Phil Starr

I wonder what's next, should we design something from scratch, use one of the cheaper pocket amps or just persist with simple mods like this? I'm thinking of having a look at my Hartke Kickback, It's been a really useful thing but weighs a ton for it's size bangs your legs when you carry it and falls over in anything but kickback mode.

Hi Peter, this is an odd one, the half roll surround suggests that this is a hifi speaker and that is what it is sold as. However for £12 you could just decide it is worth a try. The specs are a bit odd, for instance the 35W rating for a 1" coil on an aluminium former looks too low. I'd choose a known entity like the Fane 6-100 (£28) that I used or the Beyma CMV6. The Eminence Alpha that Bill suggested would be good too but expensive this side of the pond. However a 4x6 for £50+ some ply offcuts looks like fun, but I digress. I'll put those specs into WinISD tonight and let you know.

This is so true, one of my best friends is a professional opera singer and also a vocal coach. I know she'd love to teach me, she's a generous human and wants to convert the world to singing. I just couldn't cope with feeling that exposed. Not the way I feel about playing bass in front of her even though the musicians she works with are probably just as distantly ahead of me in their skills. There is something uniquely personal about singing.

The Fane 6-100 is on offer at Blue Aran at the moment £28 + a few pence. Another alternative might be the Beyma 606CMV http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=BMA606CVM28&browsemode=category If you want I can model the speaker in your cab and give you some port dimensions.

Here you go, this is my 'build'

That's it really, I'm using it with the mains lead going in through the port at the moment. Let's not carried away, it sounds OK but there is almost no deep bass, a little warmth above 100 Hz helps but that is the point really, it doesn't annoy the neighbours as normal house structures are fairly good at containing the higher frequencies. It keeps up with two of us singing and my duo partners unamplified but enthusiastic acoustic guitar, it takes up very little space and it is plug and play. All the donor guitar combo provides is the amp and a ready made cab. Surprisingly the 10Watts advertised is actually 18W into the new 8 Ohm speaker and that is plenty. I'm contemplating replacing the power amp section with something that runs on a car battery and i need to move the IEC mains socket on to the rear panel but i'm happy that this was an experiment worth doing. Total time was about 90 mins over a couple of evenings

As a first step I cut a piece of ply to be a tight friction fit in the open back, I knew from previous experiments and from theory that you wouldn't get any bass when the sound from the back arrived and cancelled the sound from the front of the speaker. Actually sealing the cab made the original speaker sound a little better but I found that I could just drop the new speaker in so i did, total time so far was about 20 mins. this was getting there but was still bass light. Off to Win ISD to model the speaker in it's new cab. I used a hole saw to cut a hole in the ply and a hacksaw to cut 93mm of plastic drainpipe.

As you can see it was an open backed guitar cab just about 30cm tall. Ignore the speaker inside it had something much smaller which looked like a car speaker from the 1970's and not in any good way. Here's the speaker next to it's replacement, as you can see the original speaker had a tiny magnet and what you can't see is the flimsy cone. It was rated at 20W handling and 4ohms. the replacement was a Fane 6-100 rated at 100W but crucially with a heavier cone, good excursion limits and a proper magnet. Despite the slight loss of power this was going to be a little louder due to the larger magnet driving it harder.

Hi All this has been stimulated by two (thanks for the impetus @Pea Turgh )of us having the same need, for a tiny combo for 'quiet jamming'. Most of us will have had the same problem, even an acoustic bass just isn't loud enough when someone else starts playing a guitar and singing and maybe those wall are just too thin so any deep bass goes through them as a deep and annoying thud for the neighbours. In my case it was a stay in a rented holiday flat. I grabbed a tiny 10W guitar Combo I'd bought for my son about 20 years ago which had never been used. It did the job in that he could hear me but it sounded awful, it didn't have very little bass it had no bass at all and it was only loud enough because of the nasal tone. I wanted something just a bit better but in the same fomat, really tiny and something that would plug and play. Here's what I started with.

