Beer of the Bass

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1487370839' post='3239438'] In the same way there are vanishingly few debates on BC about re-balancing its overwhelmingly old, white, male profile. Why? Despite all the froth and fury no one here really gives a toss about encouraging 'diversity' because * Changing things entails we get off our arses and actually do something and that would get in the way of chundering on about our little hobby bands and string gauges and stuff and * Lots of people here would hate it - not least, I suspect, many of those so fervently and visibly in favour of 'change' - were BC's comfortable 'Old Bobs Club' atmosphere to be dispelled by an influx of teens and women. [/quote] There are a couple of interesting points here, and it's true Basschat is largely composed of men of a certain age range. Partly this may be because that's who are drawn to the site, but any concerted effort to bring a more diverse range of people here would feel a bit contrived. I reckon we could do better at not making people outside of the usual demographic feel uncomfortable though. I'm thinking of things like the time when it was quite reasonably suggested that incessant knob jokes were perhaps not the best way for middle aged guys to interact with women closer to their kids' age, and people didn't seem willing to take that on board.

Quite a few of the small class D heads have rack ears available as an optional extra, like the GK MB series.

[quote name='Downdown' timestamp='1487351107' post='3239246'] While that is quite right, I suspect the particular woman in your photograph would be about as useless as a chocolate teapot in that job as she'd be off work all the time with serious burns on her fingers! [/quote] Indeed it's an entertainingly awful stock photo, but a few years ago it wouldn't have been hard to find a young woman who knew which end of a soldering iron to hold.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1487331426' post='3239004'] [URL=http://s997.photobucket.com/user/stingraypete/media/stock-photo-beautiful-woman-repair-soldering-a-printed-circuit-board-204001492_zpsy46ovk4q.jpg.html][IMG]http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af100/stingraypete/stock-photo-beautiful-woman-repair-soldering-a-printed-circuit-board-204001492_zpsy46ovk4q.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [/quote] I've heard that in the days when electronics manufacturing was still a decent sized industry in the UK, the assembly line tasks mostly employed women, as that was the norm for lighter duty factory work. My mum had a job soldering PCBs for TV sets in her youth. Probably not massively relevant to the discussion, but there you go...

You never see those sparkly curtain things any more (or if you do, I'm frequenting the wrong venues). I'm sure they must be due a revival some time soon.

Skank, you'd be even more livid if you'd managed to load the website! It's quite beyond parody; pictures of fashionably bearded gents in pastel suits and loafers with no socks, pigs on leads and little moustache icons all over the place. I'm not even making that up!

[quote name='LewisK1975' timestamp='1487262717' post='3238484'] Surprised by how this thread is turning out. I know the OP asked for help, and advice has been given, but there's not much real encouragement going on here..which is not what I've come to expect from BC. [/quote] I'd agree, but when the first response is from someone with a reputation for knowing his stuff and is quite so relentlessly and unnecessarily negative (and also arguably wrong), it's hard to turn the thread around without things getting argumentative. I'm not sure anyone really has the energy or inclination for that, though I realise I've probably just gone there with this post... [quote]I know some folks take this stuff VERY seriously, and thank goodness for the knowledge!, but come on guys, surely there's no harm in the OP finishing the cab off and seeing how it sounds? What's the worst that could happen? He'll definitely achieve the result of getting full whack out of his amp and who knows? He might really like how the cab sounds, other people might like it, other people might ask him to build them one, he might start his own business..... I for one commend Shrek on having a go, Well done matey![/quote] Presuming Shrek goes ahead and ports his cab, installs his drivers and tries it out, it's not going to be game-changingly amazing, but it won't be unusably awful either. At this point, with the cab sat there and the drivers at hand, there's no reason not to give it a go.

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1487237956' post='3238214'] I think what Bill is saying is that it's like sticking a Ferrari engine in a Rover. The Rover might hold the engine, but you're not gonna get close to it's full potential. Yes you can then modify the Rover, but it's still not gonna go like the Ferrari. [/quote] Aargh, car analogies! But if you could make the Rover work significantly better with about 20 minutes work using tools and parts you already had at hand, you'd do it, right?

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1487165434' post='3237686'] It's not what it could be. The reason one would use a driver with the specs of the BP102 is to dig deeper than what the average driver will do, and that would seem to be the OPs intent, but in a box that's way too small it can't deliver on that promise. [b]At this stage I would not port it[/b]. [/quote] I don't know if I'm being spectacularly obtuse here, but would you care to go into your thinking behind that? Comparing models of a 40Hz ported cab to a sealed one (with this volume and these drivers), the ported cab shifts the F3 lower, increases power handling between 30Hz and 80Hz and only causes a bump of around 2dB at 100Hz. What is the factor that would make you lean towards sealed? The only thing I can think of is the possible challenge of fitting in enough port area. I agree that one might not choose these drivers for a cab of this size if the project was fully planned out from the beginning, but it still looks like it could be a useable cab.

Just to play devil's advocate here, is the BP102 really such a disaster in this cab? I had a quick look a model of two BP102 in a 60l cab using WinISD (using a 40Hz port tuning); It looks undersized and boomy when compared to an optimally flat cab for these speakers, but it also looks as good as or better than many popular commercial cabs. So it really depends what you're comparing it to. It would go lower and have a smaller midbass hump than the 1x12" cabs I'm happily gigging with at the moment. Am I missing something here, as I'm not seeing what's so bad about it?

