Phil Starr

I'm sure I've seen someone here who bought the 2x8. Your problem with something like the Gnome is that with 130W into 8 ohms you need a decently sensitive speaker and small speakers tendto be lower efficiency than larger ones. Unless you are looking at the more 'grown up' Gnomes with a bit more power. It all depends upon your use though. My Gnome gives me enough to act as a monitor with a fairly ordinary 1x10 but we have eDrums so on-stage sound levels aren't too bad. Have you already bought the Gnome or is it something you are still considering?

Hi Marty. I don’t think you need to worry too much. Most active speakers have plenty of fail safe protection built in. With cheap brands it might be possible to drive them too hard but even that is unlikely. If you are selling cheap the last thing you want are any returns. just to explain a little, gain is gain. If you start with the mic it goes into a mixer with an input gain control then a volume slider, then the mixer’s output master volume and two more volume controls on your speaker. Just for simplicity’s sake imagine that each volume control gives you a gain of x10. Turn them all up full and the total gain is 100,000. Turn any one right down and the gain is zero. You could turn the two volumes on the speaker right up and the master on the mixer right down and everything would work safely. That wouldn’t necessarily be the best way to set thing up though. Gain structure used to be really important when electronic gear was noisy and gain was often lacking back in the day. It’s worth googling. With modern gear you can get away with more. You want controls on your mixer working in the middle of their range so you can turn up and down equally easily. I’d worry about that first, then turn the volume up on the speakers so that 12.00 on the master volume gave me a good, loud undistorted sound but not maximum volume. You can then turn it up or down from the mixer with no worries.

Yeah my 15" RCF's are also stupidly loud if we need them to be. Just a bit over the top really in most of our venues. I'm a bit concenrned about some of the advice on sub placement though. Firstly you ideally want all your drivers time aligned especially around the crossover points so putting subs just anywhere can be less than optimal unlessyou can adjust delay to re-align the speakers. That's more in the realms of installed systems or professional sound engineers than pub bands though I'm also concerned about wall reinforcement. Even on the floor you are getting a 6db uplift in bass and my subs are easily matching the tops and having to be trimmed back unless I'm outdoors. this is obviously dependant upon which subs you use and what tops you are matching with them so knowing your own system and matching it to circumstances at the venue seems better than adopting a blanket solution for every venue. Using walls and corners to lift the bass if you don't have enough is worth knowing about but I don't think anyone is doing it at every venue.

Well said @pete.young This might be useful, it was my starting point in getting money back on a faulty car https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/what-do-i-do-if-i-have-a-faulty-product-aTTEK2g0YuEy Which also offer online and telephone advice from their solicitors at a reasonable price if you need it. Contact your retailer and keep track of correspondance (emails are helpful here) usual tactic is delay in the hope you give up (though you may be lucky) so keep plugging away regularly and if answers are slow you can give them time limits by which they have to respond. Taking them to the claims court isn't expensive (there are set fees) and most businesses find it cheaper to settle than to go to court. Out of curiosity who was the retailer and what make is the sub?

How old actually is the sub? If it is really just less than a year old you will still have rights. It's frustrating in so many areas now. Modern consumer electronics is actually so much more reliable than the gear of my childhood and cheaper too but largely unrepairable. All the electronics on a single board with surface mount components means practical component level repairs are somewhere between difficult to impossible. Assembly in the far east means circuit diagrams and component availablity is almost non existent. If your amp is class D and has a switch mode supply I'd suspect the power supply. That probably means sourcing a whole new amp but you might be lucky.

I've never worried too much about subs under tops. Whilst completely accepting the phasing issues and the creation of power alleys I've found in small venues with multiple path lengths sound is reflected off nearby hard surfaces andit isn't as much of a problem as it will be in more open spaces. On the other hand stable supports for your speakers when people are dancing only a few cm away for me is the crucial issue. It's worth mentioning also that the issue of power alleys applies equally to the bass coming from your tops. The cancellation depends only on the distance between the speakers and the frequency/wavelength so outdoors where you have more space to group your subs together there is an extra reason to opt for using subs.

