Phil Starr

[quote name='Thunderpaws' timestamp='1445780134' post='2894072'] Phil, at some point in this thread I remember you hinted you were going to try and drop the volume of the cabs. Did you ever get around to doing this? [/quote] No, but I might try it after I've published this design. I tend to take too many things on, so I've promised myself I'd get this out asap and not start anything new. If Stevie or I come up with anything that improves these cabs we'll simply offer a Mark II design. I may put out the 15 that I've built to use whilst others are trying the prototype 12's too. I also have a 2x10 ready to go. [quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1445781127' post='2894090'] Hmmmm there is where I see a problem with people talking about mids... and they want them as they can actually hear themselves, but then don't actually like the sound solo'd..but hey, that is ok and it works in the mix. I'd be thinking this is masking up a load of masking.....and at some point people will hear the bass on its own..and if at that point the sound is poor or not friendly to the ear..?? To me..wrong way to go about this, definitely. [/quote] There is a lot in what you say, It's been the biggest problem in designing a cab for other people. A PA cab is easy, it just has to put out what you put in so you choose your drivers appropriately and optimise the cab and crossover for flat responses. A single driver instrument cab is much harder. Most people play with highly coloured commercial cabs. Or well voiced if you like the colouring This cab is essentially comparatively flat which is what people asked for, and it has the potential for a lot more high power deep bass, again specified by early contributors. Then people comment about the prominent mids and the boomy sound caused by the flat (ish) mid compared with normal mid suck out and by having more bass at lower frequencies than they expect which then excite room resonances they didn't know about before. The advantage of a flat cab response is that it is highly responsive to eq. Look at the photo and you'll see I've dialled in an old school frequency response on the Hartke's graphic, left since my last gig with the 12's. There isn't anything I'd call right or wrong though. It's OK to go for flat and neutral and then use eq and fx to get the sound you want but just as OK to find the perfect speaker to go with your perfect bass and amp to get the sound you want. The second way will probably take a lot of shopping though before you stumble across the right mix. It might be fun to design an Ampeg voiced speaker from a 2x12 though.

[attachment=203570:1x12 slot port.jpg][attachment=203571:1x12 slot port with amp.jpg] never did manage to figure out how to do this properly but this should be a pic or two of the finished speaker. There will be a proper grille fitted once I've got the speaker back from Stevie which should lose the home build look of it. My goodness it worked even if they are quite small.

There's a parallel thread going on in the Southwest bass bash where the general opinion is that B sounded better because of the extra mids. This is based on people trying it out themselves rather than on the two recorded snippets. As the person who designed the cab I'm thinking 'I should have designed the resonances out' which is interesting. Any engineer is going to be tempted to go on trying to get things 'right' but an instrument cab needs to be 'musical' first and foremost. The differences between the cabs aren't that great and Stevie is continuing to run tests, we are going to fiddle with the cab stuffing a little but I think we are almost there and will start to write up the design this week.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1445727084' post='2893784'] Glad you got Black Velvet fixed. It was always my Bette noir. I know trace liked MDF for cabs as they thought it sounded better than Chioboard or ply. That was from one of the engineers there not the marketing dept. [/quote]It does sound better but it is soooo heavy and if it gets wet it expands and breaks down so it isn't a practical material for instrument cabs really IMO.

You've got me worried about the buzz, I'm hoping it is no more than the leads inside being loose. I didn't notice a buzz on the recordings or at home so I'm assuming that the cabs were moved at some stage and whatever buzzed stopped buzzing. I really had to rush the cabs out of the door to get them to the bash so Its quite possible the cables may have touched against the cone at some stage It's interesting, Stevie and I both preferred Cab A for it's cleaner sound whereas it looks like a couple of people preferred the other cab for its extra mids, which we think is down to cabinet resonances. The bracing shifts resonances upwards in frequency so it isn't too surprising to find this. Stevie is running a few more tests but it looks like we are just about finished with this design. I'll start writing it up so anyone who wants can build a copy.

