Phil Starr

I use the Antex XS25 mine is about 30 years old and it replaced an Antex 15W model. I don't think I'd go down to 15W again, you need a bit more heat for lead free solder. I've not tried a temp controlled iron because my Antex still works. All the above about cleaning the metal before soldering and keeping the tip clean. If you are new then practice soldering old bits of wire together until you get nice joints, tin the tip of the iron, tin both parts you want to join and then just a touch of solder should complete the joint. I was taught to heat the lead/solder tag or whatever first and run the solder on to that rather than to try and apply it off the iron. The solder will melt as soon as the thing you are soldering is hot enough. Works for me.

@NancyJohnson My experience is more like that from your previous post. One of blanking out inexplicably, embarrassingly on one occasion 'losing ' Seven Nation Army' and having the drummer have to hum it to me. Three weeks later he blanked out on the drum intro of a song we'd played a hundred times. Human memory is a truly strange thing.

I asked this question years ago to be told that everyone remembered everything they had ever played. At least the first few responses did. I was just starting out then and didn't know enough songs to start forgetting them. It's nice to see some more thoughtful replies this time though. Since then I've played something like 500 songs according to my playlists I use for practicing. I have played in several bands at once and with no overlaps I find I can cope without too much trouble with the sets from three bands simultaneously, that's about 100-120 songs. Beyond that it takes a lot of effort for me to keep the plates all spinning and some get very wobbly. I've played through old set lists and they start to fade about 6 months after I've left the band. Songs I've gigged a lot just stick though if I've learned them and they don't get out of the rehearsal room they'll fade really quickly. The funny thing is that sometimes it's in my head and sometimes not but my fingers still find the notes long after I've forgotten the chord sequences and the lyrics. At one point I was running a band night/open mic type thing. I had to learn a lot of songs and that was one of my three concurrent band times. Really good fun to be so busy but I found out the hard way that to keep the standard up you need to keep practising the bread and butter stuff for your bands. For me pushing the envelope up to over 120 songs needed a lot of extra work. I suppose the last point is what do we really mean by 'remember' a song. I can pick up a song I regularly played a while ago much more quickly than something I've played only once or never played at all. there must be something left there still I guess.

Yeah it's good to have Peavey back on form, let's hope it heralds a new dawn of better worked out class D bass amps from all the manufacturers.

That's really interesting, as a sometime designer of speakers I'm always really interested in people's experiences with new gear. The real problem with designing stuff people will like is that the language of engineers is so different from the language used by musicians and the words we use generally to describe sound mean different things to each of us. Ask a hundred bassists what they mean by heft for example...... Anyway we've done some blind shoot outs of a collection of cabs at a couple of the South West Bass Bashes. The last one involved a mix of 12" cabs including a Mark Bass. Technically it was the least impressive of the speakers (partly because it was modestly priced to be fair) The bass response was peaking by about 4dBat 100Hz and there was very little deep bass, the horn was poor quality and the crossover not very well worked out. Bassically it was all boom and tizz with all sorts of distortions. This was compared with @stevie high end FRFR design a Fearless and a couple of other high end FRFR designs. The Mark Bass was the speaker liked by the biggest section of the bassists present. Interestingly people scored it as the best or the worst speaker on display. It was Marmite. Interestingly for a speaker with a poor response below 100Hz it was described as being very bassy. It was easily the loudest of the cabs we tested, but on the sound level meter it measured no louder than the others. It had a shouty frequency response that made it subjectively loud. The thing is that we could all hear the differences and they were measurable, we just didn't agree which sounded best. So maybe you are like the majority, you aren't looking for a clean neutral sound but want grit, growl, bite and heft. Nothing wrong with the Mark Bass approach if you like their 'sound'. I loved my old Hartke HA3500 and my Peavey MkIII with a 2x15 before it. Rationally I know I ought to like FRFR with tone shaping to get the best tone but in practice on a live gig with 20min to set up you can't beat a bit of baked in tone. Just before the lockdown I bought a Peavey minimax, absolutely loved it in the few gigs I squeezed in with it. It was a stopgap for my MBTube which I dropped off the stack and broke. It's going to be my go-to for a while I think, love the little thing. There's one on sale in the ads here, bargain.