Bad luck, if you are at all handy it's worth trying to find out whether the fault is in the amp (ouch if it is) or the speaker which is replaceable if you are at all handy. It could of course be a lead or even a fuse. The sound from a playlist will probably be heavily compressed meaning that although it will sound louder and probably bass heavy it isn't demanding the peaks that your live set will be demanding, depending of course on how you set it up. Most active tops will take a little bass or even quite a lot. If they are active there may also be quite a lot of protection built in to protect your speakers from excessive distortion or harm. It's quite hard to really damage modern DSP controlled speakers though I have had my RCF 310's turn themselves off once when someone who should have known better re-booted a mixer that was playing up without turning the volumes down and muting averything. Good luck with the fault finding.

OK given the way these threads sometimes go I think I need to start with a disclaimer: I'm not anti the use of subs in pubs or anywhere else. In fact I'm intending making more use of my subs where appropriate and want to share experiences and any practical tips that people may have to offer. So I play in three 'bands' two typical four piece pub bands (singer, guitar, bass, drums) and a duo (two vox, guitar, bass, programmed drums) on an average night we play to 50 people. 100+ would be a very good night or a festival. PA is either 15's or 10's and we use in-ears for the bands and floor monitors for the duo. Recently I've tried the 10's with a single sub for one of the band gigs and have started to use this as a set up for rehearsals. In the past I have used my subs paired with 12" tops. My first observation is that there isn't a perfect set up or a 'right' answer to the problems. As Erwin Rommel once said; "no plan survives the first contact with the enemy" and that is true of setting up PA in a strange venue. Those who insist in placing subs centrally clearly haven't been asked to set up in a typical british pub with no raised platform or indeed any defined stage area. Fully 30% of our venues have the only access to the toilets to the side of or directly behind our 'stage' Immediately any speakers on poles are a hazard as drunk customers push past the band on their way to relieve themselves and the floor monitors become a trip hazard. In my experience speaker placement is a compromise between pubilc safety, avoiding claims for damages and acoustic perfection with the former being the most important consideration. Subs are great, the 15" drivers in mine are specialist, long throw low frequency speakers that our perfom the mid/bass 15's in my best 15" tops and bass is fuller more defined. Kick drums in particular sound great with subs. Outdoors sus are pretty much essential as you lose the reflective surfaces that rinforce the bass indoors. By taking a huge chunk of power from the tops they can be pushed harder, run cooler and the sound is less distorted. I can get away with 10" tops with subs but run out of steam without them. 15's block the view of the stage and at nearly 20kg are a significant lift. A 10" lightweight top mounted on a sub is much more stable than a 20kg 15" top on a stand and far less likely to cause anyone harm Subs are a pita, they are necessarily massive making transport difficult, in many venues they set off room resonances so you end up filtering out the extra frequencies. Because they are omnidirectiona and you have more of the really low frequencies all the bass spills back onto the stage. That can cause havoc with bass feedback on drum mics and acoustic guitars and drowns anyone without well fitted in-ears in a thick soup of overwhelming low bass. Often there is nowhere else to put them other than under the tops and then you have to live with comb filtering problems. So let's hear your experiences, ever tried subs? Had any problems? Positive experiences? Practical tips to offer?

That seems a good ball park price for what you could be getting. So long as it has the original driver in full working order then you have a quality piece of kit where the only drawback is cosmetic. For that price you aren't worried about re-sale value really, the most you can loose is £65 or whatever you pay and in reality the driver is probably worth £45 on its own and you can use the cab until you decide to upgrade and probably get nearly all of your money back, you might even make a profit

