LawrenceH

Ha! The Peavey Classic is definitely the best, by which I obviously mean wrongest. Though these disparaging comments about the woman are a bit harsh - if you look at the guy's website you'll probably agree he's actually done quite well for himself there...considering

[quote name='icastle' post='1041696' date='Nov 29 2010, 10:00 PM']Biggest catch that I can see has to be that you can't run it in bridged mode into anything less than an 8Ω load.[/quote] The other thing is that so many cheaper power amps struggle with the bass end compared to their rated spec because the power supplies can't keep up for more than a brief burst. The good amps have hefty transformers to match and (if they use traditional designs) are pretty weighty - though I've not tried them I understand the Hartke falls into this category, it's reputedly very solidly built. Don't know about the Samson Servos, if it's heavy then there's more likelihood it's capable. But at the final analysis and assuming it doesn't blow up - if it sounds good, it is good.

[quote name='countjodius' post='1041690' date='Nov 29 2010, 09:54 PM']So would I be looking at getting some closed pickup covers to solve this (as fetching as the insulating tape is )? Do these affect the tone at all?[/quote] They won't affect tone, no. They might get in the way a bit for certain playing styles if you don't want the pole pieces sitting any further from the strings since that'll raise the effective height of the pickups. One thing you could try is putting the electrical tape straight onto the uncovered pickup and then mounting the cover on after, if it'll squeeze into place? If not you could get some replacement covers and just enlarge the holes slightly on those, with a bit of wet'n'dry wrapped round something like a chopstick (I've done this before to make some aftermarket covers fit)! Should look a lot neater. But keep the originals covers as they are or it'll devalue the bass.

[quote name='BassBod' post='1041606' date='Nov 29 2010, 08:34 PM']Sorry to hear about the dead driver....having used that cab for at least 6 years, I even feel a bit sad! But its very interesting that the driver is 4ohms. I used to use a pair with an Eden WT300, and it would overheat/shut down if pushed. Now I know why! Sorry Eden......[/quote] If they used 2.83v then at least that explains in part the implausibly high sensitivity spec for these speakers

[quote name='countjodius' post='1041562' date='Nov 29 2010, 07:55 PM']Hey all, I wonder if anyone could shed some light on a problem that has surfaced with my beloved 73 jazz! It's hard to describe, but when slapping the E string I'm getting this really loud "clunk" (not all of the time, only when I dig in a lot) and have no idea what could be causing it! It doesn't cause a volume clip when recording, just a really abrasive thump. The only thing I can think of is that the string might be impacting with the pickups or something, although they are not set particularly high. I wouldn't want to mess about with the pup height either as the fingerstyle tone/output is spot on! It's definitely not a technique issue either, and has only surfaced in the last month or so! I've attached a wee sound clip so you can hear what I mean- notice how it is only the more rigorous slaps that cause this to happen! Thanks for any info![/quote] Sounds to me like it is indeed hitting the pickup. Assuming you slap between the neck heel and the neck pickup, try using the bridge pickup alone just to see if it goes away and also gently push the string against the pole-piece of the neck pickup to see if it gives the same kind of noise. You could try putting some insulating tape over the pole-pieces. Does tapping the pickup just with your finger also produce a noise? In that case, your pickup is microphonic. Whether potting a vintage pickup is a good idea from the point of view of value, I don't know.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='1041539' date='Nov 29 2010, 07:40 PM']The volume of a cab is not related to watts, it's related to voltage. At a given gain setting the amp output voltage is constant, irrespective of the load impedance. Two cabs parallel wired both receive the same voltage as one, so if identical they will each run at the same volume.[/quote] This is only true in practice at lower output levels. Amp power supplies are rarely capable of providing the maximum voltage at all impedences, otherwise our amps would all have watts ratings that doubled with every halving of impedence. So if you're running an amp close to maximum then adding another speaker cab will result in a volume drop per cabinet. Another confounding factor might be the higher resistance-associated losses from increasing the current, cos that's exponential, so the more speakers you add the worse it gets.

