Phil Starr

As a tech question there's a fairly simple answer. If you can't use the PA then you need more than stage monitoring levels. Your 2x7 would probably do the stage monitoring but not the room filling. To do that you need something like 120dB plus so you need a reasonably efficient speaker. Efficiency combined with good handling of the lower frequencies comes from cone area and better magnet/motor systems. You can get small light 12" based speakers that will do this but they tend towards the expensive, technically it's towards the limits of what is possible with current tech and that adds cost. If you want to release as much money as possible I'd be looking at a 2x10 or a 15 as the cheapest way of achieving a single speaker solution. Alternatively go for a reasonable 12 but expect to have to add a second if you start gigging again and funds allow. There's an Ashdown Rootmaster 115 for sale down here for £120 for example, that's too far for you to collect obviously but it is an example of what you might expect to pay.

The how is really simple, suck it and see. I tried the frequency response at 40,50,60 and 70Hz which brackets the range of tunings which were likely to work. Then I knew 50 was too low and 60 too high. Halve again and try 55 then try the in between again until you are happy. Too low and you get a shelving response, too high and you get a big peak just above tuning. It's best in WinISD to open a second project by clicking on new and then loading in the same driver then you can actually see what difference it makes when you make a change I'm sorry I didn't save the actual values when I re-booted my computer but from memory at 100W there were no excursion problems above 50Hz If you decide to build I'm happy to check your values

Following this with interest. I've been using the ZS10's and I can't say I'm happy with them as IEM's. They have a real fun sound for everyday listening but the bass is just too much for me when monitoring and also lacking in detail, it's all a bit one note. For singing they really lack the mids I need and with the scooped sound I can't pick out the rest of the band how I'd like. On gigs so far (remember them) I've ended up swapping them out for my cheapo Sennheisers or just removing them altogether and going back to earplugs and a floor monitor. It looks to me like the response of the MX3's might be what I'm looking for. It would be great to hear from you as to how you get on with them once you've had them a few weeks.

These are the responses you'd get with those two drivers in 40l. the Sica is in green. I've tuned them to give the flattest response each will give

At this point it might look like, as in the words of the song "logical advice get's you in a whirl" but actually I think we are quite close. The Pulse would work well in your cab and isn't too expensive. If you went for it you have the advantage of a well worked out matching horn and crossover, if you went for porting the Sica the crossover/horn Stevie designed wouldn't match but you could get an acceptable result with the right tuning, (around 52-55Hz looks good for that solution) and you'd save the cost of the Pulse. That's kind of a choice for you as it's your money and time. There are of course a number of other drivers that would work well in a 40l cab, I only picked out the Pulse because we used it in a recent design and I know that it works well in a cab your size. I too wondered if the cab you have is as original, it's an odd driver to choose for a sealed cab and that piezo does not look right, it might be worth pinging an email across to @Ashdown Engineering and asking. They are really helpful people. I think you probably need to sleep on everything and then make the design choice. If you decide not to go for the two way design then of course it may not be worth spending money on a new speaker.

I'd run the Sica through winISD and come to the same conclusion, the cabinet is over-sized and it isn't suitable for a sealed cab. Tuning it higher makes more sense 55Hz looked a good compromise to me but that's a matter of what you are trying to achieve. TBH It's a bit too good to waste in an over sized cab, it's a nice speaker. What would probably work really well there would be the Celestion Pulse 10 assuming you have the volume about right. I also notice you have a horrible piezo tweeter in there. it would be a considerable improvement to fit a decent horn and tweeter. Why not put in the components we used in the Lockdown Easy Build project? You'd end up with a really nice sounding combo for a modest cost. If you decide to go that route we'll check the dimensions for you. Oooh looks like Stevie has replied, wonder what he's saying?