I've used the Zoom H4N for just this purpose and it was the experience that sent me all the way to IEM's I wish I'd done it earlier and my hearing loss would have been less. I bought the H4 as a recorder so I already had it to hand but any small recorder would work I tried my old Olympus WS-650S dictaphone thing and that works just as well, at the cost of having to record everything and then erasing it to free up the memory for next gig. I'd look at something like the Zoom H1 if I was buying something to do this now though, the H4 is bulky and over the top for this purpose and you could wear the H1 on a lanyard. Plenty of other rivals to the Zoom also, look at Tascam and Olympus too. What was stunning and should have been obvious is that I simply plugged myself in and could instantly hear everything on stage much better than without them. That was entirely down to the reduction in sound levels. to make this work you need to concentrate on getting the best for possible for your headphones, the more of the over-loud drums and backline you can cut out the better your experience will be. Using a personal mixer can be just as good. Think of it as a system in three parts Microphone>headphone amp>headphone. You can use an ambient mic and a mixer as your headphone amp or a mini-recorder as both mic and headphone amp. Using a recorder assumes that you have a decent monitoring sound where you stand anyway. If you want control over levels and creating your own monitor mix then a personal mixer is the way to go. I know at least one bassist with a mixer fixed to their pedal board for their own monitoring.

I wouldn't be too bothered about buying this. It would depend entirely upon price and what you are expecting to get. What you effectively have is an Ashdown ABM 15 in a home made box. A 15" driver of equivalent quality would set you back £120 new so if you pay sub £100 for it you'll probably have a perfectly serviceable working cab for rehearsals and practice. If you are handy you can probably smarten up the cab and you could even re-house the speaker in a new cab you build yourself. My first cab was a Peavey 15" Black Widow I picked up for £30 from a repair shop that was having a clear out. It did me proud in a home made cab for around four years. It still works If it's tatty but working when you've finished with it you can still sell it on when you've saved up for something better and you'll get most of your money back. Just don't spend too much. My guitarist, also a tight wad, had a Marshall combo with the amp missing but a decent Celestion speaker in it. I got fed up with him turning up to gigs with something so scruffy so I built him a cab for that and he is still proudly using it.

That makes it an easier choice go for the orange.

Well done @Balcro really good information. Of those two responses I'd go for the Faital The LaVoce has a 2db peak centered around 110Hz which will give a noticably warmer less focussed sound whilst the Faital clearly has a stronger magnet giving a tighter bass. That's not by a huge amount but it will be noticeable. That's not to say @TRBboy that you might not prefer the warmer sound and it might well be what the original Trace speaker sounded like. It's not uncommon for commercial speakers to be created to be artificially warm and many bassists like that sound.

This does sound like something that might be fixable, certainly worth investigating as it will cost you nothing but time. It could be the cab or equally possibly the speaker so the first thing to do is to remove the speaker from the cab. Almost anything in or on the cab can buzz, a loose screw somewhere or a bit of wood that is no longer glued. cables can buzz against the speaker cone if they can touch it or against a panel, torn bits of vinyl covering can flap and resonate and you can get all sorts introduced through speaker vents. I found a load of hazel shells inside one cab which some mice had dicovered. cabs are wood and everything can be fixed and reglued. Check handles, corners, the grille and even the input sockets. Bad news is if the speaker coil is rubbing/buzzing. that's not repairable by you and a professional repair will probably cost as much as a new speaker. You can check for this by gently pushing the cone in a few times and listen for any scratching noises. This takes some care. If you push from one side the coil will rub against the magnet and you will cause further damage. Use a pint glass or similar and push the cone with that so there is no sideways pressure and be gentle. Now check the speaker magnet, anything made of iron that has come loose will stick to the magnet. That means any screws or other fixings will probably end up there and can cause buzzing. Old speakers often fail because the glues used in their manufacture break down over time. Favourite is the dust cover, the dome in the middle of the speaker particularly if it is dented or mis-shaped. Ive also seen speaker cones come away from the metal basket. Go right around the corrugated surround and check it isn't coming away from the metal frame. If it has a separate pleated surround that can also come away from the cone. Also look for any tears in the surround which will also buzz. look for tears in the cone itself. All of this can be re-glued, I use a latex based adhesive to do any repairs, it sticks well to paper and remains flexible when the glue has cured. biger tears I have repaired by building up layers of ordinary tissue paper though Japanese Tissue is stronger if you can get it. Artists suppliers may stock it as it is used to repair paper and canvasses. If you find nothing try putting a signal through the speaker out of the cab on your bench. You can get online signal generators that let you put a pure tone through the speaker so you can scan up and down a couple of octaves and look for any resonances try 50-200Hz. Don't go too loud though, the speaker cone will move further when out of the cab and a long way with really low frequencies, you don't want it moving more than 5mm but it will probably buzz most at particular frequencies and that might help you find the buzzy bit. If you can't get the speaker to buzz outside the cab then its the cab or the way the speaker was fixed. Put the speaker back in the cab and fix it down firmly. If the gasket is damaged or absent then you can use an insulating foam strip to replace it. Mke sure all the fixings tighten down properly if one screw or bolt is loose that may cause your buzz. Good luck and don't jump to conclusions if you find anything, it may be lots of little buzzes on an old cab and speaker.

