stevie

Major, this is just the most amazing resource. Please keep it up if you can.

No need to spend £100. You should be able to pick up a driver from eBay for under £30 if you're not in a rush. Otherwise, you can get a decent 12" chassis like a Fane Sovereign 12-300 for under £50. I can see that the Trace would be tempting though.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='848897' date='May 26 2010, 08:46 PM']Then you open the whole speaker replacement and cab tuning thing again.[/quote] I knew there had to be a catch.

It was a budget brand. I knew their PA speakers but I didn't even know they made a bass amp. They were well built though, with decent parts, but they were aimed at the lower end of the market. Your best bet might be to keep your eyes peeled for a secondhand unit. The current budget speaker best buys in the UK come from Fane and Celestion, both designed in the UK and built in China. I believe Phil has some recent experience of these.

[quote name='Sibob' post='848434' date='May 26 2010, 01:16 PM']Choices? [/quote] If your cabs are Ashdown ABM's, your best choice by miles is to replace the drivers with modern neos. That way, you'll cut the weight and boost the potential output for a fraction of the cost of buying something else.

[quote name='cameltoe' post='847946' date='May 25 2010, 09:25 PM']Cheers guys for all the recommendations, great stuff![/quote] You might like to consider using a 12" driver for your cab. 52 litres is too small for a 15" unless you want it to sound like a floor monitor, but it's an ideal size for many 12s. Apart from giving you a much wider choice of potential drivers, a 12" chassis will: a) be cheaper provide a better balanced sound c) have superior midrange (all things being equal) d) have better dispersion. You'd need to cut a spacer ring from 1/2 inch MDF or ply to fit the 12. Quite easy with a jigsaw. AC Euro was a Yorkshire-based company from Doncaster.

[quote name='girya32' post='844071' date='May 21 2010, 01:01 PM']..don't end your auction on a Friday Mrs Worthington..[/quote] Very useful tip. Thanks for sharing.

[quote name='lemmywinks' post='842990' date='May 20 2010, 12:08 PM']That's £40 worth of soldering then! As it takes around 10 minutes to make an excellent quality cable that's £240 an hour![/quote] That's as may be - but who can put a price on pixie dust?

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='719896' date='Jan 21 2010, 11:42 AM']DON'T DO IT!!!! 'Fever' is a banned song on the Bilbo 'not jazz' jazz chart (no. 3, if I recall correctly)! It pretends to sound jazzy but, on the quiet, it sucks!! Just let it die. Its lived long enough and deserves to rest.[/quote] What's wrong with it, Bilbo? Not enough mindless noodling? If it swings (and Peggy Lee swings), it's jazz. IMHO. What are nos. 1 and 2 on your chart?

[quote name='Merton' post='839969' date='May 17 2010, 05:57 PM']That's a proper run down, nice! PD = Precision Devices I believe [/quote] Specifically, the 153ER. They still make it.

[quote name='simon1964' post='839535' date='May 17 2010, 09:47 AM']A lot of people recommend the Nordstrand as the closest to the Stingray tone, although I've not sure how they sound passive.[/quote] Is this a Vintage Musicman copy? I had one and put a Nordstrand in it. I couldn't wait to get the Wilkinson one back on - the Nordstrand sounded really boring, for want of a better word - dull, flat, uninteresting. When you look at what goes into a bass pickup, I think anything over £100 is definitely taking the mickey.

[quote name='OldGit' post='836401' date='May 13 2010, 05:28 PM']Ha ha yeah.. Let me know when you find out [/quote] According to JTUK, it's Blueberry Hill - not a problem. :-) I've got most of the music in my collection (including Joe Bonamassa) - I just wasn't sure what's in the 'core repertoire' nowadays. I have a better idea now.

Lots of good advice here - thanks, guys - although I was thinking of running for the hills until I read OldGit's message. This is not an existing band but one that is being formed, though some of the members have played together before. So there isn't such a thing as a set list yet (and the band may not turn out to be strictly 100% blues). I'm aware of how tricky some of these tunes can be. For example, I'd find 'Still Got the Blues' impossible to busk, and unless you nail the bass line fairly closely, it will simply sound wrong. Ditto for 'Need Your Love so Bad'. I do think it's a good plan to learn a number of specific songs thoroughly before the first 'meet'. After all, you wouldn't audition for a soul band without knowing Knock on Wood. I'll try to get an idea of specific tunes next time we talk. I'm also going to find our what a fat shuffle is.

If you were auditioning for a blues band, what songs would you have to know to be taken seriously?

[url="http://seymourduncan.com/images/products/basslines/501035-100.pdf"]http://seymourduncan.com/images/products/b.../501035-100.pdf[/url]

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='832094' date='May 9 2010, 12:31 PM']When trialled A/B against a standard SSI this bass sounds like it lacks a lot of Oomph but when played in isolation at Howie's today it wasn't 'that' bad! I 'think' Howie and I have established that these pups are not quite matched to the MEC circuit so I'm going down the route of returning the bass back to the original spec with EMGs (maybe even MECs as in my opinion they are virtually identical). Any body got any EMGs or MECs for sale or want to buy some SDs? [/quote] These Duncan actives are a bit different to others because they carry on working when the battery is flat. I suspect that the active circuitry is bypassed when the supply voltage drops below a certain level. The sound you get in passive mode is relatively weak and a bit thin, not unlike what you have described, although useable in an emergency. I wonder if you have nine volts going to each pickup to power their inbuilt amps. I tried to use them in a bass with its own active circuitry and it wasn't very successful. I think they need to be wired up to passive controls, which gives you the benefit of a buffered output to your amp but not the benefit of active tone controls, as the dip switches mounted on the pickups don't do a great deal.

