Phil Starr

I was interested enough to read this thread and It's an interesting question. I've been thinking about it for a while. My go-to practice bass is my Cort action bass, I love the neck and it's my starter bass and owes me nothing so it's left lying around completely carelessly and nothing to worry about. The down side is that it has no real sustain and sounds completely dead. Over the years I've tried all sorts of strings and changed the PUP's (currently Kent Armstrongs) but it's just lifeless. I've two Fenders and a Japanese Thunderbird and they all sound so much better and they all have a lot of sustain as well as sounding so full of life but they stay in the rack until gig days arrive. Sustain is really demanding, you really have to worry about string damping and dynamics. Playing live in really loud environments makes it really lively as feedback creeps in and the strings start to run away from you but it also increases the fun factor. There's nothing like it when the bass comes alive in your hands and every fret touch becomes a hammer-on. So sustain is a really double edged sword. Hence the foam damping I guess. I've always assumed sustain is at least partly about resonance, the body of the bass vibrating in tune with some of the string movement. For me the sustain of the fundamental always seems there but the higher frequencies within the note seem to fade away quickly if the bass doesn't have sustain, so it's not just the volume but the timbre that changes over time. So I'd love to hear some opinions and maybe someone with a bit of knowledge to come along and maybe i can mod my old Cort and make it come alive.

bass cabs aren't really designed to do what PA subs do. You don't really need a lot of subsonic bass out of a bass cab, there's a limit to how mush bass a bass pickup puts out so the actual amount of deep bass is fairly low often they don't go much below 50Hz and frequently they can't handle full power over the next octave. They also have to cover the full range of a bass and this means a compromise in the lower frequencies. The speakers in a sub only have to cover a couple of octaves and nothing over 150Hz so they are specialist one trick ponies and they can do that well as a result. However if you have them and you lack bass from your PA you have nothing to lose by trying them, you'll need a crossover to limit the frequencies you send to them and probably to limit what goes to the tops. If you can borrow a crossover it will let you experiment and you can see if it works for you. It won't be perfect but if it is an improvement then why not? However there is another possible route. If you can send the kick and bass feed out through an aux channel on the mixer you could send them through your Schroeders freeing up the tops from having to deal with any deep bass. Aux fed subs are an accepted technique which might be worth a try. You can then filter everything else through the mixer at 80Hz, which you should be doing anyway.

Back in the day I had two of these which I used as amps for my mobile disco. I absolutely loved them at the time and clocked them at the time pushing out short term undistorted peaks at well over 120W on an oscilloscope. I had to replace the output transformer in one of mine and did the same job for someone else but this was way back in the early 70's. They'd certainly be loud enough but you'd need to pair them with something fairly efficient in the way of speakers, think in terms of a 4x10 or 2x15 unless you can afford something exotic and expensive. Might be worth messaging Oli Foxen who used to be a regular on BC. He was a real valve man and restored a lot of old valve amps including some of these old Sound City's. He's based in Bristol

I'm feeling lazy and I have to cook so there's a 'technical' explanation buried here https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/lessons/the_guide_to/making_it_loud.html enjoy

Celestion are using a more conservative method of rating Xmax than Eminence so direct comparisons aren't strictly valid. Eminence base theirs on 10% distortion so probably the Celestion would come out at around 5.5mm Xmax. That's a nice speaker at a good price and would be a bit of an upgrade on the BN10-200 which has a cone that starts to break up lower down than the 300X which may 'cure' the nasal sound, it may not go that much louder though. All the speakers you mention have a strong midrange rise in frequency response including the Barefaced that you like. Just dropping any old speaker in a cab can be problematic, sometimes it works fine but you can get problems with a poor response or reduction in power handling. I wonder if the advice to sell the cab on and put the money towards a second barefaced would be better. Having two identical cabs is going to give you more of what you want and mixing cabs is going to give you something else. It may be that like me you enjoy tweaking things and just generally experimenting with the cabs you have. I think that Celestion looks a bargain and would be a cheap option, if it doesn't work you could sell it on or build a cab from scratch optimised for the Celestion. Selling it on would probably get almost all of your money back.

