Phil Starr

I've used the Stagepas 300 in the past. Now upgraded as the 400i and I'm using the Wharfedale Titan 12 actives. You'll pay more than £300 new for them though. Both are great, the yamaha will only reach 113dB, loud enough for an acoustic act or as monitors for a band. Really neat, easy to set up system with a decent tone and just the facilities you want. The 600 will give you a little more volume but think loud acoustic act rather than rock band. Yamaha reliability is fantastic. The Wharfedales are better sounding and will go a lot louder though they don't handle bass particularly well as the soft plastic cabs resonate at high levels, great vocal sound though. I use them with a little Alesis mixer though you could get something like a Behringer 1204 or any no of 'me too mixers. the Wharfedale EVP12 cabs are basically titans in a wooden box and much better but heavier as a result, they turn up at good prices second hand. The Titans are an easy one hand carry. There are a lot of plastic cabbed 12 +horn active PA cabs around too so plenty of choice but beware although the sound isn't usually at all bad a lot of them don't go very loud without distorting so don't buy without listening at high levels. I'm recommending the Wharfedales because I use them myself. For your use I'd strongly advise matching active speakers with a passive mixer. Failing that an active mixer with passive speakers. Keeping it simple cuts down any chance of things going wrong and keeps it easy to set up and take down. Don't buy the Peavey's, they are reliable but the vocal sound is so poor it disqualifies them IMO. Nothing wrong with the Black Widow bass drivers but those horn drivers are truly awful.

The coils in your pickups act as inductors and this limits the high frequencies. For any inductor the resistance of the coil effectively rises with increasing frequency, the more coils in your PUP the greater the inductance and the lower the cut off point comes in. This is why the heavily overwound PUPs sound 'dark' However our hearing is very sensitive in the kHz range and you will hear a difference between a cab with the tweeter on and off even at 5kHz unless you have rolled off the treble elsewhere. Remember though that we are talking about bass cabs, there are all sorts of technically 'incorrect'/non flat designs that work well precisely because of their frequency irregularities. Bass amps rarely have flat responses, try playing an iPod through your bass amp if you don't believe me , and I've just fitted a J-Retro pre amp to my bass which sounds lovely precisely because it isn't flat either. Having said that anything over 8-10k is pretty pointless, I suspect this is a cab you would choose because of it's looks.

Just bought a J-Retro from Richard. He delivered it in person. Lovely guy, great to deal with and the J-Retro is fab.

That'll be another thread, but in the words of Blue Peter once the 12 is published i'll be saying, 'and here is the one I made earlier' Just to tease a little more we also tried out a 1x15 with the 3015HO and a Deltalite today

[quote name='Thunderpaws' timestamp='1439996354' post='2847400'] Any sound clip comparison for this most recent test. I am particularly interested having a 210 focus providing the sound for my Genz Benz Streamliner 600. [/quote] Well the Streamliner sounded amazing through the 2x10 design I have here. I recorded the sound on a little Olympus recorder I have here, if they are any good I'll put them up.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1439987491' post='2847271'] I think - no, I am pretty sure I know what it is we are hearing. It's not 'mid peaks' we are hearing, more mid presence. Its a lack of deep (sub) lows and rounded off top end that gives the sense of a prominent mid range - especially when the lil' chap is placed on the floor and we stand over it. The effect I have found to be similar on the odd cabinet I have reviewed that allows the ability to turn off a tweeter. This appears to be less prominent on a cabinet that has a naturally baked in scooped tone (either through speaker, cabinet design or both.) So, I'd suggest that this speaker is actually doing a good job of reproducing frequencies throughout the mid lows, mid range and low mids, but it's natural roll off gives the impression of having a mid boost. This would seem to support my feeling that this speaker would be great as a mid-bass driver in a multi-driver set up. This is of course outside the remit of this project. Thumbs up for the sensitivity through the mid range though. I do like that this cabinet and speaker combination offers a really nice fatness all the way up the G string of my bass, rather than the notes disappearing in an EQ's scoop. [/quote] I'm hoping that this is about right. A lot depends upon what you call mids of course, the two octaves from say 250-1000Hz or from 1000-4000Hz. The cab I sent you had the lower tuning so the bass rolls off long and slow which would really exaggerate that sort of effect. The 50Hz ports should improve things a little I hope, nothing toodramatic but a little more warmth. Glad you like the fatness on the higher strings, that's the advantage of the extended high end but cutting out the tweeter.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1439987604' post='2847273'] Sorry, just felt the need to say that. [/quote]

