Phil Starr

We do, sorry for the thread derail guys. We played a wedding last weekend, large upper floor venue with all the windows and fire doors open so lot's of fresh air. The wedding party were ticked off by the manager when they did get up to dance. Lot's of arm waving from their seats and some singing along but it all felt very safe and it was really good to be back. It's slightly strange when your set is designed to get people dancing and they can't. I did suggest revising some of the slower stuff we've ditched to get to our dance set but the rest of the band just wanted to stick to the set we were developing before all this happened.

No, but it is the currently fastest growing disease because once again we have failed to sufficiently control it. Given a few more weeks of inaction it will be back at the top, clogging up hospitals again. This constant stop start is destroying more jobs than actual proper hygiene measures would. There's a new study reported in this weeks New Scientist that shows that countries like Australia that have pursued an elimination strategy have lost far fewer jobs. Their entertainment and arts industries are in far better shape than ours and over the last 15 months our liberties have been far more restricted than those who take much stronger measures earlier. I'm happy to re-run well worn arguments but I'm afraid by confusing Australia's 25 a day outbreak for our 20,000 a day steadily growing infection rate you are spreading disinformation put out to be fair in the national media and fuelled by politicians who have failed at any stage to fully understand the situation they have failed to manage. Not a party political point by the way but a comment upon competence. I'm sure you are as frustrated as I am about what is happening but If we had taken the action New Zealand and others have taken whilst developing the vaccines we would have suffered less and had a lot more normal including live music in the meantime.

Yesterday Australia had 25 new cases which they see as a major outbreak worth controlling. the UK has 20,479 confirmed new cases. Over the past year we have been in full lockdown (but poorly done) for a lot longer than they have and for most of the time for example have had a country completely untouched by Covid, crucially for basschatters we would all have still been able to gig. In fact countries who have seriously followed an elimination policy have lost far fewer days have had their liberties less curtailed and their economies more or less unaffected. If they get this lock down right then next week they will have fewer than 25 infections and be able shortly to go back to normal (not new normal) living. We are seeing the infections double every few days so in just over a week expect 40,000 new infections, then 80,000 until we are forced once again to go into what may be more months of lockdown. The trick is to react quickly with the aim of elimination, you won't keep the whole world out but you limit the damage and it's far easier to contain an outbreak of 25 people ant their contacts than 20,000+. You can track and trace a few thousand people a day but we've never managed to get the numbers low enough for track and trace to work. If only we too lived on an island

Hurrah, it all arrived this morning, UPS delivered it all bang on time. I haven't had time to try the mixer but the led lights all work and they are nicely made and do what it says on the tin. Their own brand and really good value. So what have I learned. Brexit is causing problems with imports without a doubt and somebody messed up, possibly the first courier, possibly DV247 probably the paperwork. If you order from DV247 you are ordering from Germany and that is less straightforward than before. Lot's of people are having similar experiences and others find it problem free. If you want something quickly and reliably then order from the UK or if you have the option direct from a local shop. It's going to be a while before Brexit induced import problems are sorted (and I do have sympathy for all the co's UK and German who had no time to deal with this and didn't ask for it, less for Weatherspoons who did). I struck lucky when my second call was picked up by Jo (female) who was smart and effective (thanks Jo if anyone from DV247 sees this) DV247 need to sort their communication out both human and on-line even their own UK staff find it all confusing though they were always pleasant and tried to be helpful. I'm going to order two more lights, they are excellent, I want matching ones and nobody else does them at anything close to the price so I'm not traumatised by the process but I'll chase more quickly if things go astray and accept that the delivery time is likely to be weeks not days. Most of our gigs are open air so I'm not expecting to use them in anger for a while.

I'm growing used to this a bit now, I've still got to spray the grille frame black but an extra coat of Tuff Coat has improved the finish since I took this pic. I wish the cloth had been black ad gold as advertised not black and brown but i can live with it. Anyway I'm still testing it and I had a gig yesterday, a wedding with about 60 people in a well ventilated and quite large hall. Decent PA support and Covid restrictions on volume so i decided a good chance to run out the 110T as on-stage monitor. Our drummer didn't get the memo about volume but the 110T could still be heard and the PA did the rest (just a pair of QSC12's no subs) We have a proper sound engineer now. He said something interesting when I asked about whether it had been enough from his point of view front of house. "I can't believe that little cab, it's the best bass sound I've ever worked with". What really? In normal non-Covid times the guy works with touring bands at festivals and in musical theatre, but I guess from his point of view it's just what he wants. The basic sound is clean and really rather sweet, it sounds like a bass with no sonic nasties to clean up, nothing to trouble the vocal mics and just enough to hold the on-stage sound together. It sits well in the mix and the basic sound is excellent. (and it is nice, I love playing it at home with my Peavey Minimax) OK it's a simple little thing, it's only a 200W speaker and the components come it at only around £100 but I am so warming to it. I can carry in my complete rig in one go. Amp in a shoulder bag, speaker in one hand bass in the other. The bass is heavier and more awkward than the cab. Plug it in everything set flat and it just sounds right from the get go. You wouldn't expect a single 10 to hold up the bass end unsupported but it's only a little way off and it's enough to be your on-stage monitor and cope with anything short of a rock band. Did i say it sounds nice?

