nekomatic

Cool to see the plans ready, thanks to Phil, Bert and Sam for making it happen. I plan to build one as soon as I’ve got a couple of other projects off the books (so don’t hold your breath). I vaguely remember a video in which Phil demonstrated how to assemble a speaker cabinet without having to use a million sash clamps. I assume this cab can be built the same way? Can anyone take pity on my search incompetence and remind me where to find it?

Put me down as a maybe…

This is true, but when AWS serves a request I assume the bytes are not being picked by underpaid warehouse staff and delivered by drivers on zero-hours contracts.

Local math-rock darlings Dutch Uncles in the unusual venue of Stockport’s parish church, Saint Mary’s in the Marketplace. Atmospheric but I’m not sure the acoustic did their sound any favours, as the complexities of their stuff went a bit muddy amid the reverberation. Bit different though.

The black thing below the two pots on the top row does indeed look like an LDR optoisolator as used in optical compressors, and the board legend looks like it says OPT1. How does the drive sound, at a low setting?

Local math-rockers Dutch Uncles at St Mary’s Church in Stockport next Friday night. Interesting venue for it. I wonder if there’ll be a bar?

That’s a really, really good tip!

“…in the style of a Bulgarian wedding dance”

I am currently accordionless, having Freegled the second of our charity shop acquisitions a while back as I wasn't really playing it and it was too out of tune and not worth paying to fix. Although we then visited a mate I hadn't seen in ages and found that he's taken up accordion restoring as a hobby, but never mind. However, mrs nekomatic has inherited an accordion from her uncle in Sweden which we believe to be a decent one and we are in the process of getting it over here via her various sisters who live there - apparently it has survived the first leg of its journey via DHL so fingers crossed. Speaking of fingers crossed though, it's a button model not a piano one, so that'll be an interesting challenge.

Depends on the sensitivity of the cabs. The 4 ohm will get more power but could be less sensitive.

Sounds good - there’s nothing wrong with the tempos. Nice arco 🙂 On first listen I was a bit confused by the double-time thing your drummer does on the first tune, which sounded a bit random until I went back and concentrated on it. Maybe something that works better live than on a demo?

That’s quite a lot of power, unless these are valve amps - I wonder if they actually need that much? Anyway I have no clever ideas sorry. Your cheapest option is probably going to be an 8-way mains strip and individual 24 V adapters.

500 mA each, or 500 mA total? Any idea if the outputs need to be isolated from each other?

GET OUT

I hadn't seen this thread before, and big thanks to all contributors for the recommendations - going to be going on a playlist near you (well, near me) very shortly. If I could choose three fantasy bands to be in, one of them would definitely be an Afrobeat band. Also I hope the people on page 1 who tipped the Ezras for greatness back in 2020 are feeling suitably pleased with themselves now. Here's The Fontanelles:

Having listened through good headphones to these (and previously other) examples of ‘upright sounds from an electric bass’, I’m going to say that the best of them do manage to replicate an OK double bass sound… but none of them manages a really good double bass sound, the sort I’d be trying to make if I were a double bass player. I like how that Ibanez SRH sounds on its own terms though, without the double bass IR.

There was a thing about this in the Washington Post recently (think the actual article is paywalled but the graphic has been widely shared). Basically, everyone thinks the best music was whatever was made when they were teenagers:

I’ve seen both live, loved Loose Articles, cannot stand The Lovely Eggs. Funny old business innit.

Thanks, that's good. Wasn't he young back then though! 😄

Manchester Jazz Festival summary… Starting with the last one we saw: Courtney Pine. Closing gig of the festival so the brief was to deliver a good time, which he did. We mainly went because we'd not seen him live before (at least I don't remember doing - maybe I have at some outdoor festival in London back in the day) and it was good fun, but not exactly as subtle as the others I'm reporting on. Samuel Dubois on steel pans stole the show really, although the guitarists were both excellent too. Nikki Iles Jazz Orchestra: worth seeing just for the rarity of a live 19-piece contemporary big band, Iles's compositions are lush and all members of the band are fine players in their own right including one of my bass gurus Steve Watts on DB duties. Can't see if they have any other live dates lined up but worth looking out for. And Tim Garland's Lighthouse Trio: these guys were simply stunning (in spite of having no bass player in the band). Garland is superb but Gwilym Simcock on piano and Asaf Sirkis (also a member of current Soft Machine lineup!) on drums are both monsters. Some of their material referenced themes of migration and hope with accompanying artwork projected on a screen and this was really thought-provoking, taking (I thought) a courageous step outside the standard jazz format. Sample here and tour dates also on that website - including London this Thursday, and some upcoming dates with Yazz Ahmed who I know is an equally top-drawer talent - and if this is remotely the sort of thing you're into, I strongly encourage you to go along to one. We caught some of the free gigs at Home on the opening weekend too - a short-notice quartet led by Tom Thorp with Luke Flowers on drums were excellent, and a really intriguing Iranian trio with cello/vocals + guitar + santoor - and there was lots more I would have gone to had I been able to get there. It really is a great festival.

Yeah, each time I've gone through the thought process of 'build my own power amp' I've ended up at this conclusion, and buying from the UK dealer with the cable set, VAT and delivery you're looking at at least £150, then you need to put it in a box with connectors and so on, and hope that your thermal design is OK, and by the time you've done all that then unless you cost your time and effort at zero you might as well just buy a Baby Sumo, or if you don't mind fan cooling then a BH250 or Gnome i-pro or something. I'm still interested in other people's experience of the same thought process though!

The TPA3255 datasheet says that for 250 W into 4 ohms (the Eich amp’s rating) the chip needs to get rid of nearly fifty watts, and even applying a factor for the actual power spectrum of bass that’s still going to be quite a lot of heat. Would be interesting to know if Eich have improved on the thermal management of the cheap amp board somehow, say by using the whole case as a heatsink rather than just the stick-on internal one in the eBay pictures.

Interesting, as it looks suspiciously similar to something like https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/283964862682?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=SsSiHyWXTLi&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=O0J6pgZgSC6&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY which I had considered at in the past as a possible mini power amp - but a lot more expensive. I wonder how long these can sustain their rated output without overheating but as you say, if Eich are prepared to put their name on it one assumes it performs. The external power supply brick slightly detracts from the ultra-mini aesthetic though, which will be why they don’t show it in any of the photos 😁