Phil Starr

Wasn't expecting that, better by far than any single position video of a band clearly that was you, but live. For the sort of market my band operate in that's perfect. Wonder if there is anywhere round here that could do similar? £150 if it get's you one extra gig you are in profit. Nice treatment of the song by the way.

hey Steve where were you playing? just got back from the Park Hotel in Exmouth. Had the reverse experience, broke my amp the other day (the stack fell on it) so I had to dig out a replacement, I was going to use my little kickback as monitor and go through the PA for the audience but the band (drummer mainly) wanted a proper bass sound so I used my old Hartke HA3500 with a single 12. Firstly it sounded better than I have for a long time and secondly the rest of the band played better with the extra heft on stage. There's just more than one way of doing things isn't there? Don't blow out the stack yet

In very approximate values bass/guitar/mics have outputs of around 1/1000th of a volt PA amps have a standard input of just under a volt Instrument amps tend to have inputs of around 1/4 of a volt into the power amp section, but that varies a lot. All you need is something with a little gain obviously the dedicated pre's will do all that for you but if you want a low cost solution and you want to keep using your BD121 then almost any little mixer will give you plenty of gain https://cpc.farnell.com/qtx/mm41/4-channel-mini-mic-mixer/dp/DP35486 for around £15 is small enough to fit on a pedal board and there are probably pedals that will do it. A lot of modellers will give out enough to drive straight into a power amp too

That's the one.

Doesn't sound like these speakers are what you need for bass guitar. It would be difficult to combine a 4 and 8 ohm speaker in any sensible way unless one is dual coil. If they are car speakers then the power ratings are likely to be nonsense I'm afraid. I think the advice to buy a cheap Peavey might be the best advice, then cash it in again when you decide to upgrade, you'll lose almost nothing and be able to play straight away. the sound will probably be better than what you plan. I recently scrapped a Peavey cab because no-one wanted it at the time, you should be able to get something really cheaply. If building is what you want to do the speakers inside are usually good so stripping out a peavey and building a lighter cab can be fun and a low cost option.

For headphone use a lot of us are using the Zoom B1 effects pedal. You get a load of effects including some usable out of the box sounds, a tuner and drum machine built in but best of all for me the headphone output is really nice sounding and you can mix it in with audio from anything that'll drive earbuds. I run mine off AA rechargeables and get about 10 hours practice out of them but you can power it with a mains adaptor or USB lead. Looks like they are updating it so they are cheap £45 if you want one now https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zoom-B1on-Bass-Effects-Pedal/dp/B00JLEHMG6 Actually have a look at the new one looks like they have kept most of the features of the old B1ON but made it a lot simpler to use. £69

Hi Chris, one of my ventures is just such a set up. In the end my duo use a couple of RCF 310 pa speakers as monitors and put everything through them including bass. We just put the front of house mix through them which has the advantage that we hear what the audience hear which is kind of important if you are mixing yourselves. The reason we moved to this set up was a couple of disaster gigs where the acoustics of the room made it impossible to hear each other, not great for a duo Duos tend to get hired when space is limited and being pushed into a literal corner seems more common than not. Having something facing you takes the room acoustics out of the equation and we can have sensible sound levels on stage with the audience running on a separate volume control. Two 10" monitors are a lot simpler than two lots of backline and vocal monitors. the ART 310A is still only £250 and we bought two more for PA which gives us a bit of redundancy if something goes down at the gig. It never has but it's nice to have a plan. Up until then I used the old Hartke Kickback10 compact but heavy and only 125W but perfectly adequate and will do with drums for rehearsal and small gigs (but only just) the latest one would have been interesting if we hadn't gone for the RCF's. Lot's of small combo's to choose from though. The jack of all trades would be an 'ordinary' lightweight 300/500W bass amp and a couple of lightweight 1x12's. One speaker for the duo two for the trio. That's what I use for everything else and it's only the speaker lead that makes it more complex than a combo. Lightweight means I can tuck the amp under one arm and carry both speakers.

