nekomatic

Nabbed a couple of the last few tickets for Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny at ENO on Monday. You know, the one with that Doors song in it.

Yes! It’s still slightly outside my planning window at the moment but I’m watching the topic and will confirm or deny when able. I wonder how many BC 8" cabs we can assemble in one place?

Riot Jazz at Manchester Albert Hall. Upstairs for the first time - it’s not the very best sound compared to some venues, but a great view. That’s mininekomatic2’s trombone teacher on the right. A cracking good time was had by all.

One other thing to be aware of is that there’s no guarantee that the current generation of free or cheap to use generative AI tools will stay available forever, let alone get better and better for the same free or cheap price. All the companies providing them are running on vast amounts of venture capital based on hypothetical vast future profits, which nobody can explain how free or cheap AI models will actually deliver. A lot of people are predicting that this business model has to fall apart sooner or later.

I’ve re-read this and it might be confusing - what I mean is, the cross-section area of the square port should be the same as for the cylindrical port, and the length of the square port should be the same as the length of the cylindrical port. As I understand it the straightforward calculation for port dimensions assumes that the inside end of the port is in free space inside the cabinet, not next to the cabinet wall, so that’s why calculating the right size for an end slot (or triangular corner port, etc) isn’t so easy.

If you want to use a port with a square cross-section rather than a round one, I think you just need to make the length and the cross-section area the same. So if the area of the circle (pi * r^2) was say 25 cm^2 then a 5 x 5 cm square port of the same length should give you the same tuning. By ‘slot port’ I understand a slot in the baffle with no extra depth behind it and I believe the dimensions of that are harder to calculate correctly, especially if the slot is at one end of the baffle. Can you sketch what you had in mind, and is there a particular reason not to use a cylindrical port? Personally I’d just go with the latter, I found it easy enough to construct.

Do your soloists generally turn up with one tune that they simply must play, or are they flexible about playing on any tune that they know? The organiser of the jam I go to seems pretty good about sorting people out so everyone gets to play on something, even if it’s not always their first choice. That and not letting anyone drag a solo out for too many choruses. Still, being too popular is a good problem for a jazz jam to have!

I assume you’ve thought of politely suggesting that if they don’t like the bucket going round then they could always just pay you, out of the extra bar takings that the jam brings in.

Haha, I also need to do this. There is one Project Of Doom in particular that I need to either get done or finally abandon. Stop starting, start finishing, as the maxim goes.

Didn’t see this thread before but it’s great to hear about all your goals. Good luck with them all! I want to make a jazz trio happen this year - I’ve got a good pianist lined up, who I also get on well with, but no leads on any half decent (but not so decent that they’re fully occupied doing paid gigs) drummers. I’ve heard you can sometimes find one under a big pile of hen’s teeth.

Yeah, ‘too much power’ shouldn’t be a problem if the iron is temperature controlled.

I’ve not used one myself but I might look at this one - the handle size might be a bit cumbersome for the tiniest jobs but it’ll have enough power to deal with pots and connectors even with lead-free (and I do think we should all be going lead-free nowadays). I’d get this tip with it.

The thing I like about the Antex irons is that it’s very easy to change the tips - they just slide on and off over the element - which means you can easily use the right size one for the job, and for soldering larger parts like connectors with lead free that can make the difference between impossible and straightforward. I’m not sure if anyone else has a similar design or if it’s an Antex patent.

A thing that would make me practice enough.

From the fact that the cabs are secondhand and one socket is worse than the other, I’m very inclined to suspect that it’s those sockets that are bad. Maybe they’ve been repeatedly used with a non-genuine Speakon plug that has damaged them. The obvious thing to test would be whether you see any problem with a different cab. The good news is that it looks like it should be easy to remove the connector panels and replace the faulty connectors on the cabs. If you don’t fancy doing it yourself it shouldn’t be too expensive to have a tech do it.