Phil Starr

yes the top one is the horn. You probably don't need to worry about the wobble, but obviously I can't see it so you'll have to decide that for yourself. Speaker stands are never that stable with a heavy speaker on a lightweight stand so you always need to be careful where you put them. It is however one of the areas where quality kit shows it is better made. Our QSC speakers on expensive K&M stands are better than most for example. You can wrap some tape round the top of the stand if you want to make it a tighter fit, but make sure you don't make it so tight you can't remove the speaker. Most tone controls can turn the tone up or down, the bass control can cut the bass or increase it for example. For most of them 12 o'clock (with the pointer straight upwards) means they are leaving the tone in a neutral position. Some even have a little notch so you can feel a click as you turn the knob to neutral. You said "My mixer is all ready set to maximum high EQ and minimum low EQ" That doesn't sound right so I'm suggesting you set everything back to flat and start again with your new speakers. In any case you don't want to adjust the tone at both the speaker and the mixer so set the speaker controls flat and adjust everything at the mixer. The output XLR is for driving a second speaker with the same signal as the first, theoretically then you can go on adding more speakers in a daisy chain to make things as loud as you want.

For use at home you don't need to raise the speakers so put them on the floor or just at minimum height. At a gig you need to make sure that where possible you raise the horn at least above the heads of the audience or the people at the front will absorb the higher frequencies. Cheap stands and speakers wobble, so do a few expensive ones. You have two mixable inputs so that people who want to can mix a guitar and their vocals without having to take a separate mixer. The modes are just a range of pre set tone control settings, try them all and sdecide which sounds best. Probably 'live' for live work. Start off with your tone controls all set to flat, no boost or cut, then adjust them a little at a time if you need to. No boost of cut will give you the most natural sound probably. The high pass filter cuts out bass more sharply than the tone controls. 80Hz is useful for vocals as it cuts out a lot of handling and noise from the vocal mic but it will reduce the bass from your backing tracks as well. The other frequencies are so you can use the speakers with a bass bin/sub woofer. As you don't have one switch the filter to off. The time delay is for people using lot's of speakers in a large space, turn it off.

Why not contact Ashdown? Your biggest advantage is that they are UK based and unbelievably helpful. Obviously this is an unusual request but if you don't ask... If not and you don't want to split the cabs unless you have to then I can't see building a single combo cab to the same dimensions as the original will be any more difficult than building two separate cabs. You have the original as a template. If you build it of ply then it will be a little lighter than the chipboard and a lot tougher. If you DIY it then the only problem with a combo is the difficulty in covering the finished cab with vinyl. You can get round that by using Tuffcoat as used by a lot of manufacturers now. First of all though contact Ashdown. Edit oops should have read all the way through, shouldn't give advice when I've only just woken up, sorry.

You've got the luxury of time as you have two good quality working rigs. Continue with the PJB use the Ashdown for bigger gigs and if you want to expand wait until you can go for the PJB you really want. Anything else is going to change the sound you love so the Ashdown for the big gigs is probably going to be just as good as the PJB+ a different cab. you could also mic the PJB and put it through the PA of course. there's nothing to stop you trying the combination either, it probably won't sound the way you expect but it might be something you like and it won't cost anything to try.

If it is any help I eventually bought the K&M 21090, the one with the telescopic boom arm. There's a slightly cheaper one which is the basic stand with a simpler boom, both are excellent. I paid £107 for a pack of three (no sniggering amongst the older members).

No, I'm saying that the size doesn't matter.

You don't know that. Someone said it to you, but they were wrong. That's what I've ben trying to tell you. Oh well it doesn't really matter. In a 12" cab the bass driver is 12" in a 15" the bass driver is 15"

sorry we seem to be at cross purposes here. I haven't heard these speakers and I think that's clear from all my answers. These are cheap speakers and they will have limitations. So long as you have read everything and think the risk is worth it (with Thomanns returns policy ) then go ahead. I don't think they will be awful and if they are all you can afford then It's a complete no brainer. Thomann are a good brand and a three year guarantee makes it very low risk. If you can afford a little more I've suggested a speaker I know is very good, in fact from the market leader in quality and which I've tried. The RCF ART310 mk 3 You seem to have the impression the size of the bass driver is important, I've tried to explain why it isn't for vocals. If it isn't then there is no reason to change the size of the speaker within the same brand. Going for the Box 10 almost certainly won't improve the sound and as you've observed the 8 is much quieter. You made up your mind when you ordered the speaker, just relax and enjoy it when it comes. I hope you love it and wonder why we made such a fuss. On the outside chance you don't you have the guarantee you can return it and get a refund or swap it for something better if you decide the extra is worth paying for.

