Phil Starr

There's an old much longer thread on this, but then there are older longer threads on just about everything. It gives new people a go, it is a lot more personal and what the hell? It's still lockdown and talking s**t with friends is something we all do in normal times. Also it reminds me of times past when I was in a gigging band..... It all depends is the only answer. As has been said already if your drummer doesn't hit the same patterns then you probably shouldn't play the same bass line. to a lesser extent that's true of all the rest of the band. I don't know why most bands play in the original keys most of the time if it isn't the singers best key, but there you go. You learn a lot by dissecting music and note for note playing pushes you to places you might not otherwise go. It's a good thing to be able to play note for note even if you don't ever need to in live performance. The second thing if you are in multiple bands or a really busy band with an ever changing set list then you are going to be under time pressure to get a song working. If you can play the chord changes and the rhythm then the rest of the band can get on with their own parts and the song goes in the set. Once you've played it a few times the song becomes yours and in my experience starts to drift as each band member adds a little flavouring of their own. Hopefully what works stays in and what doesn't gets quietly forgotten. I'm often surprised going back to originals by how much our versions differ. However one of my real bugbears is people not learning the song. If you are in a covers band most of your audience want you to play the songs they know and love, in the main they want enough of the feel of the song to go on loving it. I've no problem at all with people who completely re-make the song but it bugs me when the usual reason for not making any attempt is actually laziness but justified as artistic integrity. You are in a covers band, you are an entertainer playing forty year old songs, take it seriously but get over yourself or go and write your own songs.

I've pushed the baffle in place whilst i wait for all the glue to dry and I've gone over again with a damp sponge to remove excess glue. At this poing it's just a waiting game for the glue to dry. The instructions on the glue will tell you how long to wait/ Now to deal with the speaker and port cutouts. Measure twice and cut once. This is the photo I sent Stevie, I'd positioned the horn and port centrally to keep the structure strong but acoustically it is better to have the horn as close as possible to the bass speaker so you'll see we ended up moving it in the later pic. Here you go, the cut outs for the smaller holes were done with a jig-saw. there's some discussion about blades earlier in the thread. I used a thin blade to cut the round port hole and then used it for the horn cut out which was wrong, It's hard to cut a straight hole with a thin blade and you can see it isn't as straight as I'd like. Fortunately the horn has a lip that will cover the wobbly cut. I've also rounded off the cabinet edges (I'll add more on finishing later) So this is the final cab before fitting the speakers. It's had a single coat of Tuff Cab paint, which I strongly recommend. It's genuinely tough as well as Tuff and easy to apply, You can get a professional textured finish with the special rollers or a linen like effect with ordinary rollers.

Don't stop at this point, go on and fix the other side and then the top. I assembled the whole cab in about 30 mins including the photos. You can be confident because if you make a mistake you can remove the screws and even wipe off the glue, though usually it just a matter of slackening the screws off a turn and tapping the panels into place if they aren't perfectly lined up. Once you reach this stage check all the panels are actually lined up or you will have a lot of sanding to do later. At this stage the cab is already pretty strong and stable and you can see in the pics that it is good and square without any clamping. Now you can fit the last of the battens in place, Doing these four last makes sense as you have plenty of space to get to them. You can see that the batten in the picture below is a tiny bit short and there is a small gap on the left hand side, that will be sealed up with a bit of decorators filler later. Again you can see a nice full line of glue squeezed out showing that that joint will be airtight. Finally either glue the back panel in place , you can either continue with the screws or just glue it in and put some weights on the panel with the cab face down, so long as you squeeze glue out all round the joint you'll have an airtight seal. At this point you have a cab.

I like to dry assemble things before I glue them. I've made hundreds of cabs over the years but I still make stupid mistakes measuring once and cutting twice. If it's your first time then seeing exactly how things fit is a real confidence boost. If you look below you can see how the battens on the base leave a little square for the vertical batten to fit into. Now you've come to glueing up. This construction technique is what makes this an easy build. If the panels are cut accurately and you have good right angles on the battens then the cab will be square. You really can't go wrong. Using screws with the glue means you don't have to clamp either. A single screwdriver is all you need. Any woodworking glue will do but white PVA is my favourite. It is stronger than wood, you can clean it up with a damp cloth, it's the cheapest and best of all it takes an hour to set, so if you make a mistake you could theoretically take the whole cab apart and start again. OK, I have a leak in my shed roof apparently, hence the wet wood and the move to the kitchen. The photo above shows how the technique works. You can seethe glue lines where the screws have pulled the wood together and squeezed out the glue. If you get a nice straight line like this you've used enough glue so the cab will be airtight. Because you are screwing from the inside the screws can be left in place and there is no filling to do. The nice square pse batten is holding everything in place with good 90 degree angles whilst the glue dries. the less gluey lines have been wiped once, but need another wipe.

