Dan Dare

It's a slippery slope/vicious circle. They play too loud, cause damage to their hearing, turn up to be able to hear themselves, cause more damage to their hearing, turn up, etc, etc... Guitar players who wear earplugs are just as bad. They turn up because they can't hear themselves because of the plugs and wreck everyone else's hearing. If the rest of the band wears plugs in self-defence, the volume goes up even more because nobody can hear themselves properly.

True, but you don't even need to go digital. Modern multi gain stage amps can give virtually any sound you want at any volume. If you desire speaker distortion, rather than amp distortion, use a lower power cab and cane it.

Smart move. Leave them to go deaf and don't join them.

Happy to help. A couple of points to consider: With four 8ohm drivers, your choices are to wire all in parallel, giving 2 ohms total (probably not good with your amp, which likes to see 4 ohms minimum), all in series, giving 32 ohms total (would certainly not risk blowing the cab', but might be a little quiet), or series/parallel (which is how PJB 4x5 cabs are wired), giving 8ohms total. The TH500 puts out 500W into 4 ohms and around 300W into 8, so I wouldn't worry about blowing up the cab, especially as you say it will only be used for low volume jobs.

Bass players. Someone had to say it.

Tattoos.

It sounds as if you have the earlier Suitcase (in the 4B cab), rather than the later one, which is a C4 with built in amp. The cab sizes for both combos are identical to the plain cabs, so volume, porting, etc are already correct. You just need to mask off the hole where the amp panel was and you're good to go. I'd take Bill's advice and wire them series/parallel. Those PJB drivers are 8 ohms. The 4B is claimed to be good for 300W and the C4 for 400W (I have both and think 400's a little optimistic. The drivers are the same, so 300 is safer). Your Tone Hammer will be fine to use with them, especially if it's the 500. The 700 might push them a bit at high volume, but it'll be obvious from the sound if they're struggling.

David bought a cab' from me. Sound chap and a pleasure to deal with.

In Arizona, I see. Must have used it for rounding up cattle.

Acrylic "providing a resonance that enhances its sound quality"? So a sort of dull click, then.

"it has been kept in a smoke free house when not used on gigs". No smoke in the house, but just about everything else...

Flem (yes, I know that's not the way you spell it)

This is very true. However, the guv'nor of one place my then band played in gave me an interesting slant on why he favoured certain styles of music. I had asked him for a return booking and he declined, saying he thought we were good, but not for his venue. I asked why and he explained that he tried to book bands that women liked and would come to see, his reasoning being that if the place was full of women, plenty of blokes would turn up. He had a point. We played tricky proggy stuff (this was quite a few years ago) that you couldn't exactly dance to and our audience was always predominantly blokes.

So true.

The better the gear, the more noticeable the clash between keys left hand and bass will be. Our keys player recently upgraded his backline to a quality powered PA cab and we suddenly had problems. His old amp simply wasn't capable of reproducing the low end loudly or clearly enough for the issue to be noticed.

I'm not worried. It's good of you to allow me my own opinion. I see you're a keyboard player. Enough said, really. I'll just reiterate that there is a world of difference between playing solo piano, organ or whatever, where you need to provide a melody, chordal accompaniment and bass part, and playing in a band context, where nobody is the centre of the universe.

Wrong on several counts, I'm afraid. No amount of changing tone will prevent harmonic clashes - typically caused by keys and bass playing passing notes that are a semitone or tone apart. All that will result from changing the bass tone to cut more is accentuation of those clashes. No keyboard part is set in stone. It shouldn't be for the bass player to "remember that a piano is played with two hands and work with the keyboard player"? The bass has little choice about what to play, especially when playing covers. Obviously, you have to stay in your lane and avoid clashing with other instruments (I rarely if ever venture above the fifth fret). The main issue, as I point out above, is keyboard players playing the same way in a band context as they would solo, filling all the holes and taking up too much sonic real estate. As others state, songs by the likes of Elton and Billy Joel are properly arranged. It isn't by chance that the keys and bass (or keys and other instruments) don't fight one another.

A perennial problem, this. We have had similar issues in our band. Our KB player, whilst very able, has relatively little experience of playing in bands. We have had to educate him regarding the difference between playing solo piano/keys pieces, where he can play a melody, chordal accompaniment and bass part simultaneously, and playing in a band context, where clashes with other instruments, notably the bass, are inevitable unless he thins out what he does and treads carefully. The issue is worst when the keyboard sound is similar, tonally and in attack - think electric piano and similar - to the bass. Soft or sustained organ or brass sounds are often less of a problem. There are two ways around it. Either the keys left hand has to mimic the bass part exactly - a bit pointless as it's duplication - or stay away from the low end altogether. In our case, we have asked the keys player to split the keyboard - say with brass on one end and strings on the other - which enables him to fill out the overall band sound better and avoid the clash with the bass. As we play classic soul, that works well, but it may not be so effective in other styles. And of course, it depends on the keys player's ego allowing him to be directed. Encourage your daughter to stand her ground and insist the keys player stays out from under her feet.

Hitting a five year old named Mark? Tut, tut. Pick on someone your own size 😁

Bass playarrrghs, surely?

I doubt that. I went to both a few months ago and BB is a much smaller operation (they're in a smallish unit on a farm site). No disrespect to BB - I bought from them because they had the instrument I wanted and BD didn't - but they deal mainly in used and have much less stock.

Good point. Low frequencies are omni-directional and more likely to be structure borne, meaning sound insulation has little to no effect on them. That's why you always hear mainly bass when your neighbour has a party.

Oooh, I don't know. Maybe they'll have to give up inflicting their horrible music on the world if they go deaf. Silver linings and all that.