DGBass

Wise words from the BC community and would be first thing I would check. They don't always have a big obvious EV label on the back but should have a stamp of some type, often with a traceable OEM code. Like the TL606 cabs, the speaker chassis is fairly heavyweight. I played one of these for some years and it was the first decent cab I used my ABM's with. Must admit it never lacked delivering low end in anyway, if anything I had to moderate the amount of bottom end. It was one of the few cabs I've used that never complained or struggled with lots of bass. It was also one of the cabs I wished i'd never sold 😐

The mosfet version power boards in these early ABM's are prone to failure if the caps are past sell by date which is usually around 20-25 years with regular use. There's usually a bit of smoke and charring if they do and for some peculiar reason it's the mosfets on the left side( from front) that usually fail. As the good folks at Ashdown will tell you, it's best to replace all six mosfets if you have a failure as well as the four coupling caps. It might be easier asking if they would sell you a current pre-built APC033 (issue 4) modern Bi Polar power board as a drop in replacement. It may be cheaper than getting a tech to rebuild the original board for you. Of course thats if the power board is the issue 🤔 Had the caps fail on one I owned and elected to rebuild. It was messy but worked out in the end. scorched board caused by two shorted caps finished board

Love the groove, especially the second clip 😎 Not my pref in colour for an instrument but your bass sounds um... just like a Jazz should!

plastic vintage inspired knobs on a £4200 bass? Oh dear. My only ever pre-ernie ball bass cost me £295 new from the local corner music store back in the early eighties. That was only because the shop couldn't sell it at the retail price, an extortionate £429 😬 How things have changed. At least my late seventies bass had proper chrome knurled knobs. I'd never buy one new nowadays, even though they are without a doubt classics in their time and have that sound.

I've heard it said many a time that hiss is better than hum when it comes to bass amps. Some amps though are noiser than others, even from new. I recently had a chance to play through an old Ampeg B2-RE 450 watt amp with 1x15 and 4x10 Hartke cabs, both with horns and both horns were on at the time. The Ampeg was so quiet at idle I thought at first it wasn't plugged in to the cabs. There was virtually no hiss at all even at decent volume levels and controls set flat. I also have a couple of GK amps and even with the volume up high, they barely hiss at all through tweeter cabs. Pre-amps with a tube in them can pick up a bit of noise, especially if the tube isn't at its best. If you have the option try several amp heads with your cab to compare. It might just be a particular combination of amp/cab and not anything really wrong with either.

I'm curious as to why you arranged the amp to sit on its end with your BC110T? Is there a marked difference to the sound if the cab is laid on its side to accomodate the amp on top?🤔 Or was it just to avoid the dreaded bass overhang in the upright position? 😉

Its quite interesting to hear everyones take on the One10 and whether one can cut it or two is the best option. I was in a similar situation when I bought my first One10 as the OP. For home rehearsal its a great option. However even at light band rehersals I found a single One10 never quite lived up to BF's claim for me at least. My main cab at the time was a decent 1x15 ( a Mesa Diesel TL606 EV 1x15 cab.) Using the One10 as a stage monitor pointing directly at me and used in conjuction with the Mesa it couldn't be heard at all over the output from the Mesa. I added a second One 10 eventually thinking that would be a better match and it did improve the situation but both cabs together still couldn't match the vast low end output from a single Mesa 1x15 cab. In hindsight, I should have ordered one BF 2x10 cab from the outset as it would have been eminently more useable as a home use / light rehersal small gig cab and less expensive than a pair of One10's and only one cab to move around. The only benefit at the end of day with the One10 for me was the small lightweight formfactor and its lovely warm tone at low to med volumes as long as low frequencies were backed off on the EQ. If the OP is used to a 6x10, then a BF 2x10 would probably be a more useable option than going down the smaller two cab route.

