Mottlefeeder

I bought Jay's Hartke HA4000, and collected it from his dad's house in Cardiff. Jay worked hard to get it there ready for collection, at short notice, even with various other things on his plate that day. He accidentally left the rack ears at his place, but posted them on afterwards. I'd be happy to buy from Jay again.

Another possibility is the Fishman PRO-EQ Platinum Bass. It has a 5 band graphic, compression, and a variable frequency high pass filter for getting rid of floor boom etc. Output via XLR at -30dBu and unbalanced Jack up to +10dBu. It is designed for piezo pick-ups on an acoustic bass, but works with conventional bass too. Second hand price ~80GBP

I've had halved squash balls under my record deck for several years, and yes they work, within the constraints of that amount of mass and that amount of springiness. Putting a heavy cab on them would change the system resonance, like changing to heavier gauge strings, so there are no guarantees, but it would be cheap to try out.

Another point in favour of the Stagg is that it is known, and there is a market for it. If it doesn't work out for you, a Stagg would be a lot easier to dispose of.

[quote name='Eight' post='524103' date='Jun 25 2009, 08:41 PM']Can't help you with increasing the number of low Bs unfortunately. I don't rate BiB that much to be honest - except as a tool for me to practice improvising with. At that, it is absolutely wonderful. I fire it up, punch in a chord sequence, pick a style, turn off the bass track, and I have something ideal for improvising over. And I can try new chord progressions, styles etc. with a couple of clicks.[/quote] One of the things that quite impressed me with BiaB 2007 was its ability to take a ripped audio track (wav or mp3) and produce a chord chart for it. You need to define the first 'beat 1' that you want it to count from and off it goes. If the music is not in strict enough time at the end of a verse or chorus, it can lose or gain a bar, so the 'play along' is not completely synchronised, but if you are writing out your own version, you can correct that problem as you do so. With regard to muting the bass part, sometimes it is interesting to listen to what 'another bass player' would do with that piece of music.

[quote name='steviedee' post='524129' date='Jun 25 2009, 09:17 PM']Hi Folks picked up a very cheap palatino EUB, which I'm basically gonna use for wee jams in my lunch hour in work.... First impressions are: It's a bit sh*t, it sounds very thin, the action is high, it doesn't sound like an upright, however, it's perfect for what I need it for and it was very cheap. In saying that I wouldn't mind making some improvements, the caveat being I don't want to spend too much money, I know there are loads of mods and improvements : Can anyone recommend cheap strings (would they make it a bit beefier)? Can anyone recommend a cheap bridge (could I fit it would it sort the action) Any other cheap upgrades appreciated! Cheers Stevie[/quote] There's about fifty pages of upgrade advice and comment on Talkbass here - The palatino megathread [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=221493"]http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=221493[/url]

[quote name='GreeneKing' post='509115' date='Jun 9 2009, 03:12 PM']I know it's been said in this thead but I'm not sure it's emphatically clear. Daisy chaining cabs IS parallel connecting them. That link is pretty awful. Resistance and Impedance are different. Once you start going to an AC input the capacitance and inductance of the circuit takes on significance. How high is your LMII cranked up when it cut's out?[/quote] We're going off topic, but daisy chaining means different things to different people. If you take a two-core cable from the Amp to speaker 1 and another two-core cable from speaker 1 to speaker 2, then you will be connecting the speakers in parallel, and the cables will look like a daisy chain. If you take a one-core cable from the amp to speaker 1, and a second one-core cable from speaker 1 to speaker 2, and a third one-core cable from speaker 2 back to the amp, the speakers will be in series, and the cabling will still look like a daisy chain.