Welcome to the world of speaker design, you squeeze a parameter somewhere and a new problem pops up. Rarely do you come up with the ideal design where your speaker never exceeds excursion limits, can handle all the the thermal power it is rated at goes down to 40Hz or whatever your target is and has a tiny practical cabinet with a conveniently sized port. There are a couple of things in your favour however. The output from a bass pickup isn't flat and the lower frequencies are always attenuated, how much varies and is determined by how close to the bridge the pups are positioned. That means you'll get some chuffing at quite low powers from a signal generator but less from a bass played at decent volumes. As you've noticed the ports in a lot of commercial cabs are sub-optimal for the same practical reasons you are encountering. They are successful if the compromises are carefully chosen ( and nobody notices ) One thing to try is to see if an HPF might help, WinISD lets you model that. 45Hz also sounds quite low for a 10" speaker with a modest magnet in a cab that size. Try other tunings and keep looking at excursion and port velocities. Obviously this will also affect the frequency response and you'll lose deep bass but with a modest speaker I'd be more concerned with the response at 80Hz than 40. Get the second harmonic right and the cab is going to sound better than worrying about the barely heard fundamental. In the end you'll learn a lot from doing this, you may not end up with a great speaker though, it's almost certain there was a reason for putting this speaker in a sealed box and if you want a great ported 10 you probably wouldn't start here. Equally though you should get a bit more bass and you can always cover the hole over and go back to square one if you don't like it. Good luck

Ha ha, I earned part of my living repairing them and I even produced a short run of amps to try and sell. I have a jaundiced view. The problem was secondary breakdown of power transistors at high temperatures. The advent of power FET's solved the problem. I'm talking about things like the first WEM amps so late 60's, early 70's. By the late 70's most of the problems were solved. HH produced the first decently reliable solid state amps over here but even then I still have a box of power transistors I bought ready to do repairs. And yes 4x12's were the usual speaker of the time often loaded with Celestions or Fanes rated at 30 or 25W. They weren't particularly designed for guitar or bass and design was pot luck. There were open backed bass speakers for goodness sake. There wasn't a big choice available either so what worked was the order of the day. The nice thing was that without a lot of mass production I got to do a lot of custom builds. Really good fun but I shudder to think of the lack of any basic theory behind some of the designs.

That's true. I can if you want go into long and mind numbing detail on the science but as @Dad3353 says it has been done before In the days when Jimi was still alive and Marshall stacks were the go-to for guitarists there was a reason for the 18. Sheer volume and efficiency. Valve amps were heavy and expensive and the early transistor amps under powered and unreliable. Speakers generally had low power handling, at one point 12's would handle something like 25-30W only. PA's available to most bands were incapable of handling bass so the back line was used to reach even quite big audiences. Lots of cone area increases the amount of sound you get per watt and big cones are not only usually deeper but louder. To get bass heard live over 100W of guitar through two 4x12's you needed big speakers, lots of 10's or huge elaborate horn designs. 18's have gone not because they were 'bad' but because we don't need them. A single 12 will let you hear yourself and the PA can do the rest, any more than that simply ends up going through the vocal mic line and messing everyone's sound. Huge speakers look good though

If you like what you hear through 'phones then you probably ought to be looking at something with a flat response, FRFR. That would mean looking at using a PA speaker in all probability. Something like an RCF maybe. You may get more clarity by angling your existing speaker. You've said it's on the floor, so it is probably pointing at your legs rather than your ears. The mids and top frequencies are quite directional so the speaker need s to be pointing at your head for you to hear clearly what is going on, especially if you are close to the speaker when you are playing.

Sorry to hear about your health. It's a good time to be looking for a lightweight cab, the introduction of new magnet technology means that there are lots on offer and so you aren't stuck with one manufacturers 'sound'. My advice is to set a weight limit and make a shortlist of cabs under that weight then try them out until you find one you like. Sound is still important. We don't know what your budget is of course or what your attitude to new versus used is. The other thing to consider is moving your bass out of the backline and into the PA which someone else can carry. You can use a small bass amp just as your personal monitor, use a floor monitor or lightest of all just use headphones. All of these will have the advantage of lighter loads but will also improve the whole band's sound by cutting out the on stage noise levels. Though that will affect all the band members so you'd need some agreement on monitoring. hope you recover well

interesting isn't it? The best sounding amp I've ever owned was a Hartke HA 3500. there's a real theme growing here. I've also lived with a MB tube which was OK but just not special.