It's an earlier MKII GP11 in the FB ad so above schematics wouldn't apply. These also have the ECI wiring which is a heap of trouble if you can't test its working before buying it. It will likely have come from an early AH150 or AH250. The ad picture looks like a rather poor condition and well used unit with missing knob caps and a non standard input jack. So its had work before and i would guess would need a fair bit of work to bring it up to standard. You could easily spend another £50 getting it working and at the end of the day you would struggle to ever recoup that. £25 spares/repairs is probably more realistic unless the seller has the old blown power amp unit he could throw in. The power amps are generally bullet proof and very easy to fix if they do stop working. The pre-amps are a bit more complicated. The trouble with starting a project like this these days is that folks are stripping down old trace amps because they realise they can make a lot more money selling parts than a whole unit for spares or repair. Parts are sold as no return/untested so if you do by a dud part theres little comeback. Whole working TE amps of this era in good nick and reasonably original condition are becoming very scarce nowadays and that will probably encourage the parts strippers to break up anthing they can get their hands on. Saying that, its a good enthusiast project and with a bit of work, a suitable power supply and a nice slim 2U rack case it would make a great wee project and a brilliant pre-amp once working. These old GP11 pre-amps have a great silky smooth tone. I can vouch for that as I have one in perfect working order and very good original condition 😁

The pin assigment can vary on TE pre-amp sections. Seeing the front panel might be helpul to identify your version. The schematic applies to MKV GP11's. MK II GP 11's also had extra wiring for the ECI function ( earth continuity indicator ).The MKV GP11's were used on a multitude of different amps but mostly AH150 heads and AH250 heads. Both had different feed voltages from the power section tranformers. Basically they use a half wave rail voltage from the main power supply, a big step down resistor on the pre-amp main board, a voltage regulator and zener diode run the pre-amp on roughly 30-35V dc. On my AH250 the feed voltage to the GP11 MK V via the 6 pin connector is 65V dc. On my AH150 GP11 MKII it is actually higher at 71V but thats because it has a rare 50V transformer and not the usual 40V one. The step down resistors are the critical part as they drop enough voltage so as not the smoke the pre-amp🥵 Some of these pre-amp sections aren't really interchageable between different models even though they have the same 6 pin multi plug socket. Might or might not work and you might or might not get smoke! I've just rebuilt one recently ( a MKV GP11) that had been through the wars. The multi plug was missing, long gone on a dodgy amp service years ago and the cables were hard soldered onto the pins. See pic, the red and black are the power supply, the blue is tip/signal out and the signal out screen is on pin 6. A 2 core screen cable out to a power amp and a pos and neg from a supply voltage ( anything around 60v dc would likely do) and would most likely get your pre-amp working assuming its in good order.

Hoping to use this rig at the weekend. It's the Harry D special named after its only previous owner. Harry bought it as an 1115 combo in 1985 and at some point in the nineties chopped the head off to make it a head and cab. The pre amp is an AH150 GP11 MK V and the amp section is an AH150 4 x mosfet air cooled power section. The cab has its original 38 year old Fane Sovereign 15-250w cast frame driver and even now sounds phenomonal. I recently posted this cab on a thread and tried using port tubes to change the cab tuning but in real world testing it sounded its best with the orignal TE tuning. The whole shee-bang was recovered and refurbished in a fetching alligator tolex from the eighties I'd bought years ago from a disco supplies web shop. It's fairly unique in that its a combo chopped into a cab and head but it sounds awesome and has that TE sound anyone whos ever used old school TE stuff will recognize. 38 years and still going strong. I had to consider if bass-chatters will be posting 38 years and still going strong about their boutique class D heads in years to come? Hmm I would suspect not!🙃

Something that came my way recently as a service and repair was a '71 Marshall Superlead 100w from a local contact who had bought it purely on spec without testing it. This thread has drifted somewhat off the orignal 'DSL" theme as various Marhsalls that are not 'DSL's' have crept in so I thought it worthy of a post. This particular amp hadn't been fired up in earnest for more than twenty years and needed little maintenance to get it working to a giggable standard. The thing that struck me most was the highly useable bass channel on the amp. My USA p-bass plugged straight in with no effects or anything to alter the sound was phenominal sounding. Transported me back to many a gig in the early eighties where all that you heard was a p-bass plugged into a Marhsall super lead or superbass with one of those curly coiled guitar leads that were all the rage at the time. Good times and a sound that is sadly missed these days. it was a wrench giving this back to its owner but i couldn't afford to buy it from him. Pre 72 Marshalls are fetching ludicrous amounts of money these days. This one had late nineties JJ pre-amp valves and the power amp section had mid nineties winged C Svetlana's in the power amp section. All biased perfectly and sounded awesome. Orignal mains and output transformers and old school tag board.