So this is the kit of parts, you can just about see my table saw and everything was cut with that. Most people don't have access to machine tools so I'd strongly recommend you get everything cut for you. Machine cutting will give you straight cuts and square edges and make assembly a doddle. The square batten is stuff i cut myself but you should use timber described as PSE (planed square edge) which is usually better quality redwood and the planing guarantees a good 90degree angle Time for marking out, mine isn't accurate as i went to felt tip as my pencil wasn't showing well in the photos. This is the top and one of the sides. Ive marked a line set back 30mm for the baffle (front panel where the speaker goes) and for the back panel. Those lines will be used to line the battens up . The top has two other lines as it will sit on top of the sides with the outer edge aligned with the sides.

Well I've finally broken free of the pressures of work and sent the sketches off to @RichardH who has offered to do the proper drawings for us. One of the lovely thing about BassChat is the generosity of so many people, thanks Richard. I'm going to spend 10 mins uploading pictures of the build, one of which is as blurry as my eyes must have been when I cut the hole for the horn Once I've got the drawings back and the cab back from Stevie I'll do it all properly as a build thread complete with some written hints, Then it's over to the rest of you to have a go. I hope you feel inspired

I don't know if it is of any interest Steve but I have a Rank Aldis Tutor 2 you are welcome to, no oil wheel but it worked last time I used it. If the oil wheel is working then you are back to the 70's PM me if you are interested

For a back to bass returner they are the perfect practice machine. I use them to learn songs so my phone/iPod goes into the line in and I play along using headphones. The headphone amp is spot on too. The drum machine has just enough patterns and if I'm struggling with timing or need to go over a tricky run on it goes. The amp sims are great for headphone use and I don't need another tuner. Unbelievable for the money. Now replaced with the B1 Four. Also runs for hours on rechargables so one less lead to plug in and trip over. If mine ever fails I'll order the new one immediately.

I'm guessing the answer is no. Not because you couldn't reduce the acoustic power because you can do that bit easily. You could theoretically put a great big resistor between the amp ans speakers and heat your room with it or you can turn the master volume down with the same effect. The thing is it would be quieter. I suspect what you are actually missing is the volume itself. Loudness itself is exciting, something you can feel especially for bassists. It leads to psychological changes including an adrenaline rush. We've known for years that people almost always prefer loud music to quiet in listening tests. Hi Fi sales staff have long sold their preferred system by just playing it louder in the listening rooms. The other thing that is missing is changing the sound levels also changes the 'tone controls' in our brain. Loud volumes emphasise bass in particular but change the sound balance across the whole spectrum. This shows the sensitivity of our hearing from the threshold of hearing at the bottom to 100dB, roughly the level on stage for a rock band. The steep rise in the bass frequencies at low sound levels shows just how much bass boost you'd need at lower sound levels to match the much flatter curve at band levels. Looking at these curves you can see that to get the same sound balance at low levels you need to boost the bass a lot and boost the treble a little and maybe increase the mid range suckout at around 3kHz if you have a parametric mid. Just turn down, eq until you get close to something you like and accept it won't be perfect. If you have a high pass filter use it as the subsonics are what really annoy the neighbours and if it still isn't loud enough for you use headphones. Meanwhile console yourself with the thought that your hearing is getting a chance to recover with a year off gig levels of sound. Roll on the return to live music.

I know, the cost of lock down. Normally I'd probably just driven across and we could have sorted it on the spot or taken it back for modification. Now we have to rely on couriers we just built a basic box. People like to see a bit of the development too, it helps de mystify the process.

