Phil Starr

If you wanted to do something like this you can get Jacks with switches on, you used to be able to get ones with change over/2 way switching but I've not seen those recently.

I've just spoken to DV247 they can't believe their luck that Thomann have taken this decision, apparently their (DV247) sales are way up and I guess the UK based traders will be sharing Thomann's loss. It seems a bonkers business decision to let the customers have the worry/hassle TBH.

Don't try this at home! The ring is connected to the negative part of the circuit which is also connected to earth so your power supply would be seeing a dead short. If you did rewire so that the ring was connected to the positive supply rail you'd have to stick to a stereo TRS Jack (so no guitar leads allowed) and only switch on the power supply after inserting the plug to stop applying 9V to the amp input and shorting things as you moved the plug in and out. Since the problem is forgetfulness I don't think this is something you should patent

What you remember is correct. the problem isn't one of directionality, sounds at those frequencies are omnidirectional and also not a problem of phase cancellation. If you ram the port hard against the wall it would block it. Slightly further out it could create some back pressure on the port but further out even by a few cm the effect will disappear. For downward facing ports there's normally a small adjustment to the port calculations to allow for that configuration and using one side facing would change the tuning away from the designers target, as would changing the length of the feet but probably not by much. you really don't need to worry about this but if anyone is interested airflow around the port ends is affected by the termination. The internal end of the port is assumed to be in free air and the external one flush with the baffle and only radiating into 180o Design software like WinISD makes allowances for this in it's calculations but this is usually only a fraction of a cm. That might only change the tuning by a few Hz and this is of a similar magnitude to the sorts of manufacturing spread of speakers or the inaccuracy of some of the published specifications of speakers. So yes it's there but not usally significant. Even the output impedance of the amp and the resistance of your speaker leads can alter tuning. By and large these are not huge issues in practice but with the Basschat designs we check and sometimes adjust the tuning of the ports when we build the prototypes and those are what we publish. As a rule of thumb I'd say that if you can slide your hand down the back of the speaker to pug in a lead you are comfortably far enough away from the wall.

It looks like your baffle is just screwed on and could come off easily. You've also got to fill the slot port from the looks of it. I would be tempted to cut a new baffle and place the speaker further down to make space for the horn if the baffle is detachable. It might work out quicker than having to do a lot of fiddling around. Another option would be to fit the port on the rear panel, sound wise it would work just as well there.

TV's and other entertainment gear goes into standby mode and you could use that but it would add to the cost and the current drawn when you aren't playing is so low there would hardly be any point. I frequently forget to unplug and the batteries still last me round a year. I have a routine of giving my actives a Christmas present of a new battery and I've never had a failure yet. DUring lockdown I went to May before the battery failed in my John East equipped J. The fender P is still going strong. If you are forgetting the plug you will forget a switch so it's unlikely to help. A little LED is not a bad idea and any competent tech could fit you something easily enough. You'd be able to buy a lot of batteries with the cost though. A bicolour LED with green for a good battery and red for one nearing the end of it's life would be brilliant of course. The pre-amp in my acoustic guitar has an LED.

I'll be there, no idea what I'll bring. I probably haven't built it yet.

I have a Burny (made by Fernandes) Thunderbird copy. It is beautifully made and plays really well too. It's way better made than any Gibson I've seen but I'm not sure I don't prefer my old Gibson. The Fernandes one is kind of too good, the finish is really high gloss and the sound is kind of tidied up and a bit more generic than the original but with a real thump that sounds great. The balance is way better than the original. It's as if they really couldn't bring themselves to do something as rough and unfinished as Gibson. It's Gibson taken to a luthier and sorted. I only paid £125 for it though (it had a couple of easily fixed dinks) What i'm saying is expect the quality to be exemplary but that might be a highish price unless further research shows others going for that sort of amount. It looks like it has gone though.

Brilliant, have a great evening.

