Phil Starr

There really is no point in using subs for vocals. They are only providing reinforcement two octaves below any sound going into the mic. The only possible source of low frequency sound is from vibration through the floor and mic stand, handling noise or picking up sound from the drums and bass, all of which might muddy your vocal sound. Most mixers have a subsonic filter to keep these sounds out of the audio chain often at about 80Hz. Make sure these are switched on to keep energy sucking and unwanted noise from the PA. Similarly going for 15's isn't a solution, with just vocals the volume is determined by the mids and highs so more bass isn't going to make much difference. If anything you'll probably lose a little mid output and some dispersion so they'll be less loud and less clear. I'm staggered that the EV's are struggling, these are not inconsequential speakers and should be capable of going pretty loud. How loud is the rest of your band?! you'll have to spend a lot to get better than the EV's and you say money is tight. How do you know they are struggling? Do you venture out into the audience space to listen to the sound they are hearing? How do you run your vocal monitors? There are a couple of other things you could look at. Are the EV's DSP controlled and if so how is this set up? There may be some limiting circuitry which is cutting in to soon. How is your sound eq'd, a small boost to the mids might help punch through, or cut the bass and turn up, I know some of the EV's have different DSP settings for different types of music and venues so look to see if some of the other settings, if you have them, are more suitable. You could also look at using some vocal compression, this 'squashes' the sound cutting the peaks so you can bring up the average sound level without driving the PA into distortion. Compression may increase feedback problems though.

It varies from place to place across the country, how good you are and I think we're all assuming covers bands. Down here there are a lot of small rural pubs and so fees are lower. Nevertheless £200-250 for a competent band with all the right gear seems about right for a pub gig. £400 for parties or larger gigs. Weddings are more but it depends upon what they want. If they are happy to let you just get on with the usual set then it shouldn't be more than other parties but they rarely do. Usually you have to set up hours in advance, they'll use your PA for speeches so someone is stuck to the mixer all evening and you can't pack up until everyone has left. They'll usually want a say in what you play and you may have to learn a couple of new songs. You can't spoil someone's big day either so everything has to be perfect. Given the audience may range from 8-80 you'll need a wedding set. There are bands who specialise in weddings and functions, for the rest of us I'd only do a wedding if the bride and groom had heard us and liked what we do. Under these circumstances where we aren't really providing the full wedding service I'd just go for double our 'normal' fee. There is an element of supply and demand. As someone has said, if you aren't getting the bookings then you are asking too much. Start edging the price up once you have a full diary.

Don't really understand the problems some people have with start ups. Musicians generally tend to have bigger dreams (fantasies maybe) than the general population but that is also true of many established bands. Finding the right people to play with is often our biggest problem but it isn't unreasonable to expect to kiss the odd frog before finding your prince is it? Just talking to people uncovers most of the dreamers. If they are over 20 and haven't gigged regularly then you know they are just bedroom players. If they are a gigging band then you should be able to see the gigs advertised somewhere and be able to go and see them. At the very least there ought to be some websites advertising cancelled gigs. My latest band was a start up but all the other members had been gigging, for most cases for years. The singer was less experienced, but boy can she sing. Most of all the attitude at the audition was open minded and cooperative with no big egos and a couple of songs just flew. One audition to see if a project has legs? That doesn't seem to be a lot of effort to me. The things I'd now look for in a band are people who have organisational skills and someone who goes out and sells the band/gets the gigs. That's the skill in short supply. If the band has a decent set list and long list of bookings then someone has done the hard work, if not you need to find out who is going to make that happen at the audition stage unless you ae prepared to take that on yourself. Musicians are easy to find, bandleaders less so. There's plenty of warning signs. Have they booked rehearsal space, sent out setlists, suggested audition pieces, chord sheets and recordings if they are an originals band. Do they turn up on time, what's their gear like, how do they respond to suggestions? Are they interested in learning one or two of your songs? The advantage of a start up is that you can expect more of an input into the music. Join a gigging band and you get the gigs at the cost of having to learn their set, their way in a few weeks and then sticking to it for a long time. With a start up you might have a couple of months of rehearsal but with more chance of playing stuff you really enjoy. I don't think one is better but both suit some people more than others.

