stevie

Made me laugh.

I finally managed to replace all the photos. As you can see, there are now just two circular braces with some supporting battens. I'll get the drawings up as soon as I figure out how to do it.

I'm using the same cab for the no-expense-spared version. The baffle cutouts will be very slightly different because of the different horn. Unfortunately, the cab drawings on page one of this thread disappeared when Basschat relocated, but if you have them, Gotta, just give the cutting list to Avon. Chienmort and I have already assembled cabs cut from that list by a wood merchant and they go together perfectly. You'll get two cabs out of an 8 x 4' sheet. Maybe someone else in South Wales would like one. I'll try to replace the drawings some time. A lot of the assembly photos have gone too. I've replaced a few and will do the remainder as time allows. Also, some of the additional bracing tweaks I did (in addition to those shown in the drawings) proved to be unnecessary. I'll revisit and revise those posts later. One final thing - I found that I needed a lot of clamps to assemble the box because if you're going to paint it you have to line the joints up very accurately. So assembly took some time because I had to wait for each section of the box to dry before I could to re-use the clamps elsewhere. However, I have read on some other specialist speaker sites that some builders are using Spax screws very successfully. These are German screws that need no predrilling but go straight into the wood without splitting it. Naturally, you need to remove them and fill the holes later, but a box of Spax screws should save a lot of time and cost a lot less than eight long clamps. I'm sure some of the woodworkers will comment.

Yes, this is by far the most important announcement so far.

Wasn't that because there isn't any difference (between Italian and Asian Markbass cabs)?

On the flat-pack idea, I think we got up to about half a dozen potential takers. I haven’t given up on the idea, but we haven’t reached critical mass yet. Maybe the next incarnation of this design will get some more interest. I’ve designed and built a few bass cabs with midrange drivers, and gigged a cab with an 8” midrange chassis for a few years. I built my own take on the Fearful with an Eminence 3012LF and a Celestion sealed back midrange (the Celestion is much better than its price suggests but it needs some fancy crossover work). I also built a 15” system with the Beyma 6” neo midrange. Although I thought all of these were a worthwhile improvement on a single driver, I still much prefer a two-way system with a high-end compression driver and this is the direction in which I am heading. Naturally, I’m still interested in finding out how Phil gets on with his line array design. Both John (Chienmortbb) and I have been keen to try to get the weight of our cabs down a bit. He has been using the Beyma SM212 and Celestion CDX-1445 (as used in the Yamaha DXR series incidentally) in this cabinet with a fairly weighty crossover, while I have been using neos, albeit quite heavy ones. So we’re now on a mission to make a more lightweight 12” system, although it will of necessity be more expensive. I received the Faital Pro chassis about a month ago – probably the first in the country – and this is what I have been working with in the odd hours I get to spend in my garage/workshop. For those interested in such things, it’s the 12PR320. It’s an uprated version of the 12PR300 used in the Vanderkley 112EXT and the Bergantino CN212 which beat all-comers at the Essex Bass Bash cab shootout a few years ago. The main improvement over the PR300 is in its xmax, which has now gone up to 7.37mm. Its 300W power handling matches the 8-ohm output capability of the popular lightweight amps, it weighs in at a fantastic 2.5kg and is very well priced (by Blue Aran) at about £130. It works well in our Basschat cabinet, although it looks like it will have even more low-end oomph in a slightly larger cabinet. We’ll see. I’m not messing around with cheap tweeters this time round. I’m using a top-of-the range Celestion 1” neo (the one above the model used in the QSC K-series and the one used by Duke Lejeune in his multi-thousand dollar hi-fi cabs) on an asymmetrical CD horn and crossing over at 1.5kHz. I’ve already designed the crossover, although I still have to tweak it. It’s complex and won’t be cheap, but this is a no-compromise box – so it has to be right. This will be a genuine FRFR design. You’ll be able to use it for keyboards, for PA, or as a monitor. I expect it to sound at least as good as the Yamaha PA cabs that are getting such a good press at the moment – but it will be designed specifically with the unique requirements of bass guitar sound reinforcement in mind. The drivers I’m using have distribution in the US - so we might even get some input from our US contributors, where DIY cabs seem to be a lot more popular than here. I’m not sure how they’ll deal with our new-fangled millimetres though….. Chienmortbb and I don’t live too far away from each other and we’ll be getting together in a few weeks’ time to check the new design out and compare it to the previous incarnation. We’re hoping Phil can make it as well. Anyone else within travelling distance of Dorchester is welcome to join us if they can bring a high-end 12” bass cab along with them for comparison purposes. And yes, the new cab will be at the SW Bass Bash. I have to be there to watch Phil building a cab in a day.