If you are price sensitive i wonder why you are considering new? There's a Barefaced 210 in the ads here for £400 which is more than your budget but a lot of speaker for your money and other bargains to be had and that is just here. This person has a couple of TC cabs to sell, you'll need to read the ad but it looks like he may split the bundle if you take one of the cabs

I hadn't realised this was the dual concentric, I built a couple of cabs for the Monitor Golds based on the Westminster back in the day. Your's seem to be a pro PA version with a straight sided cone but the same motor system. Those cabs are tiny for a speaker of that configuration and the catalogues show the frequency response or 100-20,000Hz which is why you're getting no bass, They are clearly vocal and instrumental monitors where keeping bass out of the mics would be important. It also looks like they are collectors items so messing around with the cabs makes little sense as you'd be reducing their value. There are ads for these with $1,000 tags in the states. https://www.hilberink.nl/codehans/tannoy125.htm https://www.hilberink.nl/speaker.htm

Is it bad that I still like Prawn Cocktail Black Forest Gateau and Liebfraumilch? Is that like still wanting heft?

It has, I guess I'm one of the techy nerds here so I'll give you the bullet points. You can't trust the specs on promotional material Having said that there are no magic watts, class D watts are the same as class A/B watts. The PA you hear at most big gigs is almost certainly class D. Amps of all classes often cut corners on the power supply. That will mean they can only provide power downhill with the wind behind them. The tendency in the past was to design and test on sound. Amps and speakers were often highly coloured and most of us like that. Modern amps tend to be cleaner out of the box. So long as they have plenty of headroom you can usually eq something decent. Only buy an amp you've had a chance to play and listen to at volume, don't worry about the class, that's for the designer to sort and if they haven't, don't buy it. I've moved from an old Hartke 3500 which sounded great to am MB Tube which was okay and much more reliable but a bit meh until I dropped it off the stack and I bought a really cheap Peavey MIniMax as a temporary replacement. It's great, really solid sound out of the box. One all to each.

OK the caveat is that I know nothing about the Tannoy and this is all from basic principles. If it's a small sealed cab then it's probable that the low end is deliberately rolled off, it may have been designed for vocal monitoring mainly and the lower frequencies aren't needed and aren't present in the vocal range anyway. It would be normal to use a sharp 80Hz filter anyway so nothing below that. I guess if you are mixing then you need to hear the sound as the audience? In a band situation i'd be really happy with bass roll off as the bass from your mains is omni-directional and you get a lot of bass even behind. Have you tried these live yet or is it that they don't work at home? The mix of direct sound from these and bass from the FOH speakers might be workable??? Porting the cab might work but at the very least you need to tune it to a sensible frequency, just removing a handle won't cut it and could severely reduce power handling and hence reliability. If you can find the Thiele/Small parameters for the drivers someone could optimise the port dimensions for you. If not you'll have to go old school. it's relatively easy to find the resonant frequency of the speaker and you could tune the cab to that or just trust that the resonant frequency is around 50Hz which works OK most of the time and tune the cab to 50 Hz. We'd need to know the internal volume of the cab to calculate that for you. It would probably work but no guarantees.

So there was one of these part exchanged

You guys are good, much closer than my guess. anyway here is the receipt. That makes a rig like that about 7 weeks wages at the time. It would cost you less than two weeks wages now for something of similar quality. Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of the price. Mind you in those days there were gigs

Well you are all doing better than I did. For what it's worth average weekly wage in June was £502, in 1979 it was £89.30.

A mate of mine is selling his old Peavey set up of a Mark III bass amp and 2x15. It's already sold and I have to say it still sounds great, lots and lots of trouser flapping heft The thing is he has the original receipt from 1979 and it just strikes me how much cheaper gear is now once you allow for inflation. So just for fun, how much was a Peavey 2x15 and 400W amp in 1979. I was way out, but no hints. This is the Mk IV but it gives the picture

Hi David, there's a lot in your response! I'll have a think and maybe reply in detail later. There's an online emulator somewhere where you can slide the position of the pickup and it shows the frequency response. Basically it confirms what we already know that you get more bassy as you move away from the bridge and bridge pickups are always more tinny and neck pups more bassy. If i find it I'll send it across to you. It's in one of the 12" design diaries in this forum. The 6-12dB figure was illustrative only. It'll be much more than 12 for a bottom B and a bridge PUP and much less for an E played on the G string. You could theoretically do the calculations for air velocity at all the frequencies for any particular PUP position but I don't think that would be useful. If you are getting wind noise form the ports your poor little 5" drivers are going to be in over excursion anyway. If you tune to 70Hz you aren't going to have any discernible output at 30Hz or even at bottom E (41Hz). Far better to do what you said and use a 50Hz filter, take out the subsonics that you won't hear anyway and use your speaker with confidence. Your smallest slot port is 3000mm2 Stevie's 50mm circular port is even smaller than that and is satisfactory. I think you can go ahead and build.