If you think about 'servicing' a car it is about lubrication changing filters and checking moving parts. None of this applies to an amp. Most amps don't have serviceable parts or even any adjustments that need periodic 'tuning'. The valve? Well they don't last forever but something like an ECC83is going to last years and a bit like light bulbs it's hard to predict exactly when they will go. Save your money

I've not tried them but they seem closely related to the Titan. John (chienmortbb) and I pulled them apart online over a couple of evenings. My Titan and his PSX. We were basically looking at the plate amps with a view to using them for other self built cabs. They are cheaper to buy than the plate amps on their own! A lot of this stuff uses pretty much the same electronics and so does this. The PSX is much heavier than the Titan and the amp for the tweeter is different. From the photos we took that night the magnet on the bass driver looks bigger on the PSX which would be a good thing. Wharfedale are a funny old company owned by a huge Chinese company who manufacture in Hong Kong but apparently engineering design done here and more engineering led than a lot of co's. Oddly Wharfedale who started in Yorkshire are much bigger around the world than in the UK. My guess it that it would be as loud as the Titan which would match the big brands for volume. I've no idea if it handles bass any better than the Titan but at modest levels John reckoned it sounded great. I suspect they'd sound very similar as most of the electronics and the horn driver are the same. Yes you'll lose money when you sell but at £125ea new how much can you lose, £50 per speaker? You'd probably lose roughly the same for the RCF312's which I really rate but which are twice the price. I've the 10" RCF's as monitors (ART 310's) and they are great and would be loud enough. The RCF's will handle bass.

I was really thinking of BassAdder here. I've no knowledge of these so I'm not saying they are good or bad. I just have an aversion to over claiming and this is way over the top. Sound on Sound are usually pretty good but they don't often slag any gear off either. Fohhn stuff is nice though.

Before we get too carried away the OP needs to come back and tell us more about his band. A lot of the recommendations so far would be inadequate for a band with rock band levels with even just a moderately loud drummer. The Yamaha Stagepas recommendation for example, I own and use a Stagepas 300, or rather I use the little mixer amp. Neither the 300 or 500 are anything like loud enough for band use, we did try the 300's as vocal monitors but you just couldn't hear them. the output is 113db and working with a drummer you need 120dB+. the 500 wasn't much louder. When they updated to the 400 and 600 they increased the sound output considerably and they might do the trick but i have to say I haven't tried those models. The 300 and 500 were really designed for acoustic and semi acoustic acts for which they are brilliant. Some of the Behringer speakers won't go loud enough either. I'm not anti-Behringer, I even recommended their mixers and the power amps work well if you want to buy speakers from Music Tribe you probably need to go to Turbosound which are more expensive. The Alto's are OK but don't sound as good as the Wharfedales and are pricier new. I'm dubious about that HH, it isn't 1600W. The maximum handling for a 12" speaker is around 300W. There's a lot of distorted claims with 1000W amplifiers supposedly being built into 12" PA speakers, all bunkum I'm afraid. Has anyone actually tried this speaker. The active mixer and passive speakers isn't a bad idea for used. Those Yamaha EMX's are great and combine them with the S112 Club Series speakers will give you a really serious Starter PA. the only difference between the S112IV and the S112V is speakons swapped for jacks in the later models internally they use the same Eminence drivers. Peavey made a similar mixer amp and the more powerful Behringer mixer amps are fine too. Avoid Peavey PA speakers, reliable but they never did the vocalists any favours. I searched eBay with the same search criteria i only got 170 hits for the UK half of which were for car parts with PA in the serial no's. I saw nothing under £200 I would gig with and in fact no complete band PA's at that price. even under £500 I couldn't find anything which was decent value for money. A lot of the stuff under £200 was broken though my hand slipped on a pair of broken actives i know how to fix

