Phil Starr

I'm against carrying stuff I don't need Subs are a mixed blessing, more to set up and take down so I factor that in. You get a lot of bass coming back on-stage and monitoring without in-ears is an issue. That's why a cardioid set up appeals. I'm actually very happy with my RCF 745's as they do everything I want. Higher sound levels than I ever need including kick and bass, and a fabulous sound especially with acoustic instruments and voice where the big compression driver really scores. The ART 310's I love too as I've indicated above. Integrating the 1" driver with a 10" mid/bass is obviously more successful than trying to do it with a 15 so the big horn driver would be an unnecessary expense. I think the ART932 would be a better compromise for me. The smaller form factor would help at many gigs and I don't ever use the full capabilities of the 15" drivers. I'd looked hard at the 732 before I bought but the 745's came up in unused condition at a great price as a covid era bargain so I just jumped. The 932 wasn't available when I started looking. I'm also not convinced that small subs aren't really useful. A big sub needs big vehicles to carry them. I've run PA at open mic with some old JBL Eon subs, just 150W and the sound was exceptional. I've also some friends with an FBT (another Italian PA builder) system that has a 2x8 sub and that sounds terrific, I've been meaning to write that up sometime. I just don't like that overblown bass sound, I filter at 50Hz anywhere other than outdoors anyway. Almost no-one notices the difference and half of those that do prefer the HPF'd sound. Big subs do all the things that people claim so I'm not criticising but mainly they are running well below their capabilities. When buying would a single 12" sub you took to 80% of your gigs be better value than a couple of 15's or an !* that you left at home as too much hassle? That clearly is a decision which is personal to your circumstances but something I think people should think about before they buy. Subs are great but not a solution for every band or occasion.

Don't ask My duo partner programs everything he uses soundtrap an online app, if you sign up for a months trial it seems to stay free forever. We signed up for it during lockdown as a way of continuing to play together. It's a DAW really but very simple and straightforward if not vey flexible. Having learned to drive the program Mike is reluctant to change. You have to use their kits, so using a kick drum from one kit and a snare from another is an issue for example. Also won't let you change the time signature or put in a single bar of 2/4. Sounds great though and has moved our duo a long way forwardI'm not complaining because I don't do any of the work on the drums. We are much tighter as you have to be with backing tracks but the presence of drums has resulted in people dancing at every gig now and our set list evolving more quickly.

I'm still looking out for a pair of RCF 910's which are near enough to collect and at the right price. Though my duo did a gig on Sat at a large pub (an ex-Weatherspoons and I think an ex cinema before that) with just the 310's and no sub. and we cranked it up to 11 to compete with other venues along the street which had bands making more noise than us. They sounded really good, startingly good out in the audience area. We have my bass and synthesized drums going through them. The drums are probably compressed and the speakers have a limiter in the DSP but none of this was noticeable. I think the 127db rating in ad-speak, 121db in real money for the 310's must be pretty accurate and very comparable with the old 12" Yamaha S112IV Club Series speakers I used for years. I've only used the ART 905 mkIII once, it sounded nice but was overkill for the venue, I had to crank it right down and it was barely on. My drummer was excited with the kick drum sound but nobody but she would have noticed mid gig. I bought it to replace my pair of Wharfedale 15" subs on the basis one of these would replace the two Wharfedales which are also heavier individually than the 905. The mkIII's also have a simple set up for Cardioid bass which is an added attraction. I only use subs once a year on average and only at open air gigs as the 15" tops I have never struggle indoors. I keep meaning to try the single 905 next to the pair of Wharfedales. The specs say they should be capable of matching each other in terms of volume. BTW worth mentioning is that the Wharfedale T-sub 15B is a good budget priced alternative sub and well proven, it is basically identical with my EVP15 subs but with a lighter plywood cab, a new grille and a class D amp replacing the class AB amp in the EVP's making it 18kg lighter! You can pick up used Wharfedale EVP subs at under £300 each in good condition so if you can lift 43kg they are a real bargain and you can still repair the AB amp or replace the speakers if they blow so a long term option if you are on a budget.