It could be said Marhsall 'offloaded' the Eden brand for whatever business reasons they had. There was an Eden Amps forum which had a dedicated and very knowledgeable following about all things Eden Amps & Cabs. You would have found all you needed to know their if Marshall hadn't switched the forum server off without warning or even a message to the forum users. I was an Eden amp user and forum member for many years and have nothing but praise for their products ( and the old Eden forum). I owned a smaller Terra Nova cab and it was superbly built, and sounded great. I bought it at a time when G4M were ridiculously discounting Eden gear a few years back before the Marhsall offloading incident. My experience was of a well made plywood cab with decent quality driver that sounded great. There are still some ridiculously good bargains for Eden gear. I recently bought a D115 XLT( Eden's top of the range bass cabs) OEM replacement Eden/Eminence driver which is essentaily a custom voiced Eminence Kappa Pro 15 driver for just £30! Terran Nova cabs are midrange and the earlier ones were carpet covered. Later were tolex covered. They were both made offshore and I don't expect there would be much difference apart from the outer covering. The D series cabs are the pro version and priced accordingly. These were most recently made by Marshall in the UK as far as I am aware.

Ahh..missed that post! Thanks for pointing it out, I obviously wasn't the only one who noticed. Thought it curious though that a possibly decades old TE branded valve would show up in an Ashdown EVO 5 demo amp and if that maybe says something about the current standard valves going in production amps.

Spare amp x 1 ( usually a Markbass LMIII - still not used it ) mainly because i've got a thing for using old well used amps these days and its peace of mind more than anything else. Spare instrument lead x 1 Spare speakon to jack lead x 1 Spare power lead x 1 Clip on tuner just incase my polytune fails on the board. Selection of used spare strings Backup clothing eg spare black t-shirt for sweaty gigs. Not needed spare underwear as yet but might consider it if I'm still gigging in the next few years😆. It's an age thing. Towel x 1 Pain killers for the third set of a three hour gig! More than anything its about packing only what I think I'll need these days and keep what I have to carry to a minimum. I used to take a full tookit including soldering iron, spare batteries, fuses, jacks etc but no one especially the band enjoys waiting for the bass player to change a fuse on a dark stage or troubleshoot leads and cables. A quick swap out is my plan these days. Troubleshooting can be done later after the gig.

I noticed this when I was viewing the promo video for Ashdown's ABM EVO V - 750. Had to double take at the part where the insides are revealed to the camera. Begs the questions, does the EVO V sound more like an SMX than and ABM?🤔 And do those lovely people at Ashdown HQ keep a secret backroom stock of tasty NOS Trace Elliot branded valves from the nineties to use with their own personal /demo amplifiers? My EVO IV had a no brand ecc83 in it (which didn't last long!). Wouldn't have minded a wee TE branded one to try in its place🙄. And no I haven't asked them for one - yet!

There's a UK company i've used in the past called Vital-Parts to source replacement blanking plugs for various different Ashdown and TE models. The only thing is the originals do vary slightly depending on the year and model and it can be tricky finding an exact replacement. Ashdown seem to use the bigger plugs these days for approx 16mm hole with overlap and the older smaller ones are mostly between around 14.8 mm to 15.1 mm with an overlap. The size of screwhead on the M6 mounting bolts also makes a difference because earlier combos like yours had large M6 screw heads with narrow wall plugs and later ones had smaller chrome head screws which leave more room for thicker plug fittings. Plug depth varies a lot as well but mostly 1.5mm to 2mm panel depth works. Most of the time its a case of measuring an existing plug and seeing if you can match whats on offer.

I just meant my particular MDF box cab🙂 And I guess you are saying the answer is Yes, it could make a difference to the sound although the yes word isn't specifically mentioned.

