Phil Starr

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.

Oh dear we are on our first gig on Saturday or I'd come along. I'll pm you if we are going up to Bristol sometime. My daughter lives there.

Some of you may have seen our latest self build design in Amps and Cabs. It's a 10" FRFR cab, fairly compact, weighing in at 10kg and something I think might work well with DB. I don't play DB so i'm looking for someone reasonably local who wouldn't mind putting it through its paces. I'm based in Chard in Somerset. Any takers?

Just a quick update on the 110T, I have it back from Stevie and reassembled it. I had a chance to run some test tones through it and there really was a serious panel resonance on the baffle centred around the area between the port and the bass speaker. You really need a brace on the baffle behind that point. I'll make some changes to the drawings to show this. Yesterday i had my first chance to try the cab in anger at a band rehearsal. Our drummer has returned from COVID lockdown full of enthusiasm and was really hitting the skins so it was a good workout for a little cab. That's the first thing to notice, the cab weighs in at 10.0kg at the moment, it still needs a grille and a handle but it really is a featherweight. First impression is that it was bass heavy but that was due to room acoustics, it's actually very neutral sounding. I've been trying out new settings on my Zoom B1 and it takes FX well. Dial in grit and that's what you get, dial it out and the clean sound is all there. I was drowning in bass until I switched to in-ears. As a stage monitor you won't need anything else and the drummer was happy too, he normally likes the bass louder than I do. Out front it was loud enough for a pretty hard rehearsal, it would certainly do the average pub gig without stress but I did have a bit of compression on and an HPF. We've acquired a sound engineer as we are attempting to move up-market as a band, well you've got to dream His response was very interesting as he was there setting up levels and monitor mixes "I didn't need to do anything to the bass other than set it in the mix" So would I use this as my only speaker? Well yes, but I do have a feed to the PA so I'm only worried about stage volumes. It will certainly cope with the average pub gig. This is a 10kg speaker with a pretty flat response and a lovely full rounded bass. You should be able to build this comfortably for £150 Get the panels cut to size and it's no more difficult to construct than some flat pack furniture, the only tricky bit is cutting the speaker and port cutouts and it can be constructed without needing to be soldered. What are you waiting for?

That's looking nice, how does it sound? Well done

It doesn't really help someone who just wants a bit of practical advice to nit pick. The question makes it absolutely clear that the OP is only asking about what will work in practice and will be operating at levels where the voltage will drop as the current increases. so no you won't get 6db every time. Trace Elliott make that absolutely clear 130W into 8ohms and 200 into 4ohms. ie they don't expect a 3dB increase in power in practice at high levels. You know as well as I do that in practice very few commercial bass amps will double their maximum power into 4 ohms and we know this one certainly doesn't. For the OP don't worry about the little squabble, 5db is is plenty of extra sound and the extra 1db difference between what is theoretical (and real at low output levels) and what the Elf will actually do at high levels will only just be noticeable. Given your drummer's eKit just adding an extra speaker to what you have will be fine

I'm with @Chienmortbb on this, probably. you won't get the theoretical 6dB extra as the Elf won't deliver double the power into 4ohms but you will get close to that, around 5dB is likely. That's the equivalent of almost four times the amp power but sharing the task of shifting air between two cones means each won't be working so hard. You already know that the speaker will distort if you just double the amp power, do it for any length of time and they will break. Generally speaking two tens will get you where you need to be, but i don't know your band of course. There are two ways to go on this, put your bass through the PA and just use your 'rig' as a monitor for you to hear or if your PA isn't up to bass then you need to get your sound levels matching the drummer. You have the luxury of a drummer with a volume control. It's nice to have the second option as you can always turn down from maximum but you can't turn up if your system is already flat out. Adding a second identical 10 is going to preserve your sound and give you much more headroom for the lowest cost and preserve the sound you have. Anything else will change your sound and be more expensive, then you are into auditioning different gear and looking for a new sound. If you are newly back to this I'd keep it simple, within a year you will have a much clearer feeling for what you want to do and the same GAS for new gear most of us here suffer from If you don't like your sound then...... have fun looking

Look forward to hearing it at the next Bass Bash through one of our BC designs

Interested in this, I've been contemplating building a lightweight small combo for semi acoustic work and the odd open mic, maybe for rehearsals too when drummist brings a cut down rig. I've been looking at a number of Chinese made circuit boards with an aim to building the amp but the total cost of these is approaching the TC BAM by the time you've factored in the case. Using the BAM seems a no brainer and it could potentially be unplugged and used as a back up amp. So yes it would be great to hear what you make of it over time, maybe even a few clips of how it sounds?