[quote name='lemmywinks' post='1041489' date='Nov 29 2010, 06:43 PM']One last thing, the driver is 4ohm and the tweeter is 8ohm, yet the cab is listed as 8ohm. Why is that?[/quote] I may have missed something, but how do you know the driver is 4 ohms if it's dead? The recone kit will need to be the advised one from EA since it's an Eminence driver built to their custom spec.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='1041277' date='Nov 29 2010, 03:35 PM']Top one is closer to ear height for the mids/highs. Acoustic coupling will mostly affect lows, and lows are affected by loads of other room effects. Since most of the 'sound' is in the mids, that would be a more signifcant factor to perception.[/quote] Both you and Ghost have a point I think...most of my preferred tone's certainly in the mids but a fair number of players I've heard with rockier bands have a lot going on between 80 and 500 and comparatively little above. A lot of rooms I've engineered and played have nodes that make them very lively in this upper-bass/low-mid region. In a smallish rehearsal space all sorts of weird and wonderful (or more likely terrible) things can happen. Acoustic coupling between single 10" speakers won't do much above 500Hz anyway - the main advantage of vertically stacked 4x10s, or 8x10s, over the 2x10 is going to be a little bit of coupling to boost the low mids and then getting the upper mids closer to your lug 'oles! There could well be something wrong/unusual about the cab setup here but I wouldn't discount a quirky combination of the room's acoustics, cab and listener placement.

[quote name='Circle_of_Fifths' post='1041252' date='Nov 29 2010, 03:09 PM']--- but it has TWO chrome bling-things on it and they are both in the way for me - so even though it's beautiful, it's a No-Go too. [....] But somehow I (maybe) am missing the quality that everybody ELSE says that the Miller and the CVs have in the necks. I dunnow, but I like a less-rounded and less-plastic feeling neck.[/quote] Why not just remove the pickguards?! That's what everyone did with the early Fenders anyway I prefer the vintage neck profile you don't like - in the long run it gives me less fatigue than the thin ones, not something that's evident immediately though and I expect it depends on both hand size and technique. But you could try a Geddy Lee, necks on those are very narrow front-to-back, might be just your thing?

[quote name='Prime_BASS' post='1039576' date='Nov 28 2010, 03:08 AM']Itdefinatly interesting if I can get something lighter I'll get it. But there must be a reason it didn't catch on.[/quote] Cost - foam-cored cabs are more complicated to make than a simple wooden box. Check out [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=432560"]this[/url] and [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=549976"]this[/url] Amazing DIY cabs but the man-hours for the two 12" cabs were around 60 hours!

The VM jazz is a very upgradeable bass. Plus you could always refinish it in sonic blue!

It annoys me that this listing wasn't pulled a second time for being blatantly misleading. That fake signature decal on the headstock is enough for it to be a breach of copyright, but I don't really mind that, it's more that he's lying by omission about what it really is - at best a butchered Made in Mexico with stickers on the neck. It's not going to sound any more like a Marcus Miller than a standard MIM maple-necked bass, since it doesn't have the right pickup spacing and the body is almost certainly not ash.

[quote name='kneal6' post='1037451' date='Nov 26 2010, 09:44 AM']Bigger tone pot and tone cap so the tone control cuts more highs.[/quote] Yeah, making sure the tone cap and pot work and give nice gradual variation along its range is probably the most important!

[quote name='Lozz196' post='1037508' date='Nov 26 2010, 10:32 AM']Saying that tho, theres currently a Roadworn precision on here for £650. I`ve never been over keen on false relicing, but these basses are sooooo nice its unbelievable, the just feel so comfortable, and sound great.[/quote] If these are anything like as good as the jazz equivalents then I'd hold out for one of these at £600 secondhand.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='1035183' date='Nov 24 2010, 03:28 PM']Science does have a tendency to win out over dogma, though sometimes it takes a while. Ask Galileo.[/quote] As a working scientist, I'm relieved to hear that.

