Phil Starr

Then I'd have to confess to a Thunderbird as well

I've never played a Precision, not a proper one. Let me explain, I decided when I first played bass that Fender just meant you were paying for a name on the headstock. Started off with a Cort, then on an idle day long ago when guitar shops existed I wandered into Mansons in Exeter and tried just about everything in the shop. I have small hands and thought the P's were awful but fell in love with one bass in particular a Highway One with Fender written plainly on the neck with MIA in little letters. I had to admit Leo knew more about guitars than I did. Full disclosure I later bought an American Deluxe P Bass and I'm in love with both basses and we are very happy together, me and the two genuine Fenders I swore I would never buy. However, there are so many people out there playing those simple straightforward P basses who sound so good. Could it be that a real one would be different from my fancy Deluxe??? Well like many of us I saw the big discounts on the Squier 40th Anniversary basses and for £250 I scratched the itch. I've had it a few weeks and 'oh my giddy Aunt, it's good'. I've been running through the set this morning for our gig and oh the sounds it's making. I swear it's not me playing it sounds too perfect. Tone controls all flat and straight into the mixing desk. Of course I play covers and I guess most of the covers I'm playing along with were originally played with P's so there is an element of 'rightness' but it also sounds so right when i'm playing with the band; the damned thing just sits there sounding spot on tucking in behind the kick but sitting nicely in the gaps the rest of the time. Playing it is gorgeous too, the neck is much wider than I'm used to rather than maybe the full on block of wood that some P's have but it's wide and flat and has a piano like feel about it, if that makes sense. I feel like I'm playing notes rather than fretting. It also plays fast and has terrific sustain, mainly though it is that gorgeous sound. OK it's a Squier and it has a C neck but to me it's a proper P and I'm in love again. Why did I leave it so long. Have I left my poor Highway One Jazz forever? Will I get distracted by the next flashy American I see? Oh the joy of P!

The same thought occurred to me. I’ve ended up with the original and it’s my default cab of choice. It sounds good in a really unspectacular way. You just dial in the tone you want and it just gets on with it. It’s loud enough for any stage monitoring or rehearsal room and I’ve used it at gigs with 50 punters. I built the first cab in well under an hour at a bass bash and the whole thing is wired up with some chocolate box connector and some crimp terminals so no soldering required. It’s a really easy carry too

Despite gigging more or less continuously at 20-30 gigs a year with a covers band I’d probably describe myself as barely adequate. Far too lacking in confidence to even try out gear if it means playing in front of other bassists. It can take me weeks to learn some songs and I rely heavily on tabs and chord charts. If it’s not in ultimate guitar I’m lost. I know my limitations and work within them. I’ve along list of skills I want to accomplish so s*** hot? I’m not. I’m sure bass playing is like every other human skill, normally distributed: 20% of us are truly skilled, 20% are awful and 60% of us are intermediate. A little story, I came to bass via cricket. I have one skill, I can throw straight. I can’t catch and I definitely can’t bat. I’m not big or strong but at my best I can bowl accurate line and length and I’ll happily run round a boundary all day. I can do maths as well and realised we won more matches when I played than when I didn’t. Some of my team were in a band and they needed a bassist. However crap I was they would be better with me than without a bassist and I let myself be persuaded. I could hold a beat and hit a root and mostly that was enough. I’ve played in bands with people with genuine talent and skills but sometimes in life, music and cricket a good line and length, holding down an end is all you need.

I hadn't come across the Nux Mighty, it looks a really good system. I do almost all my practice with headphones and I use a Zoom B1ON now superseded by the B1-Four. Mine runs off a set of rechargeables for around a week but it will run off a power supply or USB. Music in is via a minijack. It gives you the widest possible range of tones and metronome/drum machine/tuner in a nice little box.

You're from Cumbria make your own pencils or go to the museum 🤣🤣

You couldn't make it up could you? you'll have to start collecting them at the end of the lesson (ahem gig) I was a secondary school teacher. When I used to teach bottom sets I would count in the pencils and pens at the end of each lesson and give them out at the beginning of the next. I even bought in a load of cheap pens and 'sold' them to the kids so they wouldn't get into trouble in the next lesson with teachers who hadn't worked it out and started their lessons with stress and chaos.

