Phil Starr

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.

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