Phil Starr

I've done a quick look over my morning tea. I'll stick the results up below but before I do can I ask what you want to get out of this? If it is just a cab that is an Ashdown and sounds like an Ashdown then contacting @Ashdown Engineering is probably the way to go. They'll probably provide you with a couple of 8ohm drivers at a reasonable price, the cab will retain it's value and it's sound. @Stub Mandrel's suggestion is a good one and I'm happy to help you set up WinISD if you get stuck. It's free and it works If you want to go ahead with a mod then it's a question of what you want to get out of the mod and how much surgery/woodwork you want to do on the cab. If it has a tweeter you might want to look at the crossover too so it could be slightly more complex than just re-tuning the cab. So this is the initial look at a pair of Celestion Pulse 10's in a 100l cab tuned to 50hz. For comparison there are two other more 'normal' responses in smaller cabs. That's partly to illustrate what we are all saying about the cab being 'a bit big' for the Pulses. Interestingly for a nerd like myself the response in your cab will be almost exactly that of an Extended 3db Bass Shelf/EBS-3 response which is a 'thing'. You just need to know this is the result. The bass shelf works well for bass guitar as the lower frequencies get reinforced by any hard surfaces near the cab but you just need to know that this will happen when you swap the speakers. Green your cab with the Pulses 100l tuned to 50Hz Blue is maximally flat SBB4 resonse in a 65l cab Red is a more typical commercial cab response in a 45l cab

I'm happy to model the Celestion Pulse drivers for you or indeed look at any others. As @stevie has pointed out the cab is a little large for those drivers (we used a 30litre cab for the Pulse design we did during lockdown), but they look like they would work in a range of cabs. It'll be good to return some of the help you've given me over the years

Pleased that it went well. Thanks for the update, we all like a happy ending

We have something similar, ours have low power red and green lasers that project tiny, intense moving dots in a matrix. They run off power supplies but i've adapted ours to run off a USB power pack to cut down on leads. They were about £10 ea.

Mine came with the light and are shaped to fit just that light. You can buy acrylic sheet cut to size but I've no idea if this would be suitable https://www.cutmy.co.uk/plastic/acrylic-perspex-sheets/frosted/translucent/3mm/L1020-W80/

Our recently ex drummer and a couple of friends bought their local inn when it was threatened with closure. He tried running pub bands and even quite good ones were only attracting a couple of dozen people and some were bringing in no more than a normal Saturday. He's switched to tribute acts and they are taking an extra £2-3,000 a night over the bar. Some of these are low-rent tribute bands but most are karaoke singers with backing tracks. One of my friends (ex Jules Holland Big Band singer, so he's good) is earning £400+ a night going out with backing tracks. Strangely I can't tempt him back to £75 a night to work with all the egos in a band. Our drummer is a really lovely guy who bought the pub partly because he wanted live music. He's faced with the choice of running a dreary, empty, loss making drinking den with bands or having a lively pub, full every weekend and being able to pay his staff decent wages. He hates that this is reality but his main aim was to save his local and there is limited space for sentiment. Meanwhile my singer is missing all the excitement and energy of a band but finds it hard to turn down the £400 gigs and enthusiatic audiences with no need for rehearsals or damage to his hearing.

It's a thought but what we've always tried to do are demos rather than talks. You'd need the right room to do that in and it would be difficult in practice. I'll give it some thought. This year I'm wondering about a proper blind test of something but I'll give it a little thought. I know I wandered into PA last year so I'd like to go back to something more bass related this year

Hi Sean, you'd have had a problem with any speaker in that position. Each surface the speaker is placed against boosts the bass in particular and you had all three surfaces to contend with. Effectively you had placed your speaker at the end of a huge conical horn. That's no criticism of you, I've been stuck many a time in the corner of a tiny performance space like that you really don't have a choice. Using the Monaco may have helped quite a lot but it's a horrible position to be in, literally The only thing you can do in that situation is to wind the bass right back. I'd use agressive HPF and be prepared to roll the bass eq pretty much right down if I needed too, I'd also be looking to boost the mids. Years ago I posted up the eq I'd ended up with in a particularly difficult hall. I had a Hartke with a graphic and I was stunned how much bass I had to roll off. It might have been better to swap places with the guitarist in this venue as it would be less affected by the corner position.