I don't think you'll have any problems at all, especially if you are operating in dual mono rather than stereo. Certainly nothing is going to happen that will stop you entertaining your audiences. In the past when I had no money we mixed all sorts of amps and speakers using whatever we could get. I won't pretend it was ideal but these are two great speakers which are essentially flat response so sonically I don't think anyone in the audience will notice. I did wonder about suggesting you buy the 932A. I think they'd be my first choice for our PA if I was buying today, my 745's are just so damn big, over the top in many venues. I recently acquired a single ART905 mkIII sub at a knockdown price and will be looking out for another, It's a great way to update and not spend too much if you have a plan and a bit of patience. Buying used when the opportunity arises means you usually get your money back when the time comes to take the next step up and sell of your old kit. Good move

We've all been there The obvious still trips me up and the adrenaline flowing when something goes wrong at the start of a gig makes it hard to be entirely rational. It's good to see a happy ending

Of course you are right, I was really just thinking of amplifier prices and did not make that clear. In the UK in the early 1970's a month's average wages wouldn't pay for a 100W bass amp. Currently an average UK week's wage would buy a 500W amp and leave you some change.

I'm not sure this is counter intuitive. A lot of what is happening is I think down to improvements in PA. Even fairly modest bands can carry a fairly capable PA system with no need to reach the audience with back line amps, bass goes through the PA for FOH just like the rest of the band. Increasingly people are using digital mixers with multiple aux sends and individual monitor mixes, often through in-ears. If there is back line then it only needs to reach the band on-stage so you don't need he same volume that a few years ago you used to reach the back of the venue. The other technical advance is the gradual development of long throw loudspeakers with extremely temperature resistant voice coils. They aren't efficient and need a lot more power than the 4x10's but amplifier power is so cheap nowadays that small speakers and lot's of power has become a practical option. Portability is an issue too for a lot of us. I can turn up with a SansAmp and a set of in-ears for most gigs. I have a 1x10 600W AES thermal and 800W amp for the odd occasion when I need backline.

Just a thought, with slap on an upright you are really whacking everything much harder than would be the case on electric bass a lot of the time. Electric bass doesn'tactually have much content below 80Hz but using an upright bass as a percussive instrument might be creating a lot of subsonic peaks. Ported speaker cabs will go into extremes of excursion just above and below the resonant frequency of the port. If that is the case when slapping (and this is just a theory) then an HPF on the amp might reduce the problem and less audibly than a really sharp limiter. Is a castrated bass a viola?

I don't know if this helps. As Bill has said it's all about the natural compression valve amps give you. The peaks aren't any bigger but you can bring the average level up and the overloaded peaks sound OK. Clipping of the waveform in most solid state amps is pretty unpleasant. Other factors are that a lot of the power claims are basically untrue. There is also the importance of a decent power supply to consider, a lot of switch mode amps also have switch mode power supplies which are specced for fairly low duty cycles. I'd expect Mesa valve amps to have a pretty decent power supply.

I'm curious about this, do we know this for certain and do we have any idea of how they are achieving that? Is there some sort of DSP or other trickery going on or is this just some sort of limiting. We know from measurement that all the micro amps have particular and different voicings. I did prefer the voicing of the Elf whan we tested it at the Bass Bash and in the shootout but a genuine compression circuit would justify the extra cost of the Elf.

Anyone who has done any recording will know music looks like this That's three notes or possibly three drum beats. Each note starts loud and then decays. Within each sound there is a complex waveform which is also going up and down.This is just a random image but it looks like the scale on the side is in decibels and the loudest part of the sound is the first peak just above -6db. If you imagine that 0db is the maximum power of your 300W amp then this trace is probably not unlike your bass playing. The loudest note is nowheere near using full power, -3db is half power and -6db is a quarter power and that only lasts a few thousandths of a second. Within a tenth of a second the note is down to less than 10W and the average power is below even that 10W level. Your amp isn't being pushed at all. Swap the amp for a 150W amp (-3db on the trace) and the peak is still nowhere near the amps peak handling or indeed the handling of a 130W into 8 ohms of the Elf/BAM/Gnome amps. In fact if you bring in a 70W amp only the first peak is going to be distorted. This is where a valve amp scores, the distortion will only be barely noticable compared to horrid solid state distortion so a 50W valve amp would probably sound as loud but with a little bit of crunch. This would only be in the peaks and the rest of the music would be the same. The watts aren't bigger but you can turn the valve amp up a bit more before it sounds bad so you can get the same average power and not worry so much about distorted peaks. Incidentallyyou can use this information to get away with a smaller amp. The biggest peaks will all be in the subsonic bass so an HPF filters out the biggest peaks and you can turn up a couple of notches knowing your amp and speakers are safe. Alternatively you can add in a compressor which will reduce the difference between the loud and quiet bits of each note. You can then turn up the average volume with smaller peaks keeping within the amps limits but sounding louder. Maybe you don't need new speakers

