Phil Starr

If you wanted an upgrade then for £600 you could go for the RCF ART 312's https://www.thomann.de/gb/rcf_art_312_a_mk_iv_bundle.htm. I've auditioned the mk3 versions and they sounded great for the money and definitely a step up from the Alto's. the vocals were particularly well done. Having said that nothing wrong with the Alto's and they are great value. Buying subs will help but it's a lot to carry for a pub gig. Unless you put bass and kick drums through you won't necessarily need those IME. I'd certainly look at replacing your other vocalist's mic something like an AKG D5 is a great sounding mic though it's tight pickup pattern (great for feedback reduction) makes it less suitable for someone who moves around a lot and has poor mic technique. They are only £50ea at the moment too. If you think their mic technique is a bit less than good the SM58 (£80) is a very forgiving mic, it doesn't sound as good as the AKG but will be like lifting a veil from his current Shure cheapy.

I use a zoom B1ON (Now updated to the B1 Four https://www.zoom.co.jp/products/effects-preamps/bass/b1-four-b1x-four-bass-multi-effects-processors ) for home practice with headphones as do a few people here, you could then put that through a PA speaker or floor wedge if you want it in the room with you. As a guitarist you probably know the G1ON It contains a load of amp modellers, all sorts of effects, a tuner and a drum machine/metronome and you can mix in a input from anything with a headphone out like an mp3 player or a phone. It's neat and well made and runs for hours on a set of rechargeable AA batteries. Through headphones it sounds great.

Turning the sensitivity to 'mic' should give you plenty of gain. I drive my ART 310's straight from the bass and volume is fine. try missing everything else out and just plugging the bass straight into the jack on the speaker. you should get at least a decent volume if not loud enough. Try switching from mic to line and than back to mic again, I don't like those sliding switches and they might not have switched as they should, a wiggle usually fixes it.

As you observed the frequency responses are very different, that peak with the LaVoce is huge and over a bigger frequency range than the Celestion. It's also centred on 2kHz where you are really going to notice it. The more open and snappier is now your over emphasis of slap sounds. It may be that in fact the extra mids might make this a good speaker for rock where it would really cut through rather than slap where you have just too much of a good thing. Knowing it is there you can always target it with eq of course but this is a really highly coloured speaker, I'd probably quite like that sound but it is coloured. The advantage of self build is that you learn these things but the disadvantage is that you can end up kissing a few frogs before you find your prince. Actually the response rises from 400hz and that too will affect how you subjectively perceive the tonal balance.

Again I've simplified some of the problems in calculating these things. I've been reading up on Spanish Flu for years. Everyone has to have a hobby. The trouble is there were no tests at the time, all they really knew was that there was an infective agent smaller than a certain size. Many of the deaths may have been due to other causes and some due to flu misdiagnosed as something else, there's flu going round at the moment and that will kill a few thousand people this winter, I've also seen figures of 80% infection and much lower figures around 27% too. On top of that even the size of the world population in 1918 is a matter of speculation. I simply chose to quote the WHO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

We need to be careful about mortality rates, they are expressed as percentages, what is not clear is percentages of what? All countries seem to be using different measurements of what constitutes infection. For some it is those tested who are positive, for some it is an estimate of how many we believe might be infected, for others it is people who show symptoms and others of those hospitalised. That's one of the problems of comparison with Spanish Flu there were no test for viruses so the 2-3% mortality is based on people reported as infected. The 2-3% for Coronavirus I quoted was based upon the proportion of serious infections in China and other east Asian countries as reported in New Scientist. Spanish Flu was particularly deadly because it was a novel disease, we are the decendents of the survivors so the 2009 outbreak was much less dangerous to us. Covid-19 is another novel disease