You've tried a lot of options then I think whether a 15 will cut it for you depends upon the quality of the midrange, It's hard to believe that sitting on the floor the bass efficiency won't be sufficient. I quite liked the tonal balance of the Eminence Kappalite that Barefaced started off with. As you can try your own cab without spending and you already know you are happy with the tone you don't have a lot to lose by trying it. It sounds like you are in a good place really. You know exactly what you want to achieve and are in no rush as your 2x10's will go on doing a job for you for the foreseeable future. It looks like tone is the most significant thing for you so take your time and audition the cabs thoroughly. Good luck with the search

An interesting problem for you and I'm not sure what you are looking for exists as a commercial product. That in itself is slightly odd as you aren't really looking for anything very extreme or technically impossible. Just to summarise: you find your 2x10 is an ideal speaker in terms of form but they aren't quite 'enough' for the gigs you are playing so not a single cab solution. You have tried a TC112 but that isn't 'enough' either. You like a coloured cab with a bit of mid scoop. You aren't keen on the 'Barefaced' sound. You are finding the majority of 2x12's too bulky and an awkward carry. So technically you can get better efficiency and a louder sound for the same speaker excursion by increasing the cone area of your cabs or by having long throw drivers and increased power handling. Interestingly to me at least is the high tech long throw drivers aren't reall available in a 2x10 format at the moment. The TC's you are using at the moment are really pretty unexceptional designs but neither are many/any of the rest. You've rejected a 2x12 as too bulky so far and most of them are 500mm+ width. There are some like the Darkglass that are narrower. Of course carrying anything is a mix of physical dimensions/weight and things like the handle position and balance. If you go for more speaker then you are left with a couple of 3x10's or you can draw up your own shorlist of 'portable' 2x12's. I simply don't believe a 2x10 is out there that you would be happy with for volume. I think it might be worth having another look at the 'hi-tech' 12's as there are a feew available. because they use a dedicated bass driver (essentially their own sub) they can be driven much harder and louder. The top end then has to be driven by a horn and they tend to be FRFR but some siple tone shaping by a decent pre amp can soon restore your favourite tone. Because the horns give better dispersion than a large cone you will get to hear more of your own sound. The best of these cabs will go louder than a drummer with the right amp. I don't now why anyone would want to go louder than that as it implies the drummer would be miked up to match you and you therefore have a PA that will also cope with bass. It might be worth asking @stevie if he still has a demo model of his Monaco you can try so you could try it for portability and volume. For me it is my one cab solution and i've sold my second cab as I've never needed one. It's genuinely as loud as any drummer. The only other solution I can suggest is the original Mk1 Barefaced Super Compact with the 15" Eminence driver in it. It is more properly old school sounding than the tweetered cabs which you don't like and a properly lightweight and portable single cab solution.

