Phil Starr

Which one ?

Yeah, as ever i want all the features for the same price The biggest attractions of the RCF are a router that works and the simplicity. I'm going to be playing bass if I need to tweak it and set up times are important too. a simple screen, large sliders and the ability to tap the screen for a 1dB change in the channel volume looks really enticing. If anyone else needs to touch it then again simplicity is king. Multi track recording is something which would be great to have though and 8 mic channels leaves nothing to spare unless I use a separate drum mixer. That's OK but then I'm in the same position as using an external router with extra boxes and cables. 18mics versus 8 is a huge difference. With your help I'd settled on the Behringer just before COVID struck. Now I can see limited gigging (outdoors probably, but we do a lot of that) it makes sense to purchase again and learn to drive it before we start gigging. The MR18 looks made for our band and isn't expensive, I think I'm struggling with heart v's head. I can see me ending up with both or having to upgrade in a year or two.

I've found a review if anyone else is having the same thoughts. Bullet points are The RCF is 'flawless', the router works, the app is really well executed and the learning curve is simple and short. It sounds great. The Behringer offers so much more in terms of flexibility, the app is glitchy but not catastrophically so and the learning curve is steep, but no more than other digital mixers. The router is awful to the point of unusability. Behringer XR18 vs RCF M18 Digital Mixers - YouTube also this Digital Mixer Showdown : RCF M18 v Behringer XR18 review - Which should you buy ? Soundcraft Ui24r - YouTube

is this a viable alternative to the behringer XR18? Any pro's or Con's? Anybody used one? We're a 4 piece band playing smallish venues ( in normal times) mainly pubs. Guitar, bass and drums with three vocals. QSC K12's for mains and a mix of in ears and floor monitors. We rarely if ever have a sound engineer. The mixer will be mine but I'm unlikely to play in anything bigger than a 5-piece band so a bit of redundancy on channels might be nice but eight mic channels is probably just enough for the foreseeable. At the moment drums are rarely miked and if so it tends to be just the kick.

Exactly my first thought, power supply caps. The other thing to look for is leakage from them any sticky goo is terminal and they need to be replaced. Second thought is the same too. Electric shocks from the caps are DC not AC and believe me are worse to experience than mains shocks. They can stop your heart so really, really be careful and if you have any doubts leave it to someone who has more knowledge.

I had a 115BW and a 215 I still have the 115 driver. Hmmmn maybe a lockdown project. Peavey BXBW in a lightweight cab...

Oh go on, I'm sure the ban is on politics and party politics rather than economics. So long as we refer to the decisions made by government in terms of macro-economics and their consequences we can surely have a grown up conversation. In terms of musical instruments and amplification there is an opportunity here. Since most of the stuff is actually made in the far east, not just China there is no reason it can't be imported directly and there is an opportunity for some increased design work and branding taking place with a more isolated home market. People like Studiospares already directly import and brand Chinese sourced gear for example, and the removal even if temporarily of competitors like Thomann will create all sorts of opportunities for UK based middlemen. There is a chance for a revival of old British brands or the development of new ones, Barefaced China anyone? I can see that for European brands like RCF, Markbass and the like that this could be challenging but there is no real reason why they shouldn't set up UK based subsidiaries. As you point out this is a medium sized market this means you won't necessarily get the full savings of a Europe wide purchasing train but it will still be a market big enough for most brands to want a presence. Eventually I think there will be either more negotiated deals or maybe a genuine Thomann UK shipping directly for the domestic market as we find ways around the bindings we have wrapped ourselves up in. It's unlikely to be better than EU membership but it won't stay as uncertain as it is now. My thoughts are that the steady erosion of the pound will be more significant in the long run. The other thing is that with the shutdown of the entertainments industry nobody is buying now or will be for at least another six months, if i was a European seller I'd hang fire on implementing changes whilst the market is quiet.

Sometimes we just have to make the best of what we have to hand, I think this is the best solution for the moment. One day, perhaps once gigging starts again, you might want to revisit this but it is sensible in the meantime to just try and squeeze as much as possible out of what you have.

It does help, many thanks. So for example one of the parts I need is just that, a gear wheel. It's one of a pair in a John Deere mower for which parts are no longer available and weren't distributed in the UK anyway. The gear is about 10cm in diameter and drives the wheels of a mower that probably weighs 30kg. It's made of some sort of hard plastic. There are a few used ones in the States but they would cost anything from £10-50 and the list price was in the $20 region when they were available. If i could get one for say £20 it would make the repair worthwhile.