Genius

That's absolutely fair and I did consider putting some of that in my post, but my posts tend to be too long anyway. I'm not coming on as a prophet of doom. I've been following this since the coronavirus popped up in 2014 and before that the SARS outbreak. Pretty much any epidemic novel disease interests me. All I'm really trying to do is pass on some of the stuff I'm reading. I'm optimistic by nature and there are things we can do collectively to help. I suppose by giving a bit of perspective I'm hoping people take this thing seriously. It isn't really here yet but people washing their hands will slow colds and flu too, when it does get here properly, if it get's here then the better our understanding the better we will cope. We all know people who think they know best, who will try and leave quarantine because they feel fine, who will fly to the Veneto because they've paid for the holiday, who will go to work because 'it's only a cold' What you say about the conditions and people moving because of the war is all true, I don't have numbers but in 2018 there were 4.4billion air passengers carried worldwide (Statista) way bigger than the movements of 1918. We just have better transport now. Cities are bigger and more of us are urban dwellers. Worldwide there is less absolute poverty in proportion but still plenty of people who are under nourished or who have little access to healthcare. My specialism at university was mathematically modelling biological populations. It was a long time ago but is kind of why I've been interested in contagious diseases over the years. It seems whatever the changes in conditions the transmission rate now in our conditions is similar to the transmission rate then in their conditions with a different disease and so is the mortality rate. You'd need far more fine detail than those two crude figures to do any modelling but the figures I've seen haven't been comforting so far. FWIW I'm checking figures and information before I post, I'll make mistakes of course but i'm trying to be objective.

I don't want to get into a long argument about this mainly because neither of us know if any of these things might be true, because there is a lack of data. Comparing it to H1N1 flu virus is interesting though. You may feel the 2009 pandemic was sound and fury signifying nothing but WHO figures suggest 27% of us were infected and anywhere between 150-575,000 people died prematurely. The fatality rate of those infected was 0.01% The 1918 pandemic was altogether more serious between 11 and 21% of the worlds population was infected. Fatality rate was 2-3% and the peak death rate was 25 people per 1000 population in the UK. Worldwide for a brief period it dwarfed malaria 40-50million people died in a couple of years. At the moment Coronavirus looks like it is killing 2% of infected people showing symptoms and infecting about 20% of the population. Given that the world population is four times that of 1918 and the similarity of early figures to H1N1 in 1918 we ought to at least consider the possibility of ten's of millions dying, maybe hundreds of millions. Game changer? certainly for those of us who are killed. Significant? Well I think 150-500,000 is significant even if there are nearly 8 billion of us. So if it pans out as badly as the 1918 pandemic expect maybe 195,000,000 deaths plus a lot of illness, that's about 400 years worth of malaria deaths (600,000 in 2017, 420,000 in 2018). That's only one possibility amongst many of course. It will be a game changer, we have been steadily upping our response capability to novel infections, we can now sequence the DNA of these viruses we are more vigilant than we were and Chinese scientists were warning of a new infectious Coronavirus in 2014. Our skills at containment are getting better, work on AIDS has improved our anti-viral skills. Part of what drives this is public opinion and unfortunately we are all too willing to let problems be ignored.

I don't get your point. Every malaria death is a personal tragedy leaving children without parents and families and friends losing people they love, the economic costs are huge and some parts of the world are held in poverty just by this disease. Some of those deaths are preventable and that is a disgrace. In countries where it is endemic it affects the daily lives of everyone. The research efforts could still be better and so could public health measures in many countries but this is an entirely different disease. If we did nothing it would kill more than this and if we do more we can reduce that toll. That is true about Coronavirus. Our responses in this country will be in part shaped by public opinion and understanding. There's a lot of nonsense out there on social media but I think people need to know that this is probably coming and it is probably going to be serious but there are things we can do to mitigate. If official advice is just met with cynicism and complacency it is going to be worse for all of us. I'm trying to be as accurate as I can and some of this is potentially not too good.

New Scientist this week and the WHO are effectively of the same opinion. We are at the tipping point of this becoming pandemic. If that proves to be true it simply means that the disease is out in the wild spreading from person to person in a certain number of areas and the process of tracing and testing contacts of known cases will no longer contain the disease. That doesn't mean we give up just that it looks like a lot of us will get the disease and we will move from contact tracing to hygiene measures as a way of slowing the spread. Slowing the spread is important, it gives healthcare systems a better chance of coping and longer for us to develop counter measures and treatments. In the UK as ever we are in a fortunate position, islands are easier to protect than land borders. I doubt our government has the political will however to take extreme measures to protect us, not a party political statement that, I don't think our system is working well at the moment and if the election result had been different I doubt that it would affect this threat. IMO it looks very likely that we will all be exposed to this disease at some point. On the figures that we have so far which are extremely unreliable maybe 1/5th of us will be very ill with flu like symptoms or worse and some of us won't survive, so far it is looking like 2-3% of the people who get very ill but who knows in a different population with different levels of fitness and different healthcare in place. If the government has the will it will try and limit personal contact, which won't stop the disease spreading but will slow it reaching people. Obviously with a million people all ill at the same time the health care for each would be less than if it were only 50,000 ill at any one time. There are still so many unanswered questions that speculation isn't going to help much but nevertheless there are things we can do to mitigate the effects. The world hasn't really reacted well to mitigate climate change so it'll be interesting to see how we respond to an immediate but lesser threat which will be shared across borders. I found out today that Tokyo ( my son lives there ) has run out of toilet paper, it ran out of masks last week. People there are planning for what they will need if they have to stay at home in isolation for a while, you can see loo roll would be important. We may have more to worry about than keeping the pubs open.