Meanwhile my in-ears/headphones arrived from China no problems.

Yep it's just getting odder. The money not has been credited to my account and I've had a subsequent message that the goods are on the way. This time via UPS. UPS say they have picked up the parcel which is a good sign. I'm hoping the new German displays of inefficiency spread to their football team

I'm with you on this, I'm into lyrics in the songs I listen to and the ones I play and get very uncomfortable about those lyrics sometimes. For each of us it is something different; I have no problem with Delilah which for me is just telling a story but i have huge problems with a lot of rap which is frequently misogynistic as others have said. Don't Stand So Close? Well I used to be a teacher when it was released and I find that deeply disturbing, things went on then that we rightly see as a disgrace now. Every Step you Take is pretty out there too, though you could make an argument that Sting is not holding this up as something to be proud of. A lot of old blues songs are pretty suspect in the attitudes to women, somehow because it's not my generation I respond to that as just being historic and a reflection of how things have changed. Brown Sugar is an interesting one. Whether it was written about Claudia Linnear or Marsha Hunt it's pretty clear that with a couple of successive girlfriends Jagger had a thing about Brown Sugar. Remember that as late as 1967 mixed race marriage was illegal in most US states. There would probably have been a big element of forbidden fruit about all this for a South London middle class boy like Jagger. Black people were seen as being defined in large part by their sexuality and we know from interviews that Jagger knew a lot about the history of slavery. I remember when it came out I just thought 'you lucky B*****d'. So is this a positive song about his black partner(s) from somebody quite liberated by the standards of 1970 or is the lazy association of black women with sex and slavery deeply racist? The trouble is that you know it's wrong. Once you've seen that and asked yourself the question you know the answer. I don't judge the people who just sing it without asking the question, it is a great pop song but I couldn't play it. Is it racist? i think probably unintentionally but it is.

yes, though last night was interesting, Messages that they are there from 10.00 to 18.00 Mon-Fri I got through at 17.00 and opted for ring back. It hadn't happened by 5.30 so I rang back myself and was then cut off every time at the end of the 10.00-18.00 message, presumably they'd gone home.

Well at my end it is just getting weirder. I've just had an email telling me about an automatic refund referring to a form I didn't fill in because it was with the package I didn't receive which was returned for reasons unknown to me. Meanwhile I spoke to a very nice lady in romford who told me she would check my goods were dispatched immediately which she had re-ordered and get back to me, which she hasn't. I'm checking my account to see if the money has gone back in.

DV247 are having problems, steer clear of them until they are sorted I ordered an RCF mixer and a couple of LED bars from them at the beginning of the month. None of the UK suppliers had the mixer in stock and we had a gig coming up and I thought it a chance to try it out in anger. The site says DV247 UK and they have the Romford branch plus I've dealt with them before, pre-Brexit. You know where this is going, the goods didn't arrive. I got the usual email with a tracking no. telling me the goods were on their way. Saw they were being dispatched from Germany, not the UK which made me slightly concerned and saw that there was a note saying there might be a short delay. Our gig passed and I was in no rush so I waited. Then I got an email from the delivery co. that the goods were returned, no reason given. On Sat I rang DV247 on their UK no and was promised "no problem, the goods would be sent out first thing this week, upgraded to 24hr delivery as they had let me down". Then no contact and no dispatch note so I've chased again. Again very pleasant but no record of Saturdays conversation. "I'll look into it and ring you back". No call so far so I go online and it seems everyone is having problems. Germany not contacting Romford. People not being reimbursed for non-delivered orders. staff fobbing people off with clear untruths and broken promises. The most worrying thing is reports of people struggling to get their money back. There was a thread on this back in Feb and I assumed then it was just Brexit teething problems. It's possible my order was returned through some minor irregularity with the paper work but with my experience and the reviews online I'd have to recommend you don't order through DV247. I'll let you all know if it gets sorted Is anyone else having problems? Has anyone successfully placed an order in the last month or two?