Most of us go through this I guess. What comes next defines us as musicians. When my first band (all friends) folded after five years I started my own band with one of my mates, this folded after a couple of years and the usual hassle over material. It's rare for any two musicians to completely agree over direction even in a covers band. I saw the writing on the wall with the second break up and joined another band with strangers which so far is looking really good. Most of the musicians in the folded bands haven't played since, hence the defining moment. Several much better musicians than me have gone back to being bedroom players. Being unwilling to compromise music means they are unlikely to play in bands again. My advice is to start looking into either building your own band or joining an existing one. It's not clear from your post but are any of your last band willing to try and make something new? If not keep a look out for bands needing a bassist. It only took me a few weeks to find a new band even in a rural area so I'd be optimistic. Good luck

Soak in warm soapy water to remove some stickers. Dry thoroughly then white spirit will do the rest.

[quote name='dincz' timestamp='1432234322' post='2779603'] I play only a 4-string but even the fundamental of the low E should drop almost 12dB with the filter on. I agree that it seems counter-intuitive. I was originally planning to mod the filter to operate at 40Hz but after hearing how little tonal difference it makes at 75Hz, decided it wasn't worth bothering. [/quote] [quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1432247146' post='2779778'] Your logic is not correct. Check Ampeg cabs. At normal volume levels most are only rated down to 40ish hz including the 810. That doesn't seem to impair their E and B string handling capabilities. [/quote] If you look at a lot of the techie posts we've been saying this for a while. A quick look at Wikipedia explains some of it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour Our ears don't hear bass very well and the sound is 10-20dB quieter at 40Hz compared with midrange frequencies. That means the bass is drowned out by the higher frequencies. Then as explained the pickups only get a fraction of the fundamental so there's another 10dB lost. The result is that you can barely hear bass fundamental. The effect is even bigger than that at 30Hz. On the other hand there are two good reasons deep bass is your enemy. One is it excites a lot of resonances in the room if you are playing live, and as it bounces off the walls you get a lot of reinforcement and cancellation effects. The second is the one you observe about speaker excursion. The speakers work so much harder to develop deep bass and end up working outside the region where they move in a linear fashion, this means the sound will distort, and ultimately the speaker will fail. I always run live with the 30Hz slider all the way down. Sealed cabs naturally roll off at about 12dB/octave and the trad 8x10 has a lot of speakers packed in a small box which boosts the 100-150Hz range making them sound 'bassy' whilst limiting the room exciting frequencies.

There's a reason why the advice varies, speakers in particular will vary hugely in their ability to turn electrical power into sound with bigger speakers generally (but not always) needing less power than small ones. More important still is the sound you are after. Boosting the bass needs a lot more power. 6dB of bass boost will need you to get an amp which is 4x as powerful for example, with most amps this is with the bass less than halfway up! Add in an octaver and the demands go up even higher, 10x the power wouldn't be unreasonable. My advice is simple, if not straightforward in practice. Aim to match the drummer in volume. If your rig will comfortably keep up with the drummer then it is loud enough. If you go louder then the drummer would need to be miked up and when this happens all the band should be going through the PA or you will sound worse than the alternatives, and you will be damaging your hearing. 100W through a reasonably sensitive 2x10 would do this, just about. 200W or bigger more efficient speakers will give you some limited headroom. Anything this size or bigger should be enough but this all assumes you have the eq set flat. This covers the amp, the next problem are the speakers. Many budget speakers have limited excursion, they can handle lots of power in the upper mids and highs but with deep bass (octavers and 5'ers) they overload at much less than their rated power. You'll need more cone area with budget speakers to avoid this . A modern alternative is to use long throw drivers (a single long throw 12 might well be able to match a drummer with the eq flat). Generally these speakers are less efficient as only part of the long coils are being driven at any one point. You'll probably want a bigger amp to get the best out of one of these. The advice here is all pretty sensible seen in this context. A 200W 2x10 combo is going to cover 50% of most people's needs and 2x12's or a few more watts will take you a bit further. The rest is down to knowing your own sound and that of your band mates. There's a few more techie details here, easily understood I hope http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/gear_maintenance/making_it_loud.html

If you are after playing covers or the pub scene generally have a look in Lemonrock. bands have to pay to have a site in there so it is populated by gigging bands from hobby bands through to semi pro. Cuts out a lot of the bedroom dreamers so you are likely to find a functioning band a bit quicker.