I've got a Shark I don't use, it was bought for the same purpose you propose to use it for. It kind of works but once it's knocked out all (12) of the problem frequencies it can cope with it does affect the sound noticeably. I needed it for the lead vocals so that wasn't acceptable and it isn''t something you can programme manually and play bass at the same time. For me the solution was to improve the set up and some of the PA kit plus manual tweaking of eq. It does what it says on the tin and can give you fairly extensive DSP options but it certainly isn't a magic bullet. It was simpler to rethink and move monitors around than to fully explore it's capabilities for me. I mainly used it on the monitor feed. Funnily enough i was thinking of digging it out seeing if it might be useful on my bass signal. It offers some quite nice HPF and compression options for bass.

Did you go for the Turbosounds in the end Dave? Wondered how you got on with them?

I've been gigging with single 1x12's for years. Even with a loud drummer I've never struggled for volume except at open air gigs where I take a second cab. Looking at the specs on Mesa's web site these look to be very capable cabs. Their specs are really helpful and so specific that I assume them to be the result of measurements rather than made up figures. (375W @ 74.3 Hz is such an oddly specific figure to choose it must be a measurement) So 97.5 db/W and 400W for the Subway 112 means the maximum output should be a genuine 123.5db. That's a really loud cab and should be much more than you'd need on stage. Any more than that and I'd be looking to put bass through the PA anyway. All this assumes your amp can drive 300W into the cab at 8ohms. Have you tried doing a gig with just one cab? If not why not try it, you might be pleasantly surprised. If you need reassurance then why not take both cabs but only plug one in (preferably the one on top) and see how you get on. Obviously you'll have to turn the volume up a little to get to your usual volume but the cab should be fine. I'd be interested to hear how you get on.

Right I misunderstood. Obviously the physics remains the same in terms of impedance and power handling. I'm wondering why you need to be so loud? I've just upgraded from the LFSys Silverstone to the Monaco, I had two Silverstones and never ever used the second cab. The Monaco will go louder than the Silverstone and one cab was all I needed to match any drummer. In terms of on stage monitoring and/or your sound out front being louder than the drummer just creates problems because you'd then have to mic the drums and put them through the PA. Is this actually a problem with your over-loud guitarist I wonder? I'm also concerned that if you are pushing 600W through a Monaco generating peaks of 125db then your stage levels are high enough to damage your hearing. If space is at a premium then you wouldn't want to be carrying two cabs where one will do. Why do you want 800W handling? is this to match an amps quoted output? Who isn't hearing the bass? Is it you or the audience?

I’m going to be controversial and say that this is the result of weak, dysfunctional politics. The facts are clear, it’s possible to measure the power of an amp or a speaker at home with basic equipment but we allow manufacturers to lie about it in print all the time. Governments in the past have legislated to protect consumers. Germany with the DIN standards, America with AES, British Standards and so on. This is then identified as being “nanny state”, “red tape gone mad” etc. and funding for regulatory enforcement is slashed. The lies and disinformation then continue. We are complicit in this by voting for politicians who tell us we can have it all without having to contribute to a well run and funded society. So, getting back to the question ‘ they’ give you peak power because they can get away with it. Because everyone else is doing it. Because you can’t sell a 200W AES amp if you don’t describe it as 400 W peak, 800W music or 1600W PMPO. Mainly though because it isn’t illegal to try and deliberately deceive you. It should be the role of government to protect people from vested interests and not to be scooped up and owned by them.

I've used exactly your proposed set up. It works absolutely fine. The only consideration is that you get what you pay for and that bass guitar is fairly demanding on the bass driver so a single 10" cab is not probably not going to be able to fill a large room with bass. The really cheap brands will almost always compromise on the bass driver so sticking to the brands mentioned by @jrixn1 and going for a 12" or larger unit is probably advisable depending upon what style of music you intend playing. If you search for FRFR you'll uncover a lot of previous discussion of using a PA cab for bass and an increasing no of us are doing it

OK most of the answer is: it depends. So I'm assuming you are looking to drive both speakers on one side of the PA and close coupled, ie close enough that the wave front is entirely in phase. You don't say if they are active or passive If they are the power is doubles and the radiating area is doubled so you'd gain 6db, in practice if they are passive the amplifier will be limited by the current the power supply can er.. supply so the power won't quite double but a 1db difference would probably not be noticeable. In practice it's more complex because they won't be close enough to couple perfectly and you'll get some cancellation. If they are active cabs then obviously you have two amps each 'seeing' an 8ohm load, if you are driving two 8ohm passive cabs from an amplifier and you are wired in parallel then the amp is driving into 4ohms and in your example the power handling is doubled to 800W.