Quick update, just spent a couple of hours playing with speakers and basses with GrahamT of this parish. What a lovely guy. Anyway amongst other things we compared the Basschat 12 with a Genz Benz focus 12, the first time I've been able to AB with a commercial cab. Volume levels were very similar. Surprisingly the Genz had a prominent upper mid compared to the Beyma loaded cab (with the tweeter turned off by the way) as well as a bass peak in the 100Hz region the Beyma going deeper and tracking the bass more accurately but the Genz having a pleasing warmth to it. The Beyma was much more even in sound across the strings and frets. We tried the speakers with a Harke HA3500 and a Genz Streamliner 600 and the influences on the sound of the two cabs were pretty clear with both amps. I'm not sure where this thing about the mid prominence of the Basschat design is coming from, I've heard it and so have Stevie and Dood but it doesn't show in the measurements and didn't show in this test either. I'm hoping to get back to the measurement room with Stevie to work out what we are looking at.

Compliment definitely. I'd settle for that. Two of the audience for us on Sat came up at the end and compared us favourably with other cover bands 'because our rhythm was just so much more'. I have to say drummist and myself just glowed. Praise for the bass doesn't happen very often so just enjoy it. Well done

Measurements taken at Glastonbury a few years ago showed the drummers experienced an average sound level of about 103dB. That would have been from the whole band but I would guess mainly from their own drums. They would be less than 1m from their drums and sound levels fall by 6db for every doubling of the distance. This ties in fairly well with your figures. Basically drums are bloody loud, your drummer may be at the top end but not exceptional. The damage/time limits you give are different and stricter I think than EU regulations about H&S sound level restrictions at work, but this is an inexact science and very dependant upon frequency in any case. I'm not sure this helps in any way. I think your measurements show your drummer is loud but not in any freakish way and that the sound levels your band produce would damage your hearing if you don't wear earplugs. I think you knew this anyway, but asking your drummer to be quieter than other drummers and everyone else to turn down by similar amounts is tricky in my experience. Really interesting measurements though. I wish you luck.

You've no idea how reassuring this is guys. Funnily enough I asked this on a guitar forum and they remember everything, forever, never make a mistake

