Phil Starr

Crackling is likely to come from damaged pots or connectors, poorly soldered joints or cracks in the circuit boards or from the breakdown of components with electrolytic capacitors going first usually but not always. there are safety issues and you would need to check the power supply caps are discharged before fiddling around inside the amp. there are several thousand connections inside the amp and resoldering all of them is more likely to end up with you creating other problems especially if there are surface mounted components. You will need a specialist soldering iron with a very fine tip and thermostatic temperature control. You can often find the fault using a freezer spray but even this is a moderately skilled job, if you can read a circuit diagram and can solder then fine but if not you will probably struggle. It depends upon you, if you are happy to spend long evenings learning loads of new skills then what have you got to lose, if you want an amp that works then you will have to pay someone who has spent the long evenings learning this stuff.

This is all getting a bit unreal. When I used to make speakers I paid rent on a workshop, paid bills, bought machine tools etc etc. There's labour costs including the fact that only a fraction of your time is spent making speakers, You have to factor in design time, marketing effort, paperwork dealing with customers etc.etc. You don't go to a good restaurant and expect to pay for just the ingredients, you know that a team of highly skilled people have spent all day prepping ingredients to serve a couple of hundred meals and that the posh surroundings don't come cheap. there's probably nothing to cooking the meal that you couldn't do at home. It would just be a lifetime's training to reach the skill level needed. You probably could build a cab like the Barefaced for £75 but calculate how long it takes and add in the labour costs (what do you pay your plumber or to get your car fixed) and you'll realise there isn't a lot of profit in that £450. You'll need to sell a lot of speakers to make a living.

I'd forgotten this thread. First of all yes i would definitely port the cab. Your amp will overload the 125's but this is more due to over excursion than the thermal load. Having said that they suit your cab a little better. In practice it depends upon how you use them. I've used two with a 600W amp but I tend to leave the bass flat or even cut a little and I don't play in a very loud band. I can drown out the drummer and so it is plenty loud enough for me. If you use a lot of bass boost or are heavy on the volume there is a small risk. How easy would it be to get replacements? If you wnt to be idiot proof the 300's take you well beyond the thermal limits and with the extra air in your cab the speakers are less likely to go beyond the excursion limits. They are going to have an extended bass with a slow roll off in this cab so they might be a bit 'polite' sounding though the bass will be clean and deep. If it helps I've been gigging a lot with the 300's in a 2x10 but I'm swapping them out for the 125's to get a little more character. The 300's are cleaner and will be going into a pair of wedges.

Hi Lawrence, the difference in Xmax isn't that great with the different measuring techniques, I've been developing some cabs for 15" deltalites with 4.2mm Xmax and with some cabs I'm getting excursion limiting at 35W at some frequencies. I'm kind of with BFM on this one, With only two 10" speakers Xmax of 2mm is a potential problem, even if it is 2,6mm in real money. The high resonance is also an issue, though not necessarily a deal breaker. If Fs is 73 then in a cab it will be higher, probably a whole octave over E or more. There will be a hump between 100-150Hz somewhere to compensate but this will give the speaker that sound which so many commercial cabs have. If what you want is that particular colour to your sound then it isn't a problem, in many ways it is the old-school sound. If the OP wants that sound then great but he should know what he will get with the Celestions when there are other more neutral speakers at that price point. That Sica is awful though.

On mine there's a speaker jack deep inside the back next to the power socket which connects the internal speaker to the amp. You could unplug this and plug into any speaker of 4ohms or higher. If you used a Hartke 4x10 with the same speakers in it you should get an extra 6dB using the same power from the amp, equivalent to turning up 2 or three notches. I'd only really do this if I was going to upgrade anyway or if I was able to borrow a spare speaker from someone. If you were looking to upgrade anyway you could buy a cab first and just use the Hartke as a head until you had the funds to buy what you wanted. But, yes I'd look to either buy a bigger amp for gigging or decide I was going to go through the PA, the Harke will do fine as a stage monitor if you really like the sound but it needs some PA backup.

