Phil Starr

I said I'd report back from the shootout, a disclaimer here I was behind the speakers so I personally couldn't hear the direct output maybe John @Chienmortbb or @stevie or any of the other bassists there would like to comment? Even behind the speakers you could immediately hear the differences in sound and up on stage I could see the difference in audience reaction and I talked to people afterwards and a bit of what I'm saying here reflects those conversations. So the set up was straightforward: we had two LFSys Monaco speakers (very high quality FRFR bass speakers) with yours truly swapping the amps whilst @MichaelDean did the honours with the bass. Initially all the amps had the controls set to 12.00 except the master volume. Gnome first: no reason other than it was my amp and was set up before I went out looking for the others. It caused quite a stir on first few notes and at the end a couple of people said they were suffering GAS for one/going to get one. They are very bright airy and modern sounding. Next up the Elf: again this created quite a reaction. It's immediately quite a loud sound, a bit richer in the bass and with a really pleasing mid scoop. It kind of did have the generic Trace sound as proven later when we tried a proper Trace amp. It had a noticeably higher gain and was initially louder with the master at 12.00. Obviously that doesn't give you any extra power but it's going to jump out at you if you get to try one in a shop which is why they do it of course. Finally the BAM: to be honest it didn't get quite the same audience response but that was probably about the way we tested, I know from the measurements we did last year that it is in between the other two amps and that is exactly how it sounded. the Elf has a stronger bass and the Gnome a stronger top end sparkle. Like any taste test more always creates the stronger initial impression so the other two got the attention. It's still a fine amp. Once we had all three i went back to the Gnome and asked Michael to forget 12.00 and try to make the Gnome sound like the Elf, within 30 secs he was getting there and you should be able to get all three amps sounding similar to each other with just a little patience and without maxing out the tne controls. Again from last year's measurements I know the mid control works in the centre of the mid scoop they all have so it's relatively simple to remove that or to increase it. Finally I cranked the Gnome to demonstrate what sort of levels you could expect from 130W into 8ohms. There was still a bit of bass boost from the tone matching to the Elf and i took it to clear distortion and cut back to where i could just hear the distortion from behind the speakers. I could still hear the peaks being limited but this would be louder than I'd be likely to need on stage. In practice when I do use back line the Gnome doesn't really struggle as a stage monitor for bass and I only use my bigger amp when I have no PA support. The LFSys Monacos are 98db/W @ 1m. I'd like to thank Stevie for providing them and I've now bought one of the ones I used. I don't think there is a better FRFR bass speaker out there at the moment based on sound quality alone. I'd like to thank all the people who lent me their amps and Michael for being brave enough to demonstrate the amps to a room full of other bass players, I'd have frozen

I think that's maybe the price difference, Thomann are listing the Gnome at £129 so used at say £90 isn't going to tempt anyone to sell. You could hardly buy a pedal for that sort of price and for the buyer it's not enough of a saving to not buy new.

We'd love to see you at ours, maybe combine it with a holiday or take a sabbatical in the UK

As it happens we are going to the SW bass bash tomorrow and we will be doing a shootout of amps. I’m hoping that we will be able to start with the three micro amps. I’ll report back. We got to look inside all three. Whilst they aren’t identical they all seem to use the same chips in the output stage and similar power supplies. The pre amps are different so they were developed separately. The standard of construction was similar and good so IMO you should buy on sound or cosmetics with confidence that there isn’t a best one you’re missing out on. My Gnome has been 100% so far and I rarely use my bigger amps but I do go through the PA so most of what it does is at rehearsals.

As above most class D amps aren't repairable. when someone borrowed and blew my Behringer a few years back I did find someone in the UK who stocked replacement boards. At the time is was around £100 for complete amp and power supply which I thought reasonable. It will have gone up but you might be lucky.

The useless bloke is absolutely not useless, he's working hard to solve problems he's not causing himself and approaching things systematically. Those sound levels are scary if accurate. Female voices aren't usually as loud as male voices and few female singers in my experience have the confidence to pull the mic in closer and really belt it out. Quite apart from which the SM58 has a marked proximity effect which will make her voice sound unnatural as she is singing and instinct will make her push it away. The Laney is rather dull sounding in the crucial mid-range so she won't be getting the detail she needs to pitch and at the mic I suspect the band is more or less at the same level as her voice so turning her up amplifies the mud instead of lifting her out of it. I'm off to a gig in a couple of hours so I'll have a think and get back to you tomorrow. The proper solution for her is definitely in-ears and for the band to turn down but there are a few marginal gains to be had.

