Phil Starr

I'm not sure I could be so disciplined as to sell my last bass cab, even though it is so rarely used. I do love the Fearless cabs too. My probably final cab is a LFSys Monza and it does seem a bit grand for a 'just in case' gig. I think the RCF 732 is a great choice btw. Those big horn drivers do make the vocals sound good and my 745's are overkill for 90% of our gigs. GAS never goes away though, I keep eying up a pair of these https://www.thomann.co.uk/rcf_nxl_24_a_mk2.htm

My duo (bass, guitar and two vox) use a couple of RCF ART310 actives plus another two for floor monitors (no backline to keep it compact) We also have programmed drums and can play pretty loud. We played to a couple of hundred people on Sat no problem. Thomann are listing them at £285 which is a bargain. You can of course run them using the Yamaha just as a mixer.

OK that's good, wider than it is long could make it easier and the lack of depth may mean you don't need repeaters so the people at the back can hear. If the front row of seats are 4m from the speakers and the rear ones 11m then the sound levels between the two won't be impossibly different, it will fall around 10dB or by about half subjectively; the difference between an average room in the house and an average office. A plain cube shape helps in the sense of being a simple shape with no intrusions simplifying multiple pathways it won't necessarily reduce all feedback issues but should make it easier to work out where they are coming from and strtegically damp them. I was going to suggest you test the reverberation time in the hall and then use RTA to measure it's frequency response. Your son may be able to help with that. The shape of the hall suggests to me that a couple of column speakers might do all of the work. A broad flat pattern would keep the sound from bouncing off the ceiling and the congregation are a great sound dampener to stop floor reflections. Acoustic treatment of the hall could be quite expensive so it would be good to minimise this cost. Have a look at this, it's a great primer and very visual in explaining what you are trying to achieve.

OK loks like @SimonK has more practical experience than I do of this in terms of churches. I come at it from a basic knowledge of acoustics a few community events and years of operating PA systems for bands. Fortunately for you there are loads of videos about PA and worship bands on You Tube mainly American based but useful in your case because yours is a new building in terme of the history of churches I think he has Identified the human issue really well. I was picturing one of the all in one stick systems as being potentially more appropriate for an inexperienced user. Some of them come with a very simple mixer built in. They would be loud enough for anything short of an all out rock band with an all out heavy hitting drummer, pack away tidily and be simple to set up. Like Simon an eKit for drums would be my ideal. Before offerering any further advice it would be good to know the size and shape of the building. Chicken curry in an almond and lentil based sauce, spiced with coriander and cardamom, touch of cumin and chillies from the greenhouse. I'll save you some

You probably need to concentrate on the building itself first. Lot's of hard surfaces so sound is going to be reflected and you'll have multiple pathways to the congregation particularly as you look at the rows at the back. That means poor intelligeability for speech in particular. the needs are very different to those for music. You'll want everyone to have a good experience and a singe pair of speakers at the front will mean uncomfortable volumes at the front and possible inaudibility at the back. I'm assuming the lessons/sermons are more important than the music? You may find something with controlled directional patterns is particularly important and for a permanent venue a mix of short and long throw speakers will give more controllable coverage of the area. An installed system is very different to a band PA. The Behringer software is particularly confusing and easy to get lost in, it may have knobs and buttons but there are much simpler systems to operate. Again I wonder if the music and speech needs might conflict here. I also wouldn't really recommend the Behringer 1220's I'm cooking at the moment so I'll revisit if you want me to look at this further for you another day