It's really interesting, when building the cab I took an instinctive dislike to the baffle arrangement. it left extremely thin pieces of ply between the main driver and the horn and port. I sent Stevie a drawing of the baffle before it was cut and he asked me to move the horn and woofer closer together. Completely the best thing to do from an acoustic point of view as the gap between the speakers needs to be as small as possible to avoid cancellation around the crossover point where they are both working. I actually cut some strips of ply to strengthen the baffle at it's weakest points but left them out as they could always be added later and it would have been almost impossible to remove them cleanly once the glue had set. It shows the value of the frequency measurements. Listening tests alone wouldn't have identified the problem so specifically and we'd have had a potentially disappointing cabinet. We might have spotted it in testing and my wood working instincts to strengthen weak spots might have come in to play but Stevie's systematic approach nailed the problem fairly quickly. You can see the problem here. The pencil lines for my original placement is clear in the picture and they've been moved a couple of cm closer in both directions for the actual cutout, the speaker and the horn both have a lip that overlaps the baffle so they will be almost touching in practice. The metal frame of the speaker will help stiffen the lower part of the baffle and it will be simple to reinforce the baffle from the back. Testing will show what additional bracing might be needed. It will all be in the final drawings.

The Crown XLi 1500 is the usual culprit for this sort of application. Crown XLI 1500 2 x 450Watt @ 4Ohm | DV247 | en-GB

Hi John, have I missed something here? Stevie has designed the port for this cab using an off the shelf port and is aiming for 58Hz. You are correct that I allowed 7l for the speaker, ports and braces in the original design but that was for a 12" speaker, the 10 Stevie is using will take up less space but of course the horn will also take up space.

I wonder if the wood you use gives you colouration

Sticking to the practical what exactly do you want this for? Are you playing for a band or expecting to when things straighten out? If so is this with a drummer or something quieter? If you are using this at home and are there any space issues? Do you have a PA system or expect to use one soon? How about studio monitors if this is for home use only? If you are strictly an at home player and you mix your own music then bigger monitors could be a solution. From the little we have I'd say go down the Active PA speaker route. I have a couple of RCF ART310's they handle bass happily up to their full output and in any case have DSP managing the speaker protection. They sound great but neutral and I've used one on it's own for rehearsals and I'd happily use a pair for just about any gig. You could of course buy one and add a second if you needed extra volume. They also make a great PA The other consideration is how loud you want to go. You can't really do everything with a single 10, a lot maybe but not everything. A 12 will get you pretty much there if it is a good one and with most 2x10's or a 15 you can cover the bottom end. That's state of play with technology at the moment and it applies to bass speakers and PA speakers equally. The other thing to think about is that to an extent at the bottom end of the market you get what you pay for, don't expect a cheap, no name PA speaker to handle bass competently at high volumes.

It's quite interesting, I tend to print off the pdf's as I just find it easier. Eminence tend to be fairly stable producing the same models over very long periods. Fane on the other hand frequently change things around without changing the model no of the speaker. I've some older 10-275 from Fane that were changed to 10-300 in the catalogue, all the Thiele Small parameters stayed the same except the power handling. It was the same speaker. Since then it has had more than one change of T/S parameters as it has been re-engineered but has kept the 10-300 designation. Celestion too have come out with the Pulse range a few years ago, which we are using but it was identical with a previous speaker. We try to recommend speakers that are easy to source and which we think will be available for several years and I try to watch out for changes which might affect performance. I suspect some of this at least is affected by the sourcing of components in China. Nowadays I keep all the old specs so I can double check for changes, and I rarely trust the database in WinISD not to have been overtaken by manufacturing 'updates'. It is ironic that paper still seems to be the best way of looking out for this stuff. My memory isn't any more

Let's hope what we say in lockdown stays in lockdown

Can't disagree there. I must admit when I bought my first bass and when I first dipped into BassChat I thought all this talk about tonewoods was nonsense. I'm a scientist by training and how could the tiny amount of energy I put into the strings move something as massive as a bass body in such a way as to affect the movement of the strings in respect to the magnetic field of the pickups enough to be audible? Well it's pretty obvious the bass body does vibrate, I can feel it through my body and those little clip in tuners work pretty much on any part of the bass (with varying success). It's fairly obvious that a lot of this is down to resonances within the structure of the bass. Those resonances are then related to the physical dimensions of the vibrating body (the bass's not mine) its Young's modulus (stiffness) and it's mass. Wood is so variable, growth rates vary from year to year, the relative proportions of different cell types and their structures vary during the growth of the tree and in different parts of the tree. Trees grow differently even planted at the same time and only a couple of metres apart. The density and elasticity of woods varies and species overlap hugely. Every screw, machine head, routed cavity, the strings, pickups and even where you rest your hands are going to shift and change resonances. Can a tonewood change the sound of a bass? Obvously. Is this predictable enough that you can reliably say which timber was used or how a bass will sound from looking at a body blank? Well I'm sceptical.