As a design aid I use a calculated value at 1m. The real life measurements I based my rule of thumb on were taken at the musicians ears as they were taken for health and safety reasons. The drummers experienced higher levels than 100 db but some of their drums are going to be less than a metre away. It will be interesting as to what you find but don't take it too seriously, taking a sound pressure level isn't quite point and shoot. They won't measure all frequencies accurately and will consistently under measure low frequencies and short duration peaks, the data needs interpretation. Sound meters including the ones on phones (which are pretty good) measure in standard ways which both filter in terms of frequency and time. Your meter may be A weighted which filters out bass and high frequencies C weighted which is less filtered or Z weighted which is flat response. Most only offer A or C weighting. They are also time weighted (averaged out over a time period) You'll be offered slow or fast and maybe impulse. Slow is measured over 1sec fast 125ms and impulse 35 ms. On top of this the microphone in your meter or phone won't be flat response or cover the whole frequency range. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_level_meter Use C weighting or Z weighting if that is available. If you have a meter I'd stick to 'slow' and accept that I'm not getting any peak measurements. If you use a phone it will be able to record the data and yield more information but that will depend upon which app you use. I'm not sure how you will interpret this to your band, that will be the difficult bit but I'm really interested in how you get on. Good luck

Decibels are useful to know about, but just like watts they don’t tell the whole story. Hearing is also frequency dependent and the correct unit for how loud something sounds is the Phon. Midrange sounds are the loudest and that is why guitar amps sound so loud compared to bass amps. Guitar speakers also have huge peaks in their response in the 1-3kHz region where our hearing is most sensitive. For the record the 120db sound level I use as a rule of thumb for bass is a peak level. The loudest sound I’d want a bass amp to make without distorting. I needed something as a target when designing my first bass cab and it is chosen so that a bassist can match a loud drum kit. I found some figures from “a well known festival in Somerset” showing average sound levels at the musicians ears of around 100db and randomly selected 40db as my dynamic range. So 120db is a peak level and 80db would be lost below the audience noise. Since then that figure has proven to be robust with commercial cabs not able to reach that level sounding a bit weak in the loudest bands but it’s all good for those exceeding that level. sorry this is a bit of a thread derail but since I’ve been quoted I might as well come clean about where that no comes from.

If you are looking ar the RCF TT series then I’m guessing the budget is good? My duo gig with a fairly modest PA, a couple of RCF 310’s. We run two vocals, electric bass, guitar and programmed drums. So far we have managed all our gigs bar one with this modest set up. The most demanding was an outside gig with people sitting 50m away at the far end of the garden. We were loud enough that they could continue their conversation with slightly raised voices which was what the host wanted. The only gig I brought bigger speakers for was an outside gig where they wanted band level sound. For a jazz trio I think a couple of good 10s should be enough. Im wondering if you need a sub with double bass, acoustic feedback can be an issue so you’d probably high pass the PA? If so then the frequencies below 80Hz aren’t going to be a huge issue for the speakers. I’d be really happy with a couple of TT10As or RCF910s and you could add a 702 later only if you found you needed it. Without the kick drum in particular the need for a sub is reduced. Ive probably got a very stereotypical picture of a jazz trio, lowish sound levels, high sound quality, appearance is important. A few people in duos and trios are turning to the line source/stick systems which work well at moderate sound levels but look much tidier than speakers on tripods. Ive used my ART310’s as backline, they need a bit of bass cut on the floor but work well

I don’t know if you’ll want to hear this but to date the best floor monitors for your buck IMEare the RCF 310s. I’ve never tried the QSC12.2s as monitors but we used them as PA for years and they have some harshness, fine speakers though they are which would make me look elsewhere as a monitor. You mention a loud band. I’m assuming you can get feedback if you turn everything right up? If so you don’t need anything louder. The 310s strong point for me is feedback resistance, the response is free of nasties so gain before feedback is good. If you are running the 310s into distortion/overload then unless you’re on huge stages you are just too loud. They do need eq though. On the floor there is way too much bass as they are set up to work on poles. You don’t want low frequencies in monitors anyway. I shelve the bass response @150hz down 6db and then HPF as well. If we are close to the PA I will cut the bass even more as we get more than enough from there. RCF and others don’t use the big horn drivers in their smaller speakers because they don’t need to. The crossover point can be higher because the smaller drivers have a better response in the mid range so there is no gap to close. There comes a point particularly on small stages where just pouring more sound in makes intelligibility worse, we just aren’t designed to work in 100db environments.