[quote name='Mornats' timestamp='1445712138' post='2893700'] A great sounding cab that looks cheap with no brand name on it could be ideal for those dodgier venues. I preferred cab B - the one on the right. I think it was the one without the bracing? It had clearer high-mids if I remember rightly. If I needed an extra cab for my MarkBass CMD 121P combo I'd definitely consider that one. [/quote] Was your favourite the one with the slot port or the four round ports? I think they got muddled at some stage in the bash.

A possible solution. Guitar amps are more directional than bass amps and unless he has a decent amp stand his amp will be pointing at his knees. This means he will only be hearing the bass from his amp and not the screetchy high notes. He is probably eq'ing so it sounds good where he is standing and he is turning up so he can hear clearly when well off the axis of the speaker. Explain politely you think this may be happening and ask him to lean the amp back at rehearsals so his ears are in line with the speaker axis. If he balances the sound then it should sound better for everyone. Then he needs to get a stand so the speakers are pointing straight at his ears at gigs too. I've used this tactic successfully more than once.

Thanks for the comments, and thanks to Woodinblack for posting the sound clips. Keep them coming. Sorry about the Barefaced look, (I hope Alex doesn't see this) the 12mm cab was the test bed prototype aand hasn't been finished at all other than a coat of blackboard paint so it could be used at gigs. The other was given one coat of Tuffcab and went out to the bash with the paint still wet! Thanks to GrahamT for transporting it for me. I'll fit a proper grille when it comes home. The point about a homebrew is that you make the choice of finish and handles etc. They can look very professional or as amateur as you like.

If you wanted to use two then you'd have to get a series lead made up so you presented an 8ohm load to the amp. I'm sure you could ask OBBM to make one up for you. Where the volume settings are can bear little relationship to the actual power and Alex Claber has a sticky in the amps and cabs forum that explains this. You can't trust speaker ratings as anything other than a rule of thumb. The speaker designer can't control how you set up your eq or how you play. Your speaker will probably handle 300W at higher frequencies but below 100Hz there may be times when 50W would take it out of it's safe zone. That's normal and true of many commercial bass speakers Whether that would cause a problem is down to exactly how you use your speaker and how you play. If you use a lot of bass boost or an octaver it might well be troublesome. You might get a thumpinator which would make a huge difference to the safe operation of a small speaker like this.

[quote name='pete.young' timestamp='1445687565' post='2893410'] That's triggered an odd memory - I'm sure I read somewhere about some cabs that used MDF for the front panel and ply for everything else, but I'm damned if I can remember where I read it. [/quote] It was common at one point for cabs to have a ply skin (top,bottom, sides) because it was tougher but mdf or high compression chipboard for the baffle and rear panel to save money and get less resonance.

[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1445678023' post='2893266'] I prefer A from that small sample but I'd want to spend a bit more time with them and try them with songs I do. How heavy did each of them finish up? [/quote] the 12mm was 14.kg ish and the 18mm cab was about 1.5kg more. If I'd made the ports with plastic pipes in both cabs I think the difference migh have been down to nearer a kg. I haven't actually had time to weigh the finished 18mm cab before I sent it off to Stevie

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1445601082' post='2892719'] I preferred A in the first two sample. In the rehearsal, I can forgive your hesitation. Black Velvet is a deceptive song in that if is all about the bass and the passages ate the end of the chorus are a B. I read that the bass line on the record was a mixture of real bass and synthesised bass. Or maybe that was my excuse as I found it hard, On second and subsequent listenings the B speaker seems mid heavy or bass light. I am using AKG 450 headphones from an old macbook pro so the quality should be OK. [/quote] you were supposed to be judging the tone of the speaker, not my bass playing And you are right about the end of the chorus, fixed now.

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1445509347' post='2891956'] I like B better out of those recordings, though the difference doesn't seem huge. Both are a more pleasing tone (to my tastes at least) than the recordings of the Markbass combos from the same day. [/quote] You've no idea how encouraging that is. I know these speakers model well and that they are hugely capable of handling bass and high volumes well but the voicing is something else. I'd feel really responsible if no-one else liked them. That's the first ever comment to directly compare them with a commercial cab.