Great advice too. QSC and FBT are both great brands as are Yamaha and RCF. I've committed to the RCF745's for the immediate future with my band but also use RCF 310's in my quite noisy duo. I've done band gigs with them and a sub as an experiment and that went well but the vocal clarity of the 745's is outstanding. I'm toying with the idea of upgrading the 310's to 910's with a view to doing all my gigs with RCF 910's plus a sub though. I gigged for about four years with a previous band using QSC K12-2's without a sub and didn't need my bass stack ever. K12's are pretty heavy though, depending upon your age and fitmness

I'm going to agree too. You can build a nice sounding PA around the DBR's. I went for the two 15's route with a couple of RCF 745's. It works in that I can do just about any gig with just a pair of speakers and they sound fabulous but in small venues they are completely over the top and obscure the stage. Lifting them onto the poles is starting to wear thin as is the load in and out. I can't say I'm unhappy with them as the sound is just glorious but if I had my time again I'd probably go for a single sub with smaller tops. The DBR's would probably handle the smaller pubs without a sub too so you'd have options.

You got marks for building a cab! I spent most of my time at university building cabs but I was supposed to be studying Applied Zoology and I didn't get a 2:1 Why didn't they invent this course back then 😂

While it's all been good advice I don't think this has moved you forwards too much, though it may have refined your thinking. What you are really asking for is a small'ish/portable single speaker that matches your Elf nicely and you have a bigger system when you need it. The Elf is voiced differently from your Streamliner so you want something with a bit more 'oomff' at the bottom end. Have I got that about right? I've got a Warwick Gnome in my bass case I use mainly the same way, but also as a backup if my main amp goes down. I pair my Gnome with variously a 6" cab, an 8", 10" and an LFSys Monza, also a 10" cab. I've got 12" cabs also but I've never felt the need to use one with the Gnome. If I need that much volume I take a bigger system. I'm going to be a heretic and say 2db is worth having if you don't have to sacrifice anything else so 4ohms isn't a bad thing but Bill is right in warning you that you won't be able to mix or pair cabs with this. However you can buy cabs that are louder than others so you could buy something 8ohms and efficient so more than 2db louder than some 4 ohm cabs. Since there aren't many 4ohm cabs out there it makes more sense to me to look at any cab, have a listen and then decide on how it sounds and simply don't worry about the impedance. I'd suggest you stop worrying about using a 12 too all other things being equal you can get better bass out of the same size cab by using a smaller driver rather than squeezing a 12 into something portable. Look at 10's anbd 12's. My experience with the 6" speaker it that it is way louder and more capable than I expected. I designed it for open mics to match up with amplified vocals and acoustic guitar and at most open mics it can be the loudest thing in the room. As a joke I took it to a rehearsal and set it up next to the drummer who was always too loud. Actually it was loud enough and I didn't bother swapping it out for a proper speaker. Small rehearsal room and I backed it into a corner to give as much extra help as I could, I also rolled off the bass a little and boosted the mids to give a little more volume and protect the speaker but I surprised myself. I've used it at dozens of open mics and it always causes a stir. The 8 has an equally sensitive driver and what you get extra is all at the bottom end below 80Hz. It sounds great. You aren't going to use it at an open air gig or a room with 100 people in the audience and probably not with a full on rock band but it'll do a decent job in a smaller venue or with something relatively laid back even if you have a drummer in the band. My regular 10 has a horn as well and a really clean sound. I've regularly used it with a pop covers band, without PA support in most pubs will work and with PA support it is easily good enough for the whole band as a stage monitor. I'd use this mainly with my 300W amp but I've tried it with the Gnome and I've still had a little headroom. All these speakers are home built and I've published the designs on BassChat but they obey the laws of physics, there's nothing special about them. Nobody commercially makes one anything like the 6" cab but there are plenty of cabs you can buy like the others. Only you can decide what limitations you are happy with based upon simple practicality. My experience says we often take far more kit than we need. In the 60's and 70's 100W was considered to be a decent amp and 200W a monster. Amps are so cheap relatively now that we all run much bigger stuff and the standard 300/500W amp is probably rarely actually needed to work flat out. As a practical suggestion how about something designed to have an old school warm bass sound like the Barefaces One-10, Mark Bass also make some warm and loud sounding cabs but so do many manufacturers, go and try a few and see what you think.