[quote name='Sean Fairchild' timestamp='1438274578' post='2833172'] Dear All, Hello fellow bassists! I'm on the Experience Engagement team with MUSIC Group, which includes BUGERA, and I just wanted to drop in to clarify the power ratings we use on the VEYRON heads, as well as our other amplified products. As has been indicated here, we rate our amps based on peak power output rather than RMS. To paraphrase our CEO, Uli Behringer, on the matter, this is because we, like many manufacturers, have found the traditional way of measuring RMS with a sine-wave is not necessarily the best predictor of actual amplifier performance. Since maximum power measurements are not standardized across the industry, to assume the “RMS" of the Veyron amp to be 500W based on the 2000W rating would be incorrect. You can read a full explanation of our CEO's thoughts on the topic in this thread on SoundForums.net: [url="https://soundforums.net/threads/4299-Uli-Behringer-of-The-Music-Group-Q-amp-A?p=32194&viewfull=1#post32194"]https://soundforums....ull=1#post32194[/url] Thanks all, and let me know if you have any other questions about these amps or our other products. [/quote] Hi Sean, first of all welcome to BassChat, it's always great to engage with people from the industry. Music Group people are popping up all over the place and I hope it is a trend that will continue. I hope that you are part of a process that feeds back to your design and marketing teams so that we customers can get the products they want at the prices you tend to offer. [quote name='Sean Fairchild' timestamp='1439225034' post='2841022'] In regards to RMS and a "level playing field", well that's actually what that whole post I linked to was attempting to explain; that RMS doesn't, in and of itself, create a level playing field - it has just gotten to be a commonplace rating, albeit imperfect. If you haven't checked out our CEO's thoughts on the matter in the post of his I linked to, I would encourage you to do so, to further understand the company's point of view on the matter of power ratings. I'm unable to give you an RMS rating, because my understanding is that we don't use that metric to measure output whatsoever, so that information just isn't available from our technical group for me to give to you. [/quote] Well RMS is of course open to manipulation, but it remains the best basis for comparison for amplifiers particularly if one of the industry standards for measurement are adopted and the standard used is published with the ratings. RMS isn't just a bit of advertising speak it is a mathematical calculation used in the design of any equipment using alternating voltages. It is inconceivable that your engineers would have started the design of an amplifier without having a design spec, and the supply rail voltage and current capability of the power supply and critical components would have been decided on this basis. It is vanishingly improbable that they wouldn't have bench tested the design before moving to production and that production units are not regularly tested to see that they meet spec. Your engineers know the RMS output of these amps intimately. [quote name='Guinness21' timestamp='1437179547' post='2824339'] To anyone curious, I emailed Bugera asking what the rms for this head was. They said it's 500w at 4 ohms. [/quote] There you are Bugera do know. [quote name='Sean Fairchild' timestamp='1438274578' post='2833172'] As has been indicated here, we rate our amps based on peak power output rather than RMS. To paraphrase our CEO, Uli Behringer, on the matter, this is because we, like many manufacturers, have found the traditional way of measuring RMS with a sine-wave is not necessarily the best predictor of actual amplifier performance. Since maximum power measurements are not standardized across the industry, to assume the “RMS" of the Veyron amp to be 500W based on the 2000W rating would be incorrect. You can read a full explanation of our CEO's thoughts on the topic in this thread on SoundForums.net: [url="https://soundforums.net/threads/4299-Uli-Behringer-of-The-Music-Group-Q-amp-A?p=32194&viewfull=1#post32194"]https://soundforums....ull=1#post32194[/url] [/quote] [quote name='Sean Fairchild' timestamp='1439399391' post='2842512'] I appreciate that we all want the ability to compare items to each other in the best way possible, and I hope that some convention that's more of a true test of an amp's power. I'm certainly not trying to confuse the issue, my point in chiming in was that it's not accurate or fair to say that the VEYRON amps are simply XXX-Watt RMS heads. Thanks for your understanding. Thanks all for the questions, I'll keep endeavoring to assist as I can [/quote] You see this isn't true, and I'm not accusing you personally of anything other than good faith, particularly as you say you are not a technical person but your company doesn't publish any details we can use to research your products. You may not be trying to confuse the issue but Bugera are. You refer to Uli Behringer as setting the policy but that isn't right either. Behringer amps, like yours are marketed on inflated peak power ratings but their website and literature are models of good practice in giving plenty of good information. RMS power ratings are given at stated distortion levels and details of the testing procedures are all available freely from Behringer. Before I wrote this I researched this amp, in all your ads, videos and sales pitches you repeatedly claim you have a 2000W amp, but as we know from your own technical people it is a 500W amp (with probably some limitations from the power supply that means this itself won't be continuous). Bugera are the only part of Music Group that does this. It looks like you have something to hide, that you can't be trusted. This is slightly bonkers, a 500W amp with what seems from the reviews to be well built and with a decent sound at a price which is as good or better than anything else in it's class isn't something to be embarrassed about. It's an interesting amp you could be hampering with poor marketing. The only reason for giving peak figures is to confuse the customer. I can see why in the short term it is in the interests of a company to twist reality but if you want to build trust and a long term relationship then you need to get back to your marketing teams and get the data you have out there. Your customers clearly want this, other parts of Music Group know that and give the information that Bugera keep hidden. Jennie Innie wasn't being rude, just saying what we are all thinking.

I wonder if there's a difference between the USA and here. Accepting that the Venn diagram would show we have more in common than differences of course. Not many British musicians would say they were only in it for the money. There's a tendency over here to value the music highly, which seems strange sometimes if it's a covers band but then playing stuff you don't enjoy for a tiny rate per hour isn't very motivating. I also wonder if we Brits are just natures amateur enthusiasts. Me, I love performing, I'd take a poorly paid gig or do a charity event for free if I could guarantee a large enthusiastic audience and I've no problem playing Mustang Sally if it's what the audience want. So for me it has to be fun primarily, the music is part of that but good company is very important, or at least a positive and professional attitude. Gigging is a must, although start ups in gestation can be fun too, but at least you have to hit the open mic/jamming sessions right up front. My current band suits me fine, we're all pretty much interested primarily in giving the audience a good time, the guitarist is the only prima donna and we gig regularly and it's building up. We're playing rock covers and I wouldn't go to listen to a band doing our set in a million years but hey, it's fun to play and the audiences are usually up dancing from the first few songs. Having said that the whole band have to take the music seriously, practice at home, rehearsal is for rehearsing and working on arrangements not learning the song. If I mess up then I'd go away and work hard on that bit and I'd expect others to do the same. I don't mind lowish skill levels so long as you're trying to improve and take it seriously, we all start somewhere but I'd rather work with people who have a positive attitude than a lazy talent. My bands have always been more or less democratic, I'm often the bandleader in terms of organisation but I'm not the greatest musician and I don't sing so the musical side is pretty much shared. Not sure how I'd respond to the sort of band leader you describe Blue. On the one hand just having to think about bass might be fun but I can't handle doing things badly just because the boss says so especially in what for me is my social life.

