LawrenceH

[quote name='JTUK' post='1133270' date='Feb 19 2011, 12:24 PM']If someone is still using one in 2-3 years time, would probably say 6 months, even [b]with original parts[/b], then maybe I'll review my cheap and nasty post. In fact, post your experiences after that time.[/quote] That's hardly fair...none of my Fenders have had all the original parts on 6 months after getting them!

[quote name='Johnston' post='1133106' date='Feb 19 2011, 09:55 AM']Saying something has to be nasty because it's cheap is just snobbery.[/quote] Not exactly, I'd say it's more people often don't understand how global commodity prices work and base their assessment of what stuff costs to make on what we pay in Europe. Apart from supply and demand the other major factor dictating these things is how many middlemen an item has gone through, rather than material costs. How many grams of metal on a p bass? Not more than 1kg I'd hope as a player, even with a high mass bridge, the scrap value will be pennies. Add a few kg of what are pretty common woods and some trivial electronics, your raw material costs are negligible! Especially where you're in an industrial country close to the production source. Factory costs are going to be far more significant, but they're really not going to be very much per instrument if it's a large operation. So, whether these SRs are any good I can't say but even with poor QC a fair number of instruments will be well within the prescribed tolerances rather than at the extremes. They might have cheaped out on metal but equally they might not - either way the factory'll be making a profit. I wouldn't be surprised if a decent example did as good a job as a CV Squier and those are perfectly playable instruments.

Btw I've not played an SR (though a friend has bought a tele that I'll have a look at at some point), just making the point that price in a global capitalist market is dictated more by supply and demand than actual production cost, since that's just negligible. We pay way more for these items than some other places and I very much doubt they'd deliberately manufacturer and sell at a loss!

[quote name='JTUK' post='1132482' date='Feb 18 2011, 05:29 PM']I am so pissed off that Fender have the gaul to charge me £800 or whatever for a complete rip-off when I can get it for £60. It's not fair, I tell you.[/quote] I lived in the Middle East for a year a couple of years ago, at a time when their markets were just getting flooded with cheap Chinese consumer goods. If you saw the retail prices on goods there, identical to the ones they sell here in the uk that seem pretty damn cheap, you'd realise just how much of a mark-up there is compared to the cost of production. It's simply astonishing how cheap stuff is to make nowadays especially in terms of raw materials. Improved QC is one of the main things you pay more for from those factories. But even with that factored in, given the measly wages they pay I bet they could churn out the equivalent of a US Fender bass for under £60 cost. It's only some cheap wood, paint and small bits of metal. A US Fender is a pretty damn simple item.

Yes, that should all be fine. It won't do any harm if you get it wrong other than wasting a bit of time, so give it a go and see if it works. If not, a photo of the cavity will help us work out what's up.

I don't know when they changed to string-through but older jazzers definitely aren't - hence all the reissues don't have it! At least the early 80s jazz basses also often had natty one-piece single ply pickguard/bell plates together with strat-style knobs. Some of them also had dots and binding, with 70s pickup spacing. It's all a bit jumbled around then.

[quote name='stevie' post='1123731' date='Feb 11 2011, 12:12 PM']The 12NDL76 is a very nice driver but the Qts (of .2) is going to kill any low end in a reflex cab.[/quote] Oh bother...I totally misread that when I looked! A pity because I really like the sound of B&Cs.

[quote name='stevie' post='1123085' date='Feb 10 2011, 07:38 PM']B&C drivers are excellent - although last time I looked they didn't have an off-the-shelf neo 12" that was suitable for bass guitar.[/quote] The 12NDL76 is probably worth a look. It'll be happier in a smaller box than the Eminence - I suspect the driver that small Markbass 12" cabs are based around is a tweaked version of one of these (though it could also be a custom version using the old HPL frame).

