thinman

One big difference is the dispersion from the horns/tweeters which has a lot to do with how clear they sound. Your usual active speaker with a letter box-shaped horn works better when upright as it disperses the higher frequencies more widely left-right than it does up-down. When you turn them on their side that arrangement is reversed. What that means in practice is that they're OK if you're right in front of them but the clarity will drop off quite a lot if you're to the left or right - more than with a dedicated monitor wedge that is built to be laid down and having the tweeters orientated accordingly. As others have said they'll do the job but don't expect a full range mix to work. You generally feel that from the mains anyway. Angle them to point at your head and not your knees too!

[quote name='mybass' timestamp='1461158841' post='3031975'] Bad news on my Yamaha EMX 312 PA powered mixer amp. It suddenly switched off at sound check though had tested fine the day before, (luckily the band had a spare amp). The cost of repair for the internal power board/supply is far higher than buying the same new Yamaha amplifier off the high street at £320! Repair man says he isn't able to buy direct off Yamaha, ( it s a Yamaha thing!). I guess most of this type of powered mixer amp are built along the same lines, Yamaha's apparently have a weird internal earthing that allows power through only when the unit is completely assembled (sounds safe) as my repairman found on a previous Yamaha job. Anyone had this particular amp problem and resolved it? [/quote] Spare parts and repair man's time can quickly get expensive! An experienced repair may be able to repair to component level rather than replace whole boards depending upon what's gone wrong. I've just been mending a Yamaha EMX5000 - yes they do have a complex earthing arrangement but that can be got round for testing - an experienced repairer should be able to sort that out. You do have to be very careful with them as they have switched mode power supplies which carry high voltages. I'd ask another repairer for an opinion.

Thanks chaps. My projector appears to be made by "Zoom Manufacturing" which doesn't appear to exist as a specific company on the internet. The wheel is about 4.5" so I doubt those on the sites name would fit. May have to ditch it...

Nothing to do with basses or amps. I've got one of those oil-effect lights for the band lighting that has some coloured oils sandwiched between two glass plates driven by a motor. Over the years the colours have faded and the whole thing's a bit anaemic-looking now. I can't seem to find any replacement discs but wondered if there are any ways to bring it back to life. Any ideas what kind of oils and dyes are used?

Bought a Yamaha P2500S power amp from Kev. Very fast turnaround, good comms and very well packed. Painless.

[quote name='brensabre79' timestamp='1397059874' post='2420268'] Yep those personal monitors are the bomb. We use two of the Thomann ones - similar to the Behringer i think. I would seriously think about a graphic EQ between the desk and monitors though - and FOH for that matter, but definitely monitors. If you're wedded to the passive wedges, then a class D power amp will do the job. the Behringer iNukes are pretty good (and cheap!), if you get the one with built in DSP there's a graphic EQ built in - it isn't that easy to use but it's only 2 rack units, it'll do bridge mode or dual mono from a single feed so you don't even need a splitter from the desk. [/quote] +1 about the EQ - mostly for feedback suppression - monitors tend to be the biggest source so you need an eq to remove the peaks in response that contribute to it (after making sure your mic/monitor placement is OK). If you use a graphic it needs to be a 31-band or some kind of 3 or 4-band parametric. Look up how to "ring out" your monitors - it makes a huge difference to how loud you can get your monitor levels and is not hard once you've done it a few times. A few other things I've picked up over the years that help reduce feedback problems include: 1. Use the same monitor speakers (avoids having differing frequency responses that can make for more frequencies that will feed back). 2. Use the same make/models of vocal mic - same reason as above. 3. Try to not be too near a back wall - stuff reflects back and makes for a lot of spill and feedback problems. 4. I've used active speakers as monitors that are designed to be either PA tops (mounted vertically) or can be laid like wedges on the floor when used as monitors. Generally it's the higher frequencies that account for how intelligible the vocals are - when vertical the high end dispersion is not too bad so you don't have to be directly in front of them to hear stuff clearly. However, when laid on their sides that left-right dispersion often goes up-down and not left-right meaning there's only a narrow area where the clarity is best. So, such speakers can be better heard stood up and leant back - don't have them aiming at your knees as you won't hear them too well. Someone may well jump in and say "if you had really good gear you wouldn't get all of these problems - it's your cheap gear that's peaky". Well, we can't always have what we want so these techniques are useful.