Lot's of sympathy from me, you know what you need but when you are young you just can't afford it. You'll just have to do the gig with whatever is there. Until you have your own gear you have no choice. Music is full of dreamers and very few really good organisers so this isn't anything new. In my student days I used to organise this sort of event but would get one of the bands to share their gear and that would be set up on stage and used to sound check, they got the best sound and the best slot in return for their generosity. If anyone else wanted to use their own stuff they had to fit in around the stuff on stage. It is unprofessional not to be able to provide your own gear, but you have to get there somehow and turning down gigs wont help. You can get a usable backline amp for probably £100 if you aren't too fussy. Make it a priority but in the meantime play all the gigs you can and smile sweetly at the crap. keep the enthusiasm and deal with problems one at a time. Good luck.

The good news is that capacitors have got smaller so higher rating capacitors still fit, in fact they may b a lot smaller so you'll need to plan for how to physically support them. Always go for higher voltage and look to match the capacitance reasonably closely unless you really know what you are doing and understand exactly what function the cap is performing in the circuit. However as has been said 20% tolerance isn't unusual. The values now usually follow standard E12 or E24 values designed for resistors http://www.logwell.com/tech/components/resistor_values.html. You shouldn't have trouble finding a 39uF for the 40uF.

My need would be for something foolproof and simple, I'm already running the sound whist playing bass, singing and trying to work the audience. If they are up dancing we try and have no gaps between songs, maybe 5-10 secs every third song. I don't need the lights as a distraction. The current four switch controllers are great except for two things, scrolling through dozens of unused programs to reach a new scene relying on a confusing display the other side of the stage and the fact they are set up for DJ's rather than bands. Everything is rather frantic and even slow fades and strobes can't be slow enough for a band where the band not the lights is what you'd like to be displaying. Something where you could pre program say, half a dozen scenes which could be dialled up with just a couple of stomps would be great. An expression pedal would be a bonus too.

[quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1439241500' post='2841291'] I took an acoustic with me when Mrs Axe and I holidayed near Axminster a couple of years ago, and we had a thoroughly grand evening at Elijah's 'Howl' open mic at the Ax Inn. [/quote]My home patch, we 'grew' a band there, learned three songs a week betwen 7 and 9.00 then went and performed them at the Howl open mic, then played our first paid gig at the Axe once we had a full set prepared. Wonder if you were there at the same time. This week coincidentally Elijah is moving the open mic to Cloakham Lawns in Axminster, the Axe is going to just run one open mic a month on a Thurs.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1439207126' post='2840781'] Sounds like you had a much better time than we did. The current mrs discreet and I went on a two-week mid-life crisis group relationship-counselling holiday in the Lake District. What a disaster! We were sent packing after I got my banjo out at the dinner table. Needless to say we won't be going back there for our holiday again next year. [/quote] Oh the dilemma, four string or five string.

Just got back from a busman's holiday in St Ives, the Cornish one. Went with an old Uni friend and we took guitar and bass with us and did 4 open mics in a week. We had a really great time, the local musicians made us welcome, we even got invited along to jam sessions and we could have done more. In the summer there's music on somewhere every night. We heard some good stuff too. The audiences were really appreciative, a mixture of locals and holiday makers and we had a great time talking music and playing. My idea of a perfect holiday. Wonder how many others take instruments with them on holiday and grab the chance to entertain.