Don't go for the 100W Celestion it has a smaller magnet and isn't really going to be suitable for your cab. Do you have to have an 8 ohm cab? A 4ohm cab means you can use 8ohm drive units and there is a wider choice available for you. I cant find that exact model on Celestions web site. the BL200X (8ohms) gives an Xmax of 4mm but at a lower sensitivity than you give. It may be worth contacting Ashdown and finding out what they would charge for repalcement speakers. Rumour is that they are not too expensive and you would get the sound of the new speakers you tried if you use the same drivers.

You kind of need to give more details, is price a factor? do you have a budget in mind? how about size and weight? some speakers are more suited to compact cabs than others. One of the things you seriously need to look at is Xmax, basically how far the speakers can move before the coil exits the magnet. There are plenty of speakers out there (eminence and celestion amongst them) which will handle 600W of heat but only 100W of deep bass because they are excursion limited. I haven't time tonight to look anything up but maybe you could give a few more details of what you are looking for.

I've got the kickback 10. Neither of these cabs will go terribly loud. You are pushing only 120W through a relatively small cheap speaker. They are excursion limited and you can see the cone working like crazy. At low frequencies they will move beyond their recommended limits (Xmax) and 'fart out' Probably best to turn down if this happens, it won't get any louder anyway and you will break the speaker fairly quickly. You say you like a warm tone, I suspect you are using some bass boost, even a little bass boost means the speaker will overload more quickly and turning to 3 o'clock will halve the volume available. Shoving your amp back against the wall will give you some natural bass boost and pushing it right into a corner even more. If you do this you can cut the bass on the amp and get more volume before it distorts. I would only expect a kickback to match a quiet to medium drummer in a small room, they really won't give rock volumes at a gig. Plugging in a better speaker will give you a lot more potential volume but you can use them for gigging. I run mine with bass cut on stage and use the DI out into the PA where I cut the top and boost the bass. This gives me a nice clean sound on stage and kicked back I can hear really well. The audience hear a really full sound from the mix of backline and PA. I like this set up because it stops most of the bass feeding into the vocal mics and takes up less space. I retain the tone shaping on the Kickback which I quite like.

Ok the speaker has a coil inside the magnet which is what makes the cone move when the amp pushes electricity through it. The coil has a resistance because uncoiled it is a long thin bit of wire and thin wire resists electricity. Coils do something else though they have inductance, they resist the passage of high frequencies and the higher the frequency the more they resist. So to work out the total resistance you add the two together, resistance and inductance and this gives the speakers [b]impedance [/b]which is what the manufacturers give as 4,8, or 16 ohms. This means the impedance is always bigger than the resistance you measure. Actually as it varies with frequency an 8ohm speaker may be less than 8 ohms at one frequency and 80 ohms at another. If you look the specs of drive units they usually say [b]nominal[/b] 8 ohms. If you look at a graph of impedance you'll see what I mean [url="http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Kappalite_3015LF.pdf"]http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Kappalite_3015LF.pdf[/url] If you have two 6ohm resistance speakers then they are 8ohm units and the cab is probably 4ohms or it could be 16ohms.

You need to think about what use you are going to put them through, just vocals or will the band be fully mixed? FWIW I use Yamaha S112V's and i'm pretty happy with them The bass is OK (but I wouldn't want to put the bass through the PA without the bass bins) The horn is a real gem though and vocals really cut through. I've not heard any better vocal sound from bands using gear in this sort of price bracket. Worth a read [url="http://www.performing-musician.com/pm/dec09/articles/pabuyersguide.htm"]http://www.performing-musician.com/pm/dec09/articles/pabuyersguide.htm[/url] You probably know all this but [url="http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/gear_maintenance/a_guide_to_live_sound_speakers_and_amps.html"]http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/gear_maintenance/a_guide_to_live_sound_speakers_and_amps.html[/url]

I've used the mixers and the EP power amps and had no trouble at all. Talking to some of the dealers after sales support is almost non-existent though. Thomann's support might be worth having here. I once played through a behringer 2x10 combo. Sounded awful. I think i'd avoid cheap speakers generally though, too much of the cost of a speaker is down to materials for you to be able to make a cheap one without cutting corners