[quote name='dood' post='1034365' date='Nov 23 2010, 08:22 PM']Big grin... Well, my main rig is a pair of Hartke Hydrives and the LH1000 - I really wanna get my hands on the new Kilo, which is (or on paper at least) a true stereo head. In the meantime, Hartke don't make a lil F1 sized head - so, just for shits and giggles I have put together a superlightweightanddisgustinglypowerful HiFi Stereo rig! I run (as far as possible) all my effects to the top end so the bottom end gets left alone. I've also found that the added 'muscle' helps reproduce those low notes of my 7 stringer. It's not all showy and 'eeeee look what I've got' or anything, not that kinda guy at all - I just really love listening to yummy stereo effects! So all of that aside, there is something slightly perverse about having all that power in something that weighs well - the whole rack cant weigh anymore than about 6 kilos! I'd have to stick it on some scales - but that's about 1000W! Golly![/quote] Sounds disgustingly, brilliantly prog. So are you using a crossover?

[quote name='lojo' post='1035413' date='Nov 24 2010, 06:24 PM']Why does a Precision sound so, well like a precision, is it all in the pick up, or are there other factors, surely the original mid/neck one on a Jazz was not all that different from the P in its design?[/quote] Pickup has got to make a difference thanks to split-coil design versus single, and the different windings, as well of course as the fact that it's not and can't be in exactly the same position. Though I wonder if a chunkier P neck also has a role. But actually, my Jap ash/maple jazz with neck pup solo'ed pretty much nails the tone on a lot of 70s funky tunes that I know were played on P basses, particularly that wicked dirty bark when you pop a string. It's not the lightest bass and I wonder if that contributes!

They look the business. Looking forward to your report!

[quote name='steve' post='1034102' date='Nov 23 2010, 05:02 PM']Mick, who's your supplier of Baltic Birch? I ended up going to B&Q when I built my omnis [/quote] In case anyone's interested, when we built a few J10s we used the lightweight poplar ply from Avon Plywood in Bristol. Not particularly cheap but it's good quality and incredibly light. Wasn't really sold on the J10s though, at least for PA.

[quote name='dood' post='1033930' date='Nov 23 2010, 02:32 PM']Quick update, I've done a conversion on a US F1. It has been running for a good hour whilst I spank the **** out of it and it sounds fine! Fuse in the US model was a T6.3Al and I have swapped it to match my UK F1 @ T3.15Al.[/quote] Me too - works a treat! Why on earth do you need two F1s though, what kind of monster rig are you running?!