Hi Al, I don't really disagree, I think both things can be true at the same time. Let's face it the band really isn't the main event at a wedding It is a privilege to play and for the couple it is a one off event they can never get back. For the band it is just one event amongst many. but it is a huge responsibility to make it work. The audience generally just want to have a good time and are pretty much always on your side so there are lots of positives. The money is nice and when you are paid that much you expect your client to call the tunes. I admire the musicians who go this route, it is more demanding than the pub gig. For me though it's not something I'd actively go out and look for.

I've never aspired to function band work. I've probably not got the skill set anyway. The only functions I've done have been for friends who know what we do and are happy with our normal set. I've never seen the attraction of weddings. There's often a lot of travelling involved. There's usually lots of restrictions about setting up and knocking down at the end so it tends to be a very long day. The band is inevitably a bit of a side show, you work hard to fill the dance floor and then someone has to make a speech or there is a cake to be cut or whatever and you have to go again. They can be fun but more are just a chore, you aren't really encouraging me to start looking for weddings now

No come on, say what you really think I guess this gives @mrtcat a professional problem. If people commented on the band sounded at the sound at the event then the band's reputation is at risk. If the band start to highlight the problems with the sound then the venue could lose bookings and revenue. I can imagine that having invested £10,000's of pounds on this system the venue are going to be reluctant to re-visit the sound system. Equally the clients might eventually twig that the sound at this venue is never good. There are some delicate conversations to be had here. If the system is new the venue might have some redress with the people who sold them the system and the earlier they realise thay have an issue the easier that would be to deal with.

I havn't come across these, and not likely to with my band who rarely do functions and certainly not the posh ones. I had to look it up. There only seems to be one company selling them in the UK and for anyone not familiar it's a 'ceiling of sound' Lots of panels of small speakers forming a suspended ceiling directly above the dance floor. DSP is used partly for compression/limiting I suspect and also to do some phase control deliberately creating power alleys so the bass drops off rapidly as you move from under the speaker array. Reading between the lines there is probably some eq boosting the bass. To give anyone else reading this some idea there's a second hand system being sold for £17,000 with 64 panels totalling 576 tiny speakers. I'm imagining that with all the DSP it deliberately creates the full disco experience with the thumping one note bass that implies. Maybe @EBS_freak or one of the other sound guys may have come across the system so I stand to be corrected. Where was your band positioned? I'm guessing outside of the array and that you weren't allowed to use backline or floor monitors or that if you were levels were severely limited? Do you use electronic drums? The system wouldn't work to keep the noise down if the band were just outside the Zone Array creating 100db sound levels. The only solution for you would be for you all to use in-ears in which case you could have the sound you wanted, I've played the opening number of our set with in-ears only to find out the PA is still muted :)

I have some flourescent pink gaffa tape. All my leads have a strip wrapped round the cable so I recognise them as mine in the dark. Mainly this stops me 'acquiring' other people's leads as I box anything not nailed down at the end of a gig. It now means I can at least recognise I have someones kettle lead and return it to them. I also have sets of coloured XLR's from my days of running jam sessionswhere leads are swapped all evening.

I can never work out if this is just common sense or I am slightly bonkers/obsessive

I must admit that is an appealing solution Typical that it's the drummer who already has the kit to contend with which takes almost as much effort as the PA, rather than the singer who has only that oh so heavy mic and stand to contend with😂 I can't bear to leave things alone though, if I see that something would make the band look our sound better I'll just do it rather than have all the arguments about who pays and what we should get. Partly it's because I like playing with all the kit and am lucky enough to be able to afford it. My duo partner is very good and takes his fair share of the work. He sets up all the lighting and carries in slightly more than half the kit and has bought the monitors we use. With the band I wouldn't trust them with anything electrical and certainly not with winding any cables, though we did have one guitarist who knew what he was doing, brought a mixer and lights of his own and knew how to coil a cable. I think he joined the band because all my cables have cable ties

Thanks John, that was just before I bought the extra lighting, I think we only had two of the lights in the video above. The best bit was that by the time we finished it was completely dark and setting the lights to white allowed us to pack up more quickly, the diffusers meaning we had a nice even light.

