Phil Starr

It's a great way of doing things. because I experiment a lot with speakers I have a conventional bass amp but with my duo I use a Zoom as a pre and modeller into a couple of RCF 310's which also do our vocal monitoring. Sounds lovely and less to carry. you just have to remember there are no magic pixies. Two tens are two tens, you aren't going to get loud, deep and cheap at the same time so they have the same limitations as any other 2x10 as far as bass output is concerned but a couple of high quality PA speakers are going to match your Alain Caron. A couple of cheap ones not so much.

Another bit of phone footage then, Steve on keys didn't get the memo about black T-shirts. think he was going for a Dennis Taylor look.

I'd back up the love for the Ashdown, my first amp was a MAG and it proved reliable and did just what is said on the tin. I can also vouch for the fantastic after sales that Ashdown offer even on gear bought used, they really couldn't be more helpful. Having said that I own a Wharfedale PA system and it is nicely made, great sounding and reliable. It is quite old but even so when some idiot sound engineer used an incorrectly wired lead to pump 40+ volts of phantom power into the subs with the volume up full blowing the speaker Wharfedale came up with a replacement speaker, return of post at a very reasonable price. Again an old established company that treat their customers well. I've had a look at the bass speakers in PMT Bristol and they look to be really well made and at a silly price. My vote would still be for the used Ashdown though

I think that's fair Al. I actually spent a few minutes listening to those clips in the video jumping back and forth to compare like with like. With headphones and jumping straight back and forth there is a little difference. Our ears (actually our brains) are tuned to detect differences so A/B testing does emphasize change. Even so the held note at the end of the first bit of bass is so much cleaner with the Thumpinator. In a live performance with variable room acoustics and the rest of the band going I think the only differences would be a cleaner more defined sound.

I'll give it a go Al The energy going into the speaker is coming from the amp, about 4% is going to be converted into sound and the rest into heat. Most of the heat is transferred across the magnetic gap and ends up being dissipated into the air by the magnet assembly and to a lesser extent the frame. A smaller proportion is lost into the air around the coil and some speakers use the cone movement to move air through the gap to increase heat loss. All of the coil carries the same current but the bit in the magnet gap runs cooler as the distance to the heat conducting magnet is small. Having the coil largely out of the gap can lead to overheating so not a good thing. the other thing that can destroy a speaker with over excursion happens if the coil makes contact with the back of the magnet assembly. The HPF will have two effects, it reduces the electrical power below the cut off frequency which is good, although not usually a large effect and it will reduce excursion as you can see keeping the coil safely inside the magnet gap. It will also reduce distortion because the coil is operating in the linear part of the magnetic field for more of the time and by reducing doppler effects.

Ha ha, I was 55 when I started playing bass. I've been in bands pretty much ever since. I actually don't really get why people would play bass other than to be in a band. Music for me is to be enjoyed and shared. Bass in particular is about how music fits together to make a whole which you hope is greater than the sum of it's parts. It's rarely a solo or lead instrument and so much more fun when working with a drummer. Working with other people can be an issue, usually fun but sometimes really frustrating and you have to compromise; sometimes quite a lot So what are your options? Join a covers band? There is a limited choice of songs, you have to go where the money and audiences are but immediately you have a hobby that pays for itself, people tell you that you are wonderful when the reality for me is that I'm just about OK but watching a room full of people dancing to the rhythm in your fingers well that is a blast! You don't want to compromise what you play? Maybe you can't afford that level of commitment, 30+ songs take a lot of learning and keeping up to performance standard (I practice every day) and a gig can take 6hours out of your day which is a big chunk out of every weekend. Well it's still fun playing with other people. Just playing half a dozen songs over a few beers with mates is a nice way to spend an evening and you'll inevitably end up doing the odd jam at a party sooner or later. If your mates don't play then there are loads of open mics around. Go along have a listen and chat with anyone who plays songs you fancy a go at and see if anyone bites. Talk to the organiser and they might be able to match you up with someone. I run a kind of open session for people whose lives are too full to cope with proper gigging bands. It's tough to find time if you have a family and a job. There's loads of really good musicians who can play to a high standard but just want a run out once a month or even once a year, but it makes the hours of nurdling away on their own worth it and every now and then some of my musicians do go off and form bands. Good luck, get out there, persevere until you find what you want and yes, you may have to kiss a few frogs on the way