Looking at your pics what I think you are looking at a very simple circuit to protect the tweeter. The beige circular component is a thermistor IMO opinion. It's resistance rises quickly when it gets hot and reduces the power to the tweeter. The yellow component is a single capacitor that reduces the low frequencies by 6dB/octave effectively reducing the bass below certain frequencies. The horn is simply being used to add to the sound of the bass unit. The fact it has survived probably means the protection is adequate. A proper crossover will probably clean up the midrange but a commercial crossover will only get you part way. If you are planning on using these as bass speakers they are probably going to do fairly well as they are. The APT 50 is an Eminence horn driver, it may be one of those the BL400 was designed as a bass guitar speaker by Celestion If it is an APT 50 then it is a very modest driver, you cant make it into a silk purse so the right crossover may improve things but don't expect miracles

No I'm saying the size of the bass driver doesn't matter for vocals. A 10 wouldn't necessarily be better or worse. If weight and size were an issue you could have gone smaller with no problems. The RCF would have better everything in all probability but it would be the better tweeter and crossover that would make the difference in the vocals. Better components just cost more but the Box stuff represents excellent value. I agree with Paul, don't have buyers remorse, the likelihood is that you will be happy with the choice so go on and concentrate on the important thing, making music.

I haven't modelled this in the 30l cab, it will certainly work in the 50l cab and Eminence say it works in cabs over 36litres. You'd use the same construction technique and the dimensions in the other thread . There you are the model is above (I took a break to cook for friends and Stub Mandrel has kindly modelled it for you in the meantime) and with the 30l cab you are getting a 4db peak at 140hz and the cab rolls off earlier than the Beyma. I think that's a little too much and the excursion is likely to reduce the power handling too. The Eminence also has a midrange peak so you will get a 'smiley face' response baked into the cab, build the 50l cab and it will all be better controlled. Alternatively you could try the Faital driver used in the Mk 2 cab in the 30l cab. that will work well I think.

I won't say size doesn't matter, but it doesn't matter much For vocals it is the midrange that matters, as speaker size increases the higher frequencies fall of at the sides of the speaker, almost the whole of your vocal range will suffer from this distortion with a 12" speaker. Depending upon your vocal range and timbre a 15 would not be suitable at all. That's why the horn is there, nearly all of your vocal frequencies will come out of the horn. The frequencies are shared out by a crossover and this usually happens in the middle of the vocal range. This introduces it's own distortions and because of where it occurs we are very sensitive to distortions at those frequencies. The best vocal sound then is more dependent upon a quality horn and driver and the crossover design than the bass driver, which is why size doesn't matter much with vocals. The 12 does the bass notes below your vocal frequency. What you've ordered won't be 'wrong' and will probably be very good at the price. I don't know the actual speaker so I'm only surmising but at that price I don't think a lot will have been spent on the horn driver. the budget speakers I've taken apart for repair have been remarkably well constructed however and have improved their sound quality over the years. The Thomann ad says it has DSP which means the crossover will probably have been done in software and done well because once you have DSP the additional costs are effectively zero. If you've bought from Thomann, try them out as much as possible and if you are unhappy you can always send them back or exchange them for the RCF's. Thomann will be very helpful and have plenty of English speakers working for them. I've looked at your manual, all the output connections are unbalanced and take a mono jack. I hope you enjoy your new system.

Bob I think you need to decide what you want. As you know by now Thomann are one of the biggest mail order firms in Europe. Their reputation is very good and one of their biggest selling points is the three year warranty on everything and their excellent returns policy. The Box products like all their own brand stuff is incredible value for money and generally pretty well made, but it is built to a budget and won't be state of the art. The 128dB is quite enough for a rock band playing to 200 people but isn't likely to be accurate. It will be a calculated figure based upon the 800W peak power they claim and the sensitivity at 1W. 12" speakers can't handle 800W and the continuous power could be anywhere from 2-400W so the actual figure is more than likely to be 3-6dB lower, however nearly all PA manufacturers claim similar silly figures. It'll be plenty for you. If this is your budget then you might be looking at brands like Alto too. They have a growing reputation with a few fans here. If you are using these speakers as part of a solo act for mainly vocals then you don't really need 12" speakers. Another question only you can answer is how far are you prepared to go? For an extra £100 you could go to something like these https://www.thomann.de/gb/rcf_art_310_a_mk_iii.htm I have two pairs of these, RCF are currently probably the top brand, the vocal sound is particularly good and you could relax knowing you had bought quality, at a higher but not astronomic price. If I was in your position that's what I would do. Check the manual for your mixer. many/most mixers with jack outputs are actually using balanced outputs via a stereo jack so using a stereo jack to xlr will give you a balanced output to your speakers