Footsore from 6 hours walking round Venice I thought a break in order. Basschat is the distraction I need. This looks like great advice. You will end up with a very usable cab and if you like it a second one will cover any need you are likely to have. If not you'll have invested only a little and learned a lot. A cab this size is a nice easy carry.

just off to jump on the Vaporetto You are in safe hands with these two john

Hi John, just pm'd you. you might be better off bulding this cabs big brother, there's a link at the beginning of this thread. This little cab is less likely to work well with a cheaper speaker. I'll have a look when I get back from holiday.

Hi Al, if you want to 'dip your toe' then a couple of suggestions. My subs are Wharfedale EVP's like the Mackies they have the crossover built into the subs. I picked mine up for £250ish for a pair and we've done open air gigs with them. I've also got a couple of JBL's They aren't the loudest or best sounding of subs but it is surprising about how little sub you need to add to fill out the sound and how that in turn allows your tops to do what they do best. I didn't really want the JBL's but someone sold me a pair for £100 and 15" active subs for that price was too good to turn down. There are quite a few subs with the crossovers in so look around for them. If not then a simple crossover for less than £100 is available I'd completely concur with EBSFreak there's nothing of any interest below 50Hz that is going to improve your sound. Technically using subs gives you some genuine advantages. They are going to remove 30%ish of your power from the tops. This means they will run cooler and more reliably. Cooler is good because heat causes the resistance of the speaker to rise and you get reduced output and increased distortion. You will also reduce the excursion of the bass/mid driver in your tops. This means the coil will stay within the linear part of the magnetic field and distortion is reduced. In the end you need to engineer a system that suits your needs.

Disagreement is good. It shows that no-one is gospel and that there are more than single solutions that work. I've seen Steve's band two or three times. They are seriously good and very seriously loud. When I saw them down in The Marine in Sidmouth they were ear splitting, but Steve is right the mix and clarity is really good. I haven't heard anyone else that loud recently though.

I think you've answered your own question here. It's largely about what venues you play and the drums. In most of the gigs I play the drums are a problem, they are too loud. why on earth would you wantto amplify something too loud already? I.ve some drummers who don't get that and more than once I've miked up drums with no intention of putting any drums through the PA. IME few gigs 'need' mic's on the drums. If I don't need to mic drums then do I need bass through the PA? Even if I want to reduce the backline levels most PA speakers will handle a bit o bass reinforcement so the only time I need subs is for really decent sized venues and for outdoor gigs where the bass is lost with no rear walls to reinforce the sound. I've got subs, they come out literally once or twice a year. I like the backup of being entirely self sufficient and picked them up cheaply but need them? Well only you can decide that. Probably not for a pub band or one that goes out without a sound engineer.

What speakers are you looking at, dual coils are pretty specialised kit?

This is all really exciting, I feel quite left out and can't wait to see all the reviews. Well done everyone

I don't think there is a lot of difference John, I suspect they are made from the same pulp. Obviously brands vary with softness being traded for strength. Also I think we could be over thinking this. If the tissue is thin I just use more layers, the composite is going to be stronger than the latex or the paper on it's own and if you build it in layers it's eventually going to be stronger than the cone itself. Anyone doing this is just going to have to estimate the balance of strength and adding weight and stiffness. I try to offer conservative advice so using baby wipes which contain plastic fibres is introducing an extra material. It might be worth a try but I haven't tried it so won't recommend it. Silk is light and strong and might be good if you had it but again I don't know because I haven't tried it. All I can say is I've done the tissue/Copydex thing a lot and so far with no failures and no noticeable change in sound.

Copydex for me. You want something flexible and Copydex is latex based, effectively you are putting a rubber patch on. I layer up in stages with tissue over the tear. You need to have some sort of fibre to bridge the tear itself and it needs to be compatible with the paper in the cone as well as absorbing the glue well so paper fibre it is. I suppose you could use something like blotting paper but most of us have toilet paper to hand and you need to keep the repair as light as possible. I've done this a lot and no failures yet, some of the patches are over 10 years old. I'm not particularly clumsy, I repair other people's stuff.

