Phil Starr

I'd not worry about wattage, here's why. Most people will go for a PA which is 12" bass driver + horn. 12" drivers can usually only handle about 3-400W. (a bit more for a 15" and a bit less for a 10 usually) at the most. Less at lower frequencies. If you go active then the amps will usually be class D but computer controlled (called DSP) The amp may well be a 1000W amp but is controlled by the DSP to prevent the speaker ever getting more power than it can handle. If you buy an active system it may well claim 1000W based on the amp but it won't usually be louder than a 400W speaker. Ideally look at the maximum output in decibels, though this itself will be exaggerated and not always by the same amount. The reality is that most 12's from the top manufacturers put out very similar sound levels and all will be enough for the average pub gig or even slightly more. RCF, QSC and Yamaha are my current value for money favourites in that order but there is a lot of good stuff to choose from. The next question is are you going to put bass and kick drums through the PA, and how loud do you want to go? If the answer is yes and deafening then you might want to look at a bigger speaker with a 15" bass unit or buying a sub or two. (you'll generally only need one but that's another issue. Not only will the sub give you more and deeper bass but by reducing the power going through the tops it will clean up your sound. Finally I'd go for active speakers, unless I was running a hire company. It's years since I had a failure at any gig so with sensible use of your own gear you can expect good levels of reliability. Having active speakers and up to date lightweight gear means setting up and knocking down time is considerably reduced and the leads are what go wrong so having fewer boxes means fewer leads. Also the DSP will look after your stuff if somebody does try something stupid. What is your budget?

Wow, listening to it now. Lovely tone too.

If you use this method with the battens you can leave the screws in, they aren't anywhere near the edge of the panels.

My feelings are pretty much the same, I'd say start with a four string and look at P basses and J's. Or a PJ of course. There are plenty of other fine basses out there that you might like and which are lovely to play and sound great but I started off thinking 'don't buy Fender you are paying for the name, in any case surely design has moved on since then' I'm now the proud owner of a P and a J and have stopped looking anywhere else. Fender/Squier are reasonably good value for money at most of the price points. Some come off the production lines better than others though so even if you buy new try them out and see how they feel in your hands. The big difference between the P and J for a beginner is that the P bass traditionally has a thicker neck, most of us find a J more comfortable to play especially if you have small hands or come from playing a guitar. Confusingly nowadays a lot of P's have a jazz neck or something in between. They sound different too but until you have spent a little time with them how they play is really the thing, the nicer they feel the more you'll play and the quicker you'll get there. I'd buy used, though difficult at the moment of course. In a couple of years you'll be as opinionated about basses as the rest of us and probably upgrading every few months so being able to trade in and get most of your money back is good. The market place here is good, and policed by all of us so reliable. the only problem is not a big selection of beginner basses. Good luck, it's getting hard to find a really poor bass nowadays so go out buy a bass and enjoy

Did you use a furniture polish? they usually contain silicones which 'disagree' with wax or oil finishes and make them go pale and cloudy. I would avoid waxes too to be honest. If you want to do anything I might use a bit of meth's on a cloth to just raise dissolve and remove any surface dirt and wax, but really gently and start in a small area you cannot see. If it's something you guard with your life though maybe take it to a qualified practitioner when times ease, or just leave it alone

I'm a woodworker not a luthier so take this with a large pinch of salt. Anything you do is going to change the tome of your bass, so proceed with caution. Your post got me thinking and I did a little research too. My initial thoughts were what would I do and my solution was shellac and very light natural oils, I'd also keep water away from the wood as any increase in the water content of the wood is probably not going to help. That seems to be what the on-line advice is, there are lots of violin varnishes based upon seedlac and plant oils it seems https://www.internationalviolin.com/Shop/varnish-supplies for example. Lot's of advice out there just search violin refinishing https://ourpastimes.com/how-to-revarnish-an-old-violin-12556279.html

coming along nicely It is such a simple construction technique isn't it?

Steve @skidder652003 band is soo loud so if he says it is enough it will be.

There's also almost enough for a couple of 1x12's. Easily enough to build one of Stevie's Basschat mk 3 super FRFR speaker. A 2x10 would be good too. @Marvin Given the lock down the gang here would be happy to design you something and talk you through the build, so long as you did a build diary we could all share. How much do you want to spend on drivers? Do you have a budget in mind? What sort of sound do you go for/ music do you play?

yep 18mm is good for a cab, better if you don't mind the weight, you have more than enough for one of these

Hope you like them The Beta's have a really prominent peak between 1kHz and 4k. they are also slightly underdamped so will give you a prominent peak around 100hz in most practical sized boxes, so will end up with a bit of a smiley faced eq baked in. the Beymas are similar but it won't be so exaggerated and you'll get a little more deep bass at power with the extra excursion. It's the kind of response I like in both cases but £15 per speaker makes it a no brainer.