surprisingly varied for what is meant to be a flat response, I actually thought no 1 was the most 'honest' but of course that might be because is sounded most like my bass, we don't really know what your bass sounds like. 4 sounded a bit lifeless to me but more bassy due to some top/mid end missing, I can see why some like it but it's a sound I think would get lost in a mix. 5 sounded quite coloured but was my preferred sound. It's interesting that they were so varied but I suspect you would notice very little of this in a live performance. It would be good at some stage once everyone has had a blind listen if you could put up what the runners were. If people are about to make a purchase I'm sure they would like to know the identity of a good cheapie and if people really did get the identities right or wrong it will help inform their opinions. It'll be fun too.

I don't know about being the same boat but both the drivers are changed, I'd imagine the bass driver will probably have a bigger magnet and allow for improvements in excursion and maybe control over the cone. The specs show a 3dB increase in total output which will be determined mainly by the ability of the bass driver to handle bass excursion. Both systems seem to have the same amp but both will be throttled back by the onboard processing the 712 slightly more so. You've got a better speaker

Of course it can, cabs have a wide range of efficiencies though you won't get cheap, light and loud all in the same package. Try and find out the sensitivity (usually measured in db/W) if your original speaker is a fairly typical 95db/W then you should be able to find something that will be significantly louder. Don't get too hung up on sheer volume though any new speaker is going to change the sound you like so make sure you try anything with your amp before parting with your cash.

I don't know if you are still following this Adam. good suggestion from @deepbass5 if you can run full range or split there has to be some switching operated by the jack plugs and given some of the muck you can see on that input the contacts may well be not working. If you still have problems then I would always work back from the speakers, You'll need to get inside or remove the 8's from the box. remove the wires from the speakers and apply a low power signal. I use the speaker leads from my hi fi, if the sound comes out undistorted then you know that they are working. Then check the leads inside the speaker, the crossover and finally the sockets on the back.

Thanks for the quick response. I was hoping for something simple as a solution rather than an extra bolt-on. Once I've gone digital on the desk then I've got a solution particularly if I can put a limiter on the monitor feed but I'd still prefer something a bit more 'honest' in my ears. Pretty much as I would with the PA. Looking on the website the ZS10's have a huge suckout of about 7-10 db from 100-1500kHz (or put another way 7-10db of boost above and below), pretty crucial for vocals. I desperately want to find something that works and I'm probably an awkward customer, I've a bit of hearing loss as well as narrow ear canals so finding something that physically fits as well as something that gives the mids that I need might be difficult to find. At the moment using the Etymotic ear plugs is working better than having in ears in terms of picking things out of the mix. They'll protect what is left of my hearing but it would be so much better to get the in ears sorted of course.

Do you have any suggestions for in-ears shaded towards monitoring vocals. Having solved the problem of getting a decent seal with the KTZ's I've done a couple of gigs with them and there is a real midrange suckout with them. Lot's of bass, way more than I need but not enough detail in the midrange. I do a bit of backing vocals and it is way more important to me to hear my vocals than my bass which I have no trouble picking out. Even with the bass the lowest frequencies are swamping the mids which give me the detail of what I'm playing. I don't at the moment have the facility to eq the feed to my in-ears. I've tried my domestic Sennheiser buds and they are much better sounding but do overload with bass at times. I'm loving the KZT's in the gym where the smiley face eq works really well but I need something more balanced on stage. Where should I be looking.