I love the idea of a blindfolded scientist passing a Stradivarius to a blindfolded violinist, what could possibly go wrong?

You probably don't want a load of techno-babble but have a think about what you are actually trying to achieve here. There's lots of talk about watts which doesn't make sense. The ratio of power to sound is logarithmic. you need to double the power to get a noticeable 3db increase in volume and you need ten times the power to be twice as loud. You can pretty much not worry about going from 200 to 300W and the difference between 300W and 500W isn't huge. You really aren't going to notice a difference between a 250W amp and a 300W amp. The only thing you'd gain might be a tiny bit of headroom but then why not use your RM800 and just not turn it up too high. If you want a second amp for other reasons, because you want different eq for example or a back up then that's fine but just for a reduction in power, that's what the volume control is for. Oh Bill has popped up whilst I'm typing, I'll guess he's saying something similar

I used to build and design hi-fi speakers before i started playing bass and moved to building my own gear for bass. interestingly Wilmslow, IPL and Falcon are still with us. I had a look at the Wilmslow kits out of curiosity and to me they seem expensive. Looking at the HB2 for £285 for just the components and £435 for the flatpack kit. £150 for a bare MDF flatpack looked expensive so i looked at the kit, the speakers are £45 for the bass mid and £24 for the tweeter so they are charging £127 for a crossover,port and a binding post on the back of the cab. I'm sure they have the design well worked out but the drive units are modest so I'd be pretty confident that a commercial built unit for £285 would be at least as good. If you paid for the flatpack I think a commercial speaker for £435 would be better. If you went for a used speaker then potentially you'd get best value for money. For example I found a number of Quad electrostatics on eBay for around £400, now they'd go nicely with your 33/303 if you have the space. Of course we don't just build for financial reasons, there's real pleasure in building your own kit and a lot of satisfaction when it works out well which you'd never get just buying something. My experience was that at the cheaper end mass production wins every time, but as you move up the quality range you start to make savings by self building. If you think you'd love to self build then I'd be looking for a published design and source the components separately. It probably would be cheaper and easier to buy something. Incidentally I think that things have moved on since 1975 and though the LS3/5A was a revelation at the time to me it was quickly overtaken.

I can't believe this thread is still going but it's interesting that I'm re-examining what i might do when we all go back to gigging. Just for context I was the sound guy in my youth in the days when frankly most amps were valve driven and incredibly unreliable and a lot of gear had to be built because there were gaps in the market. I carried spare everything and a full toolkit and have soldered replacement parts in the middle of gigs. When i started as a musician in my mid 50's I just carried spares of everything including anything needed to keep the rest of the band going. It took me a while to realise I wasn't responsible for everyone else The change came for me with the adoption of active speakers, no point in taking a spare amp and speaker if you can't pair them anyway. At the same time came the realisation that the only thing that has ever gone wrong at a gig is a lead or two. I carry spare leads and that's it, Oh apart from batteries I use rechargeables and carry a spare set and a charger. I don't carry fuses or a tool kit any more, I think that's probably a mistake so catching up with this thread i'm going to have a think about what I take in future and pack a 'first aid box for gigs' in the car; next to the first aid box perhaps?

Well done, that was quick given how late you got the cab and work demands. I'd better get on with the build write up

Hmmm, me, superglue and in-ears, what could go wrong To be fair they are a good fit when new, I just needed to be careful and to change them regularly.

Hi David, looks like you have considered everything. I have lots of 18v battery powered tools and associated chargers already so it probably makes more sense for me to think that way. One of the boards I was looking at needed a 36v split supply rail too so it seemed appealing and worth mentioning. Running on batteries is a secondary consideration for me too, it's the small and portable aspect of the project that appeals. It's a real shame that amplifier didn't work out. That TDA3116 chip looks interesting and there are higher powered ones too but if the implementation on the boards is poor as you and john have found then they aren't worth touching. Anyway keep on going this looks like a great project.