LFSys Monza - A Review

[FirstBass]

I’ve been lucky enough to be approached again by LFSys to take their latest offering out for a spin. (that’s a lie, but sounds more professional – I begged via private message)

 

Having tried the 12” Monaco earlier this year, I was looking forward to comparing the Monza.

 

The Monza is a 10” woofer/compression driver combination mounted in an enclosure only 53x36x30cm. Yep, that’s small. It certainly looked lost in the boot of my car!

 

The cab is internally braced to dampen resonances. Whilst small in stature, the cabinet weighs in at 11kg. It’s built to last and built well from quality materials. The enclosures are finished in a grey paint with a green baffle.

 

It utilises a Faital Pro neodymium driver rated at 600w / 8 ohms with a hefty vd measurement of 251.5cc for all you Thiele Small fans out there. Compare this with the Celestion Pulse 10 used in the 10” bass chat design cab that a few of us have built @ 138.5cc and you begin to see that this is one serious piece of kit output wise.

 

The design uses an in house designed, developed, and built crossover sending all the mid and high frequency goodness above 2khz to a Celestion neodymium compression driver which is coupled to a rather large vertically aligned CD horn. No token “el cheapo” tweeter spitting out some hissy stuff here for sure.

 

A front mounted, single round port is used. I heard no chuffing whatsoever when giving the cab the beans at gig levels.

 

A heavy-duty grille and corner protectors take care of your investment. Bespoke covers are also available at a sensible price.

 

A single handle on the top of the cabinet makes carrying this little wonder a cinch. It’s a comfortable and dare I say “good looking” handle. The handle has also been recessed to allow for bass amps with low height feet to sit on top with no issues. LFSys listened to their reviewers and made changes to their design. Brilliant!

 

Two parallel wired speakon sockets on the rear of the cab take care of connections. They’re mounted on a bespoke lightweight aluminium plate that really does look professional.

 

And that’s it – all you need in a dinky package!

 

So… to the main event. How does it sound?

 

Good. Very good.

 

I had a gig at a club on the Norfolk Coast and took the Monza along for a workout. It’s a strange building, as its almost three rooms joined together. We play in one room facing into another with yet another room off to our left-hand side. I would estimate the crowd was 120 or so people. It has a low ceiling and it’s probably 70% carpeted floors.

 

I walked in with my kit (one trip – result!) and felt as though I was missing something.

 

I placed the cab in my limited amount of stage space. With my TC electronics BH800 perched on top my rig looked, well, a little lost if I’m honest. The drummers 12” monitor beside it dwarfed the Monza. A couple of comments about the size (or lack of it) and we were ready to go.

 

I play Glam and 70’s Rock covers. I dress up and look like a potato in a pair of flares. I don’t care. I’ve reached that age where most of my self-respect has gone out of the window.

 

We have a drummer that is rather deaf. He sets the volume for us as a band. As hard as I try to tame him a bit, the adrenaline takes over and we creep up until its quite loud. It’s hard to describe a band’s volume, but we’re definitely not “sit and have a nice chat 20 ft from the stage” material. His monitor seems generally almost as loud as the PA, so stage volumes are high to say the least. No in ears or technical wizardry in this band, just old kit gaffa taped and tie wrapped together working very hard.

 

Setup wise, I use a Yamaha BB734A bass in passive mode as it eats batteries, a lead, a TC electronics BH800 head and the Monza. I run a little bit of compression via one of the onboard tone print slots. I play with fingers. The EQ section of the amp was bass, low mid @ 12 o’clock and high mid and high around 2 o’clock. I find the TC heads (or at least the 2 I own) are a little lacking on the top end side of things. I recently compared it to an old Genz Shuttle 6.0 and this seems to have much more sparkle.  

 

I set my amp to where I’d normally be, and my glamorous assistant said I was a little lost in the mix. I would estimate I had to ramp up about 15% on the master volume to get myself where I like to be in the mix. I set the gain so only the heaviest of playing would occasionally wake the peak LED up.

 

There I was. In the mix. Playing at gig levels with a 10” driver carrying the whole room. It didn’t feel “right”, but sure enough the little Monza pumped out a most enjoyable tone for three (hot and sweaty) hour long sets. I didn’t tweak the amp. I could hear all I need to hear, and I play with 20dB attenuating moulded ear plugs (due to aforementioned tub thumper)

 

If I was doing a blind test, I would be confident that I was playing with a 12” driver behind me. The bass was very prominent without being boomy or harsh.

 

My only concern was having to drive the Monza harder to be sat where I’d normally be in our mix. Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t complain in the least, but I knew I was working it quite hard.

 

Gig over and gear packed away (one trip again. Brilliant) I reflected on my test.

 

This shouldn’t be “right”. A 10” equipped cab shouldn’t be punting out this level of bassy goodness. But it did. It did it well.

 

I still believe that you must be realistic about your expectations. For example, I have a gig this weekend outdoors for a bunch of Harley Davidson riders. Would I expect the Monza to perform as well all by itself? No, I don’t… But given the opportunity of a little assistance through the PA then it’d be fine. BUT – on this occasion I’ll take my 2 bass chat 112’s and cover all eventualities.

 

Big sound equals big enclosures, right? Well, not always. The Monza is living proof that good things really do come in small packages.

 

I’d like to thank Stevie of LFSys for trusting this idiot with one of his products.  

 

I’d recommend heading over to www.lfsys.co.uk to read more.

 

Jon

 

[Tradfusion]

Great review... ordered my Monza this morning 😊

[FirstBass]

Thank you Tradfusion.