Just in case, here's the abstract. I love this sort of thing. [b] Abstract[/b] [color=#333132][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] In modern societies, cultural change seems ceaseless. The flux of fashion is especially obvious for popular music. While much has been written about the origin and evolution of pop, most claims about its history are anecdotal rather than scientific in nature. To rectify this, we investigate the US Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 2010. Using music information retrieval and text-mining tools, we analyse the musical properties of approximately 17 000 recordings that appeared in the charts and demonstrate quantitative trends in their harmonic and timbral properties. We then use these properties to produce an audio-based classification of musical styles and study the evolution of musical diversity and disparity, testing, and rejecting, several classical theories of cultural change. Finally, we investigate whether pop musical evolution has been gradual or punctuated. We show that, although pop music has evolved continuously, it did so with particular rapidity during three stylistic ‘revolutions’ around 1964, 1983 and 1991. We conclude by discussing how our study points the way to a quantitative science of cultural change.[/font][/color]

Bass Gear in Twyford just outside Reading?

Without details it's hard to advise on amps. Hi fi speakers may be quoted in anything from PMPO mickey mouse watts to RMS. What brand and model are they? If the sound is really distorted at low levels then something isn't working. If you try other speakers and they are OK then it is the speakers if not the amp or the sound source. If the distortion is at high levels only then you could be overloading the amp or the speakers so turn down.

I think I'm converted, always thought anything but a P. Then I saw an American Deluxe with the original style humbucker going for £500 on eBay and thought, what the heck? It needed some tlc and I still prefer the tone of all my other basses at home but in front of the band it just sounds so right. Nothing else has made it to a gig for a year now, I think it may be 'the one'.

There's a longer and more detailed discussion of some of this in General Discussion, including a response from one of the Music Group's companies

I'm with the 'concentrate on what you are playing and don't worry about the tone' camp. At most you'll need two or three tones in an evening. Audiences won't worry about your tone but if they are up dancing they won't want to wait whilst you and the guitarists change instrument and eq after every number. If you must then I'd go for something programmable so you can change tone for each song with one click and set it up at home. I use an American Deluxe P bass for gigs, just the P pup for most songs but with a bit of bridge dialed in for some songs. Having the tones on the bass helps tweaking without diverting my attention from the audience or the rest of the band. I'd say the second pup is useful for varying tone, so if you are looking for a one bass solution then whether P/J, P/bucker, twin soapbar or whatever I'd look for somethign with bridge and neck pups. I prefer a master volume/blend for live work as it helps make adjustments quickly but TBH its the last thing on my mind once the audience is there.

I'm sceptical but not cynical about Behringer, like most people I have bits and pieces of Behringer gear, 1204 mixer, EP2500 power amp a set of BD205 monitors the odd mic and probably others I've forgotten. The only problems i've had are a lead breaking on the mic and a power supply going down on one of the BD205's, replaced under guarantee. About par for the course, I've had similar problems with Harke, Ashdown, Peavey TC and others over the years but most stuff including the Behringer works pretty much without fault for years. My experience isn't a particularly huge representative sample but it wouldn't be fair to say Behringer stuff is particularly poorly made or unreliable, just built to a budget. If anything Behringer already do far too much, very similarly specced gear as they try to be all things to all people. There product range is almost as confusing as Fender's! It'd make sense to make a range of different quality products clearly branded so you know what you are buying. The proof of the pudding is in the eating of course, let's see if TC's standards fall.

Most of the Hartke dry joint problems were in the power supply, unsupported capacitors held in place by just the solder. Anything to do with the eq and cleaning the sliders is the first point of call. possibly even the switch If you are still struggling to locate the fault then get some freezer spray. It rapidly cools small components one at a time and if that sudden cooling makes the fault dramatically worse or better then you have located the little devil. Good luck