It may also be a problem with those speakers. 4x10's will always be bass heavy and top end light because of the way the multiple drivers work together. Even slightly to one side and the top from one speaker will cancel the sound arriving a fraction of a second later from another speaker. Unless you have the speakers angled so they are pointing directly at your ears you'll not hear most of your top end. It's really unlikely you aim the speakers at your drummer so he isn't going to get any of your top. Adding an extra 15 (also very directional) is only going to make things worse. You can test this at your next practice by resting the 4x10 against something so it points at your ears and the 15 so it points at the drummers ears. That doesn't mean the other posts aren't true of course, it may be eq etc etc, maybe a little of everything.

This is either a wind up or you are seriously richer than the rest of us. If I had £1500 to spend on gear for home use most of it would go on a bass which would give me much more pleasure to own than a nice amp. I use a Hartke kickback 10 which cost me £125 and sounds great in a small room. That leaves £1375 towards the dream bass. If you already have a bass fund (£5,000?) then my dream amp would be the AER Amp One which is small, heavy and sounds like a dream. It will also do gigs if you change your mind. About £1,000. Wish I had your problems.

Just a thought, the head isn't the only thing controlling your sound. The bass and the speakers will have more effect than the amp. Have you tried the ABM with other speakers, if not it might be worth taking it into the shop with you and trying a range of speakers with your amp, if you are thinking of spending Ampeg money they should be pretty helpful. Good luck in your search.

I'm glad its working out Steve. There are two possible benefits to doing the ports properly. The noise from the ports, which so far you haven't noticed and also the tuning. To get maximum bass volume you need to tune the port to the speaker and you have now changed the speaker. It works the same way it does on a bass. Pluck an E string fretted at the 5th and the A string vibrates because they have the same resonant frequency, but this only works when the bass is in tune. If your port isn't in tune with the speaker the air inside won't vibrate any more than the A string if it is out of tune and you won't get any output from the port. If you give us the inside dimensions of the cab we can tell you if there is anything to be gained by re tuning the cab.

Reading all this tells me I'm a total malcontent or just unlucky in love. My Jazz bass is lovely to play but I can't get it to sound right, the bass on mine just keeps on going down and there's plenty of clean top to play with but it just seems too characterful for me, however I EQ it just invades the mix and drives the rest of the band out. I've tamed it with flats for the time being but ther is little love there even if she is a looker. I've just bought a Gibson Thunderbird (well it was cheap). Gibson are insane. How could they build such a wonderful sounding instrument and give it that lovely neck and then stick on a body that has nowhere sensible to put the strap. Thunderbird players aren't really all posers, they a wrestling with a guitar that is constantly trying to dash itself to pieces on the floor. The only one I really love is my starter bass, A Cort Action IV which more than matches the jazz for action but sadly doesn't sound good enough with the band, at home though I keep sneaking back to it. Sooo comfortable.

There's a few practical questions to be answered here before you should pick an amp. Is it weight, ease of carrying or bulk which is the problem or a combination of all three? Without a car an amp you can put in your gig bag and a small speaker which is a one handed carry makes sense as it is easy to beg a lift from a band mate if your stuff is small. If it is absolute weight then the AER might be out, it is tiny but fairly dense. Can you go through the PA? This is critical, if you can then your 'amp' becomes just an onstage monitor and you can dramatically scale down. How long term are you thinking? is this a temporary solution to fit your current band or something that you expect to play for years with possibly different bands and at a wide variety of venues? I'll give you a for instance, I've got a 600W Ashdown with a collection of 12's,15's and 2x10's. I use a Hartke kickback10 for rehearsal. About three months ago we were playing in a tiny pub so I took the Hartke and went through the PA. The sound was better for the audience, the sound for the band on stage was better by a much bigger margin. Because the Hartke was only really doing the mids and highs with the thunder coming from the PA I could hear my own articulation much more than usual and played better. I haven't moved my cabs since and i'll only keep them against the days we do outside gigs. The freedom to walk to the car with guitar in one hand and amp in the other is just total liberation. If you can't use the PA then the classD/2x112 solution looks good, you might get away with one speaker only at smaller venues especially if you go for something reasonably loud. Two 12's will solve a lot of the weight problem but not the bulk one. It is probably out of your budget but the AER amp one is the ultimate solution. They are tiny and the sound is genuinely immense in any normal venue, There's some very clever, well worked design going on there.