I'm a little surprised by some of the comments here. I use RCF 745's purchased just as the 9 series were being launched. I've found them to be a great workhorse speaker capable of great sound limited mainly by my own skill and by time costraints setting up quickly in strange venues. I've never needed more volume or to use subs even at outdoor gigs and recorded music can be played back at hi-fi quality if the source material is good. The downside is the size and weight of the things. I've no sense that these speakers are harsh but they are revealing in the way that studio monitors are revealing and you'd expect to hear more from these than from lesser speakers which might be veiling something that you wouldn't have noticed before. Moving from the 3 series (discontinued) to the 7 series and now 9 series does bring you more rigid cabs and bigger magnets on the bass drivers with maginal improvements in sound and maximum volume. RCF are really clever with tempting us with marginal gains but there are lots of sensible choices.The big improvement in sound quality though is to move from the 1" to 3" and 4" horn drivers with the lower crossover points, real gains in the mid-range to be had there. The ART range are pretty much all great speakers as are the more expensive Yamahas. Obviously I'm most familiar with the 745's but I'd expect a slightly improved bass performance from the 935's and the 745's to score highly on vocals. I gigged last night with a couple of ART 310's plus two as monitors. Electric duo with programmed drums, packed pub with maybe 2-300 people and no backline so all the kick and bass were through the PA we were plenty loud enough and even ran an extension speaker into an outdoor seating area running on a single floor monitor. We were plenty loud enough for one of our bigger audiences with still some headroom and bass was well forward in the mix with a little compression and HPF applied just to round off the peaks and keep the speakers comfy. This is just to say that while you can't be prescriptive you don't absolutely need subs and to be honest if you are going to use them you don't need 15" tops. Paying more to extend the bottom bottom octave from your tops by 5Hz when you know you are then going to use a crossover to remove the whole bottom octave makes no sense at all.

Don't we all bring different skills to the party? I have a good memory and an absolutely terrible grasp of musical theory. I've a fairly decent sense of rhythm and no musical ear to speak of. I'm also lazy enough to take short cuts rather than learn skills which I know would serve me better in the long run. I pretty much learn every song from tab and You Tube videos and I use my one skill to memorise everything parrot fashion. That's my version of lazy. A friend's father when I was in my teens was lead horn for the LSO, played the horn part on one of the Beatles songs and spent hours practising everything with the score in front of him. At the other extreme I've played with guitarists who don't need anything in front of them, one listen to a song and they have the chord sequence/rhythm/melody in their head and under their fingers (sadly not always the arrangement ) Are these people not musicians? I dislike singers with stands between them and the audience. I wonder how they sing words with feeling and expression if they don't know which word comes next. I'd prefer my front person to be actvely mobile and interacting with an audience and I've rarely seen classical singers, who don't generally dance their way through a recital, singing with a crib sheet. They learn the songs. However I really love that so many peoiple can make music, entertain and thrill other people. We aren't all the same and if the singer has a wonderful voice but a poor memory then why not use a stand? The joy of playing music with or for other people is that the whole is frequently greater than the sum of the parts. Should we really be saying to others this is the only way to do it?

All the above is golden advice. We all do it including classical musicians in professional orchestras just harder to pick out with so many of the buggers. The trick is not to worry; easier said than done, and then to slot back in as quickly and smoothly as possible. To do this you need your songs firmly in muscle memory which is down to constant repetition. I don't think those who have never played in a covers band have any idea just how difficult it is to carry 30 songs in memory, I doubt may of us can ever claim to have completed a 2 hour set fault free and the error count climbs if you haven't performed for a few weeks. It's probably not entirely ADHD or maybe not at all, just your Humanity . You learn all sorts of tricks over the years. I've played whole bars of dead notes before now and none of the band noticed.

Ha ha, you can actually measure the TS parameters and calculate them from physical measurements using the added mass method but without the software you are in for some serious calculation even after your physical methods. It's a world of pain You can get a decent measurement using a stadard box and impedence plots too but again I wouldn't recommend it unless you need a new hobby. The theory treats the speaker as a tuned circuit with capacitance resistane and inductance standing in for the physical and electrical elements of the speaker. It's actually really interesting for a total nerd like me, a retired science teacher but not a practical proposition who just wants a nice sounding speaker. I think trying a 3cm cardboard tube in the tweeter hole will be an interesting experiment and sound ok at low to medium levels. If you really like it then you can always mod the cab with a bigger port tuned to the same frequency later on to preserve the sound with reduced wind noise from the port.