If you want new then you need to look at these Wharfedale Titan 12D 250W Active Speaker in Black - Andertons Music Co.. I have a pair I bought as floor monitors. We used them as PA mains for a couple of gigs just before lockdown instead of our usual QSC 12-2's putting vocals (three of us sing) and guitar through. Our drummer needs a booth rather than amplification and bass was from backline only. It was only as an experiment because said drummer bought a new car which won't carry drums plus PA and I didn't fancy . Umm this is embarrassing but for that use they eclipsed the QSC's which are five times the price. They are a little sweeter sounding and my goodness they go loud. The downside is the flimsy cab and lightweight bass driver mean they absolutely cannot handle bass. They also have an enhanced upper mid peak which means they don't work well as floor monitors due to feedback. On stands out front they are fine. The other strong point is that they are really lightweight, our female singer has no problem carrying them. I've also used them with a sub at open mic nights at genuine rock band volumes, relieved of the bottom octave by the subs they are great. I've had them six years without issues though they aren't my main PA. That takes up only half your budget. I used a Behringer 1204USB Behringer X1204USB Mixer - Andertons Music Co. mixer for years, compact and does the job, when I upgraded to a Yamaha MG I realised the difference better mic pre's make but they will do a job and you can often find used ones. There's also a Wharfedale PSX112 Wharfedale PSX112 350W Active PA Speaker - Andertons Music Co. which @Chienmortbb recently tried out. It's a lot heavier, probably has a better cab and the bass driver looks to have a bigger magnet. I haven't used one so no comment from me.

I've had no problems with Lidl's own brand rechargeables, I've some that are at least six years old I use with radio mics. The AA cells I use have been great too. I don't think I've had to throw any out yet. If you use rechargeables though carry spares. They cut off very suddenly when they do go flat I have a charger in my leads box too.

You haven't given a budget which makes all the difference. I'd advise getting the best active speakers you can. At the moment I think RCF as a brand probably lead the way in value and quality. Even their basic ranges sound good and their best are stunning for the money. QSC as mentioned are very good but perhaps a little rougher for vocals, Yamaha also are excellent. All three are very reliable. The American brands JBL and EV are still good but slightly coloured compared with the above. The 'standard' band set up will be a 12" speaker with horn. You can safely ignore the power ratings (wattage) they are pretty much all so over-specced that the rated wattages are meaningless. 12" speakers pretty much reach their full potential at around 300W being limited by the physical excursion limits of a 12" speaker. Claims of 1000W are basically just advertising huff. All of the above offer 12" speakers with roughly equal outputs and enough to bring your vocals up enough to be heard over the band. They'll also be able to cover the output from the rest of the band too with the possible exception of bass and kick drum. This of course will depend upon exactly what music you play, general guidelines here. Look for maximum sound levels here 128-133decibels are what will be claimed and anything in that region will be adequate. Even there though be sceptical, none of them will reach these levels except perhaps for short bursts of sound at certain frequencies and they all use different levels of caution in their claims.(ie none at all for the worst offenders) If you want something really cheap I've used the Wharfedale Titans successfully. They aren't particularly flat response and won't handle bass or drums, but for vocals only they are great, particularly female vocals. After sales service from Wharfedale is good too. The reality is there has never been a better time to buy, even the cheap stuff is way better sounding than gear of even 10-15 years ago Don't forget to budget for mics, stands, leads etc. as well as the inevitable mixer. Let us know the budget though

Sadly it wasn't part of my training. The maths seems to say if you want to win money become a bookie

