stevie

Everything is ready to go, @tubbybloke68. I'm just waiting for the woodwork. I'll post pics as soon as I have a production model finished, but it's basically a scaled-down version of the Monaco. So the appearance and cosmetics are the same - it's just smaller.

If you want a professional quality iron, check out the Quicko T12-942. It's a copy of the Hakko and uses the same bits. They're available on Ebay, although you can buy them for less on Ali Express. You'll need to add a power supply - anything from 15 to 24V is OK. You might have an old laptop power supply in a drawer that would work. That's what I use. I've been using two of these for the past 12 months and they've been great. They replaced a Weller soldering station.

+1 I believe Mordaunt-Short used a lot of Audax tweeters. As Matt P says, take a photo of the tweeter from a few angles and post it up here. Alternatively, search Ebay for parts for your specific model.

It sounds like a ridiculous amount of work. Let's hope things pick up - you certainly deserve it.

So how many great tribute bands are you actually in?

I used to own a cable manufacturing company and still have some cables that are over 20 years old. Instrument cables in particular have relatively thin central conductors that are constantly flexing. So you can't expect them to last forever. I did have one cable fail (it became noisy) at about 20 years. I certainly wouldn't want to rely on a cable that old. How long they last obviously depends on how much they are used, but I'd suggest you've had your money's worth after ten years.

It's an imperial vs metric thing. We used to use gauges for wire diameters in the UK but it's still used in the US. It saves having to use weird fractions of an inch.

A1. He's your man for everything connected to cables.

The Celestion K series, as far as I can remember, was a budget range of PA speakers. One of my databases gives 1.5mm as the xmax for this driver. Even taking into account Celestion's more conservative xmax specification, it would be OK in a PA cab (with a sub) but would not go very loud in a bass guitar cab - certainly compared with more modern drivers. It's also got to be at least 25 years old.

There's currently a demo Monaco doing the rounds - the one that @GlamBass74 reviewed in a parallel thread. It's being put through its paces in Edinburgh at the moment and we'll no doubt be hearing more soon. So, if any players in and around that lovely part of the world would like to take it for a no-obligation spin (especially at a gig), please PM me and I'll set it up. You'll just need to collect from a local address.

I've been asked regularly if I could supply ready-built crossovers for the BCIII and have always had to say no. The original hard-wired crossovers I supplied with the kits took me about half a day to build, and I don't have that many half-days available any more. The good news is that I've now invested in high-quality fibreglass PCBs for use in my LFSys cabs that can be repurposed for the BCIII design. So, if you have the woodworking skills to build a BCIII and would like me to supply a ready-to-install crossover, just send me a PM.

Thanks for a very informative review, Mike. I'd just like to comment on one small section of the review, if I may. A common query you'll see in this part of the forum (check out the Orange thread currently running, for example) is "my cab isn't cutting it, what should I do?" And the most common advice you'll read is: "add a second cab of the same type". It seems to have become accepted wisdom. In other words, if you have a mediocre cab, you should add a second mediocre cab to create a louder mediocre pair of cabs. Mike has pointed out some of the benefits of ditching two average quality cabs and investing in a single, high-performance solution. I hope it's provided food for thought.

I'm not sure how aware the average bassist is of speaker dispersion. Not everyone reads reads Basschat and not every member reads this section of the forum. Dispersion is an issue no matter what the size of the driver. I remember using an 8" midrange a while back (in a 15" cab) and finding the dispersion inadequate until I added a compression driver. If you're using an HF horn to complement the main bass driver(s) and cross the horn low enough to obtain a smooth off-axis response without any mid suckout, the size of the bass driver doesn't matter much. As @chyc points out, PA speaker makers like RCF do this as a matter of course. But you need a decent compression driver and horn to cross over at around 1.5kHz (or lower), which is what's needed with a 15.

I'm a big fan of 15-inch drivers. There are some amazing products out there that haven't found their way into bass guitar cabs. 15s do seem to have dropped in popularity over recent years, however, at least if the word on Basschat is to believed. So the question is, when buying a larger-than-compact cab, do people want a 15, a 2x10 or a 2x12?

Thanks, Jeff. There are quite a few LFSys cabs in the pipeline. The next one will be a 1x10. So, yes, it's reasonable to expect a 2x10 some time in the future.

I've never heard of Cioks, but that's great customer service for sure.

It's a nice idea but, unfortunately, there's more too it than sticking a driver in a cab. The problem is that the nice flat response of your full-range driver will stop being flat as soon as you put it in a cabinet. The baffle step will rear its ugly head and the overall sound will be very middy - and not at all hi-fi. I've designed this kind of speaker in the past and sometimes you can get away with just a passive notch filter to flatten the response. Sometime you''ll need more than that. But you won't be able to design the filter unless you can measure the results.

LFSys speakers were designed principally for use with bass guitar, but I spent a lot of time developing the crossovers, testing and retesting, and making sure that the LF and HF drivers worked seamlessly together. This involved many hundreds of frequency measurements of different types, although the acid test of any of the various designs was always how well they reproduced male and female voice. I hadn't thought of these cabs as something for acoustic guitar but I can see why they would work. I do know they sound great with keyboards and as an FRFR cab for electric guitar. I guess they could well be a one-cab solution for multi-instrumentalists.

Very impressive piece of work, @ChrisDev

I've always had the impression that shopping sites wipe the contents of your basket after a while - not just Blue Arran.

Yes, the cab is permanently sealed after it has been assembled. Access is quite easy through the driver holes. See if you can find the thread on here where Funkle assembles the kit cab. That might help. You need to assemble the panels in the following order: back panel and braces (use a set square or similar to make sure the braces are at right angles). Then glue one side. Then the bottom. *Then the baffle.* Then the second side, and finally the top. If the panels have been cut accurately, all the joins should be air tight as long as you use plenty of glue. You could also use polyurethane glue if the cuts are iffy, as that expands to fill gaps. If you're short of braces, use screws to hold the panels in place while the glue dries. Remove the screws, (if you want) and fill the holes afterwards.

It's starting to look like my workshop.😃 Tuffcab's available in a variety of colours. You could also buy white and use an acrylic tint. Last time I looked, Blue Aran was out of Tuffcab in everything but black, although they say they'll eventually get more stock. There are other options, but as we know Tuffcab works well and is specifically designed for the job, you might be better off waiting. Anything else is an experiment, I'm afraid. To find the centre for a handle (or a top hat), you need to load the cabinet and place a piece of 1x1" batten underneath it. Adjust the batten until you find the centre of gravity and the cab doesn't tip over.

Have you had a word with @Chienmortbb on here? I believe he's taken over from OBBM. He certainly makes some very nice cables at reasonable prices.

Have a word with @doc40hz.

The recessed panel, if I remember correctly, was made from a small panel of wood fixed behind the input cutout. Ii's not relevant if you're using a commercial backplate