Gottastopbuyinggear

I use one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01BY5W692/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The legs detach from the feet and it's very light, so pretty portable. It's also only nine quid! I was using a Hercules mini stand which is actually okay with a Jazz, but mazdah's photo above hints at the problem I had with it at gigs with a Precision - the upturned part of the support is just where your jack plug will be, so you end up having to have the bass leaning over

At a gig a few weeks back our drummer’s wife did a Facebook live stream of one of our songs. As we start the song the guy just in front of the camera turns round to his friend and says, fairly audibly “Guitarist and drummer are good”. “What?” comes the reply. “I SAID, GUITARIST AND DRUMMER ARE GOOD. NOT SURE ABOUT THE REST...”.

You say you know a bit about T-S parameters, so that makes me wonder if you’ve considered DIY? If that interested you at all then there’s a good thread here about building a very capable 12” plus horn cab for not a great deal of money. I have a pair of the previous, non horn, version and they’re great, but I’m guessing from the cabs you’ve suggested that your looking for something with some sort of HF driver?

Sounds a bit odd. As I understand it you just need a 4 pole speakon plug, wired appropriately, instead of a 2 pole one. Should cost about a quid extra. The amp is designed to be run in bridged mode.

How was it with the SC when bridged - plenty of power?

Presumably you were running the SC on one channel at 300W? Bridged into 8 ohms those things are allegedly rated at 1050W, which I think (could be wrong) is RMS rather than peak, so should be more than enough for a SC?

The XLS 1502 is only £315 at Thomann at the moment. I keep um-ing and ah-ing about getting one myself.

Depending on the size of the amp, and how cheap you want to be, you could try this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MINI-1-Tonne-Skip-Bulk-Bags-Builders-Heavy-Duty-Sack-Kerbside-Collection-Paper/132308168548?_trkparms=aid%3D555017%26algo%3DPL.CASSINI%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20151005190540%26meid%3D1aca9fb70e4943c5902b965072ef5745%26pid%3D100505%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26%26itm%3D132308168548&_trksid=p2045573.c100505.m3226 These happen to be a pretty good fit for my home built 1x12’s. They’re not going to give much protection from knocks but they’ll keep the rain off when it’s wet. Cut a slit for the handle, and maybe some gaffer tape to stop it fraying. Not very pretty though! At risk of raising the Roq Solid vs. Hotcovers debate again, I have both but the hotcovers one I have for my Ampeg 1x15 is well padded and looks good, and I’m pretty sure was only about £45 or so. We bought hotcovers for our PA speakers as well, based on the band liking the cover for my Ampeg.

I'm possibly opening a can of worms here, but is there any rule of thumb for how the power handling graph relates to the real world where we have a fundamental tone and a bunch of harmonics? I don't have the graphs to hand at the moment but I recall looking at a model of a Beta 12 in a box a bit smaller than the original Mk 1 cab and thinking it was a bit marginal because the maximum power at the low E was about 90W. However I also recall seeing another chart somewhere showing that the first (and possibly second and more) harmonics typically had more amplitude than the fundamental, but then there's the fact that the power required (I may have got this wrong...) halves for every doubling of frequency... Hence gut feel says that if you have, for example, 320W going into a speaker then there's only going to be a fraction of that used to produce the fundamental, but I'd guess it's probably quite a large fraction - around a half maybe? Does that make sense or have I got completely the wrong end of the stick?!

If it was me, and a three piece, I’d go for a Jazz bass for a richer/fuller sound. With keys in the band then I’d go for a Precision with either flats or rounds to make sure I could sit easily in the mix. I’d see nothing wrong with going a bit more hi-fi in a modern blues context, though. Sounds like good fun - I’m a little envious!

In the interest of balance, I played a gig at a biker rally a few weeks ago where the bass player from the band on before us left his American Elite Jazz at the venue. Fortunately the organisers took charge of it and he got it back. So, not every bass player is as organised as some of us. Personally I count the number of bags/cases going into my car when I leave home, and count them all back in at the end of the gig (usually between 10 and 12 depending on whether we take lights) and the only thing I’ve ever mislaid is a mic stand, which I’d taken as a spare at the last minute - I don’t even sing! And for even more balance, on that occasion our guitarist spotted it and took it home for me. I will admit to occasionally leaving my cabs in the car overnight after a gig, but they’re home built so apart from my time the actual investment in them is relatively low. Everything else comes into the house.