One of the nice thigs about Eminence is that they are forthcoming about their specs and how they are measured. If you go on their website then have a look at the frequency charts, as Bill says they are averaged but have a look at the frequency graph above (roughly) 200Hz and see if there are any big bumps and where they are. Any humps will push the sensitivity up but if they are frequencies you don't want then that isn't very useful and you may be tweaking eq to take them down. Ignore the low frequency response below 200Hz as that is determined by the test conditions they use. You asked the technical question. Sensitivity depends upon cone area, the strength of the magnet system, the mass of the cone, the resistance of the suspension to cone movement and the amount of the voice coil that is inside the magnetic field. All of these interact with other parts of the performance of the speaker. The cone needs to be heavy for bass but massive is harder to shift, the coil needs to be long for bass but that means it is mainly outside of the magnetic field so some of the power is lost. The mass of the cone and suspension change the tuning of the speaker at bass frequencies and so on. In the end a speaker tuned low and with good extension is going to be less efficient just because of the basic mechanics. You can compensate for this by putting in a really good magnet system to compensate. Hence the rule that you can't have cheap, loud and deep all at the same time

Ah but the bass to Stay With Me makes up for it

Ronnie was a bit of a hero of mine growing up. Always loved the Small Faces, I've always enjoyed a well written pop song and the band always had a sense of fun about them as well as being a great rock band. I briefly met Ronnie when I played the disco at a Slim Chance gig in Reading. They say never meet your heroes but he was a real gentleman, a lovely warm human being. Actually stayed and danced the rest of the night after the gig. Actually sent his girlfriend over to ask for a couple of songs, I wish I could remember what they were. Couldn't believe it when I found out soon after about his illness, there's no doubt about it, he was a wonderful person as well as a great bassist.

This is where the science doesn't help too much, different experts and different bassists will disagree about what sounds best. I don't like an instrument speaker to be too strong at 50Hz, Those frequencies are poorly heard and few people will notice if you simply filter out at 24db/octave at 50hz. Trading a little loss of the fundamental for less chance of exciting room resonances and cleaning up the onstage sound is something I would do every time. When I designed the Basschat Mk1 speaker a flat response down as low as possible was something people asked for. I've been gigging with that speaker on and off for a few years and I almost always eq out the low bass and then apply a little boost around 80-120 Hz to get the sound I personally prefer. At a recent bass bash we had a shootout which included a Markbass 12 with just such a response, half the room loved it and half hated it. It's a Marmite thing. I'd say though that you probably don't want anything bigger than a 3db peak at most, that's going to really colour your sound, that disqualifies the Emi in the small cab for me and the Celestion needs a bigger cab too IMO. WinISD will tell you the response, it can't tell you if you'll like it. The other thing to consider though is that most of the character of the speaker will be in it's mid range response where our hearing is very sensitive. It's worth your while looking carefully at the published responses.

And then report back on how it gigs

I'm looking at the 735's or the 732's probably. The 745's are just a bit too steep for me.

Just looked them up the 12" top is £950 and they use B&C drivers and some of their own. Cabinets are wooden not plastic. Yeah I liked the Elixirs, have you tried Blue Steels either way it's definitely worth it to have your strings at the sweet point in their lifespan for longer. I'm going to sell my PA and upgrade to RCF's I think. The 310's we use as monitors are perfect, just no trouble and sound great. The 735's and 745's are so pricey though..

Well I saw Skidder's band The Jefferson Archive last night. They were seriously loud (and seriously good I have to say) No backline apart from the guitarist's stack, everything going through the house's FBT PA with subs and Steve (Skidder) had his RCF on the floor in front of him as a monitor. The drummer uses a butt-kicker. The guy mixing (the manager of the venue and a musician himself) knew what he was doing and the bass and drums were really well forward in the mix and sounded immense. I've never heard the bass sounding better, absolutely full and rich but sitting nicely in the mix, really driving sound. Steve had some fx on his board but I didn't have time to find out what he was using. the Archive are a seriously impressive full ahead rock band think Zeppelin/Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac/Focus all of which were in their opening medley. Anyone who thinks that sound can't be nailed without backline, well they are just wrong. Mind you my Hartke did sound good the other night

5.9"

One last tip, open the project twice and change the colour of the second plot. Then when you make changes you can compare the results with the original plot. Then you can change the volume of the cab and the tuning frequency of the cabinet if you've gone for a ported cab. Win ISD calculates a maximally flat response with good bass extension (sort of) The problem is that you will usually want something more portable than the ideal for frequency response. You can do the same trick for comparing different drivers in the same cab as all the frequency curves and so on are displayed on a single graph.

Does the amp have any fx sockets. They can cause problems if they corrode and a bit of switch cleaner and wiggling a jack in and out may clean up the contacts. It's simple enough so worth a try

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.