[quote name='jimcroisdale' timestamp='1430121678' post='2758036'] So I'm thinking of a super small cab that will do for an onstage monitor and something to mike up, powered by my Streamliner. Here's what I THINK I know so far...[list] [*]I understand that sealed cabs can be made much smaller than ported cabs, right? [*]I know that a sealed cab will have a more 'natural' sound and a more gentle rolloff in the low end, right? [*]I'm assuming that this will give the sound guy something good to work with, and he can add the big low end back on the desk eq, right? [*]The maths are a LOT simpler... [/list] So, with these things in mind I'm looking to build a cab for myself. Questions? What driver? Kappalite 3012HO? Deltalite II? Basslite? Others? (I don't need a tweeter) What size is realistic? Would 16" x 16" x 12" be a doable, or ultimately would I end up with something that's light, portable and useless? How small can I go? I welcome your thoughts. :-) Jim [/quote] I think the experts are being overly pessimistic. If you want to build a cab and are happy to settle for a less than optimum sound then designing and building a successful sealed cab is easier. What is right is that using winISD or any of the online programs to do the calculations for you will help you tweak your sound and just putting a speaker into a small box won't get the best out of the speaker. If you decide on a speaker someone here will suggest a cab size for you, if you go for an Eminence then there is helpful information on their published spec sheets and more on their website. Celestion are helpful and i think Fane have similar information to Eminence. [list] [*]I understand that sealed cabs can be made much smaller than ported cabs, right? [/list] Not always but for many speakers this is true[list] [*]I know that a sealed cab will have a more 'natural' sound and a more gentle rolloff in the low end, right? [/list] What is a 'natural' sound? The roll off from a 'typical' sealed cab is 12dB/octave and 24dB/octave for a typical ported cab. EQ for the slower roll off is likely to be effective but you can't eq your onstage cab much because it will run out of excursion sooner if it is sealed.[list] [*]I'm assuming that this will give the sound guy something good to work with, and he can add the big low end back on the desk eq, right? [/list] It won't make a heap of difference to the sound engineer, none at all if you are DI'ing. I've played a few times with a small monitor with the bass rolled off and the deep Bass added through the PA. I really like it, you hear the deeps from the PA anyway and it clears up the stage sound, I need to hear the rest of the band more than myself most of the time. The guitarists and singer preferred the stage sound the drummer hated it.[list] [*]The maths are a LOT simpler... [/list] Well you only have to calculate the cab volume, not the port dimensions. If you use a computer program then it calculates everything for you. If you are using formulae and a calculator then I guess this is true. The build is simpler though. The thing is that not all speakers are designed to work in sealed cabs, most bass speakers aren't so you are into looking at general purpose speakers. The critical parameter for sealed cabs is the damping, Over damped speakers will lack bass output and roll off from a high frequency, under damped speakers allow the cone to flap around giving a bloated bass output above 100Hz, Damping or Q needs to be between 0.7 (slightly larger cab, flattest response) and 1.1 (smaller cab, small but acceptable upper bass hump). The overall damping depends upon the damping built into the speaker and the damping provided by the cab. If the speaker is well damped already, usually because it has a big powerful magnet then the extra damping of the cab will mean the cab is overdamped and you will only get a very weak bass response. Look at speakers which are less well damped Qts> 0.38 as a quick way of identifying suitable candidates. Or use EBP as advised above. If you want an easier program than winISD then http://www.ajdesigner.com/speaker/ will do simple calculations for you with less information needing to be fed in. It won't let you do anything sophisticated though, just the classic TS designs. It's good enough for a basic sealed box though.

The amp will put a little over half the power out, from memory it's about 180W with this amp. The power should double into half the ohms but in practice the power supply will rarely provide enough current. You'd be unlucky to blow the speaker with this extra power if you avoid caning the amp of using huge bass boost but it is clearly a possibility and you'd need to listen out for any unexpected ditortions and be prepared to turn down. Ashdown are really helpful, why not ring or email them?

I've been planning a 1x15 along the lines of the old Altec A7 with a lower midrange/upper bass horn and a ported rear chamber. Reckon the shelved response might work well with bass.

Just so you know. You need big ports because they need to shift a certain amount of air, equivalent to the air moved by all the cones put together. Moving that much air through a tiny hole will make wind noises. The ports are there to tune the cab to something close to the resonant frequency of the speakers. Just putting in random holes might tune the cab to a frequency which is pointlessly too high or too low. You might as well not bother which is why I suggested leaving them out. If you do want to tune the cab and get a bit of extra bass then use ports the size Alex has suggested. 4" drainpipe ( actually soil pipe) is easy to cut and you can fix it in place with silicone or other mastics, even if the hole you cut is a bit iffy.

I managed to take about half a cm off the tip of my thumb last year with a bench saw, playing a gig that evening was pretty painful. I have Imodium in my kit box just in case, geting the runs is the one thing that can really stop you.