It’s worth noting that midrange frequencies sound 12-18db louder than some bass frequencies so 115db of Guitar is a lot louder than 120db of bass. You really don’t want to be on a small stage with a fully cranked Vox AC30!

It can be. Basically though don’t worry about it because wattage is only part of the story. Sound is usually measured in decibels and some speakers make more sound for each watt than others. The other thing is that our ears are cleverly designed to cover sounds from the tiniest whisper to incredible volume by squashing down the loudest sounds. Ten times the power is needed to double the sound. A 500W amp is only a little louder than a 300W amp. Going from 100 to 400W sounds like a big step but is only 6db. A bass speaker might give anything from 90db to 102db or more so 100W into an efficient speaker might be louder than 500W into a less efficient one. Then the advertised power is often a lie so you’ve little chance of buying the right amp based upon power alone. Generally speaking though 300W through most bass speakers will cover most gigs.

Mine arrived last Friday as promised from Thomann. I have to say I’m loving it, it sounds so good and absolutely nothin like my American Deluxe P. The satin neck is the joy everyone so far has said and with a quick set up it plays well. Can’t wait to try her at a gig. Only reservation is the pick guard which is really ugly, I can’t decide between antique white, black pearl or a tortoise to go with the Dakota Red

It’s becoming clearer that you have two issues to address but only one problem. The first is that nobody can really hear what they are doing and the second is acoustic feedback. The first is caused by too much sound at their ears and the second by too much at the mics. None of this is down to you, they have to change or accept that they can never sound as good as other bands. So addressing the monitoring. They can all hear themselves, if they were at home on their own they’d hear themselves without the PA or the monitors. With what you have they’d probably be deafened. The problem is everyone else being too loud. If everyone else turned down you’d all hear the vocals. It may well be that the guitarist is drowning out his own vocals, but the reality is that with stage monitoring you can’t alll be the loudest sound in a small space. Only one thing can be the loudest sound and the best way of achieving that is to all agree what that is and to turn everything else down. They won’t agree of course and the best you can do is to agree to all be at the same volume. The mantra has to be a consistent ‘you can’t hear, everyone turn down’. Nobody wins a volume war! There is only one way round this. If you can isolate your ears from everyone else’s monitors then you can have what you want. Plug your ears and make a hole you can squirt your own mix in. In-ears it is then. Im seriously concerned for your guitarist, with that level of hearing loss he needs to manage his sound exposure really carefully or his gigging days will be over, and soon. It’s also not fair to the rest of the band for him to expect to be twice as loud as the rest of the band to compensate for his hearing loss. Get him to wear a good fitting set of over ears at rehearsals if you can. It’ll prove that headphones will improve his guitar and singing without impinging upon everyone else, and he’ll be able to hear at levels that won’t make his hearing loss worse. If he doesn’t believe you get him to talk to an audiologist, his remaining hearing is probably already fragile. Im sure we can all give some tips about reducing feedback if you can’t get the so and so’s to turn down but this is long enough ’

Presumably as a result of the sound levels at gigs.

Thanks for posting, this is a really interesting bit of history I knew nothing about. People looking back at this period need to remember how the world was at the time. Certainly in the UK the majority of houses were just being electrified, owning a radio was a big purchase that most people couldn't afford. My dad made a lot of his income before WW2 recharging the batteries that radios then ran on, that dried up as more people were connected to the grid. Even in the 1960's and later in some places street lighting was by gas and in the 1990's I was still removing the gas lighting from houses I was restoring. Most of this gear was incredibly expensive and there grew an army of repairmen to maintain it. You couldn't use You Tube to look up repairs but there were a wealth of monthly magazines like Wireless World and Practical Wireless full of practical hints, DIY designs and news of the latest developments. Ideas spread rapidly and people were experimenting all the time and if something didn't exist you would make it. Within this environment it isn't surprising that several people will come up with similar solutions. Equally trying to sell electric bass amps when the grid was at the stage fibre was ten years ago was probably an uphill task.