 

I'm sure you'll love your new purchase! 👍

Edited July 4, 2023 by GlamBass74

[Chienmortbb]

Since I have had my @steviedesigned cabs, the one thing I never hear is “I can’t hear the bass” from my bandmates. We had a gig on Sunday in a courtyard where there are several odd walls and the acoustics are not good. We all had difficulty hearing the drums and the guitars on either side of the stage, but everyone could hear that bass. I have been asked to turn UP at several gigs as amount of sound reaching my ears is so much more than other cabs. The downside? All the band can now clearly hear my c*ck ups. 
 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Chienmortbb

[Beer of the Bass]

Has anyone tried one out on double bass yet? Though the double bass guys often favour even smaller boxes, it looks like it might be promising.

[msb]

Great review!

 

[Phil Starr]

3 hours ago, Beer of the Bass said:

Has anyone tried one out on double bass yet? Though the double bass guys often favour even smaller boxes, it looks like it might be promising.

At the SouthWest Bass Bash we tried out a few speakers with double bass. I'm quite keen to investigate the design challenges involved. I thought the BassChat 110T would be a good starting point, a clean but not extended or overblown bass and no nasties in the upper range and fair enough it sounded OK. My six inch 'House Jam' cab scored really well for note definition but the lack of deeper bass meant it was a bit unexciting. The surprise package was a one off 8" cab I'd designed with @Chienmortbb which did sound really good in a very compact package but the star of the show was the LFSys Monaco which shares the same horn and driver as the Monza. The notes really sang.

 

Crucially the Monza and Monaco share a similarly tight bass response. They both have incredibly powerful magnet systems and as a result a highly damped bass response. There's an extended but lightly falling response that goes down a long way. The bass is really punchy and tight and that damped response should and did reduce bass feedback in an upright. Obviously the proof is in trying it out but I would think the Monza would be just as good in a much more compact package and with the proviso that I haven't heard it used this way it looks like it could be the perfect speaker for an upright player.

 

Why not pm @stevie and see if you can organise to try one?

[Chienmortbb]

14 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

At the SouthWest Bass Bash we tried out a few speakers with double bass. I'm quite keen to investigate the design challenges involved. I thought the BassChat 110T would be a good starting point, a clean but not extended or overblown bass and no nasties in the upper range and fair enough it sounded OK. My six inch 'House Jam' cab scored really well for note definition but the lack of deeper bass meant it was a bit unexciting. The surprise package was a one off 8" cab I'd designed with @Chienmortbb which did sound really good in a very compact package but the star of the show was the LFSys Monaco which shares the same horn and driver as the Monza. The notes really sang.

 

Crucially the Monza and Monaco share a similarly tight bass response. They both have incredibly powerful magnet systems and as a result a highly damped bass response. There's an extended but lightly falling response that goes down a long way. The bass is really punchy and tight and that damped response should and did reduce bass feedback in an upright. Obviously the proof is in trying it out but I would think the Monza would be just as good in a much more compact package and with the proviso that I haven't heard it used this way it looks like it could be the perfect speaker for an upright player.

 

Why not pm @stevie and see if you can organise to try one?

I pulled the 8” out the other night and plugged in my main amp the other day. I was once again astonished at its performance. @Phil Starr and I broke just about all the rules making it as it was designed to sit underneath the Ashdown After Eight as an extension cab. We were building to a size rather than designing the best cabinet for the driver, my fault not Phil’s. I should explain that the After Eight has been gutted and rebuilt as a 100 watt combo using a new 8”, 8 ohm speaker with an extension cab capability down to 4 ohms.

 

What the cab did show is that, with limitations, a small format cab could work well for both electric and double bass. It would be interesting to see a well designed small format  cab from @stevie at LFSys. 

[nekomatic]

This 8 inch design… would there be any chance at all of sharing it here, do you think? Even if not fully written up with woodwork drawings and all that. (flutters eyelashes)

[Phil Starr]

On 05/07/2023 at 15:29, nekomatic said:

This 8 inch design… would there be any chance at all of sharing it here, do you think? Even if not fully written up with woodwork drawings and all that. (flutters eyelashes)

I'll see what I have from the process, I think I took a few pics and John @Chienmortbb still has the cab somewhere. As he says it is an odd shape for a cab (almost a cube) and both shape and size were dictated by the need to match the dimensions of the Ashdown. I didn't break all the rules though, I'd had my eye on the driver for a potential 2x8 for a while and it is properly tuned and optimised.

[Phil Starr]

On 05/07/2023 at 15:29, nekomatic said:

This 8 inch design… would there be any chance at all of sharing it here, do you think? Even if not fully written up with woodwork drawings and all that. (flutters eyelashes)

Well I've looked and can't find any pics, notes or sketches but I saved the file on WINisd and I have the dimensions of the Ashdown in a pm from John who I built the cab for. I'll be able to re-engineer the design though I think I built it out of 18mm ply off-cuts as it was a one off. TBH that didn't add an awful lot to the weight in a 20l cab.

 

John still has the cab so we should be able to take a couple of shots. I'll start a new thread when I have it ready and tag you when it goes up. I'm feeling this is a bit of a thread hi-jack

[Chienmortbb]

5 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

Well I've looked and can't find any pics, notes or sketches but I saved the file on WINisd and I have the dimensions of the Ashdown in a pm from John who I built the cab for. I'll be able to re-engineer the design though I think I built it out of 18mm ply off-cuts as it was a one off. TBH that didn't add an awful lot to the weight in a 20l cab.

 

John still has the cab so we should be able to take a couple of shots. I'll start a new thread when I have it ready and tag you when it goes up. I'm feeling this is a bit of a thread hi-jack

It is in the garage now and I can happily take some pictures.