Hi Andy I think you'd be crazy not to consider the LFSys options. I have the Monza which is gong to be the cleanest sounding cab on the market. It's streets ahead of the Barefaced 110T if what you are looking for is uncoloured sound. I've not heard them yet but there is a newer 10" Blue Line cab from LFSys which is lighter to carry and a little cheaper but won't go as loud as the Monza. For me the Monza is the Swiss army knife cab that does everything I'll ever need but you might not need that headroom. I think @stevie is still offering a discount to BassChat members. If you want to hear one then let us know where you are based and someone will probably invite you along to try theirs. If you are West Country based you'd be welcome to come to try mine.

The PAR floods are prtty much what i have on my Party Light bar I quite like the multiple single coloured bulbs as they give a sense of movement, and the tri light bundle is pretty much standard for bands. It's interesting that both of us and @Rosie Cseem to have gone for lamps around 20W each. four of those gove a decent amount of light on a small stage without blinding people. I have got a couple of 180W Par lights I bought before I'd really thought things through and they are mad, there's no way you could use them in small venues and the only time i've used them successfully is outdoors. Those Stairville floods look great because of the 45deg spread of light. Proper floods which is what you need when the lights are necessarily close to you. Too many of these lights have too narrow a beam.

All I can say is don't do what I did. I had no plan and wasted a lot of money on stuff I don't use. I discovered lights can be too bright as well as not good enough and still have a couple of PAR lamps that will blind any audience. You can dim most lights but not when they are on automatic sequences. Most of the automatic sequences are too fast (designed for dicos not bands) and using a DMX controller is as much work as setting up the PA and getting a mix so it doubles your set up and knock down time. Fortunately lighting has become a lot cheaper and more reliable and so far I haven't lost any led bulbs. Most local bands I see seem to have settled on a single set of 'party lights': a set of four PAR lights on a stand with a sequencer/sound to light built in and operated by a footswitch. I have one of these and it does a job but willleave either the band or the audince in the dark. They take up a lot of floor space though and aren't absolutely stable. I wouldn't put them anywhare an audience member could knock them over. I quite like the LED bars like the ones in the video. Most of them are 1m long and you can shove six of them in a canvas bag. They are great at up lighting a wall or your banner, You can sit them on the floor to illuminate your front line and increasingly I've used them on short stands (basically tiny speaker stands with a top hat to fit the light) which gets the light where you want it and takes up less space. My current set up for a small to medium venue is 4-6 strips all mounted vertically on stands. Two point back at us to illuminate the band. the other four go behind us pointing at the audience with one pair running a sequence and the other pair running sound to light. If there is space we'll put up the Party light set. We also have some dirt cheap lasers that do the dancing dot thing on the ceiling. These are low powered lasers that don't need a dedicated operator or a licence. I'm finding the strips a lot more convenient than the 'party lights' they take up less space in the van and are more versatile so you can adapt to each venue. Both band and audienbce get more light too. Without the clumsy overhead stand set up time is about the same for all six as a single party light. For me lighting is an irritating necessity, get it right and the band look really professional but it's a lot of work and nobody pays you extra as a pub band to have great lighting. As it get's more sophisticated i have wondered about offering an optional lighting package to venues.