Hi Pete, I'll get back to you later. I've just done this with a guitar combo of my son's, never used. It's still not brilliant but it'll do bass at a sufficient volume to play along with an acoustic guitar. It just involved a simple cab mod and a speaker swap. Camera's broken on my phone so it'll take me some time to show you what i did. I'll try and make some time this evening.

Following this with interest. I've nothing to offer in the way of tips, I'm hoping to learn. I always thought I couldn't sing and I still don't do much but with band members desperately searching around for someone to do something to support the song I've very tentatively given it a go. By describing myself as a non-singer I mean awful. I was told not to sing in assemblies or lessons as a child. My own kids fall around laughing at my attempts to sing and I had nothing but negative comments for 50 years at least. However I discovered I could hold a note with decent stage monitors. It's not a nice sound but it is in tune. I started off with one chorus and one song. No-one threw anything and my duo partner was encouraging and gradually I've added in bits. The moral of the story is that it gets easier with practice, I only do backing vocals, my range isn't great and for some reason I struggle with songs in E or B, also vowel sounds. On a good day I can sing in tune without monitors but only songs I've practiced. I've never thought of singing as a learned skill, I assumed you had to have some talent and I know most people find it easier than I do but when I do sing the audience join in and when I don't we get less of a response. Give it a go if you are a non singer, wherever you are at you can improve.

agree with Bill that the Trace are using probably some version of the 8PR200 http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=FTP8PR200AP&browsemode=manufacturer they are on offer at the moment but retail on them is around £200, that's just the speakers of course, by comparison the barefaced super compact has a variation of the Eminence Kappalite in it again around £200 but with a more complex cabinet than the Trace cab. On balance there is roughly the same sort of mark up. FWIW we ran a blind comparison at a bass bash last year down in the South-West and one of the contenders was an MB12, probably the one you are looking at. It was the marmite cab with about 40% of the bassists scoring it top and the rest really hating it. It was a classic smiley face cab lots of tops and a really warm full bass due to a peak at around 100Hz but not much really deep bass. It was run off against much more expensive speakers like the Fearless 12. I didn't like it much but it would sound good in a band setting and an object lesson in a good sounding cab at a reasonable budget. That's why you have to listen to cabs.

I know it's difficult in the current emergency but this isn't the best way to choose a cab. I won't say size doesn't matter just that it doesn't matter much. You really need to go out and listen to these things, not all 12's sound the same or all 2x10's and the same applies to 8" drivers. There are a few design considerations connected with cone size but you are buying, not designing these cabs. I guess there's a little worry about the concept of 8" speakers for bass. There is no technical reason why the cabs can't work, sure there is less cone area and the cones are likely to be stiffer and lighter but all the problems can be designed out. You've probably listened to your favourite bass tone at home on the hi-fi and it sounded great, my guess it that this will have been with an 8" or smaller bass driver. an 8 can do a low B if that is an issue for you. A couple of 2x8's vertically stacked is an appealing concept to me, it's not just weight that makes things difficult to carry, larger cabs still tend to bang your legs and doorways even if they are lightweight. Go out and have a listen, you may end up crossing 8's off the list just because no-one has yet designed a cab with your sound, with 2x10's and 12's you have more choice but there is only one way you can decide and it isn't on the internet. Good luck with the search.

Here's the original ad

I was browsing the amps and cabs for sale (lockdown boredom) and came across a Trace horn cab. A kind of bright box but with what seemed to be a single driver with a wooden horn cabinet rather than the 4x small speakers most people would recognise as a Bright Box. I haven't been able to find any details on the web other than a couple of not very informative pics. I've been toying with the idea of building a midrange horn (more lockdown boredom ) and wondered how well they worked; possibly not great as they didn't seem to sell many. Anyway does anyone have any experience of them or better still any pics to give me an idea of what went on inside. Here's the pic

another really interesting bassline, a bit more sophisticated this and this one I know. Andrew Powell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Powell look him up and you realise he knows a bit of music theory! Wish I did, so much for the idea that knowledge stifles creativity

Perhaps guitar solos belong at the end. Whoever the session guys were on this they did a great job. Fun bass line too.

