Dan Dare

Old TE stuff is rack width. However, there is no complete internal casing (there wasn't on my old AAH350), so you cannot just whip it out and put it in a rack case. Ashdown make ply amp sleeves. Given that they were originally TE, the dimensions/layout will probably be similar. May be worth asking their advice.

I admire good tribute bands. The dedication and attention to detail required to play the material true to the original (musically and stylistically) is impressive. I played a large wedding once where the main band was a Beatles tribute. They had the right instruments and amps, the right clothes and sounded very close, including spot on vocal harmonies. They were great and I enjoyed their set very much. However, I couldn't play in a trib' myself. I'd get bored. I'm too much of a grasshopper. I like to flit from one artist/style to another. My failing, I guess.

If you're in the Oxfordshire area, FinnDave is selling a 2x10 Ashdown combo at a reasonable price in the Market Place (no connection to me, so not trying to boost a pal's sale). It has a tweeter, so should do your required clean and sharp.

Does Lee Sklar not live in the "real world"? I've seen/heard him play in many styles (but not "clangy metal", oddly enough). Metal players like Dingwalls because the long scale means the low end is clear (good for de-tuning), intonation is accurate due to the fretting and the pickups give even tone across a wide frequency range. That doesn't limit them to metal. I've tried one and I thought it was something of a Swiss army knife instrument, albeit a modern-sounding one.

I lived in London for 68 years, until moving away this year after my retirement. I never had an issue travelling home after gigs on public transport. In recent years, I virtually always drove - you can't really carry a bass and rig, even a compact one, on the bus or train. However, I used public transport when carrying just a gig bag and bits and I never had any trouble. Obviously, you need to exercise a modicum of common sense as you would anywhere, but don't allow doom mongers to infect you with their irrational fears. London is still a very safe place compared to most cities.

Thanks Bill. That's very interesting. I didn't realise that volume of air was not the main determinant. I'll Google Pressure Vessel/Cabin Gain and do some reading.

In photography, you alter aperture and exposure time to control the amount of photons reaching the film to ensure they are correct for the ISO rating of the film, light conditions, whether you are attempting to capture a moving subject and so on. How is there any parallel between that and the behaviour of a drive unit or speaker cabinet design? Am I missing something? Low frequency reproduction is, of course, "possible even in small volume" - my headphones tell me that. However, the tiny drivers in my cans only need to energise the minute amount of air between them and my eardrums. If you wish to energise the air in a large space - a room, bar or whatever - you need to shift a much higher volume of air over a much greater distance. A small hi-fi speaker might reproduce sufficient low frequencies in a domestic environment (they are usually measured in an anechoic chamber by a measurement microphone placed one metre from the cone to produce their spec's, which tells you little about how they will perform in anything other than a small, quiet living room), but they won't cut it for live music. Your 12" open baffle speakers may produce sufficient bass in your living room, but, as anyone who has tried to play bass through an open backed guitar cab will attest, it is not sufficient when playing in a band context in a room of any size. Remember also that most recorded music is compressed to a greater or lesser extent, which reduces the dynamic range and creates an impression of loudness. Play your bass through a bass amp driving the average pair of domestic "mini-monitors" and you'll destroy them in short order. Bill will correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the idea of isobarik loading was to eliminate out of phase reflections rebounding from cabinet walls and striking the driver cone. Isobarik cabs employ two drivers working in parallel, one directly behind the other, so the column of air between them acts as a piston. It is that, not stuffing, that is supposed to enable isobarik cabs to fool a driver into thinking it is in a larger box. If you stuffed the cab, it would impede the movement of the column of air between the two drivers, so isobarik cabs are not stuffed. Is that correct, Bill?

Bill said rather more than that. He observed that extended low frequency performance at any volume demands a larger cabinet. That's an iron rule, I'm afraid. One can bend it a little via reflex loading, porting, etc, but it holds good. There is no equivalence between the photography and speaker cabinet design "rules" you cite.