I think the answer is in your original question. You ask how the power is 'split' between the fundamental and the harmonics. The answer is that there isn't very much fundamental and it's likely to be 6-12dB down in terms of what comes out of the pickup and which note you are thinking of. The fundamental is greatest at the twelfth fret and much reduced at the position of the pickup. By wisely using a filter you are also reducing the chances of over excursion and chuffing in the ports. http://www.buildyourguitar.com/resources/lospennato/index.htm All this goes out of the window of course if you use 12dB of bass boost and an octave pedal! Any cab like this is going to be a compromise, you are using small speakers and want a compact cab so looking for full power with no port noises at all frequencies is something you are going to expect to compromise on. It's useful to know the points where you expect problems and port velocity is just one of them. Have a look at commercial 'briefcase' designs and see what compromises they have made. If your port dimensions are coming out close to theirs you are probably in a safe enough place with your design. I've looked at this for some of my own designs and you can come up with something where the port can end up with you needing to considerably increase the size of the cab. In the days before Win ISD I never calculated port velocity and some of my older cabs have quite restricted port dimensions. You can show the chuffing with a signal generator easily enough but I used them for years without noticing anything playing live..

I looked these up when the thread started. Looking on the Thomann site though the Bugera is cheaper and a known entity, there are also offerings from TC, Markbass (admittedly lower powered) and Laney at similar prices. There is a lot of good stuff to be had in this price bracket. I bought a Peavey Mini Max just before lockdown for just over £200. Not knocking Harley Benton but this is a competitive field.

These things are fun, thanks for posting it. The clue though is the difference between the two eight inch speakers. Not all eights sound the same so why should all the 10's, 12's or 15's? And they were all using different amps albeit all from Fender. The 15 looks has a horn, if so did it also have a crossover modifying the signal to the bass driver? The Rumble 500 also has a horn but not the 12 and the crossover frequency may be different. As I said these things are fun but not very objective and you can't really draw wider conclusions about other speakers in other cabs. Even with the Rumble series the sound a few metres away won't be the same as these recordings.

If I'd known you were looking I know where one of those cabs is. I borrowed it for gigging when I first started out. That one has the Black Widow speakers with the metal domes in the middle. One thing I've noticed with the old Peavey speakers is the glue breaking down so the dust cover in the middle of the speaker can start to break away and so does the corrugated surround which can come away from the metal frame. This shows up as a dreadful buzzing the first time you play at high power. Don't worry though it's a quick fix to stick them back down with some Copydex adhesive. Of course you may be fine. I loved the sound of these, nothing has really bettered them. My mate also has the matching 300W amp if you are interested, sitting there doing nothing. The period method of cleaning up old Tolex was WD40 but best to get most of the s**t off first with some soapy water.

he sounds wonderful, and he lives in Devon, anywhere near the Somerset border

I mixed for him once at the Watchfield festival. With musicians as good as that it's the easiest job in the world. He's a total gentleman too.

I've just looked at some of the links, the gov't guidelines are still that the volume shouldn't be loud enough for people to have to raise their voices and full social distancing so that's us out then. Pretty much people's movements have to be controlled by the venue and nothing that could lead to bunching so dancing is out I guess. To be honest I don't really want to be part of an event which becomes a super-spreading incident. Potentially killing the elderly and infirm relatives of our audience isn't something i really want to be doing, even though I'm probably personally immune having recovered from Covid. Opening pubs when the numbers are edging up is the act of imbeciles. Doing so when you know track ad trace isn't working and your scientists are telling you there is a second wave in a few weeks time when the weather turns and you want to open up the schools is fatal negligence. It's great that the government is finally moving the tracing services to local control and that they are ordering up all the differing vaccines and have almost sorted PPE and spreading by care workers but until we do tackle the disease we aren't going to get back to regular gigging. Rant over