We've been looking at designing a self build BC design active speaker for a while and there is no real shortcut or financially sensible way of going about this that we have found. The cheap chinese amp modules are just a lottery to buy, quality of fitted components is usually poor and very variable anbd quality control seemingly non-existent. They do make high quality reliable amps too but these are approaching the cost of the ICE Power amps. @Chienmortbb is our expert in this area. I concluded that the cheapest way of getting this power was to buy a PA amp and build it into a speaker and I've experimented with using this approach with multi-way speakers both for PA and for bass. You can certainly drive them directly from a SansAmp. I've also considered just ripping the plate amp off an active speaker whose drive units/speakers have died. The other alternative would be to use something like a Bugera Veyron as a pedal board amp with the SansAmp feeding into the aux input.

Btw one of your photo's illustrates the problem you have. At the relevant tuning frequency all of the sound from a ported cab comes from the port and theoretically none from the speaker cones which almost stop moving. You are asking tht little port hole to shift as much air as those two big speakers. 20" of speaker v's 3" of port. Roughly speaking that is a ratio of 50:1 in area so the port air is moving 50x faster than the speaker cones!

It is possible to measure the behaviour of your speakers and then calculate the Thiele Small parameters using software like REW https://www.roomeqwizard.com/ It is moderately complex and you'll need to make up some test leads but perfectly feasable at home. The results will probably be as/more accurate than the manufacturers tests as published. As usual You Tube is your friend.

It’s probably radio frequency noise. The strings (probably) act as an aerial and subsequent components rectify that and turn it into audio noise. Changing the pickups re-tuned the system and may be responsible. You can’t win this, sometimes it’s your body that acts as the aerial 😊 I had this the other day with my supposedly noiseless pickups. Moving to another room solved that one. Its often more noticeable if you have the early gain stages set too high and some fx exacerbate the problem.

You might be better in the Repairs Forum where the real techies hang out 😁

First of all you might want to consider improving your headphone practice with a Zoom B1-Four https://www.thomann.co.uk/zoom_b1four_bass_multi_effect.htm It's got a tuner and drum machine built in, emulates a variety of amps gives you a wide variety of bass effects and you can input songs to play along with via a mini jack input. The headphone amp is good and it runs off AA batteries, USB or a power supply. A lot of us use them for headphone practice -£85 new. You might even be able to pick up the Zoom B1ON it's predecessor used. I've given the advice before but avoid these little practice amps, they really don't sound good at all, even most of the brand name ones. There are hundreds of these around unused often sold as part of a starter setup given away for free or next to nothing with a starter bass kit. I think I sold my little Peavey one for £10 in the end. I doubt that anyone here has tried that Fazley so it could be the bargain of the century but probably not. You could pick up an old Hartke Kickback 10 for under £100 which will sound great and plenty of other small combo's are available too. Most of these will be 100W+ and that's where I think I'd try looking, not because you need 100W at home but because the 'practice' amps below this power have had no love put into their manufacture and almost universally fail to deliver. There are good sounding tiny practice amps but they cost at least as much as a bigger amp to make. You can save money by skipping this stage and going for something used.

Honestly? Don't do it, there's always been a market for these 'next step' combo's but they make no sense at all for a bassist. Essentially they don't sound much better than the tiny practice amps we all started with, you don't need the extra power for home practice but they are not loud enough to play with a band, specifically with a drummer. It's a bit like buying him a half sized hammer, it may look like the real thing but he'll struggle to bang any nails home and will ultimately be frustrating. Your son is probably ready to move on and practice with mates and needs something functional for that job that will also eventually get him to his first gig. Something that sounds great rather than just OK will also encourage him to ply and practice more. You probably need a combo like the Minimark802, CMD121 or Fender rumble 200 or 500 and these are double the price you are expecting to spend. Seriously talk to your son and go for something better second hand. it's also the nature of musicians to move on quickly as they find out what they want out of an amp and it's likely this too will be upgraded in a couple of years time (or less) and you'll take less of a hit on buying used gear.