For the OP yes this is spot on. You don't need to worry as all of this has been taken care of by @stevie in the design stage. For anyone interested you'll notice that we always talk about a speaker's impedance but measure it in ohms, which is resistance. That's because the resistance of a speaker and the crossover components change with frequency. Capacitors resist low frequencies and inductors resist high frequencies. The speaker has a coil in it of course so that is an inductor too and it's resistance to the amp's power rises with frequency. The amp 'sees' a higher impedance. In this case we have a capacitor in series with the horn tweeter which limits the bass and an inductor coil across the horn which shorts out or bleeds off the treble. The horn is louder than the 10" speaker so there is a resistor too, which reduces the horn driver's output. The trick is to match everything up so that at the crossover point there is enough 'resistance' to cut the output to each driver by half so the combined output stays the same across the frequency range. One little point of detail is that the speaker is a really complex load with an impedance that varies at just about every different frequency. Stevie doesn't just rely on theoretical figures in designing his crossovers but by measuring each driver and building prototypes and then measuring frequency responses. It isn't rocket science but a lot of care goes into a simple circuit like this.

Thanks for your support Russ, genuinely it has helped. You don't know who is following this thread and thinking of moving to in -ears. I think for most of us it's a combination of some genuine concerns and a bit of inertia. OK a lot of inertia, and that's why I wanted to put up a bit about my 'journey'. It's really simple as a gigging musician to stick to what you know and for most of us that is fill the room with backline, vocals through the PA and vocal monitors are a luxury extra that the singer can sort if they want. If you are my age it's what we did in the 70's and it kind of works, a lot of old bands provide a good enough sound for the audience to just enjoy the music. The biggest cost is that you progressively lose your hearing. So for me, I've never been reluctant, it has been about finding time to do the leg work. just like choosing your forever bass or your ideal bass amp this all takes time and some thought. Like trying out basses or a new set list it is fun though. For me I wish I'd makde finding the in-ears a priority. You really have to find something that fits and gives a good seal, it doesn't work if you can't cut out the stage noise. Our ears are all different shapes and the provided ear buds probably aren't going to work. You wouldn't expect shoes to fit if they only made small medium and large and our ears vary as much as feet. I found my fit with ear plugs, for years i struggled with the memory foam ones for building work but the ERS triple flange musicians ones fitted perfectly first time. Moulded ones I'm sure would be even better but that's a hell of a step up in price. If I'm still using them in a year I might try buying some custom ones but it's a big cost for something you might not use and can't sell on either. The other big thing is the mixer, if you only have a couple of Auxes then individual monitoring isn't an option. Digital mixers are now almost the same price as analogue and will soon be cheaper. They probably are already for the same level of control. My Yamaha MG16xu is £380 and the replacement RCF M18 is £339, way more options/flexibility and 6 auxes, so individual monitors for the whole band. My hearing is shot, it's been accumulating for a while probably but 5 years ago it was better than most people's, now I struggle to pick out conversation in a noisy room. I'd say to anyone who plays with a drummer to go in-ears for that reason alone. The fact it will make you play and sing better and improve your bands sound, well that is just a bonus.

You won't be getting the full benefit then, though its obvious why you do it that way if you are also trying to manage front of house sound. We've got a sound man in. Our guitarist used to teach him so he's not expensive (though the deal is he takes a share of the fee as if he were a band member) Our gamble is that we will sound better, improve our playing and singing and get better gigs as a result. I'm wondering about asking to try a FOH mix in my in ears. For bass I know that is what I'd prefer. I'm a 'pocket' player so listening to the rest of the band in my monitor is more important to me than haing my bass enhanced. As an occasional backing singer though I really need more me for the vocals. With my duo I do the mixing and I do use front of house for the monitor feed. It's much simpler though as we have no drums and of course only two of us

You are going to be very disappointed with me Russ. The good news is that at last nights rehearsal (who'd ever imagine a gigging band rehearsing on a Saturday before Covid) we all had in-ears. We've never played better and that is down to the monitoring, There is absolutely no substitute for being able to hear properly. The real revelation though was the headphones. A pair of KZ ZSN Pros. I'd ordered them by mistake, or rather by slightly dodgy Chinese advertising. They were advertised as ZS10's but for £13 shipped from Shenzen. Predictably when they arrived they weren't as advertised , but before i returned them i had a listen. They are loud! The mid-range is more forward as well and vocals jump out at you. The fit is a dream and they are slightly smaller than the ZS10's. I tried them as monitors yesterday and frankly for me they blow the ZS10's out of the water. I had to mix the vocals back a bit and the guitar and also reduce the gain overall but everything was crystal clear. The bass was nice, not as forward as the ZS10's and the treble is a bit harsh but as a monitor so much clearer. They still have a smiley face eq but not as extreme as the ZS10 and as i say i had to turn down the volume which achieved painful levels. So for anyone yet to embark upon this route very usable in-ears, especially good if you sing as well as play bass and at £13 no excuses. Remind me how much I paid for my RCF ART10 floor monitors

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.