Sorry I've missed something here, do you already have two of the Headrush 8's? If so you don't need to ask just try them out, it's very difficult sitting at a keyboard to judge how loud someone else's band are. If you are happy then it's all good. I'll do a separate post and ask some questions about what you are trying to achieve? OK keeping it simple two eights are going to be better than a single 10 for bass handling, all else being equal, they will be just about as good as a single 12 and because you have twice the power available the rest of the frequency range can be louder if that's what you need. the ART 310 is rated at 400W continuous, 300W to the bass speaker and 100W to the horn driver. The specs make it fairly clear that this is limited to protect the speakers and the specs for RCF drivers are widely available. I doubt that the horn driver is really drawing more than 35W but it is normal in pro PA to use more power than you need to drive the tops as you want to avoid any chance of amp distortion which is both more noticeable and likely to destroy the driver. The only claim they make which is improbable is the 127dB which is a peak figure 6db higher than actual, but to be fair I can't think of a single major manufacturer that doesn't do this so it at least enables you to compare if they all use the same untruth 127db would cause immediate permanent hearing loss if it was on the floor in front of you so perhaps it's as well it can't do this. It's a good move, I use two RCF 310's for my duo, I sing as well and mix from on stage so it makes sense to have a single monitoring system and to be able to hear on stage what the audience hear. Not needing the on stage sound to reach the back of the room means we can reduce the sound levels which cleans everything up (less rubbish picked up by the vocal mics). I also use a single 310 for rehearsals with my full band sometimes and for open mics and jam sessions. So far a single RCF310 has been fine, if anything on the floor it is a bit bass heavy but it is designed to be on a pole so no surprise there. Even without my Zoom the sound is fine though I have active basses so I can tweak the sound at the bass. We also use a second pair of ART 310 mk3's for the PA for the duo which is fairly loud but still acoustic. there's no signs of any difficulty at all putting bass through the two 310's at room filling levels. I wouldn't have chosen the RCF 310 if I wanted to cover every situation with a single speaker, I'd probably have gone for a 15 but I'd happily use a pair of 10's for any gig.

This is from the link you posted. HeadRush FRFR-108 Features: Specially-voiced 8-inch woofer and high-frequency compression driver deliver a precise full response across the entire frequency range without any artificial colouration 2000 watts of peak power (1000W continuous) delivers outstanding clarity and punch (2) XLR/TRS 1⁄4in combo inputs with independent volume controls and clip indicator LF Driver: 8-inch (203mm) 2.5-inch (65mm) high- temperature voice coil HF Driver: 1.4-inch (35mm) neodymium HF driver with precision waveguide Crossover: 2.5kHz Maximum SPL: 129dB peak, 126dB continuous (dB SPL @ 1m) Frequency Response: 62 Hz – 20 kHz (±3dB) Frequency Range: 52 Hz – 22 kHz (-10dB) This can't possibly be true the maximum thermal power handling is limited mainly by the coil diameter. In this case the coil would only be able to handle 300W at best. To be as loud as 126dB even if it could handle 1000W it would have to produce 96dB/W an extremely improbable figure for an 8 with an f3 of 62Hz. To produce 62 Hz at 126db would need an excursion of about 25mm (I haven't done the sums tbh) etc. This thing defies the laws of physics. It's a complete lie. It may have a 1000W amp (2x500 probably, it's common to use a standard amp across the whole range and throttle them back for the smaller units) inside but it'll be signal processed to stop that power reaching the speakers. Equally it may be set up to give the response they quote at 1W a bit like VW diesel engines were set up to pass emission tests but you won't get anywhere near those figures 'on the road'. This thing is a guitar speaker, if you are playing guitar it may well do a good job though be far short of the claimed figures, with bottom E on a guitar at 83Hz a guitar is much easier on a speaker. People say the Barefaced One-10 is a little short for a full band and that is pretty much state of the art at present with a driver that would cost a significant part of the cost of this whole speaker. Unless this is going to be a personal monitor on a pole really close to you this is not going to be enough for a band with a drummer. For not much more you could get the RCF Art 310 which would do as a personal monitor at moderate levels (I use one but not with my rock band) but you ought to be aiming at a 12 if you want to use it in a range of different settings. I do hate it when companies deliberately try to deceive.

Everything Bill has said is right. If you are still struggling I'll try and see if I can make it simple. These speakers are designed to be used with two stereo PA amplifiers and a crossover. Anything else is a bodge. You could use it with a single amp if it was 2ohm stable but it would be less than good even though you could get sound out of all the speakers. To get the best out of these you need an extra amp and a crossover. Some PA amps have the crossover built in. The reason your speakers are wired to 2+ and 2- is to stop you damaging the speakers accidentally. You'd originally have had a lead with four wires running to the subs, you'd then have had the option of running a lead from the 1+and - of the second speakon socket to run the tops or running a longer lead all the way from the amp. If you had two identical leads then there is the possibility of accidentally plugging the bass frequencies into the tops and damaging the speakers at high power, Running the subs through 2+and - stops you muddling the feeds up. It's also possible the system may have run off a 4-way PA amp To run the subs directly you can simply change the connections at one end of the speaker lead, wiring the +output from the amp to 2+ and the - to 2-, better mark the lead as sub to make sure you know which is the 'special' lead. Many speakons don't need soldering so it's an easy job but get someone else to make a lead up if you aren't sure. Even so the point of subs isn't to get more bass, it's to improve the sound by making sure the tops only have to deal with tops and the subs to handle the bass. Just connecting up all four speakers to a single PA amp won't improve the sound it will make it unbalanced and too bassy as well as introducing other distortions. Hope that makes sense

