stevie

There's an astonishingly good tribute band here. From Ukraine of all places. Great sound quality and excellent musicianship.

You've got to hand it to them. They are very supportive of this forum, but not in an in-your-face-buy-me way, and their service support is legendary. This has to be applauded in an age where many companies think that a website FAQ can substitute for friendly and knowledgeable support staff. I can't imagine there are many bassists who haven't used their products and some are better than others, but I'm currently very happy with one of their amps.

I wouldn't beat yourself up about it Dave. It's easily done.

No, that was someone else (Google suggests it was Paul Jeffrys - certainly a sad story). Graham Knight was in the band from the start - and in the good old Gaylords. He's retired now I believe and although they are still gigging there aren't any original members left in the band. There's an interview with him here:

If you're struggling for space, you could always put the port at the back as Phil suggested. If you decide to stick with a front port, try to get it as far from the corner as you can.

Sounds to me like a manufacturer making wild claims about his products and misusing statistics to slag off the competition. Not unlike the website actually.

Greenboy provide more information than most about their cabs because they are not coy about the drivers they fit. When you know what drivers are in a cab, you don't need much technical knowledge to get a good idea of the performance potential of the design. While some manufacturers, like Mesa Boogie, provide accurate specs and a reasonable amount of detail, not many do, and even Mesa don't provide the kind of information you would expect from a serious PA cab manufacturer. There's a lot of specmanship going on - as is evidenced by this thread.

I always liked Graham Knight's melodic basslines for Marmalade. They contributed a lot to the songs.

It really is impossible to say for sure. You need to try them. Based on the drivers used, I'd say that the F112 has the edge as far as power handling and LF extension is concerned. The bass driver used in the F112 is slightly less sensitive than the one used in the Barefaced cab, but it goes lower in a slightly larger box. The midrange driver is a huge plus, which adds to the power handling and improves subjective sensitivity and accuracy. The F112 offers more in terms of hardware and is therefore better value for money, but at the end of the day, it's down to how well the designs have been implemented. It is also worth pointing out that the F112 is built from 12mm birch ply and the Barefaced from 9mm poplar ply.

This is why compact cabs for bass guitar are much more difficult to design than most people think. Not only do you have to get your sound to the audience (assuming no large PA), but you also have to get the sound to the player's ears when he's standing one to two metres in front of the cab. And the sound the audience hears should ideally be the same as the sound the player hears, for obvious reasons. Most players, I think, recognise the limitations of their cabs and live with them - and angling always helps the player to hear better (but not necessarily the audience). You can more or less tell by looking at the driver configuration whether a cab can pull this trick off - and most don't come anywhere near. So you have to stack a second cab on top of your first so that you can at least hear yourself. When you do that you get cancellation between the cabs at certain frequencies, which affects what the audience hears - and so on. No wonder people like in-ears!

Although the midrange driver on your TKS may go up to 9kHz, it still starts to roll off about 2kHz off axis. That is, of course, a great improvement on a 12" on its own or a 12" with a bullet tweeter, and you're right: it will allow you to hear mids on-stage much better. Not only that, but it will project the mids better into the audience. A two-way with a small midrange driver is a great solution, and one that I gigged with for a number of years. But I'd say that a two-way with a (proper) compression driver and CD horn is even better. It's also likely to be more expensive. That's what I've found works best for me anyway - so far.

[Edit: in response to Al's post] No thank you. I make a very good living doing something completely different. I did design speakers for a living once, but now it's just a part-time hobby. Which is how I like it.

I stopped using commercial cabs years ago. I'm currently using the self-built cab I have been describing in the Cab Diary Revisited thread. It's gone through a few iterations but the design concept is basically what I outlined in my post above. The bass driver I'm using now is the new neo Faital Pro 12PR320 together with a Celestion compression driver and constant directivity horn. I've nearly finished this particular version, which has been designed specifically to be lightweight, and will be continuing the thread as soon as it's ready so that anyone who wants to can build one. Straying a bit off topic......

You make a valid point. A midrange speaker is going to make any cab subjectively louder than a 12" driver on its own or one with the usual tweeter on top. It will also have more "punch" and clarity if implemented properly. This, as I'm sure you know, is directly connected to what's called the "power response", which is the total output of the speaker at all frequencies and at all listening angles. It's an aspect of cab design that is ignored by just about everyone making bass cabs, with a few exceptions including Greenboy. I've experimented with the 12 + midrange configuration but was never totally happy with it. I felt that a midrange speaker on its own didn't have enough highs off axis, and adding a constant directivity hf driver on top made the crossover very complex. I did complete a design with an Eminence 3012LF and a Celestion TF 0615MR self-contained midrange unit, which I could revisit and publish if anyone is interested, but I felt that a better solution was just a single crossover point with a high quality compression driver and constant directivity horn. I think Duke Lejeune is the only commercial builder to go down that route because 1) it's quite an expensive approach and 2) the costs incurred are not immediately apparent to the average cab buyer.

I agree. Depends on the 212 or 210 (or 1x15) though. This really is the crux of the matter - and not whether a 1x12 can go as loud as a 4x10 (which it can't). I find that my 1x12 is loud enough for any gig I play, including small outdoor ones. But sometimes it's just nice to work with a bigger speaker, and not everyone's bothered about portability.

It's the extra area and the reduced friction from the port sides (odd though that may sound). I'd put it at the front if you can - I'm not a great fan of rear porting for bass guitar cabs. 12mm spacing from the edge should be fine.

I take it that this personal attack is your way of avoiding answering my perfectly reasonable questions. Perhaps in future you should refrain from making claims that you can't back up.

Al, I would expect the VL210LNT to be more sensitive than the BB2 because of the greater cone area of the 2x10 drivers. Whether it is actually 100dB depends on how they have measured the cab, and Vanderkley don't go into any detail here (although 100dB doesn't sound unreasonable). If a manufacturer states the conditions of measurement - AES standard, for power handling as you mention - you know what you are dealing with and you can make comparisons. However, if the manufacturer doesn't say how they arrived at their figures, they are meaningless. Like the 127dB Chris quoted. The specs for Mesa Boogie's Subway cabs are a model of how to spec a bass cab.

If there is room to fit the 110mm port, it will handle quite a lot more power than two of the smaller ones - although it looks a bit tight from here and you don't want the port right in the corner.

It shouldn't take long with that!

Rated in the industry-standard way, the power handling of the BB2 is 400 watts. I'm afraid you need to be very careful if you're going to repeat the claims on the Barefaced website. Also, please explain how you get 127dB. Ashdown do give SPL figures. They are between 101 and 103dB @1m. So you can now tell us what their maximum output is. We're listening. And that's quite an interesting claim you're making, Chris, that Ashdown cabs can't handle their rated output. What do you base that on?

Sorry, fryer, it's LMC Audio: http://www.lmcaudio.co.uk/acatalog/LMC_Web_Catalogue_12__Drivers_53.html. - although they're not much cheaper when you add VAT. Plenty of cab designs on this very Basschat forum. In fact you're spoilt for choice. Start here:

The problem is the design of the driver: it's more like a guitar speaker than a bass guitar speaker. As Mottlefeeder said, you need to put it in a very large box to get any bass out of it, and when you do, it runs out of excursion very quickly. So it won't go very loud and is unlikely to keep up with your ATS cab. You should be looking for a driver with a decent excursion and a power handling of about 300 watts. The Beyma SM212 works well as a bass guitar speaker for about £70. You're unlikely to find anything better at a lower cost unless you pick something up used on eBay (not a bad idea). You can get all your bits and pieces from Blue Aran, but the Beyma is a lot cheaper directly from the Beyma distributor, LMS.