LukeFRC

odd off topic question..... say I went and bought a RCF HD12a.... what would stop that (and a preamp) working as a powered bass cab?

Half an inch can make quite a big difference, so I hear

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1407874544' post='2524996'] I've got a headless system which I've been itching to put to use.....this may be just what it's been waiting for.. [/quote]nah fix it, it's a nice bass.... deserves not to be butchered!

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1407492515' post='2521041'] Bill is of course absolutely right about this. The interesting thing is about what the implications are for us as bassists. If you want a single speaker to do the job for you then you have to have something engineered for high volume displacement. This usually has a cost in terms of efficiency or a large exotic and expensive magnet system. The other thing is that doubling the number of drivers gives you 3dB of extra sensitivity. 6dB if your amp can maintain the voltage swing. Go to an 8x10 and you have a potential 12dB of sensitivity or 9dB at the same wattage. Although this comes at the cost of the speakers radiation interfering with each other to make a lumpy bumpy frequency response and radiation pattern. This extra efficiency means that your system is using much less power. 3db is half the power and 10db a tenth. So instead of 400W into an exotic lightweight you might be using 40W into an 8x10 for the same sound level, and only 5W into each of the eight speakers. If you are using the same amp it is going to run cooler and maintain its output, it is also much less likely to distort because of peaks in your playing. More importantly probably the speakers will run cool, 400W into a tiny coil trapped in a tiny air space inside a magnet does get very hot. Speakers running consistently high powers run very hot and the resistance of the coil rises reducing the speakers output so the sound changes as they warm up. Of course this is only one variable, there are many other differences to take into consideration but there are distinct advantages in multiple speakers vertically stacked. [/quote] most interesting post i've read for a long time.

what you got to loose? (about £300)

it's not a C bass though, I think it's standard scale.

my thought exactly! would you fix it yourself or pay someone else to? I am tempted, matlock isn't far...

I picked up an old peavey t40 in it's original case a few years back for less than one went for... some makes just don't seem to sell well, old japanese Yamaha's can be picked up for stupid low money too... Yamaha, Peavey, some of the older washburns.... there's some bargains out there.

most fun bass I've had cost me £40 out of a secondhand shop. (two years ago) Wish I hadn't sold it to a mate. One of the next best I think owed me £80 and I bolted it together myself. Ampwise you can pick good stuff up for not much, esp if you don't mind weight. old Trace Elliot stuff goes for pennies these days.

I read in interesting paper about flaired ports and investigating them from a aero fluid dynamic POV. The main thing I can remember that in a straight exit port the air forms laminate layers at the length of the port. Flaired ports , ideally on both ends induce eddies that break up the laminates reducing resistance on air flow. A bit like the dimples on a golf ball or sharks skin

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1407584582' post='2522014'] Don't blame him at all. I've been to gigs where there's dozens of people 'watching' the performance through phones or even iPads. Go to a classical concert or ballet phones are banned full stop, I think they should be at contemporary gigs too. [/quote] yeah I don't get it. I'll maybe take one or two photos... but..... why on earth do people want to watch the life they are living through a b****y 2 inch screen is utterly beyond me.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1407520577' post='2521491'] FWIW... and I don't mean to demean your experiment, but I don't know what you plugged into it and what sound you were looking at or wanted to hear.. bass-wise. I know what models you used but I don't know what sound you get out of them... [/quote] not demeaning at all - I stuck my status update up and a few folk (Discreet, Shergold and Kiwi - you're to blame!) were interested in some kinda write up - as you said no only does no one know what we were aiming for sound wise but it's so hard to both describe sound and know what info would be interested. Plus we mention Barefaced - the Basschat marmite.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1407505741' post='2521290'] Yes, it's beefier than Beefy Jack McBeef, winner of last year's 'Mr Beefy in the Bottom' competition. But the OP does say the Big One was only 'briefly' plugged in, so it looks like it was a bit of an afterthought here. There are no attenuators on The Big One, it has a 15" Kappalite driver and a 6.5" mid-range unit. It's an 8 ohm cab. For the record, mine has endless acres of bottom end. The joy is you don't need to dial it in, it's just there. I would agree that you do need to give it some beans to get the best out of it. Or maybe that's just what my G-K MB500 Fusion sounds like..? Remember, The Big One was Barefaced's flagship cab for a while, and it's still a lot better than most manufacturers' current offerings. In my humble opinion, of course. [/quote] We weren't stupid loud but we weren't running them super quiet either. James (who owns it and gigs it) said it was tuned higher than the big baby. We tried it briefly and it sounded like he described so didn't feel the need to question it further! We would need Alex back on the forums to comment if the Barefaced Big One is tuned higher or lower than the Big Baby. To my ears the Big baby went lower. And of course the ACME B2 is -3dB at 41Hz and -6dB at 31Hz and it's not as low tuned as that. The trade off is that it's more efficient.... Sorry it's my thread so I'm going to get on my soapbox... we got to try out some really good high end gear and it was all good - but aimed at different things... and I think this is the important thing to think about if discussing bass cabs. What is it designed for and what were the tradeoffs? Based on the three cabs we tried... If you want something to win a "Mr Beefy in the Bottom" competition go think about ACME cabs. If you want a one cab solution and often don't have PA support... Big One, If you have PA support more often than not... I would go for a Big Baby... Personally I don't think low end response is the be all and end all - I'ld personally like to hear the Big Baby 2 a Simplexx 112 and a Fearless F112... for James playing Reggae and synth bass a bigger low end is more important and I think he was going to try and hear a BFM Omni and go along those lines. Mind you Tomorrow I'm playing at a wedding and just plugging a Zoom b3 into the PA and using a set of headphones so make of that what you will!