I haven't checked but it looks like I could be well over that in 13 years with maybe 10 in covers bands. Remembering is a problem, though most return fairly quickly with a couple of run-throughs so long as they were originally gigged a few times. I wondered where the saturation point comes and it is pretty severe for me at around 100 songs (down to having three bands on the go at one time). I lose them fairly quickly once I stop gigging them and always mean to keep the ones that cost most to learn going, but I don't think I could make much of a stab at Fool For Your Loving for example. I don't play from notes though due to an inability to play and read at the same time For me memory is the lazy way out and it's a skill I've never learned.

Slight derail here but how much would this have cost if done commercially? I've needed a few plastic parts recently which are not available and aren't bass related; like a pinion for a CD transport for example. Have we reached a point where parts can be scanned, replicated and sold at prices which make them economically sensible to use?

Sympathy with you from me, I too have a broken Markbass and have come across the problem with Real Electronics. They aren't unpleasant or anything but you get a fairly inflexible response and estimate from them. The 'estimate' is around £200 whatever the fault is and they talk about it being as good as new on the phone, ie they are simply taking boards out and replacing them. As the used value is about £300 that's a huge chunk of the value and it makes MB an unviable purchase IMO. You might just as well purchase Behringer for all the aftersales support you get from MB, in fact to be fair the UK supplies of Behringer spares are very reasonably priced and with better availability. I bought the Peavey Minimax for £180 on the offer above as a stopgap as i had a load of gigs at the time. It sounds way better out of the box than the MB Tube and has noticeably more heft, if i can use that word. I ought to fix the MB and pass it on really. I won't be going back to it but the absence of gigs has removed any urgency.

Ha ha I should have said that the only time I've used these was with a hand brace, you need really slow speeds and decent torque to get a good cut and I've never used power tools to drive this sort of bit. I'd also cut the whole half way and turn the board round to cut the other face . I actually use a router to cut my own holes. Hi, I used a different and higher tuning to get the best out of the smaller cab and i was looking for a good hump around 100Hz rather than extending the lower end response. This emphasizes the second harmonic of the lowest notes rather than the fundamental but gives a pleasant warmth. It was never conceived of as having an extended flat bass but as something usable in the small pub venues I regularly play in with my covers band. I checked your tuning on WinISD and it was very close to the tuning I intended. Old school bass rather than FRFR if you like.

Here you go Hardwood Plywood Poplar Core FSC 2440 x 1220 x 12mm (jewson.co.uk)

You'll find it is difficult to source small amounts of sheet material, generally the smallest amount is an 8x4 sheet or 1220x2440mm in new money. Even that can be problematic from local suppliers or the big chains and this adds to the cost. Jewsons however were offering Birch ply with a poplar core recently at a good price. Fortunately a lot of fast growing poplar was planted in Europe a few decades ago so expect some of it to replace dwindling tropical hardwoods used in making ply. A 20kg single cab solution is not ridiculously heavy (12mm birch+ driver) The only way to get much below this is to reduce the size of the cab but this sacrifices bass response as I've mentioned, as Bill pointed out the EV design already sacrifices some bass for portability. I wouldn't have started with the Kappa for bass, it has limited excursion for bass, a far too strong mid peak and needs a big cab to get the best out of it but that doesn't mean Steve needs to go out and spend, he already knows what this speaker sounds like in the EV design. 8kg is a lot of weight saving. I use the 20Kg bar for exercise with lots of reps but can barely get 30kg above my head. Designing any cab is a bit of balloon squeezing, as you tighten your grip in one area something else pops up elsewhere and in the end you have to compromise. For me that is half the fun

Hi again, The tube we all use is plastic downpipe used from guttering. If you are based in France or Belgium then it's possible they use a different sized tubing. In any case a single larger pipe would be better. I use a router or rarely an electric jigsaw to cut holes or you could use a hole cutter like this Silverline 427644 Adjustable Hole Cutter 40-300 mm: Amazon.co.uk: DIY & Tools. I'm not recommending that particular one as I haven't tried it but you get the idea. I'm making no judgements about how complex you want your woodwork to be either, a lot of it is about confidence and how much of a learning experience you want it to be. Sorry I don't play slap and nobody has tried the cab for slapping whilst I've been there so no comment.

Once Covid has lifted Mansons does have some stock and practice spaces so you do have the chance to eliminate some stuff from your search. The staff are fairly knowledgeable and helpful. If you can wait then the bass bash just outside Taunton is a great place to meet other basschatters and try their gear.