Just had a great experience with Andertons, I bought a TC Helicon Critical Mass voice processor, it is supposed to make you sound like a group of people. I've been doing that with reverb and delay/detuning on my mixer but having a stomp switch was appealing. It doesn't sound as good as the mixer and is electrically noisy, not Andertons fault but I don't want it. Anyway I rang the shop and a really helpful guy immediately said: "not a problem was that the TC" quick and pleasant chat and the returns details were sent to me. He even advised me that it was cheaper to arrange my own courier than to use theirs. I've always felt we need to cherish the firms with real shops and good values before they all disappear and for me this was yet another good experience from Andertons. Full Marks from me

That's interesting. I was going to ask why you upgraded. I was assured when I was looking that the only difference was the badge on the front. Back then the pre amps were 'Midas Designed' in the Behringer and Midas pre amps in the X18. Frustratingly I never got an answer to what that meant.

OK I know it's not strictly PA but I'll make a fair bet that the poor s*ds that do the PA get lighting duty as well Just got these, well strictly speaking I just bought the last four. I've had two for a while that I use as static lights to illuminate the band, they come with diffusers as well as clear fronts so they don't blind you if you use the diffuser. I lent two of them to a friend for a party and he used a sound to light program I'd never tried which works like a giant sound level meter. They are sold as PureSound Pixel Bar Switch. They look white in the video but that's because my phone couldn't capture the colours as it was saturated by the light levels, you can see the colour changes in the room. They are obviously programmed to follow the drums and seem to be fairly good at following the tempo. The plan is to use them on stands on stage so that they lift the light levels in the louder sections and fall away in any stops or quieter passages and create better dynamcs than the more usual chase sequencers. I've been trying various lights hapharzardly for a while and never been happy so this is an atteempt to up my game by actually planning the lighting. Forgive the mess, I'd just spent an hour making up some decent length leads with UK plugs instead of the 1.5m euro leads supplied Short clip.MOV

It would be, and would address any minor hearing issues as he could have a personalised eq for his monitoring. John's problem is mainly that his singer will have no truck with modernity, I think having monitors at all was an innovation.

That would do it Even with horns the output off axis would be reduced a little, below the crossover point of course you are getting sound from the woofer and with an 8" speaker the crossover point could be as high as 3kHz, most of the midrange which is essential for speech (and presumably singing) is below that. I noticed the other day that your feedback is very high frequency and seemed to be over a narrow band. Given your singers very random approach to PA in general and eq in particular I dismissed this at the time as operator error but some horns have quite sharp resonances due to phase problems in the horn. You could try and locate that frequency and filter it out alternatively turn down the top end a little and boost the mids. Either way you need to get the monitors pointing at your ears. Get some wedges sorted to put under them for next week. Which mic does your singer use? If it's a cardioid like the SM58 then make sure the speaker is pointing down the gun barrel, at the back of the mic, if it's a super Cardioid like the Beta 58 then the monitors need to be slighly to one side, roughly 135deg. Some mics are better at rejecting feedback than others so that is worth a look too. Then there are the human issues. He needs to trust that you will do everything you can to sort his problems but he needs to talk to you. It should be simple enough to explain that if the microphone is at the point of feedback then he simply can't turn it up. You have to turn something else down, so ask him what he can hear most loudly in the mix at that point and turn that down. That might in turn mean adding something to the FOH but that shouldn't be a problem. There could also be problems with his mic technique, moving closer to the mic will give him extra volume without extra gain and feedback problems. The other problem may well be hearing loss, everybody our age has it and people in bands usually worse than average. I struggle to pick out conversations in noisy rooms and he may be struggling to pick out his voice in the mix, especially as the band get louder and he gets tired. Again it's mid range losses that are the problem so boosting mids in the monitors will help. If he's ever had a hearing test and knows what frequencies he needs more of then that would help Another idea to help might be to consider side fills as monitors, hide your monitors behind the PA mount them on stands at head height and point them across the stage. This works well if you have super cardioid mics whch are less sensitive to sound coming from the sides.

A good start then John Perhaps if you tell everyone what the set up was we might be able to help a little. Did you mic the drums this time? Was the lack of volume from the monitors down to feedback issues or lack of gain?