[quote name='JTUK' post='1122460' date='Feb 10 2011, 11:42 AM']This... Just get in your mind a few cabs that you like the look of and then try and [b]get to hear them,[/b]*[/quote] * at true gigging volume. That is where a huge number of design issues will make themselves apparent, and a 10" monster (oo-er) can reveal itself to be nothing but a bedroom perfomer (oo-er again) as it runs out of excursion and overloads its inadequately sized ports. Phil's post is an excellent qualitative description, very useful for bridging the gap between small signal parameters in the abstract and how they might be manipulated by different driver design decisions in the 'real world'. It's a good basic lesson for those of us who have a habit of poring over driver spec data seeking the elusive (non-existent) 'perfect' driver

The Phil Jones uses pretty atypical custom drivers - you couldn't buy cabs like that 10 or so years ago, as far as I'm aware as no-one was making drivers like that. But, the mid/treble extension they give is still way higher than you'd get off any 'normal' 15. There aren't many 'full-range' 15s out there! Thinking about it though my 'stereotype' 15 sound wouldn't be so much bassy as just lacking in top end, and often lacking real bass as well - all those cabs that were just too small with a 15 packed in so they gave a good lower-mid hump and died underneath it, ugh. Given driver and cab economic/size constraints it was probably easier to get a more even response from 10s because they extended higher but could be put in cabs that matched the T/S specs better.

The quality control on the CVs is better than the VMs that I've seen, but some basschatters seem to have lovely VMs with great grain on the bodies - I think perhaps the earlier ones were a bit tighter on this. The fretted VMJ though - tone monster, the shop model I tried just sounded lively and fat acoustically and this seemed to translate to the amped sound, whereas I thought the CVs were completely anonymous. So if I was going for tone on a budget, VMJ with a pickup upgrade all the way and sod the weight. But if I wanted to spend less money and was looking new, Yamaha all the way - a BB414 will set you back less than a new CV, gotta be at least as good

Changing pot values (eg 250k to 1meg) has a potential effect on tone, and obviously changing log to linear will alter how volume/tone changes across the range of the pot in question. Cap value also. Before getting stuck in to the argument about whether it's going to make a difference or not, you need to know what is being swapped for what! E.g. I've had basses where tone controls did nothing, were all or nothing, or had a smooth effect right across their range. Getting this last one is a worthwhile upgrade. Perhaps the cheap basses in question have had pots that were way out or poorly chosen cap values, etc. The wiring itself, though, it's such a short distance and signal levels are so low that changing this is hardly going to have any effect at all, I'd be amazed if anyone could hear it unless the wire that was being replaced was practically microscopic.

The advantage of a passive radiator is that it can let you tune a small cab low whilst eliminating port resonance and 'chuffing', without having a port that takes up significant internal volume - ie adding to the size of the cab. The disadvantage is that the radiator has to have a really high excursion capability itself or it all goes horribly wrong. IIRC the Mesa design has been revised at least once, I'd guess for this reason. They're used more often in the hifi/studio monitor world, the Mackie HR studio monitors are quite a successful series that utilises passive radiators. But probably for bass guitar cost versus benefit isn't worth it except possibly for a really tiny cab.

Well, I said I was being controversial There's a big difference between a 'rule' and a 'trend', and my personal experience has conformed to that trend much more often than not...though I'll admit that all Peaveys I've heard (older ones only) have been mud-tastic whatever the speaker diameter. Perhaps, to be fair, because I only ever encountered them lying knackered in rehearsal rooms and music pubs. The first cabs I tried that really opened my eyes to what was possible with modern/more expensive technology were Markbass - 15" drivers that thumped and snarled like a mad thing, I loved it. But even looking at modern drivers (rather than cabs), although there are plenty of 12s and 15s that extend up quite high there are comparatively few PA-type 8s/10s that cut off around 1.5k (plenty of LF-specialist larger drivers), I assume it's just not something there's much perceived demand for. So the trend is still evident in one direction at least. It's not a rule! Just a trend...