It might take me a while to figure that one out....

I have to confess, I have not used distortion for decades. In fact, I've spend decades trying to get a great clean sound.

If you already have a cab with a flat frequency response (quite a rarity), whether or not to use cab sims is perhaps more of a philosophical question. The question being: do you consider your bass guitar to be a guitar, or do you consider it to be a bass instrument? As we all know, electric guitars sound awful through flat-response speakers. They need that midrange honk and HF distortion to make them come alive. But that's the last thing you want if you have a double bass, for example, or an electric piano, because you want to amplify their sound without adding those peaks and dips that make it sound unnatural. If you want to add colour, fine. But I'd rather have complete control over the colour I create and play through a loudspeaker that can reproduce it properly. I can't see how a cab sim can add anything worthwhile. I'm talking about simulating the sound of a cabinet here, not an amp, tone controls or effects.

Impressive.

Yes, there have been developments, some of them you may find quite interesting. I'll explain in more detail when I've got a bit more spare time tomorrow.

I'm not sure cab sims are a great idea for bass. Guitar, definitely, but not for bass guitar. All you would be simulating would be the extra distortion and frequency response abberations / limitations that bass cabinets produce. Jrixn1, what you have with your RCF cab is the kind of sound you get straight into the desk in the recording studio or through a quality PA. Of course, you can tweak it and modify it, but your basic "tone" is already ideal. Cabs for bass guitar are generally not much more than a speaker stuck in a cabinet. Some have a tweeter added to give a bit of tizz but, with very few exceptions, they are not equalised to be flat. To clearly hear the difference between what an RCF-style monitor does and what a typical bass cab does, play some music through them with voice.

Agreed.

They are not. I don't suppose they expected anyone to email Eminence for the driver specs. Still, at least the OP should have a better handle on what's happening. I'd say a good quality 4x10 would make a big difference - in 4 ohms if he is sure he only wants one cab.

According to this: <https://www.talkbass.com/threads/fixed-tc-electronic-bc-cabinets.1058202/>, the drivers are 75 watts power handling with 3mm xmax. So it's not surprising that the cab won't go very loud. Looks like TC Electronics are up to their tricks again.

Of course it will! If the limiting factor is the power handling of your cab, which seems to be the case, then a cab that will handle more power will obviously go louder. The question is, will it be loud enough? It might well be. An 800-watt amp into an 800-watt 4x10 is pretty loud.

The OP's query was for "something with more headroom, to get the most 4 ohm juice out of my TC BH800 head". An 8-ohm cab seems like an odd solution.

You forgot the bit about phoning Alex.....

Just follow the Fane plan. It's all in there, including a useful cutting list.

I'm not a fan of rear porting for bass guitar cabs. If you'd like to use a cab of those dimensions, you could use two 5" or 6" ports, which will fit comfortably on a 27 x 17" baffle. There is also the option of a shelf port, but that's not as easy to calculate reliably using modelling software.

Yes, they tune the cab to 50Hz, which is just right for bass guitar.

The size of the cabinet won't make any different to the high frequency response of the speaker. I modelled that 125-litre cabinet for the Sovereign 600 and it works fine. I wouldn't be too keen on 12mm plywood for a cabinet of that size and power. Without a lot of extra bracing, it will probably vibrate too much. You might get away with 15mm.

Fane have their own cabinet design, which works with the driver you have. It's also well tuned for bass guitar. It's 125 litres internal volume. You could go a bit smaller but I wouldn't suggest going below 100 litres. If you deviate from the published design, you'd have to alter the port tubes slightly. Cabinets15inch125Lres.pdf

I'd assume that the XLR is wired in parallel with the jack. So you could take one lead from the jack to one speaker and another lead from the XLR to the other speaker. You might also consider replacing the XLR with a Speakon socket. The Speakkon fits the same size hole. It's easy if the XLR is hard wired inside the amp but more difficult if it's mounted on a PCB. That's probably more information than you wanted.....