Pretty much my first port of call after I find a chord sheet. I find myself having to learn songs fairly quickly for a band. So although I'd like to develop my ear more, and that would undoubtedly be better in the long term, I'd rather turn up with a cheat bass line at the next rehearsal to enable the band to get on with learning a song than coming in with only half a bassline I'd had to work for. The worry is that I'm not developing musically as quickly as I should by taking all the shortcuts. I love performing and having a reputation for turning up with the bass line is a really good way of getting the gigs. On the down side I have to live with the knowledge I'm faking it most of the time.

Don't buy. The advice has been all good. These are reliable well made speakers but the vocal sound is poor due to the horn drivers the BW's are good enough but this is a higher price than you should be looking at in any case. For less than £200 you should be able to pick up some Yamaha S112V's or the almost identical but older and jack plug fitted S112IV's which I've seen go for little over £100 on ebay. These have a really punchy vocal sound and run with easily obtainable Eminence drivers should you get any problems. If you don't mind the extra weight the S115V's are slightly nicer sounding. Mine must be 20 years old with no problems to date. EV, JBL QSC and RCF are all good but are likely to cost more. Wharfedale EVP series are worth a look if they turn up in this price range.

[quote name='bootsy666' timestamp='1429375182' post='2750945'] Someone told me once that a 200 watt valve amp was the equivalent of a 1000watt solid state. If that's true then the vba could handle a 2000 watt cab, that's one of the reasons for making the cab 2000watts. I currently have a quad of 6550A valves in it, but u also have a set of brand new sovtec KT88 Russian valves sat in my garage waiting to be used. I wanted to hear the 6550's with this cab before changing them tho. [/quote] It isn't true. As far as the speakers are concerned the valve watts are the same as any other watts, a measure of the electrical energy going into your speakers, nothing magical about them. The reason for valve amps sounding louder is well understood, simply put valves and transistors can both be driven into overload, the loudest bits of your bass are easily 20dB (100 times) the average you are playing at so if you are playing an average 10W then the loudest bits will be distorting. With valves the distortion sounds Ok and you can turn the amp up even more, with more nice distortion. Transistor/solid state amps sound poor and worse as you turn them up from this point and so in practice you don't. The upper power is still 200W or whatever but the average power is reduced because of the horrible distortion. I'm probably one of the 'experts'. I hadn't commented because the advice you've been getting is good. Now I'm on I cant resist any more Your design is bonkers from a practical and technical point of view but looks like fun. Your speaker will work though and give you a different sound. With all those cones it is going to be very loud and very bassy sounding. There wont be as much deep bass as high bass but with a restricted top end and a fairly sizeable peak around the 100-150Hz range you won't be disappointed with the perceived response. You really aren't going to have to worry about power handling though 200W through these guys is going to be too loud for the band and audience to bear in any enclosed space.you are likely to play. That's 25W per speaker which means they'll probably outlast you and certainly outlast your hearing! The only poor advice is from Celestion, I wonder if you spoke to the Saturday staff. The ports will make almost no difference to speaker cooling as the air in them just vibrates back and to at most frequencies, very little air flow will occur when they are being used so no worthwhile cooling will happen. The ports are there to tune the cab, since you've not done anything else technically correct why bother with an added complication which won't cool your speakers. I'd block the ports. If you are going to keep them then put them on the back and make them big, at least as big as Alex (I think) said. Lots of 4" pipes. Some 'experts' forget that a technically optimised speaker isn't necessarily going to sound the best. You are going to end up with a huge speaker that will sound like almost nothing else but be a talking point at every gig you take it to, people will come just to see the mad speaker, not a bad thing for any band. you could doubtless achieve a very similar sound at a fraction of the cost with a couple of 15's in a well designed cab using eq for the tone and a more powerful amp but this is a fun project which will give you a massive retro sounding cab, if you can afford it and are happy to move the thing then enjoy. Just because you can

To be fair there will be an interaction between a cab and the room acoustics. Cabs will work better in some rooms than others. I've an old Peavey 15 that sounds just magnificent in our tiny practice room but very ordinary anywhere else. My Harke kickback sounds great in my home and the 1x12's I'm gigging (which normally sound great) sound poor in the same room. You really need to try cabs in a variety of spaces to make a meaningful comparison. You may not be able to get 'that' sound elsewhere.