Another sound clip for you. This is me, so forgive the playing, it was our first run through of this particular song so there is some hesitancy but you can hear the tone quite well. It has what I think of as a slight 'thoatiness'. This is using my Hartke HA3500 and I think I had my Fender Highway One Jazz for this. Can't remember all the eq but the deep bass is rolled off at 30hz on the graphic cos i always do that. https://soundcloud.com/philstarr-1/black-velvet-27-april/s-wnPYC

I'd love to hear any comments about the homebrew 1x12's if any of you tried them. Are we in the right ballpark given that these would cost you less than £150 and will go very loud compared with most commercial 1x12's. Any feedback will be used to improve future designs.

Well the OP did start off saying about the drums being miked up, so this is a band that wants to be louder than a drumkit allows, without that you are pretty much stuck at playing at the drummer's level. I feel sorry for drummers, even if you find the fabled drummer who can play quiet I'd still want to use the whole dynamic range of my kit. I'd find it tough if someone told me I could only play bass gently. You could have louder and quieter kits but who has the space to store multiple kits never mind the expense, though I suspect drummers have GAS too. No sympathy for the over loud guitarist though. The rot was there from the start. When I ran sound for bands in the early 70's you struggled to be heard with PA limited to a pair of WEM columns. Instrument amps had to reach the back of the room unaided so the Marshall full stack was born. Singers sang in their higher range just to cut through, a lot of rock norms/cliches were born of necessity. Now gear is cheap and the easy (lazy?) way of playing classic rock is to just copy the gear from your heroes, who would have killed to be able to use the equipment we have now. GAS is a problem too, most bands are amateurs whose hobby it is. Buying the best gear you can afford and lots of it is part of the fun, once you have it you've got to give it a run out haven't you. Even I had a lot of fun at one gig where my drummer shouted at me to turn up and I did. Spent the first half not needing to pick and damping the strings which were singing with feedback, and oh the tone Very gratifying to have said drummist saying he couldn't hear his own snare drum. He hasn't asked me to turn up since strangely. But you can't sound your best at the volumes a lot of pub bands play at and I'm with the people who say you should be playing for the audiences not yourselves, especially if someone is paying you to play. There are lots of good technical reasons why keeping sound levels down is better and really there is no excuse.

[quote name='Woodinblack' timestamp='1445454474' post='2891665'] There was quite a lot of background noise in the recordings, and the first set of recordings weren't flat. Here are two short recordings of the two cabs, playing the same phrase with both on the same amp (markbass set eq flat), played next to each other. There is more but it is very noisy. However, the conditions are very similar (and distances the same) as the test on the somerset bash, so these could easily be compared with the markbass recordings. Anyway: A: [attachment=203220:SpkrA.wav] B: [attachment=203221:SpkrB.wav] [/quote] Ok the two recordings are of two cabs both fitted with the Beymas One has a 12mm wall, tubular ports and is extensively braced and the other has an 18mm wall, slot port and no bracing. Both are 50litre cabs tuned to 50Hz. I don't know which cab is which and embarrassingly I can't be sure from the recordings which is which either. I have gigged the 12mm cab extensively but only had 10mins with the 18mm cab before giving it over to Stevie. I wasn't there when the recordings were made at the Southwest bass bash. The differences aren't huge but I do have a preference. I'm not saying though until I hear what you think. If you can't open the recordings I found Windows Media Player opened them but I'm told you can copy them onto your desktop and rename them as wav files as an alternative. Though weirdly Basschat has done this for you when I used Woodinblacks post as a quote

Use the curtain pole to cross brace and stiffen the cab internally

The ply was sold as 'baltic birch' it was pretty poor quality tbh with patches in the faces and it splintered badly under the saw. My opinion is that one of the qualities that makes a good panel is high mass, so there is a compromise between the 'deadness' of the cab and being able to lift it. My Hifi cabs always use MDF for example but my preference is for 3/4 ply as a good compromise for stage gear. Building both a braced 12mm and an unbraced 18mm cab in this process was to check it wasn't ignorant prejudice on my part. I much prefer the sound of the 18mm version and the panels certainly vibrate less with high power sound. It may be that i could rearrange the bracing for better effect and I intend experimenting more but I was aiming for an easy build which didn't need sophisticated machine tools so I didn't do too much this time.