Completely with Bill here, tweeters in bass cabs are for midrange mainly. The trouble is that few designs take a lot of care over this and certainly on mid-price cabs the tweeter isn't properly integrated into the design and is compromised by commercial decisions. You need rigid and fairly heavy cones to produce loud bass. Moving these back and forth quickly enough to make sound at high frequencies isn't really possible and above certain frequencies the outside of the cone lags behind the movement of the coil and the cone starts to flex and the sound starts to distort and you can see this in the frequency response also, most bass speakers show peaks and dips in response above 1khz. Speakers reduce in output from the side once the diameter of the speaker approaches half the wavelength. If you sit at right angles to the speaker the sound from the nearest part of the cone arrives at your ears before the sound from the far side and the delay causes cancellation. By the time the sound reaches you from the far side the cone has reversed direction. you can see all this in the driver manufacturers data. this is the Faital 12PR320 You can see the cone starting to flex at 1kHz in the blue line and also (red line) how much less output there is of axis due to cancellation. Between 2k and 7kHz its down between 12 and 24db so that's almost all the top end of the bass lost at 45 degrees to the side. The trouble is a decent horn/driver and crossover add considerably to the cost of a cab and may cost as much as the bass driver, adding roughly a third to the materials cost of the cab. Early designs were also developed with very little science behind them. Crossovers are often little more than a high pass filter often a single component to protect the tweeter so a lot of high end is added to the midrange peak that you already have and you can see on the graph. Since you have the tweeter and woofer operating at the same time there are also a whole set of new peaks and troughs and off axis issues. Lower crossover frequencies also mean more expensive drivers so they are 'crossed over ' too high and not sharply enough and what you end up with is that horrible tizz that everyone hates. Even worse is the piezo tweeter which can be wired with no crossover at all and almost inevitably sounds awful. Not a surprise, they are only £2.50 retail. So properly engineered tweeters should be concentrated on improving the mid-range and directionality of the speaker cab. they should give you cleaner smoother midrange and better intelligibility on stage. too many are just added because you 'need' one to appeal to a bigger market.

I gigged one of these for years and I've probably never sounded better than through my old Hartke, though memory does play tricks of course. I loved having the graphic and the contour controls worked well too. It's still up in the loft I probably ought to pass it on to someone who will use it.

Just a thought, I used to have an old Behringer B205D personal monitor that the drummer borrowed and mounted on a mic stand at ear level. If you can’t get him to go in ears then getting the monitor up at ear level means it doesn’t have to be so loud and moves it away from the mics. It’s a compromise but it worked for him, he bought the monitor off me

It's hard to give you really specific advice, without knowing the venue and type of music you play please just treat this as tips to try rather than 'this is the way to do it' If you are going bass from backline and unmiked drums then the only thing you have that will trouble your speakers are the keys. Adding subs really helps the kick but not much in the way of bass even goes through the subs, nothing at all if your are using backline for that gig. Getting the low frequencies out of the PA will help them a lot with power handling reducing both over-heating and excursion and subs will help for this but if money is tight and you are prepared to compromise for this one off then rolling off the bass in the keys will help. In fact it might be worth looking at what your keys player is actually playing with his left hand. A heavy left hand and electric bass isn't a good combination and both musically and in the mix you shouldn't be competing for the same sonic space. It's a sticking plaster strategy but if you have a 50 or 80Hz filter on the mixer it might be worth engaging it on the keys channel and seeing what it sounds like or alternatively adding about 6db/octve bass cut in their eq which will protect the speakers. In what looks like a long narrow space with a low ceiling in front of you it looks like it could be boomy anyway. Rolling off the bass will thin the keys if he is playing full chords low down but will leave most of what they do untouched and will clean up the mix, the punters will probably not notice.