Not parasites but symbiotes. Including the poor suckers that run open mics. I've never really understood the world in which some musicians look down upon others, I've generally found it rare amongst musicians, most of the ones I know are supportive of everyone who gives it a go from encouraging a 12 year old with a mobile phone singing Karaoke through to my opera singing friend who encourages my appalling backing vocals. I have a friend who runs an open mic dedicated to people who write their own songs. Thanks to his enthusiasm I've heard the first stumblings of a teenager singing to two chords and seen him take them through to BBC introducing, is that a parasite? I've run my own open mic and given bands their first chance to try out in front of an audience or to use a decent PA, encouraged people who gave up with stage fright to give it another go in later life. Does it worry me that most of the songs were written by people who are absent and don't even know we exist? The unusual state of affairs is the monetisation of music, copyright, ownership and monopoly. Music was passed on orally for centuries in written history and for millennia before writing existed in all probability. My mother and her sister used to buy sheet music from Tin-Pan Alley and sing round a piano. All covers. Music has given people pleasure and served a social function throughout history and it arises out of a community. Everyone starts somewhere with almost zero skills, some fly and others just manage but the impulse to share or just join in is strong and it is what keeps music alive. I'll bet most people here started to learn bass by copying someone else's songs. No original music is born of ignorance, at the very least it is inspired by absorbing all the music around us. There would have been no Rolling Stones or Beatles without Rock and Roll covers, no rock and roll without the blues and gospel musicians and no blues without the African slaves. Can you imagine the cost of instruments if only a few elite musicians bought them? Would there have been a Fender or Gibson and electric pickups without the amateur enthusiasm for playing Hawaiian guitar? A network of studio's and rehearsal rooms without amateurs and semi pro's paying for them. Music is deeply embedded in our society and is the better for it and the broader the base the better for all of us. The world is a better place for having covers bands and for people making up playlists for others to have a good party and I'm in awe of anyone who attempts to make s song for other people. Luckily there aren't many here looking down their noses at other peoples music, there is room for all of us.

That's probably right Bill, that way the companies can be used as collateral in further deals. It's how the UK managed to lose most of our manufacturing companies and control of our own economy. How we lost control of ARM for example. It's so sad that it's taking place in the US as well

This is a really interesting debate, I hope it doesn't get testy. I sit in the middle on this and I don't think there is real disagreement. Nobody is flying in the face of the physics and it is really, really helpful to understand as much as possible. When you are stuck with 20 mins to fix a problem and surrounded by punters who just want you to get on and play it helps to have a bit of theory to tell you where to start looking, and after all we do all face the same problems. I also suspect that performance spaces in the UK are often smaller and less suited to live music than in the USA. I'd say that the average age of the pubs that I play in is close to 200years old in this rural part of the UK. The hint is in the word Pub or public house, many of them are just houses adapted a century ago or more to sell alcohol. That said subs are effectively omnidirectional at all of the frequencies they are used for (without splitting hairs) so positioning and feedback isn't about in front or behind the mic line. It is more about how close to boundaries the sub is positioned. Each boundary reflects the sound increasing it's volume and changes it's phase at wherever point the listener is standing or where the mic is situated. You are setting up a complex series of bass peaks and troughs all around the room. You are also boosting the bass by quite a lot so that placing the sub in a corner as opposed to just on the floor is pretty much the same as suddenly turning the bass eq on kick and bass from flat to full up. A lot of bass feedback is because the subs are just too loud. How close to the boundaries is important too as different frequencies are emphasised depending upon the spacing. Mic-ing up a kick drum isn't straightforward either, you have the angle and height of the mic to consider and the kick drum is a highly resonant space, so how close to the hole do you put it? All of these things will affect gain before feedback as well as the tone of the kick through FOH. If you are going for a nice full tone you are emphasising those bottom frequencies which in turn are going to acoustically feedback to those resonant skins on the drums. Add in a floor monitor nearer the kick drum than the drummers ears and you have a nightmare to deal with. If you are having bass feedback problems then use the subs sparingly, keep them away from side walls if possible, expect to have to turn them down or up depending upon the venue and if your mixer allows it filter the lowest frequencies if you have issues. keep any floor monitors well away from the kick mic and even be prepared to steeply roll off the bass on the drummers monitors. You don't really need anything below 80Hz in the monitors anyway all the musical information you need to play is above this frequency. The issue though is time, I always think of the witty riposte after my friends have gone and the solution to last night's PA problem the day after the gig