I quite like Hartke stuff and still think my HA3500 is the best sounding amp I've ever owned, I've a little Kickback I use for open mics too. It's a long time though since they've been a 'best buy' for anything new so if you don't mind used and are not too worried about weight it's probably a good shout, if you want new and lightweight there are better options.

I'd rephrase the question: what should I look out for in a new band? To start off with you are in a good situation, it's far better to be doing too much than too little and people will want an already gigging bassist over one who isn't, don't rush, take some time and look for the right band for you. Is it really genre or is it the shared experiences and outlook you want? It's easier to be mates with someone when you can say do you remember when... and they do. Musical tastes? I'm the old guy in our band and I'm the one who wants to do the newer material, though for our band that's the 90's You are always going to be playing older material in pubs, by and large there aren't a lot of young people going to see covers bands and as someone said most people stick with the music of their teenage years, even more true of audiences than band members. Dan Dare is right though, being able to relate to the rest of the band is important too, nothing wrong in looking for some of that. Take your time and look at the set list of any band you consider. Go and see a prospective band if you can, what's the vibe? Do they look like they are sociable and friendly or has the bassist just fallen out with the drummer and the singer fighting the guitarist. Have a look at their current gig list, if they are out every other weekend and you are looking for 20-30 a year then is that what you want? You'll have to compromise on something but do a bit of research and remember you are auditioning them as much as they are auditioning you.. Good Luck

I can't say I'd be happy with options b or c. If he's not good enough or simply hasn't the time available for personal practice then don't go with him. Let's face it if you can't be bothered for the first session it's not likely to change later. Having decided that, if you have, then just be kind, and be quick. My wife was headteacher at a big secondary school her philosophy if she had to say something difficult to someone, teacher or pupil was to be straightforward and not to drag it out. The more you say the more likely it is you'll say something which will eat up at him later on. All you really need to say is I'm sorry you aren't what I'm looking for, thanks for trying out with us' He's already acknowledged that he was underprepared so you don't need to tell him and that leaves him some dignity and if he wants something to work on next time. The only other thing is; are you sure? If you want another look before making up your mind then tell him that. 'You were underprepared last time but we really liked you and if you are up for it we'd like to give it another go and see what you can really do' If he doesn't come better prepared then he never will.

The gist seems to be that how close you get depends upon the situation and the song. As a bassist in a covers band the aim for me is to serve the band and serve the song in that order. It's rare for the rest of the band to play a song note for note so you will have to adapt a little anyway. The multitracking in anything recorded since the mid 60's make it impossible for five people to cover what can 30+ recorded tracks anyway. Just as a simple example you can't play the bass to Walk On The Wild Side with a single bass however clever you are. If the drummer plays a different rhythm then I'm going with the drummer. I'll even have a go at a guitar fill if there's only one guitar and a two part bit of the song. I've a pet hate though, I can't bear it when a band can't be bothered to learn the song 'properly'. I've no problems at all with rewriting it or re-arranging it but there's a certain sort of musician (guitarists mainly) who seem to think if they have the chords for the verse and chorus they don't even need to listen to the song. I kind of think that if you are going to mess with a song people love you need a reason; keys solo when you don't have keys, too difficult to play, just bored and want to mix it up a bit, want to make the song your own are all fine reasons but drop that bit because you can't be assed (escaped the filter ) and then claim it's artistic integrity... You are in a covers band for Pete's sake.

John may come back with an answer but the idea is for an all 'self build' project and he is building a complete bass amp in with a pre amp designed by Charlie (Passingwind). He's also sourced the components now I think and just needs to 'resource' the time to do the development work. Just joined a new band so that may be in short supply I did look into this possibility because I'm lazier than John but the only suitable amp I found which was comparable with buying the bits was the Behringer NX3000D. In the end for my personal use I decided on a Peavey MiniMax with a space to fit in the cab I'm designing at the moment. Those Crown XLS PA amps look to be great for this sort of use.