Not all Behringer are the same so to an extent it depends. Generally you get what you pay for with Behringer. ”unmiked kit” You only need to match the drums and I’m assuming you do this at every other gig? If so stop worrying. An unmiked kit will be heard all through the bar and so will everything else. The punters will naturally arrange themselves where the noise is optimum. Those who want to talk will go away from the band and those that like it louder will move closer. The bar won’t thank you anyway if they can’t hear the bar orders. If there are that many people expect some absorption of the higher frequencies to be noticeable in the vocals. Ideally get the cabs as high as possible and if you can tilt them down slightly to point at the middle of the audience, though your speake stands probably won’t allow a tilt. Good luck and have a good night 😀

T nuts are a pain. I always use fingers to put the bolts in and get them finger tight before using any tools. They are usually cheap and nasty so this discovers the rough threads before you get stuck. You have my sympathy there. I never hammer them in any more, apart from being too close to a cut edge you rarely get a tight fit for all of them. Without the speaker present I pull the prongs in with a bolt and a penny washer. you only need to stop the t nut turning until it is finger tight, you might get away with it just using a bit of gaffer tape to hold it. Don’t tighten any of the bolts up until they are all finger tight as it stops you having any sideways forces on each bolt. it’s easier if you have a slight bit of movement available to line up all the holes and bolts.

Yes this has gone unremarked. No more endless one-twos whilst setting up. Line checking is just a look at the meters to see they are picking up audience noise. No horrible noise from my drummers over complex drum feed either. I can be pretty confident before un-muting that all is well.

no pun intended So earthing works by assuming that if everything is connected to the ground it is always at the same voltage. Mainly this is for safety reasons. The second thing you need to know is that we are surrounded by electromagnetic radiation coming from just about any electrical wires carrying an alternating current. This varying radiation will induce a current to flow in any wire that forms part of a circuit. If everything is perfectly connected to ground then that current will flow through the earth to ground. The problem is that earthing isn't perfect, there is always a small resistance in the earth circuit and a small voltage difference between different earths. Some of that resistance is in your equipment and some of it is in the house wiring. Sometimes it is enough to even give you an electric shock. So if you have a cable between two earted pieces of equipment the cable completes a circuit and current will flow along the cable down to earth and back up the other earth to complete the circuit. The earth shielding in the cable will pick up any electromagnetic radiation and a current will be induced. Most of the radiation will be from the mains flowing through all the mains wiring and things like electric motors so most of the noise now in your cable will be 50Hz hum you might also pick up radio too in this situation or the crackles from something with a loose connection. So (b) the ground lift thing works by breaking the circuit and (c0 no it wasn't the cab. It could be that you plugged the PA and your amp into a different mains socket and that one or both weren't earthed properly or were at the end of entirely different ring mains within the building, then there was a large motor running intermittently nearby during the gig or some other source of electromagnetic radiation. I try to run all our gear off a single socket, obviously you can only do this in the UK if you draw less than 13A in total that reduces the chance of this happening so long as all your gear is properly earthed and it eliminates the shocks you sometimes get from the mics due to floating earths. The ground lift switch is there just for this reason, to break the ground circuit, no circuit no current no hum.

These have a great reputation, though I've not tried one yet. £82 at Thomann, the alternatives in this price are possibly the Sontronics Solo £89, built like a Tank and the AKG D5 £77

I think both TuffCab and Warnex are very similar high build acrylics and you can regard them as interchangeable. Warnex from thomann and TuffCab is Blue Arans own brand

I always thought a click would be stifling, a straight jacket. Then I tried it and it is so liberating. The ultimate effect is that you just get tight. The creative person who won’t or can’t play in time isn’t really being creative. Unless they are playing solo they are just making everyone else sound worse. Just like the guitarist who can only get their tone by cranking their 100W amp. Ultimately you can only play together if you are together. If your drummer keeps good time then there is no need for a click and it’s good to know they’ll cover any mistakes and pull you back but if your drummer is really good you’ll be playing strict time anyway. If for whatever artistic reason you want to accelerate or slow or change tempo it’s all good but surely you need to stay together not half a bar after a random band member has decided to be ‘creative’. You shouldn’t need a click ideally but everyone should be playing the same time and the click is just one way of achieving that. Strict time is relaxing, liberating, you can be way more flexible if you know where the band will be in four bars time