I think I’ll be hanging onto them to be honest - Plus they’re still in the cabs at the moment, and the Beta 12s are still in their boxes! I bought the strap handles I used, along with the bulk of the rest of the hardware, from Blue Aran. They have a metal strip inside the rubber outer so they’ll take plenty of weight. After you’ve used them they won’t go back completely flat, but that’s probably not an issue. T-nuts definitely though. Here’s one of mine before I put the grilles on...

I set up our PA and was getting fed up with the amount of cables, more from a post-gig packing up perspective where I invariably found everyone's cases and bags being dumped at the back over cables I wanted to pack away (because if anyone else packs them away then I'll be taking the knots out and finding out which ones have been damaged for hours the following morning). I looked for small stage boxes/snakes but didn't find anything with returns, so I bought a 6 way snake and box from Thomann and swapped out two of the male box mounted sockets for females, and vice versa with the plugs at the other end (Backing vocals 1 and 2, keys and occasional guitar mic coming to the mixer, one main and one monitor going back). I also bought some multicore cable and made a mini snake with one male and one female XLR on each end, for the singer's mic and monitor. Now I can lay these out at the start of setting up, use short XLRs at the stage box end of the snake which are quicker and easier to coil up afterwards and don't get as tangled up if I get "help" packing up, and then just have the two snakes to pack up towards the end when most of the other packing up is done, rather than having up to 8 individual long cables to do. Keeps it all much neater as well.

I’m glad it’s not just me. But it gets worse, because... ...you can buy the hook and loop stuff in different colours. I have black for stuff the band owns, red for the mains and xlr leads for the lights, and yellow for everything I own.

My gig last night was notable for being the second in a row where our keys player spilt a pint of orange juice and lemonade all over my stage box, four XLR cables and two mains power leads. On the plus side: (1) Nobody got electrocuted (2) It wasn't my mains extension lead this time (3) He didn't "help" by collecting up my cables at the end of the night. Unlike the last gig... Is it just me (and my mild OCD) that likes things coiled up neatly so you don't have to spend fifteen minutes undoing the knots at the next gig? Other than that, and it being hotter than hell, we had a blast!

I have nothing to add other than “good luck!” I do like Misty, though...

I have a pair of Beta 12s ready to go into my 50 l cabs - just need to cut new baffles as I want to try a single port using a manrose pipe. I haven’t compared the models in Win ISD but I’d guess it would be similar at the low end to the Beyma in the small cab - that peak around 110 to 120 dB, and less bass extension? I know it’s got quite a peak in the mids, but there seems to be lots of love for that driver in what I’ve read about some home brew cabs, and of course the TKS s112. If that’s a success then I’ll have a couple of Beymas going spare - was thinking of building the mk 2 cab, but a couple of really small cabs is quite appealing. A 2x12 had also crossed my mind, but I think it would weigh in at 20 to 25Kg, and I’m not sure I want to be lugging that around.

Did you end up adding any bracing, Phil?

Thomann link to this case from their Mustang page: https://www.thomann.de/gb/gator_gw_jag_guitar_case.htm Not that I’ve been looking at Mustang's or anything...😇

I've been toying with the idea of getting a power amp for an experiment into bi-amping a cabinet with a woofer and mid-range speaker. Like lots of ideas I toy with it might never happen, but if it does I'll probably be going for a Crown XLS 1502, which are about £325 from Thomann at the moment. If you have simpler requirements than that then the XLS 1002 would probably be ample for a normal set-up - 700W bridged into 8 ohm or 1100W bridged into 4 ohm, for about £245. One of the attractions of these amps is they have switchable input sensitivity, 1.4v or 0.775v, with the 0.775v probably being more appropriate for preamps like the ToneHammer.

What type of gigs require the ball pein hammer?!

Fender deluxe active precision bass special, with an aftermarket white guard?

Sorry to go slightly off topic but how did you record these clips? I’ve got a vague feeling you might be using one of the Zoom devices - is it just the built in mics on the device or are you taking something from the desk as well?

For what it’s worth I played a new Jazz last weekend and it all looked pretty good to me, certainly no sharp fret ends. Unlike the Sterling Sub that I also tried.