I've been toying with the best way to achieve just that. There's another thread somewhere were Dood of this parish suggested using a zoom recorder to get this effect. Press record and you can monitor through the built in mics. It works. I tried it at a rehearsal with my usual monitoring switched on. It picked up everything going on but by fixing it to the mic stand I could hear my vocals just slightly louder in the mix. More importantly I could control the volume of the band and turn the drummer/band down Once you can do that everything is clearer but crucially with an ambient mic you feel 'in the room'. Trouble is that band folded and I'm with a new band, lovely people but there are a few things to be sorted and I really need to be on it at gigs. I've not dared yet to try the ambient mic/zoom recorder out at a gig. If it works I'm thinking of having a little four channel mixer for myself and using that to mix my monitoring. It would make more sense to do this at the desk but the band are still using backline for most of the sound and I don't have control of the PA. Playing the pubs you rarely get a sound engineer and I've yet to have one who knows what they are doing. That's not a comment about sound engineers btw, it's just realism about being at the bottom of the food chain. but yes the Powerplay is designed to do just that, and I'm looking at the P1 as a possibility. My only reservation is having three leads trailing behind me, two mic and one bass. I move around a lot and the bass is wireless so I may go wireless for monitors too, but an ambient mic is I think a must.

I think that might be loud enough for anything Adding another speaker may be possible but not really necessary if you value your hearing

Paul I think the problem is two fold, you are asking people to recommend things and to do that we would need to be sure. Then there is the issue of practicality, you can't always believe the adverts and some of these claims seem to defy physics and economics. The Alto says it is a 300w active speaker with an 8" bass driver and a horn for less than £100. Well I can't think of an 8" speaker that can handle 300W. Reading on with the Alto specs it then becomes a 100w to the 8" speaker. The speaker is said to be capable of 113db, to do that is feasible but the speaker would have to produce 93db/W which is reasonably high end for an 8" speaker. That's physically possible but the whole thing is £98 including horn, cabinet, 8" bass unit and two amplifiers. That pushed credulity and 113db is not that loud if you have a big brass section. Alto have a fairly decent reputation but if something looks too good to be true, well you can see why people are urging caution. Budget is an issue for you so mistakes would be especially costly. A quick easy solution is only a solution if it works. I think the general advice is to take it slowly and understand what you want to achieve.

If the specs of those speakers are reliable you've tracked down a bargain. The plots from win ISD don't quite make sense, with two 8ohm speakers in parallel you'd expect a 6dB increase in sensitivity, ie the two speakers in parallel ought to be louder across the whole plot, and of course the power handling will double. The loss of bass is to be expected, each speaker has only half the volume to operate in. Bass extension is a mixed blessing. The cab I designed doesn't get all the bass the Beyma 212 is capable of but even so it is too bass focussed for most of the small venues I play in and I end up rolling off the bass. Without having modelled your speakers instinct tells ne they might work well in the 50l cabs I designed. It might be worth your while buiding my cab and putting one of the CPC speakers in it. If you like the sound then build a second cab. You then could potentially have most of the bass and lots of volume without the problem of trying to blend two different drivers together.

I'm so sorry, you poor thing, I hope it wasn't too painful If you look at the dimensions the cab is a little over the 50litres I mention in the design to allow for the volume of the speaker ports and bracing. 70l is probably enough for a wide range of 15's especially as you prefer an old school bass sound. Remember 'working well' includes a number of things like cone excursion. One of the favourite (and frankly sensible) trick of cheap speakers is to keep the cone nice and light and the voice coil short so most of it is in the magnetic field. That all raises efficiency at the cost of excursion. It models well at 1W the default level for win ISD but you'd need to check at higher powers. It may be OK though of course. I think Stevie tried the Beta 12A2, I think its going to be fine in that box and has the old school mid-range rise that I personally quite like, it won't handle the deep bass as well as the Beyma. When looking at 'Q' you need to look at the Q of the whole system. Qts of 0.5 describes how the magnet controls the movement of the cone. Too much control damps down the bass not enough means too much. the air in the cab also damps the cone movement with more air meaning more damping, so for any speaker cab it's the combination of speaker and cab that determines the response. Qtc of the whole system should be 0.7 to get the flattest response and a speaker with qts of 0.38 is about the tipping point where cabinet design gives ends up with a flat response from a cab of reasonable size. The Beyma will have more deep bass than many/most commercial cabs and might well fill out your bass. I can't say though whether it will give the sound you want. Combining speakers is a suck it and see thing. It might be that the 2x12 is more efficient than the Beyma and will simply dominate the quieter cab. Above the bass the two cabs will combine in an unpredictable way over the midrange and probably have a character different from either cab on it's own