Love it TBH I'd have a long hard think. I spent a while 'between bands' after failing to take the Floyd's advice. I spent too long with people who either weren't really musicians and others who were great but were never going to manage to be in any group, musical or otherwise. To be fair i met a lot of lovely people as well. No 1 is are they a group you can get on with? It's so stressful if you don't and a little love and respect makes it so much easier. Can you forgive a singer who misses the odd note or the drummer whose timing is a bit suspect? Only you can decide how far to go down that route. Which of your friends are perfect? Having said that a poor singer is about the worst position to be weak in for a band. Would you turn down Bob Dylan or Coldplay though, or any of the various girl bands. People with marginal voices can be a great stage presence and really work a room so they get away with vocal murder. Just one thought, several female singers i've been with are people pleasers who get talked into singing unsuitable material in the original keys. Frequently their voices are weaker than male singers and they struggle when the band is too loud. Current band are like this with our shed building drummer. Our singer sounds lovely with her other band but struggles with ours and struggling for volume affects her pitch. how about monitoring, does she use in-ears or floor monitors or even nothing? you cant pich what you can't hear. You won't change this band, if they aren't nice people now the won't become kinder or more generous, if they aren't aware of the problem now they won't thank you for pointing it out and you'll be starting with tensions. So much vocal work is about confidence so telling someone they are flat is unlikely to do any good. If it's any help I've walked away from a prospective band because of this issue. Being in a band is all about compromise but you've got to have a bit of pride in what you do. If everything else is right then it might be what you compromise on, if not I'd walk away. Being in a busy band is hard work, you've got to look forward to being with them.

Thanks so much for this, I've been using my B1ON for headphone practice forever but have only just started to use it live. For practice it is great for making a cheap bass sound like a decent one but for live work i like a fairly clean sound so it's been an unnecessary distraction, to date. Over lockdown I've been starting recording and adding fx after recording a clean bass. It's been a revelation which is making me question my decision to play clean. I'm absolutely going to investigate the AC BS PRE and add it to the bit of compression and dirt I'm using now. I was thinking to buy the B1 Four as an upgrade, now I don't need to. i'll stick with the B1ON for another year or so and learn what it does, then re-examine.

Yeah welcome to BC

Hi Serge, Stevie is shy about this but I'm not as I have no financial interest. I also know how difficult it is to source inductors of the right values and power handling. He sells inductors on Evil Bay including winding custom values. I hope I'm not breaking any BassChat rules by putting this up but here is the link 133768834024 | eBay that's for the 10" driver but all the other inductors are available.

Stevie is the expert on crossovers but at the simplest level speakers are all different, none of them have completely flat responses and the mechanical and electrical characteristics of each speaker are different too. Adding a horn flare loads the speakers changing the load on the speaker and this changes thigs too. The horn will also have it's own frequency response. Even at the easiest level most horns are louder than bass units but never by the same amounts, so you have to sort that out too. I've used generic crossover designs and used simple design theory to calculate crossover component values. It works in that you split the signal between the drivers bass goes through the bass speaker and treble through the horn but it is only a starting point. the sound in the crossover region is rarely good. I then (theoretically anyway) do a lot of fiddling, unwinding coils or adding turns and messing with resistor and capacitor values with repeated listening tests to get it as clean as I can subjectively. Stevie does it by measurement and years of experience and his crossovers sound better than mine.

Just working from the sequence of events it looks like the speakon socket or lead was the source of the problem. It will probably be directly wired to the jack which may be why that has stopped working. If you are really unlucky it could have caused other damage. If the previous owner used jacks only the socket may have been unused for years, it may have been faulty from new or time may have taken a toll. If you are lucky it may be as simple as replacing the socket or even resoldering a wire. The thing you want to avoid is running a valve amp open circuit so get it to the tech tell them what you told us and with any luck it can be sorted. Hope it goes well.

I always have been in theory, it's about getting the practice right. I was a sound engineer a lot longer than I've been a bass player so my grasp of theory is good but I've been out of the loop for a long time so your advice on what the state of the art is now has been invaluable. it's been really interesting crossing over from behind the mixing desk to the stage, your personal priorities are completely different and of course you start any new area at the bottom of the feeding pool. There were lots of poorly paid gigs and getting the right set up together takes time. It takes a while for us weekend warriors to get to the point where we can afford our own engineer. I'm also lucky enough that the current band are interested in improving technically. Sound, like politics proves to be the art of the possible. On the monitors/mics and feedback issue fortunately I'm fairly loud so I can keep the gain down but at open mics when I'm mixing inexperienced singers replacing lesser monitors with the RCF's has given me a few more dB to play with. They are so reasonably priced too.