Blocks and binding are the t*ts. Gotta go with pearloid myself though... [attachment=71613:J_bass.jpg]

[quote name='Conan' post='1120286' date='Feb 8 2011, 04:55 PM']the old chestnut that tens are faster to respond and have more mids, and that fifteens are somehow warmer but tend towards wooliness, so twelves are a perfect compromise between the two.... Is bollocks.[/quote] I'm going to be controversial here and say, no it isn't! Simply because (read this before you castrate me), once there is an established idea that influences purchasing perception then it encourages conformity among manufacturers. Added to that, forced limitations due to price can lead to them all making similar compromises. I'm not actually disagreeing with anything on this thread from Mr Foxen, Bill et al as it's self-evident, but there is a big difference between what is possible and what is prevalant. New, higher end manufacturers using decent drivers can buck these trends happily (epitomised by eg Acme) but for plenty of cabs at the mid/lower end of the market and cetainly historically, these cliches have rung largely true - we've all heard it ourselves. For that reason, if buying on a limited budget I'd be tempted to go for the classic 2x10, 1x15 set-up even though if I was going high-end I'd be better off choosing cabs with identical drivers.

[quote name='TRBboy' post='1117052' date='Feb 5 2011, 09:01 PM']In case anyone's interested, I thought I'd upload a couple of photos of the new improved RBX.[/quote] Black bass plus cream Dimarzio pickups and knobs = epic style win. Love it!

I don't know if it's common to all Eminence neos but the 10" deltalite IIs I used certainly needed a break in period of a few hours bassy music before they started sounding any good. To start with they sounded as described by the OP. If after a few hours recorded music pumping through them they haven't improved, try simply blocking the port (try and make it reasonably airtight) to see if that improves things - if so, the cab tuning is probably off.

Love this thread! Prince stuff is particularly awesome, the Fatback band a few pages ago also. I did try and check if this one's been done...but it's good enought that any inadvertant repeat is worth it:

The item description specifically mentions that the case included. Therefore the case can't be considered 'sacrificial' in this instance, as the description doesn't include that caveat - which it would have to. Since the case is included in the item description, the seller is in the wrong here because the item (ie bass plus case) has been shipped without adequate packaging. The seller may have meant well but unfortunately they have not made clear their intentions in the item description and the buyer can be seen to have bought it in good faith. It's all very well saying cases are meant to protect basses, but if you bought a case alone unseen for, say, fifteen quid, you'd be pretty annoyed if it was shipped unprotected and arrived broken!

[quote name='Johnston' post='1116398' date='Feb 5 2011, 12:02 PM']No offence but that is brand snobbery at it's best.[/quote] But it isn't a 'real' jag, since the pickup config is totally different. I love the sound of the 70s jazz pup spacing. If it sounds weak it's probably the pickups, the more modern Jap pickups aren't that great IMO, I'd want to drop new ones in.

[quote name='JTUK' post='1116103' date='Feb 5 2011, 01:03 AM']Anybody want to print up a website with these figures for 500w 12" speakers. Its late and I can't find one.. Are they rated RMS at 500..or can just handle 500w amps which is not the same thing to me.[/quote] In terms of drivers, Em kappalite 3012LF handles 450w RMS, I'm assuming that's what Alex uses in the Big Baby. Even the 3012HO will take 400 RMS. You'd never get these things to burn out with a 500 watt amp run clean, unless the cab design compromised the cooling. Though driving them hard would presumably see power compression taking its toll on output. The B&C 12NW76 will take the full 500 watts rms, and they even have a couple of 12" drivers that will handle 1000(!) though they'd definitely have to be used with a mid-range unit unless you wanted a pretty dubby sound. Pretty sure other manufacturers like Beyma will have similar models. As has been pointed out umpteen times, excursion is a more typical watts-limiting factor and all these speakers have bags of it. They just have to be put in the right cab with a big enough port area. For a high power mini-rig you could use 2 Markbass NY604s, they'll soak up 1200w RMS. A pair is an easy enough lift! So actually the Genz unit is slightly underpowered

I think a lot of people's issues with someone like Jeff Berlin are not because he's famous, or because they don't think he's any good, but that he comes across in many posts as very didactic particularly regarding teaching/learning. He is a fantastic player and his teaching and musical approach no doubt work for some people who will succeed very well thanks to his help. But the most universally successful educators are the ones who realise that different people conceptualise problems in different ways, therefore alternative approaches are required for them to succeed. Jeff may well recognise that in 'real life' but online he does come across as taking a 'my way or the highway' attitude that is demonstrably wrong when applied in other educational arenas.