Phil Starr

That's good advice. Underpowered, so called practice amps are the best way possible to put off anyone starting out on bass. Get a small 'real' amp that will sound great at home and make the lovely full sound that made us all want to be bassists. They don't need to be huge either the BG250 has been mentioned. My first proper amp was a Hatrke Kickback 10, It sounded great and was good enough to see me through to first rehearsals with a drummer. I even managed a few gigs with it. Small enough to fit in any car but tbh it weighed more than it should have. It might be worth looking at separates if funds allow. Something like the Warwick Gnome will fit in a gig bag and combined with a 1x10 can be a very portable rig. Go for a good condition used amp and avoid the starter amps completely, they are a false economy as you can't really sell them and they really aren't fit for purpose. They will also kill any enthusiasm for bass. Probably the best thing you could do would be to go along and listen to a few things with her. Do you know what the budget is?

Not at all, choice of mic is much more personal than choosing a bass. The Senny e945 is an excellent mic and I'd probably choose that if I didn't play bass whilst singing. My e935 is more forgiving and I'm loud enough that feedback is rarely an issue. Nothing wrong with EV or Audiotechnica either. All great choices. I've an old EV ND 757 which could be the best sounding mic I have but the plastic handle is decaying and held together with shrink wrap so stays at home. We are lucky to have such a wide range of choices of mic with some truly great mics in the £100-200 price bracket.

I'm pretty sure these were what I played through at the open mic.

Orange did but it is slightly bonkers for a portable cab. You get the cost and weight of a 2x12 but the output of a 1x12. Cab size is slightly more complex. You can increase the size of the cab and change the tuning but it get's increasingly hard to have a flat response. That's the short version btw, I'm happy to do a longer explanation but it would be moderately technical and potentially very long. Worth a question in amps and speakers maybe but a bit ao a thread de-rail. Good to meet you on Sunday btw

I think that was the 1x6?? I've just put the smaller 1x12 back into the loft and it is definitely front mounted All of my speakers are mounted from the outside nowadays. A lot of the prototypes were just screwed into place but ones I used for gigging regularly had the screws rplaced with bolts and T-nuts. I'm trying threaded inserts for my next build though as I find t-nuts problemmatic when they are so close to the speaker cutout.

If anyone wants to build the 8" design it is here. It works as it is but we are tweeking the design by a couple of mm to make panel cutting a bit easier. the designs should be tweaked in the next few days. Heaven knows how BassChat chose a pic of a different cab to show

Many thanks to Paul and Paul for organising. It was a trip down memory lane for me as i used to teach in Wokingham and Nine Mile Ride was a regular part of my cycling route if I ever headed east from Reading. Really good to meet some new faces and I was pleasantly surprised as to how much difference new pickups would make. Apparently I'm a sixties fan, who knew?

I should probably go, I'm supposed to be practicing for tomorow's rehearsal

Seriously, I think you'd have a workable gigging rig. I've been using mine at rehearsals with a real drummer and in quite a big hall it works well. Potentially you'd have 6db louder than that so yes that would be good

Can I suggest you choose the way that uses fewest cuts. That'll make it easier for people going to B&Q or a timber merchants for cutting.

BTW I demo'd six cabs at the SE Bass Bash yesterday all running off PA amps set flat and adjusted so the levels were the same. The 1x8 was a clear winner repeating the performance at the SW Bass Bash.

Let's do that then, once I have that I can amend the earlier posts. and I can put @rwillett's cutting list up under the plans. Thanks guys, it's why I like it when somebody builds the plans. It's the little details that make it easier for other people to follow and once a few people have completed the build you do spot little errors.

I''m surprised at you Bill. You'll be aware that the idea is to crossover to a horn which determines the radiating pattern in the midrange and not the woofer. Above the crossover area the size of the woofer is largely irrelevant. That is as opposed to the 2,3 or more rarely 4" speakers in the columns which as you say have a wide dispersion in the horizontal plane. I can't think that you really believe that those 2 mor three inch speakers in a column would outperform the horn in a point source speaker. Perhaps to make things a bit clearer I shgould clarify. John's speakers will have a similar output to many of the stick systems like the RCF J8 and similar speakers. The dispersion of these different design approaches are that the columns spread the sound widely in the horizontal plane and the point source speaker with subs will radiate over a narrower area, typically something like 90x60. In some rooms the advantage might be to the point source speaker and in others to the column. The horns in the Typhon are 100x80 so are pretty much designed for near field but still more directional than one of the 'sticks'.

I'm really interested in seeing how this turns out John. I've played with a couple of 8" tops with a decent sized sub when we did a spot at an open mic in Wokingham. I think the tops were a couple of Alto's. In a typical sized English pub they were appropriately loud, vocals were well handled and everythind sounded as it should. The house band sounded fantastic and this was with live drums, albeit a modest sized kit. I see no reason why this sort of set up shouldn't match one of the modern 'stick' systems which often have a 12" or even 2x8" dedicated sub. The 8" tops will be more directional but that could mean that the sound is thrown further, so which works best would depend upon the venue. You aren't too far from me so it would be good to come out and see how you get on.

