard them.