I thought I'd revisit this. Interestingly no-one asked how I derived this foolish prediction. It's based entirely upon my very limited training in population dynamics, the maths of living populations. I studied r-rates at university. If you look at the date it was made without knowledge of the Kent variant. We had approved the Pfizer-Biontec but not Astra Zeneca when I did the calculations and Boris and Matt Hancock were still in charge. My calculations were entirely based upon rising herd immunity and r-rate predictions and that government behaviour would not improve. The calculations which I actually did at the end of November predicted a huge second peak in January (I predicted a median 2000 deaths a day at peak) and a third lockdown would take place. I assumed we would be capable of vaccinating as many people as we could get vaccines but I assumed supplies would be limited to around 500,000 a day. the contracts we had placed and government investment in research and facilities was widely reported. Since medical staff were the only ones who could safely do the job it would have to be managed by the NHS so was likely to be better managed than by Serco or G4S. So I shut up when the new variant was around, the infection rate rose earlier and more steeply than I expected but the government put us into lockdown in Dec a month earlier than I had predicted too, though still a week later than it should have been. January was carnage too and my death rate prediction held. I ran some numbers in Jan but there were too many unknowns to make reliable predictions with my limited resources. The actual numbers of immunised people which was the basis of my calculation was remaining quite accurate though, the Kent variant made sure herd immunity spread fast at the cost of many more dead, lots of long Covid and exhausted medical staff. So where are we now? Well we've arrived pretty much where I was predicting a couple of weeks later than I forecast. We might have made it if the idiots hadn't opened the schools two weeks early. The national infection rate was falling until they opened then basically flatlined and looks like halving over the Easter holidays ( I just checked the 7 day averages allowing about 5 days between infection and disease spread) I don't think a lot of actual education happened in two weeks of a disrupted term but I was a school teacher, what do I know. Roughly 2/3 of our population are now more or less immune from Covid and essentially unlikely to become spreaders. Even with the schools open the r-rate fell very slightly below one but only just. We know that relaxation of outdoor mixing has almost no effect on the spread of disease. Government policy seems designed to make sure we stretch out the pandemic as long as possible but I expect the r-rate to stay below one from now on. So long as it does infections will halve and halve again so by the end of April we are going to be looking at maybe 500-1000 new infections a day. Still too high for Dido Harding's contractors to get on top of tracing and isolating but another month and they might catch up. So I go back to my prediction, at the end of May I think some form of gigging will resume. The government will re-open too early and drag it out but I think we will see large scale public events in relative safety by the end of the year unless they let the new variants in to hybridise with what we already have. Foreign travel anyone?

For your amp simulator there is a really obvious solution which I use; the Zoom B1 Four. You get some decent built in sounds, a range of amp and cab sims plus a whole host of fx sims. All that plus a drum machine, tuner, looper headphone amp and aux input for playing along with songs. Runs off batteries mains or a USB lead £70 Zoom B1 Four Bass Multi-FX Pedal - Andertons Music Co. The only downside is that it's really designed for home use. Reprogramming it is fiddly and you'd ideally need a physically bigger unit to stomp on the pedals at a gig. The other issue is your practice amp, a couple of us have been pimping ours by replacing the small speakers with something better. We both used the Fane 6-100 to replace the puny 6" speakers in our practice amps and the improvement is really worthwhile for something that takes only an hour or so to do. A House Jam Combo - Build Diaries - Basschat Here's the effect of just a speaker swap, Pimp my practice amp! - YouTube Pea Turgh would have got even more bass if he'd added a couple of cardboard tubes to the port holes to tune the cab properly.

I've got a Peavey Minimax (the older model with the chicken knobs) and a Markbass Tube, an LMIII with a tube pre-amp. I prefer the Peavey which just sounds more authoritative out of the box and has a nice array of tone enhancements. The downside is a noisy cooling fan in the Peavey.

Ahh the DFA channel

It's both really, you start off with an idea of the frequency response and sound levels etc. as your design targets and then choose a driver which will let you design a cab to achieve the outcome you want. Small cabs often have non-flat responses with typical drivers. Using a bigger magnet will bring the response back under control but at the expense of extra weight. In the One10 Alex's 'warm and retro' sound is achieved by putting a speaker in a tiny cab to achieve that non-flat sound. We recently designed the 'Lockdown' 110T Basschat project. ( @stevie did all the work) but it's a self build and too heavy for you. I've been wondering about how I'd go about designing something for this purpose which is why I'm following this thread. It's really right at the edge of what is practically possible.