[quote name='truegeminis' post='510951' date='Jun 11 2009, 10:38 AM']I've got a 4U Rack case but it only has rails on the front. I want to have rails fitted across the back so that I can mount a PSU for the plugs of the front-mounted equipment. Does anyone have any recommendations of who to go to for this? Cheers.[/quote] If you are not talking about rear rails to spread the weight of a large amp etc, this should not be a major problem. To add a light duty 1 or 2U module to the back face, you could just glue-in some wooden blocks, and screw the module to those. If some of your front units need outboard power supplies (wallwarts) this approach has the advantage that you can recess the sockets as far as you need so that the rack lid clears the wallwarts. If you want to do a proper job, buy a section of rack side rail (CPC probably have them), cut it to size (the holes are not evenly spaced, so make sure that you match left and right) and hot melt glue + screw to a ply rack, or hot melt glue + rivet to an ABS rack. 'Taking it to someone' is probably going to cost you about as much as buying a double-ended second-hand rack.

Reading the stuff on the Markbass website, it seems that the combo speaker plugs into the jack socket, leaving the Speakon free for any extension speaker. It is possible that this is deemed to be acceptable because the speaker cannot be disconnected without taking the amp out of the combo, and it may be that the 'mod' being discussed is to fit a second Speakon to reduce the risk of a shock from the amplifier when used as a stand-alone head. With regard to what further work you can do, I suggest that you unplug the speaker connecting leads, and check each one for crush damage along its length, then dismantle the connectors and check for loose wires in each. The fault is more likely to be in the flexible cable than inside an amplifier box or inside a wooden box. It might also be worth checking that all four cable ends are connected to the +1 & -1 connector terminals, just in case you have aquired a cable which has been wrongly wired. Stage two would be to check the connections on the back of the speakers - again, start by looking for loose connections/stray wires, then check that the speaker in/speaker out connections go to the same sets of terminals on the two speakons connectors.

[quote name='Delberthot' post='495552' date='May 22 2009, 08:56 PM']... The problem I have with the regular ones is that the wheels don't seem to stick that far out so, it for example, you happened to be wheeling the rack across some gravel or grass etc it would bottom out. Are they all like that or are there better alternatives? - we're all getting old and fed up of carrying the bugger...[/quote] If you want more ground clearance, you probably can't have built in wheels, because they will stop the rack locating neatly on whatever is stacked it. A flat-pack trolley (Maplins/CPC, etc) will have bigger wheels and fatter tyres, and will carry your amp rack then your speaker then whatever else you need to shift over gravel. Built-in wheels only work on hard surfaces.

I have Ernie Ball Slinkys on both my Yamaha 5-stringers, and they both sound good to me. I stopped using Rotosound steel-wirewounds when I discovered they amplified a wolf note on one of my basses. They seemed to lose brightness in two stages - a) playing in, in about half an hour, and old age in weeks or months depending on your playing style. I think some folks mistook the bedding-in drop in brightness for the end of life drop in brightness.

I play a 5-string, and the top octave of the low B sounds really choked with a low action. I hadn't noticed, because I didn't use to go there, but I now see it as a problem.

[quote name='iamapirate' post='474542' date='Apr 28 2009, 08:09 PM']A bit ungelpful, but you could make one. OR go down to your local eletrical supplier (like maplins) and they should have some[/quote] Maplins seem to have cut down on their useful stuff in the last couple of years. They do standard jacks and XLRs, but nothing like that anymore. They seem to have moved into Tandy's old territory, and are majoring on radio control, budget audio, budget PA, computers etc.