It might be worth looking to get something like this https://www.gear4music.com/Recording-and-Computers/Behringer-P2-Ultra-Compact-Personal-In-Ear-Monitor-Amplifier/26FN A beltpack headphone amp with some limiting to further protect your ears and crucially a volume control you can reach without bending. There are also passive models and one which allows you to mix in a stereo signalwhich could be a feed from the PA or possibly useful for headphone practice. I'm using a wireless connection with a beltpack receiver which is similar...but wireless. It's a Trantec system bought used but there's a LD systems one which our vocalist uses https://www.ld-systems.com/en/series/mei-one-series/

If it is the same driver then put it in a matching cab. If you got it from Barefaced they should be able to advise you if it will work in a cab that size. If not i'm looking at 10" drivers at the moment. If I turn up anything suitable I'll let you know.

John I nearly asked you and/or Stevie but just assumed it was too far. It's 9.00 start, everything provided, though if you brought your Mk2 we could do some testing and even recordings. PM on the way.

This might be a good solution, a couple of fairly wide angle mics above the band if you have the height can work really well as reinforcement if you aren't going to rock band levels. I might try a stereo pair in XY configuration probably putting them somewhere near where the conductor stands, or would stand if you don't have one It's my worry about too much miking up for people who aren't used to it. If you've had a nice sound that everyone has been happy with so far then why start a steep learning curve when a bit of jiggling around with the offending guitar amp will do the job. The only really difficult thing about PA is managing the humans. I'd just chat through with the guitar, bass, keys. They may be very happy with their own backline as it is. If it is just the guitar then you only need to mic that https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/miking-guitar-amps-stage

Hi again all, I've had a couple of offers but good bassists tend to be busy and the dates aren't working out, I'm still looking for someone for the 7th June if you are free on that date and are interested then don't be shy.

Sounds like a plan. I use leads rather than adaptors for the Jack/TLR sockets. I always carry a few short 1m stereo jack to XLR leads for that purpose, a lot of older mixers retain jack for everything except the main out. They are dirt cheap really and you can just daisy chain one of your normal XLR leads. The big advantage is that they don't stress the sockets on the mixer https://www.thomann.de/gb/the_sssnake_mxp2009.htm

I'd be a little cautious about this and think about exactly what you want before jumping. Your problem with the sax players can only be solved if you put the things they couldn't hear through the monitors. If you put anything else through the vocal monitors the singers will struggle to pick themselves out. Your problem with the guitarist will only work if you turn him/her down and put some guitar through the PA. the guitarist will be the biggest problem but to get on-stage volumes down should you look at some bass and keys through the PA too? Is your one PA speaker enough to do that job? None of this is difficult to solve but I suppose the warning is about mission creep; adding layers of extras until the complexity weighs you down. The second problem is matching your gear to the outcome you want without spending a fortune. The advantage of an acoustic band with a little reinforcement for the singers is twofold. Simplicity and familiarity, most players in a big band are used to playing acoustically, it may not be ideal but they are used to hearing the instruments closest to them and learn to pick out the rest of what they need to hear by practice and experience. Most big bands have a conductor so extra clues and guidance are provided that way. The disadvantage of beefing up the monitors and running separate monitor mixes is that the monitors need to be similar volumes to the acoustic volumes or they won't be heard, so if everyone is covered by monitors you have doubled the sound energy on stage. That's not wrong but it could be a mixed blessing. It sounds like the guitar was the real problem. Without that the sax players could hear as well as they have in the past. Guitar amps are like torchlights, they throw a very narrow beam of sound which is very loud if you are in line. you could mike up the guitar amp and put it through the PA or simply move it to the front or side of the stage and provide a second quieter guitar monitor for the guitarist to hear themselves if needed. That will buy you time to think through exactly what you want without spending anything up front.