I've made up all sorts of cabs with off-cuts, they all work and are a great basis for tweaking later on. This is an 8" cab too so the forces on it won't be excessive. At this stage I'd stick with what you have and see what it sounds like. If you turn up the cab really loud you can feel the panels vibrating with your fingers. Find the worst spots and put a length of dowel across the cab to damp the vibrations at that spot, by the time you have a couple of dowels in place you'll be pleasantly surprised at the damping you've achieved. You can go on doing this forever and there are other panel damping techniques too. The more wood you add the better it should get but you are adding weight all the time so there's a compromise. For the record MDF is a great material acoustically but heavy and doesn't cope with damp, chipboard (particle board in the States) is pretty good, medium weight, but has to be the right grade and is difficult to finish well and isn't very tough. Hardwood plywood is pretty tough and lightweight so great for portable cabs. Softwood ply is, well soft, so you don't get the toughness you want. Your cab is looking fine to me so get it finished and see what it sounds like, we can talk you through damping when you get to having a working cab

The type of ply you have chosen isn't the best choice for a cab, It's really made to be a cheap material for shuttering on a building site for forming poured concrete. You won't get significant stiffening by treating the surface, so why do it? I'd imagine the Tuffcab would take to the PVA with no problems but try it on a piece of scrap first. The Tuffcab would be better just applied straight to the wood though. If you want to stiffen the panels then you'd be better of bracing the cab, the simplest way of doing that is to run pieces of timber across the cab gluing them in place so that the opposite faces are joined somewhere near the middle of the panels, slightly off centre is best and make sure the braces don't get in the way of the speaker or reflex port.

they all take the same terminals

I don't think there is a lot of point in coating the inside, the only reason to protect the wood is that being soft it may dent but the paint finish is fairly flexible. The Duratex should offer fair protection to the outside

Thanks, I'll investigate

Hi Stevie wondered if you'd reply. @EBS_freakIt's fairly normal in crossover design to do some equalisation so to do some of the same thing in DSP as you would in a hardwired crossover doesn't look like 'cheating'. I've always looked for drivers that are flattish especially in the crossover area and it looks like this is what RCF are saying they use as a starting point. I'd also use some sort of dynamic limiting to protect the drivers and they put their hands up to that too. Limiting would be more linear in DSP than putting an auto vehicle bulb in series with the horn driver which a lot of old PA speakers did I'm reading this as they are trying to make good speakers with decent components and making pragmatic decisions about how to use DSP rather than lot's of processing to give an 'enhanced' sound to sell the speakers in the showroom. I guess where any of us judge the point where equalisation becomes enhancement becomes a bit of a semantic point. You can do so much with DSP. I have to say I've listened to a few RCF speakers and they sound more honest and less congested than most of their rivals in the same price range. I think their compromises are mainly well judged.

As Bill has said those drivers are overkill, not to mention the weight! They are way cheaper over here though. I think you have used the SM110's before but these might be worth a look https://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=BMA610CVM28&browsemode=manufacturer I know @Chienmortbb has tried the 12" version and is fairly impressed.

hi Paul, might be worth checking out this thread, I think it still has details of some of the prototypes so there are a couple of options there as well as the final design but you could always ask @stevie via pm. The biggest problem is the crossover, commercial ones are generic and will work but won't match your particular drivers together very well, neither speaker will necessarily have a flat response around the crossover area which means a custom design is best. Using Stevie's design could work for the horn at least.

It's good to talk about something other than you know what I don't play upright and I haven't had cause to mic one up for 40years now but I'd think these would be ideal, basically a neutral sounding cab. I would so like to get my hands on them and see what Genzler have done. Either you have huge hands or those are really tiny cabs

I love the design of those cabs but have yet to hear them. It'll be a while before you get to gig the new one but in the meantime a review would be good.

This will end and you'll be back together again, if you are anything like our band this is the chance to refresh your set list, if you all learn a song a week it'll give some focus to your practice. mind you with the lack of focus I'm also learning a load of songs the rest of the band don't like, I'm also looking to extend my range, I love Soul music but there's quite a high entry hurdle when moving from pop/rock this is a chance to build up some new skills. Playing regularly with covers bands can be a bit of a treadmill even though every gig still gives me a bit of a thrill.

Off centre is better but of course there isn't much chance of that with a 20cm speaker in a 30cm cab. You could make the cab 20x25x40 or some such variation and putting the port directly in line won't be an option as it will probably long enough to touch the speaker. Port placement at the back isn't a problem. For practice I wouldn't worry too much about excursion. You are likely to be at modest levels and because of the placing of the pickups on your bass there isn't a lot of fundamental there anyway. I think you've misunderstood the computer model, the cone will be moving as in the excursion graph, it just won't be making much sound and will be 9dB down. That's a characteristic of all ported cabs. Below tuning they effectively just become an open box with nothing to stop the cone moving other than it's own suspension. Your amp may be limiting things at that frequency though and it's only sometimes a problem. In your own room rather than a gig you'll hear if the speaker is stressed. All this is normal

Assuming you have put the data into Winisd correctly then what you end up with should be close to the predicted response. When manufacturers rate their speakers frequency responses it is only really ever a rough guide, the bottom end is affected by the cab they do the measurements in, often if you dig into the notes they will tell you how it is measured, They may even have just calculated a figure or used F3 as the lowest frequency. In your cab it will be different. At the top end it becomes subjective, The cone will break up at higher frequencies and the response becomes uneven, sometimes very uneven. Sometimes they give the -3dB point sometimes -10db, sometimes something else. This speaker will make a sound at 4khz and much higher too. It's easy enough to make an 8" speaker with decent output at low frequencies. A heavier cone and soft suspension lowers the resonant frequency, what you lose is efficiency. Ultimately you can't have loud, deep and small. If you look at 8" PA cabs you'll find they come out at around 113db maximum output which is what winisd is telling you this will do. There's no reason this won't sound good but it's going to do so at practice levels. Build your cab and enjoy

Stevie has reminded me, yes we did check the tuning