I've never played through a Laney, but the Orange heads I've tried have had a quite modern/punchy quality. One might even say they were a bit in yer face - perhaps a little lacking in vintage or warm tonality. So it depends what you want. If you like both and the Laney has the feature set you prefer, I'd lean towards that in your shoes. Generally, it isn't a good idea to buy without trying. Is it really impossible to do so?

It isn't so much the limited volume that will be the issue, but the lack of any real low end (see Bill's comment above). A small PJB cab would be much better in that regard and of comparable price. Granted, it will be heavier, but they're still easy enough to carry.

Not always the case. Whilst the mains power supplied to a property in the UK is pretty good/clean, it depends what else is connected within the building where you are running your gear. A lot of buildings contain all manner of stuff - commercial lighting, refrigeration, etc - which can cause problems and mains-borne noise.

Agreed. Much of their gear wouldn't make it out of the shop door if they didn't do it. That said, it's perfectly possible for them to follow their engineering instincts and make stuff that does the job in real-world situations when the "showroom appeal" button is not engaged.

Peavey Black Widows. Yum. had a 2x15 back in the day, which I liked a lot. Sold it when I got too decrepit to lug it up and down the stairs to my first and second floor flat and gave up driving a Volvo estate..

For what it's worth, I tried a number of amps side by side several years back when I decided to give in to advancing years and go lightweight. I spent an afternoon at a well-known shop that sells most of the name brands. Among those I tried was a Glock Steamhammer. It was a fine sounding amp and turned out to be my second choice. It was clean and powerful and I liked it very much. I bought an AG700 in the end, because I felt it had a little more warmth when I wanted it than the Glock. I should point out that I use PJB cabs, which are clean - some would say hi-fi - sounding and I made sure I tried the amps with PJB cabs. Had that not been the case, I may have gone with the Glock. It was a close call. Do test amps with your cabs of choice before buying.

I reckon so. I've had similar issues in the past with sinus/inner ear infections and they're a bugger. They seem to affect low frequency perception particularly badly. Get well soon.

This. I remember the first time I ran my bass direct into the board in a studio with proper monitors, not the little nearfield speakers everyone uses these days with their desktop studios (it was at the BBC studios in Maida Vale in case that's of interest). The sound was smooth, clean and even - all the notes spoke equally. It was also rather characterless and needed eq, etc to make it work in the mix. As others suggest, look for an amp that has a baked-in sound that suits you and go from there. Some are certainly more overtly baked-in sounding than others, but what you like and what suits the music you are playing is what counts, rather than how it measures on an oscilloscope.

Essentially, it's just a descending scale, as you say, although he jumps up an octave part way through when he runs out of notes on the B string. What are you listening on? If using the speaker on your computer, it may not be clear, but it's easy to discern on a decent pair of headphones.

Thank you. It's what I was attempting to say when I responded to the claim that we "boomers" had it easy, bought cheap property, etc. It's sad to see how ordinary people are being duped into attacking each other and fighting over crumbs. This is rather disingenuous. Telling someone who has worked for 50 years and earned average wages at best that they "had it easy/easier" or that they don't "acknowledge their privilege" is a slight, however you dress it up.

Afraid it doesn't. Currently, the average wage in the UK is £31.5k. The price of the average property is £278k. Both are ONS figures, not plucked from the air or the Daily Mail. So the average home costs around eight times an average individual's annual wages. That is very similar to the position we were in individually back in 1983. Neither of us could have afforded to buy our flat individually. We were both earning average salaries. We could only afford to do so because we pooled our resources. The same is true today, when, with the exception of those in well-paid work, only couples or people who are older and have some equity or money behind them can afford to buy. Two people earning average wages - £63k combined - could afford the average property in exactly the way we could. In fact, eight times £63k is actually a little over £500k, which equates to something quite a bit nicer than the average property. Property values are dictated by the market. If people were unable to pay them, they would remain static or fall.