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='1033808' date='Nov 23 2010, 12:55 PM']Point is, you are constantly referencing cheap crappy ported systems, and those are crap because of the cheap crapness, not the being ported. What I have noticed in studios is that whilst they are equipped with NS10s, they also have other speakers in the room, and they are ported. The NS10s being there as representative of home stereo speakers (since that is what they were designed for) and the other speakers used for the actual production.[/quote] I wasn't the one who brought the home market into this. Bill raised it as an example of where sealed cabs don't dominate and claimed this market doesn't care about bass volume, which is evidently not true at all, apparently in a quest to 'prove' that sealed cabinets are inherently inferior in every aspect to ported cabs which seems to me a very bizarre argument. I honestly can't see what's at all controversial about the idea that porting is used to boost low-end output of speakers but comes with its own set of compromises and complications, and if it wasn't necessary to boost LF volume output we wouldn't use it. With sealed cabs you get a nice gentle drop in frequency response that is much more easily matched with a simple shelving filter than the more complex rapid drop (with small hump or shelf) associated with ported cabs. Plus the phase issues around porting are inherently dealt with rather than having to be designed out. You may be able to minimise some of these things with ported cabs, but why be complicated when simple does it at least as well? It's because of the other serious benefits of porting which I didn't dispute. That is the only reason I made what was meant to be, as I said, a throwaway comment. It is frustrating to me that we've meandered off in a direction far away from the real point of my post, that it's not necessarily the bottom half-octave that you're looking to maximise power handling for in speaker cabs if it comes at the expense of the region slightly higher up where the strongest harmonics are. I'd be very interested to know where the typical power-bands of different basses lie. By the way the reason I referred to the NS10s (as monitors, so I should say the NS10Ms) was precisely [b]because[/b] they don't sound that great overall but are nonetheless widely held as an example of where certain aspects of sealed cabinets have advantages over ported. [url="http://www.soundonsound.com/pdfs/ns10m.pdf"]Here[/url] is a link to an Institute of Acoustics research paper examining the NS10s in a bit more scientific fashion, conclusions refer to 'very fast low-frequency decay...aided by the 12dB/octave roll-off of the sealed-box cabinet' and a 'better than average step function response, which implies good reproduction of transients'. I feel justified in my statements about them as firstly they match what my ears tell me, second my ears accord with received wisdom based on theory, and third since people like Hugh Robjohns and Bob Katz seem to agree (if you don't know of him, he's worth looking up). My understanding is, the idea that NS10s are used because they sound like small home speakers started as a bit of a myth, this myth became popular so ended up becoming partly self-fulfilling. Consider that most home speakers are as Bill says ported - an NS10 is hardly representative. Plus no-one much likes their overall sound, which is the opposite of what the home hi-fi market wants, so probably their overall frequency response is not representative either. I only mentioned studio monitors in the first place because it's a market where revealing reproduction is much more important than overall output level - the live bass cab market obviously needs high output. If you listen to pretty much any sub-£600 studio monitors, the bass end has a character of its own that makes it difficult to fully trust in its translatability to another system. NS10s, [b]despite[/b] not being that great overall and not exhibiting anywhere like the volume output low down of ported designs, are (or were) unusual in the market in that a lot of deficiencies are subjectively far more audible on them than on these other cabs. Which is apparently and theoretically very plausibly at least partly attributable to their being sealed. In that sense the ported monitors are actually closer to the home hi-fi market. But, perhaps my pulling out a ubiquitous but relatively cheap example was a mistake, since there are other much more expensive sealed monitors that sound far nicer than NS10s while retaining the clarity at the low end.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='1033405' date='Nov 22 2010, 11:42 PM']That is intended to address the issue of equal loudness. To do so it boosts both the lower and upper end of the spectrum when the volume pot is set at low levels, with the effect diminished as volume is increased.[/quote] I know. That's doesn't negate what I was saying in any way. I was just pointing out that small crap speakers are often sold by virtue of being bassy, and at the low volumes of such systems it matters, if anything, more than with bigger (partly because of the requirement for equal loudness contouring). Plus, on plenty of cheap stereos it doesn't disappear as you turn the volume up at all, you can switch it in and out and clearly hear it. There're also 'hyper bass boost' buttons and a hundred other similarly-named things which EQ small stereos around the porting frequency. But you know this, I really can't understand what you're arguing against if anything.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='1033123' date='Nov 22 2010, 07:57 PM']By the market I meant speakers in general, not just electric bass. In home use output isn't the concern that it is with pro-sound, and yet ported still dominates every segment of the hi-fi market save one, HT subwoofers. There sealed is well represented for two reasons: cabin gain and high driver Qts.[/quote] Again, a slippery, almost eel-like point! What relevance is the home audio market? In any case it absolutely loves big bass, and it matters more at very low levels, hence the 'loudness function' which boosts the low-end precisely in the areas small reflexed boxes will also bump it up. A studio monitor handling typically, say 100W RMS deosn't really compare to a crappy 10 to 20W hi-fi. (The NS-10s are actually unusually low input by today's standards but that's by the by - it's a 30-year-old design). The number of terrible reflexed 'one-note-bass' plastic boxes for sale in the 80s and 90s and probably today, or the ipod docking station equivalent, are testament to how well bass sold home audio systems.