Bought my Blue Sterling SB14. Good reliable buyer, good comms. Poor chap got stuck in horrific M25 traffic when collecting.

Bought a nice black Sterling SB14 from Paul. Nice bass, nice chap, good comms and delivered to my door for a very reasonable rate. Buy with confidence. He was also too polite to point out that I had a blob of butter on my collar from some hastily eaten toast when he arrived. Oh, the shame of it.

Some years back "Bi Jovi" we doing the rounds in the Solent area. Never saw them but assumed they were a cross between poodle-perm rockers and buck-toothed tax-dodging scousers.

[quote name='Badass' timestamp='1362493624' post='2000087'] Nobody know of a simple RC network (with values) that I can make? There must be some knowledgeable chap here who can help me...... [/quote] Trying to remember my max power transfer theory now - I think you need to make the input impedance of the pad match that of the amp's input - probably between 100k and 1M - maybe higher and the output as per the guitar - maybe 10k? In other words the guitar "sees" the same impedance as when plugged into the amp direct and the amp "sees" the same impedance as the guitar plugged in direct. Or I may have totally round the wrong way.....

I need to do the same as my SB14 overdrives my EHX bass synth. Reasonable article here:[url="http://www.uneeda-audio.com/pads/"]http://www.uneeda-audio.com/pads/[/url]

I've been using a Behringer 31band for controlling feedback in monitors as elephantgrey above describes. It has a nice feature of lighting the fader where the strongest signal exists making "ringing out" easy. However, it does feel a bit cheap and I've not noticed any obvious sound degradation but.... I've heard criticism of these units in them drifting and a bit of experience seems to back that up - I get them set but after some time as they get warmer new feedback frequencies seem to creep in. Of course, this could be due to other factors such as room changes as people come in, mics being moved etc. The other criticism is that compared with better units it's sometimes necessary to make bigger cuts to reduce feedback or that the bands are not as sharp meaning more of the overall sound is affected by notching-out the troublesome frequencies. I've seen that the dbx231s gets good reviews - I'm after one myself. I'd quite like to use the other half of the unit to eq the front of house but I think I'd need a spectrum analyser to do that.

A Marshall 60W combo (can't remember the model) I bought in 1983 - my first non-home-made combo. And the most toneless. Mind you, it never broke down like most of the better sounding amps I've had since.

[quote name='paul_5' timestamp='1359828129' post='1960916'] Could you not strap a voltage divider across the input? Or a cheap compressor might help. [/quote] I suppose I could make my own inline - I'll look up a "T" pad.

I'd assumed that the EHX bass synth was genuinely straight through when not on but mine sounds like it's being over-driven by my Sterling. It's OK with a passive bass with lower output. Has anyone experienced this? Obviously I cam turn the bass down a bit but I wondered about putting an attenuator in-line so I don't have to worry about turning up too much. Has anyone seen an in-line attenuator with 1/4" jack connectors?

I really wouldn't do outside without decent PA support unless you know you're going to be in a confined space with audience up close. Once your bass rig starts to overpower the drums (I'm assuming you're full band?) then they will need reinforcement. That will require a fair bit of PA to be worthwhile and then everything else needs support too. You'll end up with ridiculously loud on-stage levels if you try to do it all with your backline!

Have just bought a lovely blue Sterling SB14 + Nordstrand pickup from Pete. Excellent condition, all parts and extras there. Bass superbly packed for shipping. Buy with confidence!

Have you got the input gain too high? I was really surprised recently when I got a new EBS Reidmar - it has a very high input gain and even with a passive bass only needs to be about 10 o'clock when I was used to about 2 o'clock on other amps. The strange thing with it was that at first I thought I had a cab problem as the signal broke up badly and unpleasantly but only on lower notes. Try a lower input gain and turn up the master more.

We typically get £200 - £300 for pub gigs. Private gigs vary a lot - £350 to £800 but we don't really chase these things - they're not usually as enjoyable as the pubs and we never set out to be a function band. For the private gigs I think you have to be prepared to go after a more populist approach. In pubs we feel people have chosen to come and see us but for private functions you've been thrown together with the audience.