We've just done our first gig back at a pub we've played before. An odd sort of do a kind of hybrid between a wedding party and a brewery mini festival. We'd had a couple of rehearsals but the rust was still present and we've immediately booked more rehearsals. the punters as ever didn't seem to notice. My goodness it was good to be back. We've got another 5 bookings this year with an apparently steady flow of enquiries. The pubs are largely absent at the moment so these are outdoor events mainly, and from previous bookers. Full marks to @skidder652003 @Happy Jack and @Silvia Bluejay for getting out there and working at it. I'm optimistic about next year, a lot of our regular pubs have closed/changed hands and a lot of bands have folded too. I suspect there is a generation of older musicians who will have retired from regular gigging, A lot of faces disappeared in the last few years before COVID and this will make up some people's minds to join them. Driving everything though will be the desire for people to go out and be at a live event. If I were a pub I'd be waiting and watching but I think when it happens there will be a rush and the bands that are prepared and ready will be in demand. I also agree that it's not the time to push prices, we need to give the venues a break and help build confidence. good luck all.

Hi Jon, the resistance of the grille cloth is something I've thought about but never done any investigation of. We had a mouse problem once and I added some nylon over the end of the ports to stop them getting in, I didn't notice a change in their performance. The grille is clear of the port end of course. There is a bigger effect i would have thought on the horn output and I know that is clearly audible when you remove the grille from a hi-fi speaker. Reversing the connection of the horn compression driver is quite common. The crossover components shift the phase of the sound so that a conventional even order crossover there is always cancellation at the crossover point and a dip in the frequency response, if you go back in the thread you can clearly see this in the frequency response plot Stevie measured. Reversing the connection puts the signal in phase and you'll get a peak. That's all assuming that the cone behaves like a piston and has no phase issues of it's own, and of course we went for a simple HPF to bring the horn in as the Pulse naturally started to roll off. Generally speaking it's less obtrusive to have a dip than to have a spike in the response which will make certain notes jump out at you but as a self builder you can decide which you prefer. With my hi-fi designs I certainly try both and I've tweaked PA speakers by trying this in the past. I did try with this speaker (I'm an inveterate fiddler) and it is better this way round IMO. Looking forward to your build and hope you love the speaker. All I can say is that when I'm testing it I end up forgetting the speaker and just enjoy playing bass.

Funnily enough I've just done this to the prototype.

Does anybody else play with normally fallible human beings Here at the bottom end of the feeding pool I play with a lot of people who make mistakes, not often necessarily but in a 2 hour set it happens and usually several times. Often it's simple things about the structure of songs or forgetting a lyric or a cue. Almost inevitably there is a small pause as everyone adjusts, a fraction of a beat is usually enough but doesn't that throw you off the click even if you keep to strict tempo? I taught myself to play to a click early on because one of my instruction books told me to, and I do use a drum machine or metronome in practice from time to time. However it doesn't seem to be a widely learned skill. I've tried using a drum machine at rehearsals and found it rare for everyone to finish with the beat, it all starts well enough but a little bit of hesitancy from someone throws us off and the errors often accumulate. I find it really difficult as my instinct is to go with the 'drums' even if it is just a click. I'm staggered by the rest of the bands ability to just keep going when out of time with the drums. Has no-one else had that experience?

Funnily enough one of the things I'm playing around with at the moment is a pair of 6" cabs. Probably though I will end up with a single 10 and a lightweight horn. And thanks it would be good to hear what you come up with.

Mark Audio are Mark Bass. I've heard the PA system at the southwest bass bash and it is very good. It's a similar system to the RCF Evox i linked you to above. I've not gigged with either of those but I have gigged with the LD Maui system which is similar and that worked well. Frankly I think this system is the future for most of us. The subs are also the stands and you only have to slot the lightweight column on top and you are off. They send out a broad flat beam of sound which reaches all the audience better and the reduces reflections and increased directionality reduce feedback problems. They are simpler to set up, look better, sound at least as good and there is no chance of a 25kg speaker on a flimsy stand braining one of the dad dancers. However they ain't cheap

Here you go The IEM Bible thread - Accessories and Misc - Basschat

This is right IMO. I've used Servisol since the 70's. It is a great product for broken pots and it will often shift dirt and stop crackling. It's a gentle solvent and rarely does damage but all it does is shift dirt around and sometimes makes things worse, it also leaves a residue so doing this once a year to a pot that is previously faultless isn't a good idea. It's a get you out of trouble thing with long term risks not something to do for no good reason. You wouldn't take a morning after pill or a laxative if you didn't need to