I think that's unduly pessimistic. As of last week there was only one confirmed case worldwide of someone definitively catching a second dose. There will have been more but very few people have been reinfected to date. That's normal for viral infections. Don't forget that immunity is more complex than just the antibodies and you wouldn't expect the body to go on making unnecessary antibodies. In any case we already know that vaccination produces better immunity than the disease. That's true generally of vaccines and specifically of this one and the Astra Zeneca one (probably of the others but I've not seen details). The reality is that all we need to do to eliminate COVID is to get the R-rate down below zero and hold it there, that is an extinction event. For that we need roughly 65% 0f the population immune. So with a 90% effective vaccine we need 70% coverage and the population becomes immune. As to venues opening up that depends upon political will. There is going to be a huge demand for the things we've missed and those hospitality businesses that have survived will do well. Let's hope that the government has a plan for repairing the economy driven by public support. We all need those jobs whoever is in power.

Well it was a few weeks earlier than I thought. Yesterday's news might mean we are back on for a completely safe bash in the summer sunshine. What a celebration that will be

Yeah this is a really serious point and could be a significant moment. Moving through another species is probably the most likely way of the virus mutating as it will come into contact with new viruses and particularly any mink corona viruses. I'd have placed anyone who has been to Denmark into mandatory isolation whilst the numbers of infected people is minimal. The chances are that it will come to nothing but it's the sort of event we should be anticipating.

This is fantastic news, there are two other vaccines which are looking good and should be reporting soon and 10 in phase 3 trials altogether. To put this into perspective if the vaccine does turn out to be effective at 90% and Pfizer delivers on 50M doses this year and over a billion next year we are going to be well on the way to the old normal. 90% would mean we'd achieve herd immunity with 75% of the population vaccinated. With an end in sight it makes real sense to look after each other with sensible hygiene and infection control. It would be really beyond sad to lose people when the end is in sight like the poor souls that died in Nov 1918. Let's not rush our fences but having predicted the pandemic in Jan and a vaccine by Dec I'd tentatively expect us to be gigging again this time next year and probably by late summer. Let's hope this research stands up but it is looking good. I confess I was tearing up when I heard the news.

What a lot of female singers

I'm a scientist, nothing is certain here but the trials are genuine, I've been tracking them for a while and there's been some recent press work from Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Foundation. I think there is a genuine possibility of a route out of this based upon vaccination. I think there is some cause for hope of an end game. The politicians may well be failing to understand what is happening and the media are certainly misreporting but there is plenty of genuine science going on. Always be a sceptic but having called this one from the start I'm starting to have some optimism. My feeling Keith is that there is a better than 50% we will be able to discuss this over Mrs Scrumpy's food sometime later this year. I'm not saying when though.

You could just about get away with Eminence beta's. on the eminence site there is a design for them in a 20l cab it would give you a 3dB peak at about 120Hz and a roll off below there so it will be 12db down at 50Hz, not much deep bass but with a bit of punch leant by the 3db peak. Given that the beta has a very marked peak in the upper mids above 1kHz that is going to give you a real smiley face response baked in, that might be the sound you like. 3mm excursion limit isn't great and you can get more for your money by buying European made units over Eminence Bass response in 20l cab frequency response curve from Eminence website

It might be fun to design a 4x10 for you. It'll be a good lockdown project. I'm sure people will contribute all sorts of ideas. The cab you are proposing is kinda small, around 85litres if these are the internal dimensions even less if they are external. Any reason why you have chosen this size? Do you have a budget in mind? Any thoughts about what sort of sound you are trying to achieve?