The speaker weighs 8kg so this is a really heavy cab. That's MDF for you. you can play with this Large panels | OSB board | MDF board | Plywood | Chipboard | Weight | Calculator (timberpolis.co.uk) ready reckoner and work out for your self how much lighter just changing the board material will make your cab. MDF is great unless you have to carry it Change the volume to area and thickness will come up

It's difficult isn't it? £600 is a decent sum so you should be able to get a really decent rig used for that but if you spend £300 on the amp your choice of speakers becomes more limited. If it's any help I have an MB Tube, not up for sale and currently broken from taking a dive off the top of a 2x12. They are good and the 'Tube' channel does add something but when mine took a dive I needed something for gigging quick and took a punt on a Peavey Minimax. Frankly it sounds better out of the box IMO and what was a temporary fix has become my go to amp. There's one for sale here for £180 which is going to save you £100 on a MB which you could take as a saving or put towards a wider choice of speakers. Peavey Minimax 500 head - Amps and Cabs For Sale - Basschat Another possibility might be to go for two 1x12 cabs. One will probably do all you want at the moment and you could delay getting the second you might want for bigger gigs until Covid is fading and gigging and other money making stuff starts happening again.

If you are going with the 606 cab then some of the panels are quite big and will vibrate, ply is intrinsically more bendy than MDF and also has less internal damping. You'll need to compensate for this by bracing all the panels.Adding dowels to 12mm ply isn't going to add much in the way of strength, if you used 6mm dowel hat only leaves 3mm of plywood either side of the dowel which will weaken the ply. The only reason to use dowels on something so thin is to locate the panels whist the glue sets. It's quite possible to build a cab with plain butt joints and a glue joint will be stronger than the ply but a 12mm glue join isn't inherently very strong simply because the area is so small and the plies in plywood can easily separate. Reinforced butt joints as in your original cab design are stronger and because you can screw them in from the inside make the construction simple as they pull the panels together hold everything square without clamping and increase the glued area. They will also provide some damping of the panels. If your woodwork is competent though and you have good access to clamps whilst the glue sets many cabs have been built without them so this is a decision for you to take. 8 braces are a lot but it depends where they are placed. It is possible to put them in after the cab has been built, more later about that.

Hi, that looks great and using a bigger port is great, I only used the smaller diameter pipe because it is easily sourced and you can get cheap hole saw cutters in the right sizes. That ties in with the idea of 'easy build'. The only thing to remember is the obvious point of not blocking the rear port by pushing it hard against a rear wall. I checked your calculations and the sizes look good. If you do go ahead and build it would be great to see some pictures when it is done and let us know how it sounds when you use it. Good luck with the build.

Thanks Bill, I had noticed some of the already entered data can be false. I've always entered the parameters manually for my own designs and I didn't check this time. As for the box for the EV it's a 90l cab tuned to 55 or 40Hz I checked both and I'd go for the 55Hz tuning with this speaker. I think Steve has enough to make some choices about which way to go and I'm happy to answer questions and tweak the design as he goes if that's what he wants.

Your Kappa is going to be intrinsically bright for bass it has a huge peak in the midrange which is likely to completely dominate the sound of the speaker whatever cab you use. The weight saving depends upon exactly which type of ply you can source and I used a timber merchants site to estimate the savings in mass you might get so treat that as approximate. The speaker calculations take no time as all the Eminence drivers are pre-loaded into WinISD. It took longer to type than to calculate the cost is that if you do build to put up some pics of the build here to encourage others to have a go.

Here you go. The EVTL606 is a good design for your speaker. the low end frequency response is in red below. The green line is your speaker in the Basschat Mk 1 cabinet. You can see there is a loss of bass below 100hz by squeezing this 15 into the smaller cabinet, partly compensated for by a 2db bump at aroung 120 Hz which will add a bit of warmth and punch. For comparison the Blue line is the original 12" speaker I used. I gigged the BC mk1 (blue line) for a couple of years what I found was that the extended bass response was sometimes a problem, in smaller rooms which equate to the average UK pub the bass was sometimes a bit too overpowering and needed to be rolled off at the lowest frequencies and boosted a bit at 120Hz something your speaker will do naturally in the smaller cab. rebuilding your TL606 in 12mm ply will save about 8kg but you will need to think about bracing the bigger panels, putting the Kappa into the 50l BassChat mk1 would be feasible if you are happy to lighten your bass sound and will work well in a live band situation. It will be a loud shouty cab though because of the Kappa's huge midrange frequency peak which won't change. I don't think the eminence design has any advantage over the TL606. Basically you can use the BC design and lose maybe 12Kg total using birch ply or lose a bit less and keep the bigger cab with the extra bass. Remember though that carrying a cab is about size as well as weight, it's easier to get a smaller cab through doors and into your car. Either way you have decent designs available to you so all you have to do is build. The choice is how much bass you want.

The Eminence designs I'd go for the medium sized box if you choose one on these to go with Eminence Designer