Hate to break it to you, but it wasn't "easier" for us to buy our homes. When I tell people my late partner and I bought our first home (a two bedroomed flat in a fairly run down area) for £38k in 1983, they often roll their eyes and say "It was all right for you" and similar. They are, of course, judging the price we paid by modern day standards, wage levels, etc. That is patently ridiculous. We borrowed five times our combined salaries (I was a civil servant. She was a teacher) and put down a 10% deposit. Interest rates at the time were much higher than they are currently, which pushed up the monthly repayments considerably. It was possible, but not easy - we couldn't afford to run a car for a few years and furnished it courtesy of hand me downs from friends and relatives. If you take five times the average current civil servant's and teacher's salary now and add 10%, you get around £350k. That's enough to buy a two bedroomed flat in many - although certainly not the most expensive - areas. But when were average first time buyers ever able to afford to buy in desirable parts of town? Cheap property for boomers is a myth, pure and simple.

It's sad that you, like so many others, have fallen for the myth that is being peddled presently, which is that the financial ills of recent generations are the fault of those "greedy Boomers", who "bought all the cheap property" (already dealt with above), grabbed all the pension funds (also dealt with above), etc, etc. Surely you can see that the vast majority of us so-called "Boomers" were/are just ordinary folk who bought a single, modest home and accepted the pensions and conditions of employment that were on offer during our working lives. We worked (for 50 years in my case), paid our taxes (which, incidentally, helped fund the education, health services, etc of subsequent generations), just as those who came before us did. There are some very dodgy people who have a vested interest in setting ordinary people at each other's throats - divide and rule and all that - and you have swallowed their nonsense. You need to look elsewhere for the culprits who are responsible for the current state of affairs.

I have to disagree. Led by thieves would be more accurate.

If you pull the frets, you'll need to fill the slots tightly with strips of hard veneer or plastic (a light colour is handy as you can check your intonation visually). Some years ago, I made the mistake of pulling the frets on an old bass and filling the slots with ordinary filler. The neck promptly bowed when I took the strings up to tension, as the filled slots were less resistant to bending. It was bad enough that I couldn't correct it with the truss rod.

I wouldn't recommend using a guitar preamp. The frequencies the eq is tuned to will likely not be ideal for a violin/viola. I think you'll find ukulele tuners will be too long to fit in the pegbox of a violin/viola. The pickup looks like the one on my Yamaha silent violin, which uses a conventional violin bridge that sits on a vibration sensing base. Violin bridges are traditionally made from maple. Changing the wood for something more dense, hard and heavy, such as ebony, will affect the ability of the bridge to transmit vibration from the strings. Whether that will be for better or worse can only be found by experimentation. However, given that violin bridges have been made for hundreds of years, it's likely that it has been found that maple does the job best. Bridges are not drop-in replacements. They have to be fitted properly - cut/trimmed to height, thickness, etc. The come as blanks which are a little too large. Doing it right is a skilled job. If you want the bridge black, why not stain it?

It makes perfect sense. There is a big difference between education and training. Education develops the whole person. Training enhances a person's ability to perform in a certain role. The fact that someone may have an interest in and a talent for a particular subject at the age of 18-25 doesn't mean that will be the case for the rest of their lives. As people develop and learn/see more of the world, their interests and desires can change, often markedly. There may very well be few opportunities to work in the field one has studied. Studying a subject to degree level and beyond does not mean you will only be proficient in that subject. The methods and techniques you learn and the abilities you acquire whilst learning will transfer across a wide range of related and unrelated topics. Absolutely. When we boomers bought our "cheap" houses, they weren't cheap by the standards of the day. We were in a similar position to the one you describe. Yes, we owned a house (or rather, the building society did. They graciously allowed us to live there in return for a hefty monthly payment), but it was furnished with hand-me-downs from relatives and junk shop finds. We had no car for several years (sold them to put towards the deposit). We took camping holidays and life was strictly no frills for quite a while. I'm not bleating about it. We made our choices and knew it would come good in the end. However, it boils my p*ss when I'm told we "had it easy", etc.