Hi everyone, although I can't make it I've arranged with Stevie for the Basschat 12" speakers to be there. Thanks to GrahamT for taking them across. Here's where the design took place if you haven't been following it http://basschat.co.uk/topic/227904-1x12-cab-design-diary/page__st__420__p__2847253__hl__12%20beyma__fromsearch__1#entry2847253

Hi Everyone. I finished the cab this morning, sorry about the wait but I had decided not to come back on until there was something to report. If you live in the SouthWest you can go and try them out at the Southwest bass bash this Sunday. Please go along if you can make it. I really want as many opinions as possible so I can learn what you want and incorporate that into future designs. The cab fits the spec you all helped to draw up but does it meet your needs??? Please please go along and try them if you can, I'm sure theres also going to be lots of other lovely gear there too and great people. http://basschat.co.uk/topic/270435-south-west-bass-bash-yes-a-real-one-sunday-18th-october/page__pid__2886424__st__30#entry2886424 I'll put up plenty of pics soon. It still need another cuple of coats of Tuffcote and a better grille but this is it. Get to the bass bash if you can

I've never even considered something like this. I really wouldn't know what I'm buying or recognise any particular luthier by name so for me i just read any ad as 'unknown make'. If that is true of other people then that's one reason for the lack of interest. I guess new they'd be out of my price bracket so there has been no point in finding out about something I'd never be able to afford. I wnder how many bargains have passed me by....

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1442840273' post='2869878'] The SM series are a blast from the past and although still good mics there are many better mics available. In fact there is an Utban Myth that some BBC sound techs prefer Behringer Mics to Shure, I must ask my friend Uli who told him that story. For value actually the Behringer XM8500 with a foam windshield/screen takes some beating. [/quote] I had the chance to A/B the Behringer with an SM58 a few years back. Not a lot in it for sound, if anything the XM was slightly brighter sounding but with a bit more handling noise, it's also a supercardioid so I'd expect better feedback rejection. It broke not long after despite looking like a well made thing, turned out someone had trimmed the internal wires too short and the solder had come away, a two minute fix but the only failure I've ever had with Behringer stuff to be fair.

[quote name='UglyDog' timestamp='1441790175' post='2861715'] One of the qualities Elixir play on is their supposed longevity compared to other brands/types. So I am going to be conducting a more long-term test, i.e. I will report back properly in a few months' time rather than give a short-term sitrep. Suffice to say that they've lasted three rehearsals and two gigs so far without any deterioration to speak of, which is what I'd expect of my usual strings! Watch this space [/quote] Well I fitted a set of Elixirs on my P, a birthday present in March, I also fitted a set of Dean Markleys (also long lasting/expensive strings) on my J. I've probably done 15-20 gigs since then and practice about an hour a day. To be fair I do most of my practice on the J esp since I fitted a J-Retro and most of the gigs with the P. I use a standard two finger picking style and never use a pick. Both sets still sound good, they sounded similar when I first set them up allowing for the different basses they are on, and I preferred the sound of the Dean Markleys at first as they were slightly more sparkly sounding. I think I'd have to say the Elixirs sound slightly better to my ears now so it looks like a win for the Elixirs in terms of longevity, though the differences are subtle and I doubt anyone else in the band would notice. Both sets are still plenty good enough to gig with. Not very scientific because of the two basses used and the J-Retro upgrade of the passive J with the Markleys which changed the way the whole set up sounds for the better. To give some context I moved from Rotosounds to Markleys because I was replacing the Roto's after 3-4 months as their sound died. The Markleys last me about a year so at double the price they work out cheaper in the long run. The Elixirs are going to have to make 18 months to be worthwhile. I don't like new Roto's but love the sound they reach a few weeks old.

Sorry, I'm going to have to miss out. Family commitments too.