Another vote for the Zoom B1 if what you want is flexibility and simplicity. It really has as many sims and fx options as most of us would ever use and for so little money. For recordings it may be a little noisy but so are most multi-fx units. As a bonus it is great for silent practice with headphones and has a tuner and metronome/drum machine built in

Glad to hear you are mending. Welcome back.

Without hearing it I'm guessing. It's probably worth going round any fx jacks with some switch cleaner but I still suspect you may have an electrolytic capacitor on the way out. It could be a number of other things of course. It's better to get it checked rather than have it go down at a gig. Assuming they are still working and not in lockdown you have nothing to lose by ringing Ashdown. They really are helpful. Oh, if the pops are really loud they may damage the speaker. Keep the amp turned down when you switch on

There aren't enough details for an accurate diagnosis. If you used the amp for practice I assume its working after a fashion but making 'pops' as well? Anyway speakers don't 'pop' on their own so it's likely to be the amp. Possibly capacitor problems if it is a definite pop, if you have old electrolytic about to fail anyway they sometimes fail when left off for a while. Anyway you are in luck as it's an Ashdown, give them a ring and see what they say, Best after sales support in the business.

Servisol for me too, I suspect they are all similar though.

I'm guessing you're fairly new to bass amplification? Sorry if that's not the case. a 2x15 is already a bigger cab than most of us currently use, it sounds like something from the 1970's, nothing wrong with that and a lot of older gear sounds great for not much money. A 4x10 alone is also a big cab by todays standards. Both will probably be louder on their own than you strictly need for any gig. Basically all you need to do is be able to produce the sound you like loud enough to match the drums for volume. Given most drummers that's already extremely loud. Any louder and you'll have to put both bass and drums through the PA. You may decide to run these two together just for the hell of it but unless you want to be antisocial to the rest of your band you'll need to turn down if you do. The other thing is mentioned above, you can't really successfully mix two cabs of different impedances. If your 4x10 is an 8ohm cab then it needs to be paired with another 8 (not your 4ohm cab )so the amp sees 4ohms and the power is shared evenly. If your 4x10 is 4 ohms (less likely) it will match the 2x15 but the amp will 'see' 2 ohms. Not all amps can manage the current needed for that and will shut down or maybe even mis-function. TBH save your money. Play the 2x15 with pretty much any bass amp and it'll be loud enough. Most bass amps are in the 3-500W range nowadays and that is pretty much enough for anything. My first rig was a 2x15Peavey with a 200W amp and it was more than loud enough so a modern 3-500W amp is going to be plenty too. If you hear the 4x10 and prefer it that's great too but choose it because it sounds good not because you want to be louder.

Supertramp and another band Brewer's Droop (Mark Knopfler) were 'our' university bands. They did a lot of gigs at Reading. They were always good, interesting and charged just the right amount that you could afford to book them and still make a small profit/loss. I think I saw them six times and I didn't see then every time they played. They were always good and just got better over time. That album must have been the result of many thousands of hours of collective music making. The same for Dire Straights too later on. I think a lot of UK rock came out of that university scene as well as the venues in London and the other major cities. Regular venues paying well enough to keep the band fed and watered whilst they grew their craft in ront of a live audience. Years of hard work before you were spotted and became an overnight success.. I still listen from time to time, it still sounds good to me, Im not huge on nostalgia but it's great music with real craftsmanship from people I know did their 10,000 hours. Just a thought, does the music made by people who make their living playing to paying audiences always end up more immediate. Mozart and Beethoven were gigging musicians

I don't know Al, they all probably come out of the same factory in China. Mine have more controls so you can set fan speeds and the target humidity and they are more powerful, they routinely remove 2l of water a day and can do more if the air is really wet.