I have a BD121 also, it's similar to the SansAmp but dare I say this; it actually sounds a little better straight out of the tin. Much easier to get that little bit of fairy dust sprinkled onto your sound with the Behringer. I had some problems with instability with it though when using it with batteries which it also eats enthusiastically. My SansAmp lasts ages on rechargeables and the programmable one which I have offers switchable eq's so gets the use.

I'm trying to find if Snugs will make something moulded that will work with Sennheiser IE100's, still waiting for them to get back to me but I'll let you know if they will.

When you start a thread with "not feeling it" with IEM's then all those people who don't like them will jump in, and that's what happened. A lot of the comments here I would attribute to poorly fitting IEM's or ones where the sound in their ears hasn't been sorted properly. @Al Krow asked if there is a 'halfway house' the answer is no, if your in ears fit properly they should cut the outside sound to almost inaudible. The whole point is to cut out all the distorted unbalanced sound mess you get on stage and only hear a studio quality mix in you ears. If you can't get isolation or a good mix you aren't doing it properly and you won't like it. People can and do use in-ears half in and half out so they can hear the on-stage sound but that just increases the sound level and the in-ear sound from the buds is nasty and tinny because they aren't sealed. We've even had people who only put them in one ear. Honestly can you remember seeing a major touring band who don't use in-ears. Do you think every single band are just going through the motions or are 'just not feeling it' when they are closing the main stage at Glastonbury (other large events are available) All the excitement coming from the crowd is still there, all the excitement of playing your music and seeing the response still happens, you are still doing the thing that makes all those people have a great time. I'm not pretending there are no down sides to in ears, it takes time to get used to them. Longer for some than others. It takes as much effort to set up properly as any new skill, you have to put in the miles. If you go wired then you are tethered. It starts feeling very different and 'wrong' but ends up being a new normal. On the plus side you won't lose your hearing, your band will sound better, you will play better, your audiences will have a better time. I don't want to invalidate anyone's personal experience, we all like loud sounds, plugging our first bass amp in and turning it up to maximum is a great experience and it is exciting and adrenaline pumping but going out night after night without hearing protection is going to damage your hearing, limit your experience of music and in the end give you a sense of isolation from friends and family and ultimately life as you hearing fades and the tinnitus rises. Choose wisely.

Getting a matching 2x12 was aways the best idea both in terms of sound and looks. You'll get an extra 6db out of the stack at everything other than full power, the speakers will run and look cooler so it's win win. You'll never need them at full power but was that ever the point? You'll get tired of carrying them in the end and they are completely over the top but if you are young and fit enough then that's a whole lot of fun for £150 and you'll have change for some good earplugs

Hi all, just to say I haven't forgotten this design but I've not been well. Recovered now, but I've lost a couple of weeks and I'm behind with everything. It's going to be a few weeks catching up before I get time to re-visit this. I know a few people are revving up and ready to go but if you are patient it is still coming

And for anyone else interested. Follow the link people, there are a series of sound clips showing the sound before and after the technique. Really interesting even if your desk doesn't have that facility. If nothing else it'll make you think about your drum mic placement to get that mix of the 'click' and resonance.

Thanks Russ this is really helpful, I haven't mixed seriously since the 1970's so this is a new technique for me, though I had noticed the kick on some bands is a bit 'one note' as well as suspiciously tight I'd put that down to a sample or even very hard compression, now I'll have to see if I can spot it, another obsession :). Fortunately I'm saved from most of this because my drummer has an E-kit and sends me the signal she wants the audience to hear. Takes her sound very seriously too. We've also used a dep who sets up his own mic's and uses a trigger for the kick. First time I saw his band I couldn't believe the kick sound he was getting. They were on the bill after us and just blew us off the stage. That kick was giving a lot to how they sounded and the audience response.

If you are having clarity issues in your IEMs try listening to the sound you hear with them switched off but still firmly in place. To me it’s muffled but the real bass is still getting through. If your bass is going through the PA loud enough to reach the back of the room and you are only 2-3m from the PA then you are always going to be swimming in deep bass. Having as little of the sub frequencies in your monitoring as possible is the only way of coping with that.