We use a couple of RCF 310's for our loud semi-acoustic duo. (no drums though) and a couple more as floor monitors. Everything including bass goes through the 310's and they are perfectly adequate, I reckon a pair would be easily enough for bass with a drummer but I haven't tried it. Remember also that there is a limiter built into the amp even with the earlier RCF's and DSP in the modern ones so you pretty much can't blow anything as compression and limiting is applied if you push too far. The 710's should be better if anything. You could always add in a bass cab for the bigger venues but I don't think you'd need it.

So was I mmmnn

I had a similar problem with mine, it was the power supply capacitors for the pre amp. The construction of the amp makes it an easy one to repair and any competent tech should have little trouble in finding the problem and the parts are widely available. Shouldn't be too expensive. Unless you understand this stuff I wouldn't advise poking around inside. The power supply caps are there to store charge and they will do this even after the amp is switched off and unplugged. They can give you a nasty and dangerous shock.

That's really shocking, even with the state of knowledge back in '69 (just before Thiele and Small) we knew better than this. The idea that we would put out something like this in 1980, well it's no wonder the UK lost it's reputation as a serious manufacturer of pro audio. As a speaker it isn't really worth repairing. if it's a valued piece of vintage kit you won't be able to source replacement parts easily, but someone might be able to recone the broken speaker. Only the OP can decide it that's a project you want to take on.

I tried Elixirs and they do last well, I left them on for a couple of years and when I changed them there was an improvement in sound but not that dramatic and the degradation in sound is so slow you don't really notice. My regular strings are Dean Markley Blue Steels which last really well, I like the sound too and reckon to get a year out of them. I was changing Rotosounds every 3 months. I don't like a really bright sound (for me the Roto's sounded best about 4 weeks old) and I don't use a pick which I guess would be tougher on the coating for Elixirs

Social Club shudder.... Did they tell you to turn down and then stop you for the meat draw?

Ha ha recording studios, it's like stnding in front of all of your friends with no clothes on. I hate the sound of my bass playing on recordings, you can hear everything completely unvarnished, Every undamped note, timing error, squeaks on the string, irregularities in volume etc etc. It's all very humbling. Then the recording engineer says; "bass and drums are OK, let's go again with guitar and vocals". At gigs I'm expecting someone to come along and tap me on the shoulder and say "come on now, you don't really play bass do you?" We've all been there.

You are getting great advice btw. You've hit the barrier of taste I think at this point. You can see the advantages of a speaker with better excursion, the effects of cabinet size and so on. the question is what you want to get out of this. Is the extra bass of some of the designs important to you or can you afford to sacrifice that for other things? Speaker design is like squeezing a balloon a bit, as soon as you change one thing something pops up elsewhere. I think you've come a long way, you've clearly made the Pulse the one to beat and it's a good choice given you aren't intending to put a huge amount of power through it. you can see why the Beyma was so attractive. With Qts of 0.38 it is neither over nor under damped and so gives a fairly flat response in a range of cabs. The extra excursion (Xmax) is what makes the maximum SPL look so good but you aren't going to put 350w through it. You might be better off seeing what the spl is at the maximum power of your amp and comparing that. I'm glad you stumbled on the Beta 12A2 I love the look of the big wide upper peak in it's response. Eminence are just a little more expensive over here but one of the advantages of Eminence is that they don't change their designs too often and replacements and re-cones are possible if they go wrong somewhere down the line and they have proven longevity. A really safe choice. I think of them as being like Levi's, if you can't be bothered to shop around you know you are buying a quality product which won't date or let you down. Mind you I've had no hint of trouble from the Beyma's. B&C, Celestion are good too. Of the speakers you've looked at the Beyma is going to give you the most bass and the flattest response. In a 50l cab it doesn't sound 'hi fi', at low levels it sounds clean, unremarkable, the top end is there but more laid back than most commercial cabs, cranked up it sounds immense, huge but IMO it needs a bit of mid boost to cut through the mix and in a small space the bass needs trimming. The Eminence 12A2 is going to sound quite old school, in a practical sized box you'll get the 100Hz boost and that midrange boost as well, a smiley faced eq in fact. It's an engaging sound. The Celestion Pulse is going to be somewhere in between but maybe more similar to the Eminence. you could make a good argument for all of these speakers but it looks like a 12 is going to be your thing.