I really wasn't that impressed with the Yamaha's, they didn't sound great on vocals sounding harsh and lacking detail. The RCF's are so much better it is worth stretching to them if you can. There's an offer on at PMT http://www.pmtonline.co.uk/rcf-art422a-mkii-active-speakers.html making them just affordable. I say that as a bit of a fan of Yamaha and someone whose PA is mainly Yamaha. I just think the DXR's are a bit ordinary. Reliability is a given though. I'm another who would push for smaller speakers and adding a sub later. 15's can lead to problems in the crossover area which is often in the middle of what you need for great vocals and 15's are bloody big to be on stands,

iME metronome good drum machine better. You need to do some of your practice with a metronome/drum machine esp as a beginner. Seven years on I still use it to tighten up my timing every now and again or with a tricky run. I use them if we are recording too, just to tighten up and save wasted time and expense. the drum machines are much better, much closer to the real thing and metronomes are pretty boring. Get yourself a Zoom B1ON which is a dirt cheap multi effects pedal. It has a headphone amp built in and crucially a drum machine and metronome as well as a tuner. Runs for days on rechargeable batteries too. Great for practice with headphones or you can put it through your amp. I paid about £35 for mine

Hi Garry, the dimensions are here somewhere but I couldn't find them amidst the hundreds of posts either. I'm down in Cornwall this week on holiday. Playing music with an old uni friend mainly so I don't have measurements with me, but I did bring paper and stuff to do some sketches for you. So long as there aren't too many music pubs in St Ives I should have an update soon.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1438428084' post='2834439'] I think I know the answer to this already, but I'd be keen to find out which brands in particular have been tested. I often read about the cheaper 1u power amplifiers having problems delivering their rated power output in one way or another. Either that manufacturers are telling porky pies, or that under extreme load the amplifier doesn't have sufficient cooling in order to keep it running under load. - Output sags after sometimes milliseconds or anything up to a minute of having to work hard. So, I know that bass signal requires lots of power in the lows and I also know that just because we have a 1000W amp it absolutely isn't running at 1000W all the time (if at all) and the chances of a continuous bass signal for any more than 30 seconds is also very rare. (Unless I suppose the amps are being used for other instruments as well including bass synths playing long notes?) My question is this - I suppose it's all about headroom. If you have an amplifier that on paper is capable of 2500W RMS in to 4 Ohms and in tests it is only capable of peaks of 2000W in the real world AND under hard load it drops down to say 1800W RMS continuous, does that then translate to an 1600W RMS amplifier that will never have any problems with delivering a big fat signal all the time? To take it a step further - using a 3000W rated power amplifier that only ever has to deliver an absolute maximum of 1000W seems like a logical thing to do, especially as there are some 'cost conscious' models on the market. You could buy two of those and still have change for the cost of a premium unit such as PXN or Powersoft? [/quote] There are essentially three limits to an amplifiers power output. The voltage it can swing, the current it can provide and the heat it can dissipate. In any given amp one of these will be the important limiting element. (I'm ignoring any protection circuits or DSP here) There are lots of ways to measure and calculate an amps output even if you stick to rms. they range from just measuring the voltage swing and calculating the power that voltage would drive through 8ohms to connecting the amp to a dummy resistor and running sine waves through it for a week and measuring the temperature rise. Different amps work differently so can scre better in some tests than others. It's relatively easy to switch huge voltages so class D amps score well here. Since in most applications the power is only needed for a fraction of a second it makes no sense to put in a huge power supply so this is often the limit. With transistor amps high voltage devices are more expensive and the transistors are prone to thermal runaway so heat is the problem even if the power supply is big enough. Valve amps were usually limited by current, not least because all the power would go out through the output transformer. So, a watt is still a watt but there is a lot of room for confusion and even when standard tests and rms watts are used there will be amps that seem louder than others. The other aspect of this though is the speaker. There is no single drive unit that can handle 1000W continuously at all frequencies, and if you use 1000W through multiple drivers then the sound levels developed are going to be so high as to be unusable on stage. These sorts of powers are only useful for PA arrays safely suspended way above the band and audiences heads. To answer one of your questions. A 3000W rated amp limited by heat and power supply to1600W continuous could be treated as a 1600W amp except it could also put 3000W through your speakers for long enough to damage them. In fact real world speakers rated at, say, 800W rms 1600W peak probably can't handle 200W at some frequencies. We are are all going to have to get used to class D amp ratings. Affordable power is now effectively unlimited, there are a few problems with power supplies but we are going to have to decide to be careful about what powers we wish for.

Not really, it slightly reduces the size of the baffle. It is intended to make it out of thicker ply to keep the construction simple. However Its up to constructors to add whatever bracing they want, that's the joy of home building. There's already enough data here for anyone to build the cab if they already have basic carpentry skills.

The prototype back only has the 'vanes' shown in the photo, they line up with the other cross braces so could be braced against each other, but whilst prototyping I like to gain access through the back. Like all small cabs there isn't anywhere to brace to on the baffle as the speaker and ports take up most of the front