I suppose thats also another way to look at it and I would agree there would be inefficiencies in a big box design. The question about whether the inherent sound of such a cab will change by extensive bracing and wadding is still open. Perhaps a little inefficiency is not a bad thing? Tube amps are a case in point. People still rave about their tube amp tone and buy tube amps despite them being highly inefficient. An 18mm MDF cab might not require as much bracing as a similar sized 12mm or 15mm cab but i'm sure it would make it more efficient. With this particular cab, anything added will also increase weight at this point as the basic cab structure is there already there. Testing with and without is likely the only way I'll find out and thats the plan at the moment🙂

I had the same issue occur in my current ABM after only a few rehearhals from new. More of a buzz than a hum but i've owned enough ABM's to know when its a tube issue. Swapped it out with a reasonably good quality 5751 to dampen the gain a little and now very quiet. The tube it came with was all shiny new but no markings on it to say where it came from or who made it.

One thing I've considered is making too many modifications to what is a very old speaker in a box cab. Maybe part of the charm of an early eighties Trace Elliot mdf box is pronounced mid boom or very peaky responses to certain frequencies, if you like a 'pre-shaped' cabinet. I will definetely add some damping with Dacron to the interior panels. Bracing and vanes are a considerarion however its in the back of my mind that by bracing sidewalls and/or baffles and rear panels I may make the box much stiffer and less prone to certain inherent cabinet resonances that you get with big empty boxes. Could these mods change the cabs orignal sound by effectively cancelling out those resonances in the original big box construction? I have no illusions of it ever being a perfect flat response cab but how much of a change in sound could result by making the cab super stiff? Could it be a dramatic or more minimal change?

@Obrienp It was over six years ago that I mailed BF regarding my 1x10 issue (still have the original mail exchange) and I would agree its probably an uncommon occurence. In my case it wasn't the actual fixings that were the problem, it was lack of wood at the rear of the baffle where the nuts had fallen off. Also worth mentioning is that too much torque when tightening can cause the t-nut at the rear to rotate and chew up the timber that its fixed into. It then has little to hold it in place and will eventually loosen off with vibration from use. I never use power tools or power screwdrivers when mounting bolts and t-nuts with speakers because of this. Then again i'm not operating a production line😉 IME its much easier to over torque when working with thinner baffles. Less likely if its 18mm voidless plyboard and M6 fixings. I'd be interested to see how you get on with your plans.🙂

@Phil Starr It's an old school empty rectangular mdf box with no internal bracing and I suppose that was fairly common and typical of mass produced boxes in the early to mid eighties. I recall seeing battens fitted across the large rear panels of some Peavey cabs of this era and guess this might have been to reduce vibration from the biggest panel in a cab. It's not a very deep cab so there isn't huge scope(space) for fitting internal bracing once the large Fane driver is fitted. It's something to think about though and as its stripped down to bare wood at the moment it would be the ideal time to do that. I'll do some actual sound testing ( at rehearshal ) as it is and see how it sounds. If there are any serious cab vibrations that need attention I can consider trying battens 🙂

@Obrienp I Couldn't say, but it was mentioned that this hadn't happened previously. The first 1x10 I had started buzzing within a week of use. The second one after about a month of use. I only contacted BF about the first one and when it happened on the second, I fixed that and both cabs were fine. The bolts were quite small, maybe M4 or M5 and I did refit them with spring washers and new t-nuts before selling the cabs on.

I had the same with a pair of BF 1x10s ( early 100s serial numbers) where t-nuts worked loose from the rear of the baffle causing an audible vibration in the low to low-mid sound range. Luckily the t-nuts stuck to the magnet assembly when they fell off and were easily retrievable. I was able to fix this myself but had to rotate a driver slightly to get fresh baffle as I could see the wood in the original position was splintered away at the rear and there wasn't much for the t-nuts to grab onto. The baffle board wasn't very thick. I did mail BF about it first time it happened but was happy to keep the cab rather than send it back. I was using an ABM 500 with my two 1x10s at the time and they always sounded fairly farty because I was driving them too hard in the low frequency dept and they didn't like that at all.