Phil Starr

I'm not sure it does. First of all many of the arguably most successful and musical cabs are non-flat response designs. There is room for highly coloured designs to become part of a bassists sound, for people to bring experience and creative flair to musical instrument design. The frequency range of a bass is limited and can be covered by single speakers and a successful single speaker design is relatively easy to design and build. Mid priced commercial bass designs are often compromised by cost cutting so putting a higher spec driver in a cab with a bit more bracing can lead to a cheaper cab or one which genuinely might work 'better'. Though you won't get an awful lot of agreement about what better sounds like. Also fewer bass cabs are sold than PA speakers so building at scale is less likely and teh market will be less competitive. It's also more common to use passive cabs for bass and it is amps that are more challenging and expensive to build than speaker cabs. Few of us now would go out and buy a passive PA system and building an active cab is difficult and expensive as a one off. For PA speakers the issue is that you can't cover the full audio spectrum with single driver cabs so you need multiple drivers and a decent crossover. It's simple enough to use open source free software to design a basic 2-way crossover using theory alone but getting the design of the crossover right is an iterative process of having a target response for both divers building the cossover and accurately measuring the actual response then making corrections. You will also have to consider the phase response as well as the frequency response. The response through the crossover frequencies is way less important in reproducing bass than reproducing the human voice for example and it is going to be a rare amateur that can match the professionals. You can build great cabs and put the absolute best drivers in them but without the ability to design a great crossover your design probably won't match the best commercial designs. The paradigm for PA cabs shifted with the introduction of cheap, lighweight class D amps of almost unlimited power and is shifting again with the advent of DSP. It is still possible to build a bass cab for less money thatn a commercial cab or to spend that money on something better than you could afford to buy. It's still possible to build a valve amp yourself but you won't make a huge saving if any. It's just not economic to build your own active PA amp for anything other than the joy of it.

It's both economics and functionality. I use RCF 745's; the 4" coil compression units are £300 ea, the amplifier modules £200+ per amp and a 15" drive unit from RCF around £300, that's without th e DSP, matching horn flare and all the other bits of hardware. Building at that standard would cost well over £1,000 per cab and I paid £1300 for a pair second hand. In addition I don't really have the facilities to develop and design the crossover, even if I had that level of skill. I know how long it took @stevie to design the crossovers for his cabs and this is someone who designed for KEF and Yamaha. Did I mention the cost of pro level design software? The truth is that it would be really challenging to match the technology now used in speaker design. The plus side is that you can buy some really good kit for not a lot of money. Active cabs with amplification and speakers designed as a complete system saves money and time setting up and allows you the chance to design in things that the best sound engineers can do but few bands could deliver. It's a bit like trying to build your own car, you might be able to build something which excels in one aspect but it is going to cost you a fortune, take up hours of your time and isn't going to be able to match an ordinary family car in general usefulness and probably reliability On a practical level if I am in a band I want a PA I can use tomorrow. I'd be balancing the needs of the band against any desire to build my own PA and if the band folds I can sell the PA and get most of my investment back.

That's interesting, I never thought of trying and I need to sort the pop filter which has turned into dust. Fortunately a Basschatter 3D printed me a new sleeve after seeing the post above and once I fix the pop filter the mic will be fully restored. BassChat is truly a wonderful place to be. Thanks for the tip @Dan Dare I'll see if I can get a pop filter, it'll save me having to improvise. I still think your avatar should be a space ship

Welcome back @LawrenceH it's good to see you again, I did a double take when I saw your post The M18 seems to be going at around £300 used. The downsides are 'only' 8 proper mic channels, it will only record the stereo mix and the external antenna is slightly flimsy. My band is a 4 piece and we all sing so four voal mis and three drum mics are do-able and you have 6 aux outputs for monitoring. Two of the channels are hi-Z for guitar and bass with amp sims and fx. Band members can access their monitor mix on their phones but are locked out of doing any damage elsewhere The plus side is wi-fi that works. Really slick seamless software with very little in the way of a learning curve. I was up and away in 10mins at the first rehearsal. No menu that is more than two clicks away. Gloriously you can tap on any of the faders and they will go up or down 1db so one two or three taps will usually get you where you want mid gig.

Sadly they no longer manufacture this. I've even bought a second one, they are so good that I don't want to lose what they do. Fundamentally they are designed to do one job and that is to mix live music for a typical pub/club band. You have extensive facilities but nothing that is superfluous but workflow is meticulously worked out to be simple for any poor sod who is mixing whilst playing. Zero problems with the wi-fi on the mixer though Apple have decided that you can't use an iPad without an internet connection for more than an hour. I need to stop it tethering to my phone in the middle of a gig. That's not the mixer's fault it's 'Apple knows best'

It's also just possible to use spade terminals which crimp to the wires without soldering, though I recommend soldering if you can do it.

If it helps this is the back of the Speakon sockets. They are neatly marked as +1 and -1 the +1 is connected to the +1 on the second socket and then to the + or red terminal on the speaker. If you use a jack socket then you are very naughty, but the tip of the jack is the +1 and the sleeve is the -1.

It's never a bad thing to seal up the cab. I usually use draughtproofing foam strip to seal my connector plates and the baffles and rear panels which on my personal cabs are just screwed and not glued. Interestingly some allowance for leakage is made when calculating the cab sizes and tuning Using a factor called Ql. WinISD defaults to Ql=7 which is what I've always done anyway and by and large the measurements on the cab come out very close to those expected. You can't seal everything and the magnetic gap in the speaker itself is almost always open but sealing things where you can is good.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" I'm OK with technology but genuine musicians still seem like magicians to me. We had a keyboard player in one band who was classically trained. We'd finished our reherasal and were talking about female vocals and Pink Floyd's Great Gig In The Sky came up; which she'd never heard of. We played an MP3 to her once over the PA and she played it back, both hands, pretty much perfectly whilst our singer did the vocals. I know that 'it's just scales' but to see a human doing something like that in real time seems like magic.

It's a confidence thing, I've rarely jammed along to anything and I hate being out of control. I've not got a great ear either. Playing something I've never heard before without even a chord chart sounds to me about as embarrassing as appearing naked in public I used to run an open mic night/jam session and was looking to build up the idea of a 'great song book' which as an organser would have helped me to get as many people as possible on stage and performing. I always liked the idea of getting sole musicians/young musicians the chance of performing with other musicians and was gradually building up a house band to support this. Sadly the pub relaunched as a gastropub just as we really got going.

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.