Lidl and Aldi do them at around £100 every now and then. They are better than the pro ones I used to use. make sure you get one of the ones with decent automatic control, you can set the humidity level and they are pretty accurate. The only other thing to look out for is the size of the tank, they can fill up quite quickly. The other thing is you will have a supply of endless distilled water. It's pure enough for going into car batteries and great for use in irons and the like, or for watering your acid loving plants.

I have dehumidifiers for drying plaster having done that for years they are now drying clothes so I have data. When we put the washing out the humidity in the room quickly climbs to 80% the washing is dry when the air in the room reaches 43%. That's quite a range and I wouldn't want my basses going through that cycle too often. I don't think you'd get sudden catastrophic failure but I can only suspect the neck would distort in the end. One of the luthiers might ha ve a better idea. Remember this is with forced dehumidification (wasn't that a RHCP song) natural drying will take longer and the humidity won't go so low, which is good, but the bass will be damp for longer. Could you leave it in a case or compromise in another room with some wall hangers

Good point, sweeping statements are almost always nonsense. I should have said don't choose on the basis of the magnet material alone. The whole process of choosing ends up with a compromise of budget, convenience, taste and practicality. My own go to cabs are tiny, simply because most of the venues I play are pubs and stage space is almost always a problem. Sound still comes first but only just and the point about neo speakers is you can get a great sound in a lightweight package.

you've probably asked the wrong crowd We are all bass players you know, the ones who hang around with musicians. People sing because they like music, like performing or just like singing. Some people don't have the skill or the charisma or even the desire to be up at the front. The bassist is rarely the star of the show even if they are the best musician in the band. I love the sound of bass and the role it fills in the music, and I love working with people to make something greater than the sum of it's parts. I also love vocal harmony but I can't do it, even the little bit of backing vocals I do to thicken the melody line I really enjoy and if the song sounds better with it I'll give it a go. It's great to work with a really good musician, everyone sounds better, even me. Why wouldn't anyone want that, and if you don't have the confidence to lead a band or you just have the second best voice why let your ego get in the way of the music or the fun. One of the great joys of music apart from the music itself is working as part of a team.

There is definitely a premium to pay for neo speakers but there is also a lot of profiteering on the exotic for early adopters too. There was a big price hike for neo when the Chinese cornered the market for Neodymium pushing up world prices. Now the prices have come down as other countries started to produce Neodymium the difference is less than it was. Just checking on the retail prices equivalent B&C drivers the neo driver is slightly cheaper (but has a pressed steel frame) against the much heavier ceramic magnet equivalent. For Eminence Delta Pro v's Deltalite £113 plays £142, that's roughly a 30% increase. Ironically a pressed steel chassis makes more sense when you have lighter magnets and don't need a fancy supporting structure but neo speakers tend to be higher standard all round. Neo magnets size for size are much more powerful than cheap ceramic magnets and even small neo magnets often outgun the traditional ones. It really is that much better at being a magnet. Elecctric cars would be milk floats without neo magnets and wind turbines would be massive too. So given that the cab cost and labour should be the same and in a combo you have the same amp a neo cab should have maybe a 20% mark up and a combo less in percentage terms, maybe 10-15%. but the neo speakers are seen as the luxury model, they may have better finishes or other tweaks or the speakers may just not be identical to the traditional ones. I couldn't find any information on the gorm but on EBS's the neo combo's were showing an extra 3dB of output so better (louder anyway) speakers are being used in the neo line. People pay silly money for all sorts of extras on their cars, or their basses to be honest so if super lightweight is important expect to pay silly money until the early adopters have all bought them and the prices start to flag. In the end I'd buy mainly on sound rather than anything else. If the specs are different then the sound is going to be too.

+1 more on the Zoom in my case the B1ON much more practical and satisfying than a metronome.