The Highlands is a big place, maybe you should hook up with @neepheid and come down to one of the Bass Bashes sharing the driving. Thre's usually a great selection of amps to try out. It looks like you aren't in a hurry at the moment. If you aren't using the preamp section of the amp then have you considered going FRFR and using an active PA speaker for your amplifcation? The QSC 12.2 has been used successfully by several bassists and is 17'4kg, a useful weight saving. If you go for separates then do look at LFSys, they are the best sounding FRFR bass speakers around at the moment. Barefaced are lighter but the LFS more accurate. The Monaco is the heaviest at 14kg. I've used the Monaco, Silverstone I and the Monza. I settled for the Monza.

I think the clue is in the title, Speaker Placement Basics. He doesn't go into a lot of things but has stuck to the sort of set up most beginners will be working with if anything I doubt many bands have this much equipment to play with. Wall placement isn't a panacea and wall reinforcement is unnecessary if your subs are adequate. Placing them to one side means you can't match the level of the sub to both of the tops. Subs may be omnidirectional but the sound level still falls with distance so the bass will potentially be too loud on the side nearest the tops and not loud enough on the side further away. In any case most people viewing this for the first time probably won't have access to subs or centre fills. Steve's question is about directional speakers and where to point them and the heat maps are a really useful way of looking at this.

Hi Steve, I think it's well worth looking at this if you haven't aleady seen it. It shows the 'heatmap' for typical point source speakers on stands and straight ahead is pretty much what you want in most gigs. I think it's the heat map which is useful, it helps to be able to picture your cabs shining out sound into the room and you can take that mental picture with you to rooms that are sub optimal.

I'm not getting into discussion of room modes (the collection of resonances in a particular space) here. It merits it's own seperate discussion and is probably better suited to being in the PA section or studio recording. Science works by isolating single variables and investigating and understanding them one at a time. In this little bit all I wanted to do was explain a simple phenomenon which we've all experienced and can easily rectify. It's more psychoacoustics than physics. Maybe a bit of biology. Most of our lives are lived at modest sound levels (70-80db) and the frequencies that are most important for daily living are in the mid-range. The quieter it gets the more the mids are boosted in our brains. If we listen to music quietly we need to add a bit of 'loudness' or the balance sounds weedy. Bassists in particular need to know of the opposite effect; if we increase the volume above the 80db range then we need to apply anti-loudness, to boost the mids and cut bass (treble in this case is outside of the range of a bass guitar). This will restore the tonal balance that you have set up so carefully at home or in the rehearsal room. This is the bit you as a bassist are in sole charge of. This is about preserving your own tone It's the job of whoever is in charge of the PA to deal with room resonances (or room modes), though in a really awful room they might need you to help out by turning down or reducing you lower frequencies especially if you are using backline only for bass.

Great idea, I did think of bringing my Snugs along

I'm wondering if it's not such a mad idea after all. You could alternate gigs with O Fortuna: Carl Orff to bring in some vocals and maybe the Dies Irae I actually think Zarathustra at really high volume would probably just impress the audience and maybe even drag people in just to see what was going on. You don't get bassier than a 32' stop after all. If you haven't seen it, this might be interesting. There's a link to do the measurements using some free open source software.

I bought a really cheap one from B&Q and it does the job so much better than my Skill Saw. I've invested in all sorts of clamping and jigs over the years but this little cheapy does the job really well. It's great for trimming doors when you hang them too.

To all intents and purposes the air in the port will just 'see' your printed port as a cylinder of air so this is great. the flange will cover any imperfections and give you a potential way of securing the port. For the technical nerds: there are sharp changes of pressure at the ends of the port when the air is moving. This is different at the end of the baffle where there is a 180deg change and the inside end of the port where it is 360deg. WinISD includes an end correction in the calculations and to date I haven't measured anything to suggest it isn't accurate. I've got some printed flanges I'm meaning to try which curve the exit of the port (much bigger radius than Rob's port). These are meant to allow a slower change in pressure and reduce turbulence in the port. Even with a big radius on the end of the port I still wouldn't expect you to need to change the length significantly. Your flange should have no audible effects.

That's correct. Looks like its all going well When the glue thickens I put the container in a bowl of hot water or just stand it on a radiator and the glue softens and flows more easily. I did that in the video. I've got all sorts of woodworking gear including a table saw circular saws, jigsaw etc but last year I bought a plunge saw with an aluminium track. It's a revelation for cutting panels, so much easier than manuvering an 8'x4' sheet of ply through the table saw even with the sliding table on the saw. It's a great tool for cutting speaker panels. It's what I used for the prototype 8.

The best track is going to be something you know well and that is well recorded. Acoustic instruments are better than electronic ones for picking out problems generally and older recordings are often useful as most modern recordings tend to be highly compressed and as advanced production techniques are available across the board honest recordings can be hard to find. @stevie uses Smooth Operator by Sade It's got some nicely recorded kick drums and of course vocals, plus enough other instruments to give your PA a workout. I use a lot of female vocals to find the problems Western Highway by Maura O'Connel is a favourite as it has two clear vocals and two acoutic guitars, the bass isn't prominent but nicely recorded. The Weakness in Me by Joan Armatrding is another well recorded song and has some lovely bass, but the point is not which songs but that you know them well enough to spot anything wrong. I know thse voices as well as anything so they work for me. I use classical music at home for testing speakers which is much more demanding for speakers to successfully reproduce, and all of the instruments are acoustic of course. I'm not sure I'd use them on stage before a gig though If pushed you might get away with Also Sprach Zarathustra which has a lot of bass and only lasts 1min49secs It'd be a dramatic way of starting your set 😁

Reading; where I went to university and lived for 23 years Bromley: where I was born this feels like a homecoming