there is something very holier than thou about the people telling us to just 'develop our ear', just a touch of arrogance. Of course in an ideal world we'd all be able to read music, play scales sing in perfect pitch and be able to improvise in 11/4 time etc Guess what some of us have cloth ears, others have jobs and families and other commitments, for some of us it is just a hobby we enjoy. If tabs help us on the way then what is the harm, actually if they help people get started then that's more than OK it's brilliant and the sometimes inaccurate tabs are done by people who are kind and generous enough to give their mite to strangers. Come to think of it who decided being able to read music notation is fab and reading tab is for thickies? Rant over, sorry. Actually you are allowed to copy small parts of copyrighted material for private study. As far as I know this has never been tested in court for tabs so how much constitutes a small part is completely unclear. Is it just a riff or could you copy the whole part for a single instrument? I feel sorry for UG, as the biggest player in the market they are such an obvious target for the big music publishers/copyright holders they had to do a deal. 911 is just a crawler I found all the 12 versions of Nutbush City Limit chords are the same (incorrect) version I put on UG several years ago interesting that one claims to be a piano piece and some are rated 5* and others 3*!!! Actually most of the tabs on 911 are found on other crawler sites so I guess each time one of the sites finds a tab on 911, 911 will log that as a new version a nd eventually the internet will crash under the combined weight of billions of incorrect Nutbush chords

As you are an electrician I'll assume you know about watts,volts amps and ohms law. the trouble is that speakers and amps aren't rated in the same way because they don't work the same way and the processes by which they fail are different.. Excluding old age speakers fail in two ways. They can be driven so hard that the coil leaves the magnetic field and suffers mechanical damage when it returns, in any case it will sound crap when it reaches this stage. this is the excursion limit Bill talks about and is a real problem with bass speakers. It isn't usually mentioned in any of the cab makers specs. The second and probably most common cause of failure is burning out. With 300W going through a tiny copper wire it gets hot (200C isn't unusual) and eventually the materials in the construction of the voice coil break down. This is the thermal rating, the 600W that Orange rate their cab. The problem is in measurement and interpretation. You can't just feed DC current through the speaker because in real life the movement of the cone creates a cooling effect. For a long time a 1000Hz signal was used as a test signal but this doesn't work for all speakers, like horn drivers which only operate at very high frequencies. Now the most common method is to use some sort of filtered mix of a wide range of frequencies (often called pink noise) as the source. Pump this continuously through the speaker for several hours and, if it survives, that is its rating. There are a number of international and national standards for doing this sort of test but basically this is how they work. The problem is that speakers don't run continuously like electric motors so this isn't a very fair test. Music has loud and quiet bits and in the gaps the speaker cools down. So long as you don't distort the sound speakers will handle short bursts many times their thermal rating. Hence the 'normal music programme' and 'peak' ratings many manufacturers give. So you can use a 1000W amp with a 250W speaker so long as you don't distort and so long as you don't push it beyond its excursion limits, which you probably will as a bassist. Amps are rated differently. By and large it is very hard to break a well designed solid state amp as they have protection circuits built in which limit the power when you push them hard. However they will only swing a certain voltage, just below the power supply voltage and then they run out of volts and distort. Their ratings are then given at the voltage where distortion cuts in. As an electrician you will realise that applying a voltage across a lower resistance will give more current and power, so adding an extra speaker in parallel draws double the power from the amp. In practice the power supply in the amp will be limited to a certain current and so the full doubling won't happen so it is a rare amp that will actually double its power into 4ohms from 8ohms. Just to complicate things a little as the amp warms up the resistances (especially in the power supply) increase so the current available is less in a hot amp than a cold one. Valve amps run at very high voltages and have transformers to match the speakers so provide the same power to any speaker they have a tap in the output transformer for. So, don't get too hung up about wattage ratings, most of the time you will only be operating at a few tens of watts or less anyway, The extra power is only to keep the loud bits clean. It's unlikely you will ever really need more than 200W for bass so any amp that gives at least 200W into 8ohms will do nicely. Most speakers will handle several times their rating of undistorted music but as a bassist you need to be aware of the possibility of over excursion. If you hear your speakers distorting at high levels on the low notes you need to turn down or roll off the bass and fairly promptly. I'd roughly match the ratings of my amps and speakers but I wouldn't worry too much if I had 1000w of amp going through 800W of speaker, frankly at that volume I'd be more worried about my hearing than my speakers. Choose something that sounds good, try it out before you buy.

