Bill Fitzmaurice

The sound of the accordion, which is only surpassed by the bagpipes as hand held cacophony devices. BTW, it was the Irish who invented the pipes as vermin repellent. After the Scots brought the gift of the game of golf to the Irish the Irish returned the favor by giving the bagpipe to the Scots. The Scots didn't know it was a joke. 🤪

I've played every genre except polka, it's never influenced my gear choices.

What's that? Never heard of it. But then I've only been playing since 1965. 😉 Only when lifted at least 70cm, and even then the change could be for the better, it can reduce boom.

If that's what a symphony player had can you imagine Ian Anderson's system? 🤑

FWIW time was my band had all the volume we needed using a Fender Dual Showman Reverb 100w head into two JBL 4560A clones that I built. Vocals only, but with our backline we got by big time. My bass cab, 'The Hulk', would have made Entwistle envious. Three fifteens in a rear loaded folded horn that stood nearly two meters high. It made people run in fear for their lives with only a 50 watt Bassman head. Good times. ☺️

They play fast and loose with SPL as well, using not only peak but quoting it in the midrange where it's highest. They also ignore thermal and mechanical power compression. 😒

My assumption is that you have one, and that you like it. That's all well and good. But it's not loaded with premium long excursion drivers, and the 71Hz -3dB is underwhelming. The above mentioned Ampeg sells for 700 quid. The BF Super Compact is another 150, but that may be money well spent when it has the same capability as the much larger Ampeg. As for not wanting to spend much without question that means used. Another advantage to that is being able to try it, as one should only consider buying from a seller within easy driving distance.

Don't fall into that trap. Sound levels aren't measured in watts, they're measured in decibels, and there's no direct correlation between them. A 4 ohm cab may give slightly better results than 8 ohm, but just as watts don't tell the entire story neither do ohms. The potential issue with a 4 ohm cab is that it leaves no option to use two of them unless you have a 2 ohm capable amp. I gig with a 1x12. But that's my 112, and they're not all created equal. 😉 My point is you can't know the result just from watts, or ohms, or the size and number of drivers. I always take a test drive before buying a car. It should be the same with a cab.

There's your price for fuel too. When it spiked here coincident with our recession in 2008 large SUVs were selling at 30% and better discounts, and small cars became popular. As soon as the fuel prices went down vehicle sizes went up. The rage among idiots now is pickup trucks that are sprung so high it requires a ladder to get into them. Why I don't know, ground clearance is still dictated by how far the differential sits off the ground, but I suspect it's compensation for a certain physical...shortcoming. 😲

I would hope so. On this side of the pond the SUV has practically replaced the sedan, even though they have the same passenger space, while pickup trucks with size inversely proportional to the owner's IQ are the norm. The dumbing down of America is officially complete.

Where power conditioners are concerned there's no more need for them in the US than in GB, which is to say none. Since they don't do anything useful they amount to being expensive power strips.

Designing crossovers is no more difficult than designing boxes, thanks to software like XSim. https://xsim.software.informer.com/ The only issue is the need for FRD and ZMA files. They're available for most hi-fi drivers, with pro-sound you probably have to create them yourself. But it's no more difficult than any other part of the speaker design process. Coils are readily available, I haven't had to wind my own since the 1970s. They are expensive and quite large when used in a passive crossover lower than 200Hz, but that's also something I haven't done since the 1970s. Below 500Hz active crossovers and bi-amping is the way to go. The easiest method to get better mids and highs is with a sealed back midrange, like the PRV 6MR 300 SEAL. Crossed over at 800 to 1200Hz it will keep up with any woofer. As for using higher order high pass filters to run tweeters to 2kHz, I've been doing that for 25 years. The bass cab industry as a whole has yet to catch up... or should I say wake up? 😉

Because they're cheap, or at least the ones you see most often are. They cross over typically between 3.5 and 4kHz, because that's as low as cheap tweeters will go. They use barely adequate crossovers again because they're cheap. IMO the best high frequency option is a four to six inch cone midrange driver, crossed over between 1.2 and 2kHz. They tend to be good to 8kHz or so, which is all electric bass needs. You seldom see them because they're more expensive, as are well designed and spec'd crossovers. BTW, you can't lay the blame for this on speaker designers. Given free rein and a blank check most of us would do it the right way. This one falls on the bean counters.