You'll get so much more than that. Good in ears will block out most of the ambient sound on stage and protect your hearing. Most of us play with a drummer and the sound levels average around 100db or higher where we stand. 2 hours of that is enough to cause hearing loss and that will be cumulative. It's almost impossible to get good monitoring on stage. fundamentally all the musicians will be after 'more me' but as you share the same space that means you are all competing for volume. In ears mean you can turn up (or down) anything you want and not affect anyone else. You can take a signal from your bass at any stage, straight from the bass, after all the tone controls, at the amp output to the speakers or by miking the speakers themselves. Most amps have a DI (direct injection) output which is switchable pre or post eq. If you don't have that then you can use a DI box to split the signal and give you a feed to your mixing desk or your in ears. The best way of running in-ears is via the auxiliary outputs from your mixing desk. You can then mix the balance you want there and send that to your 'phones. That assumes your desk is sophisticated enough to allow each person who wants it a separate aux channel. If not you'll have to split the signals from your personal mic and bass before sending them to the desk and have a personal mixer for your in ears. You'll also want a feed of the band so you know what they are doing too but there are usually plenty of ways of feeding a front of house mix to you from the mixer. There's a long thread on IEM's I'll add a link. It's a bit techie in places but it's a good place to ask questions and you'll get practical advice.

My guess is that they lost a couple of kg with the neo tweeter in the 745 and a bit more in the plate amp.

Thank you both, it confirms a lot of what I was thinking. I was blown away by the phone app for the Ui with the 'more me' facility and the ability to restrict access which was really very neat. I think I'll go back to the M18 for now and run it for a year or two, if I change bands and need more channels I won't lose too much and I'll have had use of it for hopefully a lot of gigs. In the meantime I'll have learned what I really need and how to get the best out of it.

I dither too much but I'd decided on the M18 (it's the solution for my current needs and i can sell it if I want more functionality) When I went to order it was out of stock at Andertons. One of the alternatives I hadn't looked at in this price bracket is the Soundcraft Ui16. Having a look at the software it looks to have more functionality and more mic channels and a nice intuitive feel, though more complex than the M18. A minor attraction is that it will operate with Windows so I won't need to acquire another tablet. Has anyone used/had a look at one of these?

Using a smaller speaker is a good shout if you are using subs anyway, lifting a 15 onto a stand when you are filtering out the bottom octave from your tops doesn't make a lot of sense, though we all do it so we can use the tops on their own for smaller gigs. If you are happy to just wheel in the subs and it is only the lift that worries you then one of the line source arrays might work for you. Like the RCF Evox series RCF Evox 12 Compact Portable PA System | PMT Online Interestingly there are very few PA speakers in the mid price range that offer neo bass drivers and using ceramic magnets on big bass units is always going to mean a heavy cab as a result.

There's another thread on this where it was answered in some detail. A service is something you do to a car and involves changing the oil, topping up fluids checking moving parts and brake pads. Your amp has no fluids or moving parts so there just isn't anything to service. Save your money or spend it on a bass set up.

Just a thought but Mesa make valve amps (should that be tube as a USA brand?) If so there is an output transformer on the other side of those jacks and impedance matching is done by the transformer. So, for this particular amp connection this way is correct and avoids a mismatching load. The Ashdown is solid state so using both the parallel output sockets would be fine and so would this, but not with the Mesa. It's just unfortunate that this image was used. I do feel for the OP the first advice was fine and he only has one cab. I hope he plugged it in and just got on with playing. I did find one blurry picture of the back of a Mesa

OK that's fair enough, pubs in the UK are usually fairly small and 50 people in the space you are playing would be a very decent audience. A lot of our pubs are pretty old so tend to have low ceilings and be odd shapes where separate rooms have been combined to make bigger spaces. Bands tend to be weekend warriors like myself rather than pro musicians and the better bands often move on to function work with bigger venues. It isn't well paid over here and PA equipment is often basic with vocals only PA. That's why I mentioned that we are lucky enough to have PA that will handle a bit of bass when we need it, a lot of people will still want a bass amp that will be enough to reach an audience of up to 50 people and most of us in the UK are familiar with 'an average pub gig'. It was just a very rough guide to how capable this little speaker would be.