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='829652' date='May 6 2010, 02:48 PM']Yep, I believe that's the case - It was a TB-derived thing.[/quote] In which case, would it be unreasonable to speculate that the value of said testers lies more in the amount of publicity they can generate for the product rather than in the actual value of their opinions to the company?

Call me cynical, but could the members of the test group have been selected because they are all very heavy posters on internet discussion lists? Perhaps the answer could be in the last line of the message from TC. "Our test is fully official and you are free to discuss this with anybody out there." I'm not knocking it. Just saying......

[quote name='geoffbyrne' post='828931' date='May 5 2010, 08:30 PM']Many get good mileage from cutting up old-ish mouse mats. You can put a double layer in too if you need a bit of height.[/quote] Works really well.

[quote name='Mr.T' post='828812' date='May 5 2010, 06:55 PM']Does that mean it's Ok for me to think that my new cabs sound good? [/quote] Only if the driver Qts is less than .4

[quote name='Phil Starr' post='824996' date='May 1 2010, 05:37 PM']If after all this you want to replace the speakers be aware that you can't just drop any speaker into any cab and expect the bottom octave to be any good. Each speaker needs to be in a box of optimum volume depending upon the weight and stiffness of the cone and the size of the magnet and coil. in addition a ported cab has to be tuned to the speaker with a fair degree of accuracy. The Fane 10-275 for example needs a smaller cab than the Celestion BL10. I've got reservations about the Celestion bass speakers (BL and BN) because of their restricted Xmax and the high resonant frequencies (based entirely on their specs). Stevie do you have any experience with these speakers as I am curious as to how they sound?[/quote] I’m not really a great believer in optimum cab sizes. Ported cabs for bass guitar are quite flexible in terms of what works. For example, all the speakers I listed will work quite nicely in a 35-litre cab although, as you mention, the Fane is more comfortable in a smaller cab than the pressed steel Celestions. In response to your question, I haven’t got a lot of personal experience of the Chinese Celestions. I’ve tried a couple (not the bass guitar ones), and they were better than I expected - certainly better than the older Celestion PA speakers I have tried. Other people I know have been impressed with them. Whoever is designing their drivers is very capable. I’m impressed, for example, with the way the top end is very controlled – unlike many drivers which go into uncontrollable spasms before they roll off. I understand what you mean about the high resonant frequencies. 73Hz does sound too high, although this is largely a factor of the suspension stiffness. Also, the Qts of this driver is relatively high, which compensates. You could drop the resonant frequency by fitting a softer suspension, but then Qts would drop, VAS would rise and you’d end up with exactly the same performance. I modelled the two pressed steel chassi Celestions, one with 73Hz and the other with 64Hz resonant frequency and their low frequency performance was identical. If I were choosing from the three pressed steel drivers based on their parameters, I’d go for the Fane as you did because the heavier cone helps it produce more bottom end. Oddly enough, the parameters of the Celestion NTR driver are very close to those of the Fane. Although the NTR is a very expensive option, it is probably in the same class as B&C, 18Sound and Beyma. 4mm coil overhang is quite acceptable for a 10 - even the JBL 2226 only has 5.5mm of physical overhang. If it were a B&C or an Eminence, the spec sheet would say 8mm xmax. What do you think the problem is with the top end of the Fane, Phil? Have you measured it?

[quote name='acidbass' post='824878' date='May 1 2010, 02:42 PM']I've recently received two replacement Blue Line drivers (with black cones) for my Ashdown ABM combo - the guy (his name is actually Guy) was very helpful and it only cost me around £40 for both of them including carriage![/quote] That's good - how did you manage it?

[quote name='buff' post='822149' date='Apr 28 2010, 04:48 PM']Ive got a older type abm 2x10. In recent recording's it showed up to have a breaking up speaker at low volumes, unless i cut the bass on the amp back. Its fitted with the old blue type speaker's, any sugestion's ?[/quote] That's a very nice cab, made of 3/4" birch ply. It would be worth replacing the drivers with something better. Celestion's range of 10s is hard to beat at the moment. You pay a premium for the weight-saving properties of the neo speakers, but many people think it is worth it. Get some BAF wadding to damp the interior of the cab and cut down on the midrange 'honk'. If it were me, I would also add some bracing between the middle of the fromt baffle (between the drivers) and the back panel. Ferrite drivers: Fane Sovereign 10-275 CelestionBL10-200X Neo drivers: Celestion NTR10-2520E (if price is not an issue) Celestion BN10-200X/300X I've just returned from a week's holiday in your part of the world. That St. Austell beer is world class!