Yeah there are definitely songs that would benefit from pick playing and that precision in the timing is something I don't always achieve with fingers. The trouble with playing covers is there's pretty much always the next song to learn and the easy route of using the tricks you already have to hand instead of learning new techniques. The lack of gigs means I have time to do something but motivation has always come from the things I did wrong at the last gig I've got back to playing an hour a day again though and cleared the backlog of songs to learn so now looks a good time to do some work on the basics. How are you getting along with the online courses? (thread derail)

Thanks for sharing that, coincidentally I'm another whose pick playing is non existent and last night I was idly playing through a few songs with a pick thinking I should really use this time to work on using one. Seeing this first thing this morning it looks like an ideal song make a start with. A nice get back to basics moment for me. I wasn't a huge fan of Duran Duran, too over-produced and over-hyped for me at the time, but I always loved the rhythm section and the bass in particular. I wish he hadn't mentioned the Aria Pro though, I don't need another bass.

This too will pass This disease won't last forever. Eventually the govt. will sort out testing and new infections will fall to single or maybe double figures per day. Medical treatments will improve and almost certainly a vaccine will be found. The only question is how quickly they will get the infection rate down and how many people will be killed by government inaction and social irresponsibility. I really feel for those who depend upon music for their living. Two of my band mates are in that position. In a couple of years this is going to look very different. China, New Zealand and South Korea have shown what can be done. It should be easier in an island state with a well educated population but we don't have much competence at the top with our populist leaders. Most of the pubs will reopen, and the other venues. People will want to party for a while and for a few they will have a new interest in live music and a social life. The new normal will be very much like the old normal, for a while we might even value each other a little more but day to day it will only be medical practices that change. All we can really do is wait, hone our music and support measures to bring down the infection rate. The quicker the better so the more action the better for me.

I pretty much agree with all of that but particularly with the last bit. Changes occur in speakers over time. Paper cones are made from wood fibre (plant fibre strictly, as some fibres from other plants are sometimes mixed in) Paper holds together because of chemical bonds which form mainly in the lignin which forms the bulk of plant fibres, these bonds will increase slowly across time increasing the bonding. The cone will also absorb some moisture from the air and the physical movement and flexing of the cone will break some of the bonds and also over time the fibres themselves. There are loads of other factors too and other materials in the speaker will change over time too. This process doesn't stop either the speaker will go on changing over it's whole lifetime. Even so Eminence is just one voice, there is a lot of conflicting evidence in the literature about this and it was a hot topic amongst hi-fi enthusiasts in the 80's, and probably since then too. Some of the changes are self cancelling and listening tests proved inconclusive, even with some pretty expensive hi fi speakers people couldn't reliably hear the difference. You don't need many watts of 20Hz to push these speakers beyond their limits so to leave an inaudible signal running through possibly a 300W bass amp overnight untended fills me with dread. Especially since it is to no long term advantage. For me the fun bit is to play bass through the speaker, particularly one you've just finished building. The changes are going to happen whatever you do and as Eminence themselves imply they are going to happen over time anyway.

It's like looking at an old friend Well done, it's great to see a successful build. I really hope you get as much fun out of it as I have as soon as the restrictions are lifted and you can get out with your band. FWIW I never worry about 'breaking in' a cab. The first few hours are best spent playing bass IMO and with a new cab I'm going to spend at least an hour playing bass, trying all my amps and basses in turn and fiddling with eq, but then I need all the practice I can get. The changes in sound from breaking in aren't dramatic and a few people have questioned whether you can hear them at all.

It's true about the weight. If I'm doing a jam session rather than a well paid gig I tend to take my Wharfedale Titans that weigh nothing and sound great so long as you don't put anything bassy into them. If I need bass I've got a couple of old JBL subs I stick underneath. An easy lift versus more trips to the van is a perfectly sensible thing to think about. Our band use QSC 12's for gigs but someone else brings those