Many people say forever. Personally I haven't found a set that still sound good to me beyond about 2 years use.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1486765745' post='3234510'] Go for 100W and you can up that by a sizeable amount twice as many output valves and double the VA on the two transformers. The transformers are done in small runs , unlike the ones in say a solid state A/B head where the transformers are off the shelf. There is no reason on earth that I can see why anyone would start a new business selling Valve heads. [/quote] Yes, things get more expensive as the power goes up, even more so when you get outside the standard guitar amp size transformers which are available off the shelf. I went for 50 watts as an example because I built a 2x EL34 50 watt amp last summer, so I'm somewhat familiar with what's available. Given that the price of parts is usually only a fraction of the sale price of the product, I can see how things get expensive. I get the impression that for small, recently started companies to be successful they have to go for specific niche audiences and price things at the "boutique" end of the market. There are many small builders selling low-powered valve amps to gearhead guitarists, and very few selling higher powered bass amps.

If you can find a source of the celluloid that accordion makers use, that would almost certainly do the job. It can be formed over curves too, but as far as I can gather it's a nasty process as the celluloid itself is very flammable, and then it's soaked in large quantities of acetone to apply it. I wouldn't fancy that as a DIY project!

Transformers aren't cheap, essentially. Companies like Bugera keep costs down as far as possible through economy of scale and keeping everything in-house in their Chinese plant, and that's about as cheap as they can be made. Even then they've had to discontinue models that presumably weren't paying their way, like the SVT knock-off. I build valve amps as a hobby, and I don't think I could buy new decent quality parts for a 50 watt head for any less than about £300, and that's with a lot of shopping around. Ok, that's at retail price, but it gives you some idea.

I've only played through the BB2 once (and heard it used a couple more times) but it might work out quite well for your purposes as the upper mid and high end response is very clear and even. It seems like the two-way design has been done very effectively, rather than a typical bass cab tweeter that just adds a bit of zing on the top. It might not be my first choice of voicing for bass guitar, although EQ can get it there, but it would probably work in your favour for the EUB and synth use. I'm sure there are some others that will do the job, but I'm less familiar with them.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1485929568' post='3227736'] We're a blues/rock 70s Vintage Midwestern Bar band. "Do we play what by Rush?" Blue [/quote] As daft as it sounds, the trio I'm playing in managed to shoehorn a Rush tune into the middle of a mostly blues-rock set on Saturday. Or at least, about half of one, since we segued into it from another song. The drummer is a massive Rush fan and the guitarist reckoned it would be fun. Surprisingly it went down OK.

[quote name='spectoremg' timestamp='1486282979' post='3230478'] Answer: You see the Best Offer link? The big number gets attention to it. People send offers, they might get lucky. And before people go into 'it's unplayable', really? How would they know? How many 15 string basses have people ever seen, far less played..? My guess would be one. This one. It works perfectly well as a bass of single course tuning or even as a Chapman stick, going 7 up/7 down from the centre. I trust this answers all such questions. [/quote] Brilliant! I'm not sure that rhetorical question was a good idea. How do we know it's unplayable? Could it be because some of the lower strings are touching each other, both the lowest and highest strings are hanging off the edges of the fretboard for most of their length and we can see that the frets are poorly seated and sticking up unevenly? Might it also have something to do with the sellers audio file of the instrument failing to make any sort of coherent musical sound which is shared on request? I mean, the instrument makes noises, but could not be considered "playable" in the usual sense without abandoning traditional expectations of how a fretted stringed instrument functions...

[quote name='verb' timestamp='1485469584' post='3224288'] Have you tried emailing Eminence or perhaps one of their dealers, possibly Blue Aran. [/quote] I'd second the suggestion of contacting Eminence. I've found them to be very helpful with information about older or discontinued speakers.

That diagram will work, but I can't see that the 0.0033uF cap (3.3n) will do anything. You could cheerfully leave it out.

I don't have a diagram to hand, but what you want to do is put the cap in series with the signal wire, using one side of the switch to short across the capacitor. If you look up the circuit for the G&L PTB tone controls but substitute one side of your switch for the bass pot, that will get you there. I've had good results using a 2.2n capacitor for a variable bass cut (about 1/10 the value you would use for a standard tone control) , so somewhere in that range would be a good place to start.

[quote name='Kev' timestamp='1485076618' post='3220839'] I get that requirement, but what are such people using for a cab? In such circumstances, a small combo would be even more convenient surely? If not, why not buy a more powerful amp and turn it down? I cannot see why people need an amp this tiny, 500w+ Class D heads are marginally bigger and much more flexible. As I say, the market is clearly there for companies to be making them, I just don't understand why [/quote] The 200 watt amps are often substantially cheaper than the 500 watt versions. That's a consideration for a lot of people.

200W has only been considered low powered comparatively recently. I've been gigging on and off since my teens in the 90s, and I've still never owned a rig of more than 300 watts. Admittedly, I've not spent much of that time playing with rock guitarists, but even then an honest 200w into enough speaker area can go a long way.

When the bumf for the Origin head says "2x jack speaker outputs", does that mean no Speakons? That's an odd choice. Still, if they've managed to avoid the underwhelmingness of some of their previous Class D offerings it might be quite attractive. I rather liked the 5-band EQ in my old MAG amp.

With the 10M ohm input impedance, that little amp head could find a niche with double bass players, since it'll definitely be piezo friendly.

I think they're still out there, but people have moved towards selling them in other places like regional facebook groups etc. It's ye olde marketplace fees thread again!