I successfully gigged with a 50w Bassman once I started using two 4x12 cabs. It wasn't the amp, it was the low displacement speakers of the day. The 'benchmark' Jensen C12 had 49cc displacement. A middle of the road twelve today has 250cc.

Adding a balanced DI XLR output jack to a valve amp is easy if you know what you're doing. The + and - signal is tapped at the input/output of the power amp section inverter, capacitor isolated and resistor attenuated. It's been a while since I've done it but as I recall 0.1uF and 10k Ohms will do the job. It's even possible to use a stereo pot for level control. A good valve tech will know exactly what you mean when you ask about it.

Boundaries will enhance the lows when the sub is close enough..and 1 meter isn't... and will cause low frequency response notches when the sub and/or the listener is in the .75 to 2.15 meter range from the boundary. They have no effect on subs being directionally locatable, as they don't affect the harmonics. One way to both lessen the distance to the wall and attenuate harmonics is to aim the sub at the wall. Try setting the sub low pass to 80Hz. It doesn't necessarily have to be set at the same frequency as the mains high pass.

You're dealing with two separate, although related, effects. Speakers are omni-directional where the radiating plane, the baffle, is less than a wavelength in dimension. At 100Hz a wavelength is 3.4 meters, so all but the very largest pro-touring subs are omni-directional throughout their pass band. Being able to directionally locate a sound source requires a sufficient difference in the arrival times of a sound wave at the left and right ears. This is also related to wavelength, in that the distance between one's ears must be a significant portion of a wavelength for the arrival times to be sufficiently different. By and large 100Hz is the dividing line, coinciding with the pass band of subwoofers. However, the output of subs doesn't abruptly stop at their crossover frequency. They radiate significant harmonic content, especially when pushed hard. Those harmonics can make a sub directionally locatable. For that to be purely distance related said difference in placement difference would have to have been substantial. What's more likely is that the room boundary effects were responsible, based not only on the distance from the sub to the boundaries but also the distance from the listening positions to the boundaries. Getting sub placement perfect is very much an involved trial and error process, one that we seldom get the opportunity to undertake unless we can get into the room during off hours.

I've been saying so for decades. There is a place for fifteens, that place is in subs. There's no reason for them in mains. You lose boundary loading and introduce boundary sourced cancellations.

From the standpoint of frequency response perhaps, but...in order for the high frequencies to be heard main cabs must be elevated enough to place the high frequency radiator above the heads of the audience. In order to prevent feedback the main cabs must be placed in front of the mics. In order to get maximum low frequency extension and output the low frequency sources must be on the floor, close to a wall, and if there's more than one clustered less than 1/4 wavelength apart. You can't achieve these goals without separate subs and mains. That being the case there's no point in paying for and schlepping mains loaded with more than one twelve, while a higher quality ten loaded cab will function better than a lower quality fifteen loaded cab.

Other than JBLs the drivers used in Fenders at least through the 70s were gosh awful.

What Motorola should have said was that piezos could be used without a crossover, which is true. Being a capacitive load they act like they have a built in first order highpass filter. But be it a piezo or dynamic tweeter first order filtering doesn't make the grade in professional use. I use them extensively, with a second order filter that combined with their inherent filtering gives third order results.

By the same token no matter what the signal a highly colored speaker will highly influence the result. This is particularly of interest with respect to vintage sound, as the tone of the electric bass was very much defined by the shortcomings of the available speakers of the day, and they weren't very good.

They key to minimizing feedback from drum mics is to place them as close as possible, ideally with rim mounts. Of course that means using more of them. Overheads are for picking up cymbals.

TLAH Pro uses eights. I didn't create a ten inch loaded version as when you get that large it's more practical to stack smaller single or dual woofer cabs. All of the DR, Jack and OmniTop designs have that ability, and being horn loaded have much higher sensitivity.

There are only two reasons for them thinking that. One is 'That's how everyone does it'. The other is 'It's the only way we know how to do it'. Neither is a valid reason to keep doing it. That's why one person should be in charge of PA, that being the person who is the most knowledgeable.