I've read through the thread and TBH you aren't doing much wrong. It's an impossible task to get a good mix when you can't sit out in the audience area and there comes a point where there are so many distractions your playing can suffer because you are using too much brain space in running the PA. In addition you'll often have to set up in unfamiliar venues which often have poor acoustics and you won't be able to do a proper sound check. Every single one of the band will want you to turn them up and then turn everyone else down and if they will let you soundcheck they will start fiddling with their settings after you've finished. Alternatively someone has tripped on a lead and disconnected a monitor/mic/instrument and only tells you at the end of the gig that they couldn't hear their own ....... Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Have a routine and do things in the same order each time working systematically. It should get easier over time, if your singer needs a bit of bass cut and a midrange tweak to sound good they will need the same at each gig so long as they stick to the same mic. The same should be true of each instrument. What you want is the same all purpose mix going to the PA each time. That means the adjustments you make should only be those to match the PA to the different room acoustics. I pretty much don't eq individual channels at the gig and I try not to touch levels either. Your band members should be encouraged to use the same settings at every gig so if you have the levels right and they haven't changed anything the only thing that will have changed is the room acoustics. Having a digital mixer makes this so easy as you can save the settings for dozens of bands on the same mixer but with an analogue desk you can still save settings in a notebook or by putting marks or bits of masking tape on the desk. I find nowadays that by recalling the settings I get a decent mix from the off, usually good enough that we can do a gig without a soundcheck if we really have to. Inevitably someone will have turned up or down since the last gig but that is usually easy to spot. So if you have the same people, using the same gear going through the same channel settings each gig the only thing you should need to adjust should be the outputs to match your speakers to the venue. This guy explains it well How to EQ a PA System- some tricks Of course it is never that easy and you can always do more but don't let it distract you from enjoying playing yourself. The final trick is to have a technical rehearsal once in a while to give you time to set up more thoroughly without an audience present. It helps with the human problems too, if anyone complains i say I want a technical rehearsal and suddenly they aren't that bothered

I'm using in-ears as often as possible nowadays but I always carry Pacatos in my bass case. Sometimes you can't get a feed for the in ears and I just never want to go back to the noise levels some people seem to think is clever. Don't give up on in-ears, the feeling of detachment only lasts a couple of gigs

That's a good solution if you can afford it. If budgets are tight then upgrading is best when it is gradual accumulation with a plan. So long as you buy well this will continue to be your sub when you next decide to upgrade. Hope it goes well for you.

It's a bind but you have at least two options. buy an active crossover and use your spare amp. Used there are several on FB marketplace going for £20-35 up to £100 for a big brand model. When people go active the crossovers become redundant so there are plenty up for sale. Sell your passive subs and buy an active one. Like most of us you are probably operating in mono, ie all your faders are set to centre and not faded left or right. At a pinch you could drive both tops off one channel of your mixers built in amp and the sub off the other channel, You'd still need an active crossover though.

Does that mean you expect Eminence manufacturing to move overseas, maybe to Italy or South Asia?

@stevie is the crossover expert but your amplifiers can push up to 10A through 8ohms and double that through 4 ohms. A coil that will handle that and work at sub crossover frequencies wouldn't fit in the box that crossover comes in. Read the manual I just had a quick look and it gives some hints as to how to hook up to an active crossover. The master outputs on your Dynacord are specifically there to use with active speakers. You take the output from there to your active crossover. That will then give you two outputs to feed back to your tops and one or two outputs to go to an active sub. In all probability your active sub will have a crossover built in and a single sub will usually cope with a stereo input too. Then you can either go straight from the sub to a pair of active tops or feed the stereo outputs from the back of your subs back to the power amp inputs on your Dynacord mixer. Luckily Dynacord have anticipated your needs and made it relatively easy for you.