[quote name='skidder652003' timestamp='1348602618' post='1815917'] purely out of interest!!? if i enlarge the ports to 100mm now whilst waiting for the speaker, do you think it would improve the current ashdown driver? [/quote] You'd only notice a difference at high volumes and you would need to re-tune the cab, the bigger the ports the longer they need to be. In a way it is a little like changing strings, you need to re-tune after you change them! The reason the Ashdown holes are causing concern is that at high volume levels a lot of air needs to move in those ports and potentially that causes noises you don't want. The Kappa is going to be louder and move more air making the problem worse. If you want something to do take the speaker out and measure the inside dimensions and within a day you will have someone calculate the port size for you. If you wanted to you could fit ports that would tune for the kappalite not the Ashdown you have. The Ashdown would probably work OK with these ports so you could put it back in and try it if you wanted.

Should have said that is the only problem with Blue Aran. Good to deal with but a bit slow. You can track the progress of your order on the website though.

Just an update, I wanted to sell this monster for ages but decided to try and get used to its bad behaviour (neck dive and twisting away from you to save anyone from having to search the thread) Less than a week ago I was all ready to sell it out of frustration, the neck is a wonder to play and the sound is fabulous but the playing comfort is maddening. Anyway four days ago I shortened the strap, really silly short, I look like I should be playing in a sixties band. All the problems disappeared pretty much, though it feels really odd changing to the T-bird. Last night I gigged it for the first time, [b]I love it![/b] The sound is just wondrous and strapping it on feels like becoming Jim Carrey in The Mask. So if you have one of these use a wide strap and straplocks, and shorten the strap just like one of the guys said and it cures 90% of the neck dive and twist, then you can enjoy the good bits of this amazing but irritating bass. Thanks for your help everyone.

I think we are all pretty much in agreement. The Mag is the better cab to adapt as the size is a pretty good match but you ought to put in bigger ports. All the air shifted by those big speakers (and remember they move further than the old ones has to exit those tiny ports at resonance and the air will be doing a significant speed and will make chuffing noises. Aren't the ports on the back of the Mag? If so how worried are you about how they look? You could probably find a chippy to cut the holes for you for a few quid if you are nervous about it. Get hold of the porting first though, I use black soil pipe or drain pipe mostly. Still need the internal dimensions ideally.

Good call Steve. Balcro or i will calculate the ports for you, or someone else might. It would be helpful to know the size and shape of the ports in the Ashdown cab Using the smaller cab will give you a little less deep bass but a smoother response, to get an idea have a look at the responses that Eminence give here [url="http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Kappalite_3015_cab.pdf"]http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Kappalite_3015_cab.pdf[/url] the Warwick is nearer Emineces biggest box and the Ashdown is halfway between the large and medium box. Personally I'd adapt the Ashdown rather than the Warwick simply because it is the cheaper cab

I use a Hartke kickback 10. Discontinued but I picked mine up for £125. It's not much bigger than a practice amp but also does for practice with a drummer and the odd gig using a bit of DI. Most of my practice is with a Jam mate hipster headphone amp [url="http://www.boomerangsounds.co.uk/product.php/3196/jammate-hipster-ppgm"]http://www.boomerangsounds.co.uk/product.php/3196/jammate-hipster-ppgm[/url]