Interesting, I've suspected that there is a reason Andertons and Guitar Guitar are discounting a lot of Behringer stock. It is looking like there may be some news coming out about a new range or possibly an update of their PA offer. There are rumours going round in the trade and you normally try to offload end of line stock. An updated X-Air range with a working router and more user friendly/intuitive software would be interesting as would using Turbosound's expertise to further develop their PA speaker offerings.

Greg it's a nice chance to say I quietly follow a lot of your lessons/transcriptions and I've learned a lot. This one clearly feels different and spending 5.07 listening to you playing and thinking of Herbie was time well spent

Hate is a strong word for something as simple as a song. I'll happily play most things if my bands want to play them and the audience want to hear them However there are a few songs i just can't bring myself to because of irrational lyrics. If you write a song called Ironic then there should be some examples of irony rather than just misfortune in the song. Carly Simon you can't write a song about someone and then call them out for recognising that you are pointing a great big finger at them. They may well be vain but 'probably thinking the song is about them' isn't the thing that makes them vain. This is my personal madness, my wife gets worked up at misplaced apostrophe's

Thanks Greg, nice one.

Rounded off it's 57 litres, I calculated based on 53 litres allowing 4l for the volume of two speakers and the port plus any bracing. I also assumed the wall of the port was 2mm. I also looked at the tuning with no port and the 75mm hole. It's tuned too high but you still have the problem of port velocity and it just changes the point where the cone goes into over excursion. Hence your experience just trying it as it is. Love this 😂 If you are playing with this cab at home and at reasonable volumes then just enjoy having some fun with it, try creating a cardboard or even papier mache tube of 35mm and listen to the difference. Just don't take it to a gig and crank it. If you decide it's your dream tone then the two port solution Bill suggested will give you that tone and probably will be reliable but you'll have to take a saw to the cab. You could add some bracing to it at the same time and experiment with damping, it's all good fun but it won't be as saleable if you do modify it. If you want to do the rice test you can also try putting a 50hz signal through the speaker with the volume right down and gradually turn it up listening to the noise from the port, you'll hear the port noise at a remarkably low power and that is effectively your new maximum volume.

Again Bill has got there first. I've just checked the port velocity, you aren't too far short of a sonic boom I was pushing it at 10cm.

Exactly this, without the parameters you are down to guesswork. There are drivers designed for ported enclosures and drivers that won't work well plus a few 'general purpose' drivers that will work in either, the problem is that without the specs you can't do the modelling. It's possible Ashdown didn't match their speakers to the cab but more likely that they did. The things that can go wrong with mis-matched drivers are well explained in the previous six pages of woe and blown speakers. Power handling is reduced in a mismatched cab. It could be OK but no-one can be sure so you'd be taking a bit of a risk. If you really want to do this then your cab is just over 50litres and 10CM dia port 11cm long would tune it to 50Hz. You might be better off selling the cab and buying one that sounds the way you want but if you are a tinkerer then I know no advice will stop you from trying it. Good luck, you might like the result but message me if you do blow the speakers and we can look to see if we can find replacements

Win ISD is found here http://www.linearteam.org/ It's a really good resource provided for free so well worth donating to

Hi Rich, without the Thiele Small parameters you won't be able to calculate a port length with any reliability and if the cab wasn't ported originally the speakers may not be suitable for a ported cab. Your best bet would be to simply cover the hole with a piece of plywood, so long as it is properly airtight the cab is restored to it's original design as far as the speakers are concerned. If you did want to port the cab I'd probably risk tuning it to 50Hz as the resonant frequency of the speakers will probably be around that area, no guarantee though. Ashdown are probably the best though when it comes to after sales and they might cough up the Thiele Small figures if you email them. Equally they might not want to share that information as it would be potentially commercially sensitive.