[quote name='ShergoldSnickers' timestamp='1407486452' post='2520929'] Thanks for the effort that's obviously gone into this Like. Interesting write up. It all goes to illustrate tat unless you can throw money at something to avoid compromise, or even better, if you can avoid physics altogether, then designing a speaker cabinet is a compromise. How those compromises are weighted will determine the overall balance of sound. Interesting comment regarding the Big One. I thought that the mid was pretty good when I had mine, but the newer mid/treble drivers Barefaced use are supposed to be much smoother. It sounds like they are a world apart now. I also remember the Big One being really beefy in the bottom end. Must resist temptation to investigate new gear.... must resist temptation to investigate new gear... must resist... must resist... [/quote] the big one was tuned a fair bit higher compared to the the bb and acme. James says it goes a lot louder

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1407480447' post='2520873'] I think this proves what many of us knew the Ames will go way way down but the very low stuff is not realy good for real world gigging. Alex designs for real world playing good work although it may have been beter if you had made it a blind test. [/quote] well it depends very much on what you define real world gigging as. There's plenty of folk on here who play in bands where the whole bass sound comes from their amp.... Whereas when I was in a band the gigs we were playing always had PA support so the rig served a very different role. And that's before you get into what kind of music. I'm not sure a blanket statement that x y or z doesn't work in real life is either true or that helpful. It all works and is brilliantly engineered but it depends on what you are trying to do with it.

[quote name='funkle' timestamp='1407476655' post='2520855'] Nice work. Thanks for sharing! [/quote] no idea if any of that made sense to anyone else.

[u]Amps...[/u] are harder to talk about. The ashdown power amp is a big heavy power amp that I can't wait to replace - but it does the job and I don't feel the need to say any more about it, it's a poweramp - and I doubt we were pushing it hard enough to be much different to any other power amp. The Shuttle 6.0 is a very well respected class D amp. with I think a valve the pre stage. The Hellborg is a very clean and very uncompressed sounding transformer and coil based preamp, based on a neve channel strip apparently. The Eq is quite nice and gives a wee flavour to the sound. I find it hard to compare as they are so different to each other - to my ears the Hellborg sounded nicer, and reproduced the synth very well - but then you would expect that. comparatively you could hear the way the Shuttle was a wee bit more compressed. What was surprising to me was while the Hellborg rig sounded broadly the same through all the cabs the shuttle sounded very different to my ears through the the ACME and BB, maybe because of the impedance difference, but while the Shuttle sounded fairly normal (what ever that means) through the ACME through the BB it suddenly seemed to go way more middy sounding. Like the slight spikeyness I heard and liked in the BB's mids compared to the ACME were boosted. The Shuttle I thought sounded pretty good through the ACME, less so with the BB. Whereas the Hellborg was possibly a bit too polite through the ACME but enjoyed the BB for bass, but for the synth the bottom end of the ACME came into play. Conclusions.... apples and oranges! they are different bits of gear for different things. For me the hellborg>light poweramp> big baby would be a nice rig (but pricey!) err I don't know what else to say that would be of any use to anyone!

One of the main things we wanted to do was compare the cabs, I think I'm right in saying James is looking for a massive bottom end in a not so massive package. For me I'm not so fussed about reproducing the fundamental of a low B and just like a nice sound, esp in the mids. I think we were very lucky to have the synth there as hearing the fuller (and sometimes way lower) sounds gave the speakers a better work out. The main comparisons were between the Big Baby and the ACME, we fed the two outputs of the Hellborg into the power amp and connected a cab to each side so we could switch between one and the other. I'm not really sure how to write up something like this so I guess here's my thoughts... [u]ACME B2[/u] This speaker, as you can guess has a big low end, sticking the synth through it it and it replicated this big full bottom end. The general response was smooth and flat through the range and it seemed to cross over to the tweeter earlier than the BB. Surprisingly very nice. We set it at the supposed "flat" settings as reported on t'internet. [u]BAREFACED BB[/u] With the power amp at the same setting it was as loud as the B2, even though the B2 is 4 ohms and the BB 8 ohms. So more sensitive (we all knew that though) As one of the cabs I've investigated and wanted I was expecting it to blow away my ACME... with the synth it didn't. The ACME was defiantly smoother sounding through the mids and the low end rolled off way sooner on the BB making it sound slightly lacking. and harsher. However with a normal bass sound ( not synth) the higher low end roll off made less difference. On stage probably better, and the more aggressive mid driver gave a really pleasant "spikeyness" to the sound which to my ear would work really nicely in a band setting. Turning the attenuation all the way on on the ACME brought it closer in sound to the BB. My conclusions from comparing the two.... the ACME felt and sounded like the better, more expensive and more engineered cab. It was bigger, smoother and more hi-fi. BUT like James pointed out you would possibly struggle for volume with just one... and it's supposedly easy to crease the cones. The Barefaced was obviously engineered for a different job. Back to back I felt the ACME sounded "better" but I thought the sound of the Big Baby would work better in a band context. I really liked the spiky mids and it sounded good with my streamer. For running the synth through the ACME sounded a bit smoother, but I guess my concern was how much volume it would be able to put out live whereas the Big baby you felt had power on tap. We also briefly plugged in the Big One, it's an earlier Barefaced design using a 15 inch Kappalite 3015 and I believe is similar in design ethos to the fEARful 15/6, I can't remember if it had a tweeter in at all. It was a lot louder and way higher tuned so the lows weren't present in the way our ears had got used to and the mids were very very aggressive and unpleasant sounding to my ears. To be honest I really didn't like it, but I also don't know how any attenuators were set... so... even still it was leagues behind the Big Baby. After a few moments we went back the the big baby and B2!