[quote name='conductorbtcb' post='472912' date='Apr 26 2009, 08:22 PM']Hi all, I once played bass (in my younger days). I now conduct a concert band. The Band performs outdoors most of the time and we have been using a leisure battery and inverter to provide the supply for our 100 Trace Elliott bass combo. Recently, the power supply has started providing a "earth buzz" through the combo at fairly moderate levels. Anyone suggest a cure?[/quote] There have been threads on this before, and as far as I recall, there is no quick fix. What you are hearing is the invertor approximation to a mains waveform, produced as a series of steps. I've tried running the same kind of set-up through a dedicated mains interference filter, and it had no effect. Two things that did work (for me) - (a) keep your hands on the bass earthed bridge/strings. (b) keep the treble turned down. A mains interference filter is obviously cutting at too high a frequency to be any use, but if you go for bigger coils, to bring the low-pass filter frequency down, you will also reduce the voltage that gets to the amplifier, giving you distortion and clipping at lower levels. One suggestion that was made was to use a battery powered preamp, and feed it into a car-stereo amp designed to run on a 12 volt supply. - Fine if you have a separate head and cab, but not much use for your present set-up. Hope this helps David

If you are not a fan of bleep type clicks, this Sabine model does a pretty good woodblock clonk sound. [url="http://www.sabine.com/sabine-music-accessories/mt-9000.htm"]http://www.sabine.com/sabine-music-accessories/mt-9000.htm[/url]

[quote name='ash_sak' post='452671' date='Apr 2 2009, 07:14 PM']wouldn't the main difference be due to the speaker size and depth. Cause, i as using GCSE physics knowledge here...and i wasn't that good, surely a larger, deeper speaker cone would produce a deeper sound. And that'll be the main difference... (might be talking utter rubbish)[/quote] The speaker parameters and the box define the tone. Some 15 inch speakers move lots of air, but don't go deep. Some 10 inch speakers go deep. A speaker cone has mass, and its surround, and the air behind it act like springs. Its the combination of parameters like that, and they way they can be tuned, that causes the difference in sound.

[quote name='ardi100' post='450927' date='Mar 31 2009, 10:16 PM']These suggestions are fantastic. I love the car amp idea. I'll definitely check out that option. Hopefully I will have an active bass (depends on Etihad's baggage allowance and my wife's frugality in packing), but preamp pedal could work. Yes, I plan to take a bass and amp backpacking, probably stupid, but could be a genius! It's the compromise between wanting a summer adventure and having a mini tour while still having a holiday. Am I just being naive about the whole thing?[/quote] The Bill Fitzmaurice Omni 10.5 is a single 10 that punches above its weight - but we are probably talking luggage trolley rather than backpacking. On the other hand, why carry if you have the option to wheel?

Maplins and probably many caravan/camping and tool shops will sell you a 12v dc to 230 v ac invertor, which will enable you to run your mains powered rig from a leisure/traction 12 v battery. They often retail at between £20 and £30, for a 300 w unit. Car and bike batteries do not like being fully discharged and recharged, but traction and leisure batteries are designed for that duty. You should get several seasons of use from one of the latter. I have used a Maplins invertor with caravan battery and a 300 w Hartke head and also with a 120 w Hartke kickback combo, and the only down sides are the slight buzz (turn down the treble) and the weight (use a trolley, or a smaller battery). There are units out there designed to run on batteries, but they are a minority interest so they will almost certainly cost you more than a s/h combo, invertor and battery.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='443125' date='Mar 23 2009, 09:18 PM']...I've seen a couple of foldable cab-tilter wedge-type designs which look like a good idea on the face of it but what stops your head from sliding off the top when the cab is tilted back?...[/quote] You could get two wedges, and put one under the cab, and the other facing the other way under the amp, so the amp would still be horizontal. Alternatively, you could bend some sheet ally into an 'S' or 'Z' shape so that it curled round the lip at the front of your speaker cab, and had a bit sticking up at the other end to stop your amp sliding off the back.

If you download the software WinISD, it will model what different speakers will sound like in different sized/tuned boxes. You may not be able to feed in the parameters for the Behringer units, but you will be able to model the Celestion units, in a box that size, with ports like you have (if you have them). This will tell you whether you are heading for a smooth sound, or a honky resonant sound. I'd also suggest checking whether you have a plywood box or a chipboard / MDF box before you decide whether to throw more money at it. It may feel heavy and high quality because it has speakers with small magnets in an MDF enclosure.