@BassmanPaul is almost certainly right. If you can identify the wires going in to the crossover then one is positive and one negative. Often positive is red and negative black. The crossover may be a complex affair with a separate circuit for the bass drivers and the horn but often is just a simple high pass filter that only affects the tweeter. Take some pics if you aren't sure and someone will advise how to connect everything.

This below is a simple version of how they work, which is as you surmise. You may need to add in an extra resistor or so to add in further attenuation or limit the range over which they operate. As you can see the example in the picture isn't hard wired so you can make the circuit as you wish. Most commercially available L-pads work at 8 ohms. You've clearly spotted the flaw, there is no way in this circuit that you can maintain a constant impedance. For those who haven't worked it out: If we take the simplest example of both rheostats being 8 ohms. At one extreme the series element is 8ohms and the parallel one is shorting out the tweeter which shuts it out completely. The amp 'sees' 8ohms and is perfectly happy. At the other end of the dial the series element is now zero ohms and the parallel one 8ohms, the circuit is now 4ohms, at the mid position it is 6.67 ohms. All of these are easily driven by an amplifier but they are also part of a tuned circuit in the crossover, often a simple CR circuit so the resonant point of the high pass filter will vary and you'll get non flat frequency artefacts around the now crossover point. It's not an issue if you are simply using the L-pad to tune in a sound you like but if you want to use a modeller to best effect you now have something to notch out to get a realistic model coming out through the speaker. I'd also be suspicious of any cheaply made wirewound product in a tuned circuit having unwanted inductance.

Hi Charlie, hope all is good with you? I love the irony here. My contribution was intended to steer us away from a technical issue back to giving the OP some simple advice. I seem to have set another hare running 😂 You are of course technically spot on. I hoped it was clear that I was using the term to describe a variable rheostat based l pad, which is how it had been used so far in this discussion 😉 Interestingly Wikipedia recognises that l pad is used differently when applied to loudspeakers. “A speaker L pad is a special configuration of rheostats used to control volume while maintaining a constant load impedance on the output of the audio amplifier.[1] It consists of a parallel and a series rheostat connected in an "L" configuration. As one increases in resistance, the other decreases, thus maintaining a constant impedance……” Anyway just to be clear L pad in my post was only referring to an adjustable rheostat based l pad which has no place in a truly frfr speaker but can be used to offer flexibility in a musical instrument cab. Neither is “wrong”, just different.

Maybe there is a little bit of people talking at cross purposes in the chat about L-Pads. If you're trying to design a flat response speaker then an L-Pad is not the way to go, there is only one position where it will be anything like flat and unlikely that most users will know how to find that point. You still can get all the advantages of having a decent horn driver in terms of extended frequency response and improved control of dispersion at high frequencies. Modelling of classic amps and cabs is only going to get better over time and this demands an FRFR approach to get the best out of it. Your bass speaker effectively becomes a very loud studio monitor. Crossover design at this level needs an iterative process of measurement and re-design to achieve the best results to remove artefacts in the crossover region. You won't achieve this with an L-Pad in the circuit, but for simply playing bass though a traditional bass stack an L-Pad can give you a great sound with some additional control of the particular colouring you might like. @Graham wants to transparently amplify a sound he knows and likes, so FRFR is the way to go and a decent PA speaker could offer him a sensible way of getting close to this.

There is so much to untangle here Firstly dont change your speakers. It will completely change the sound of the cab, reduceit's value while it will cost a fair bit to buy the new drive units. It would be far cheaper to change your cabs entirely. That's without the re-engineering of the cab you would need to match it to the new drivers. Secondly don't believe the advertising. There aren't many 10" speakers that can handle more than 200W at all frequencies and there are usually frequencies in the sub 100Hz range where power handling may be reduced to a few 10's of watts. This leads to the old rule of thumb about cabs handling twice the amp power. That dates back to the 60's and early 70's when speaker coils were wound on paper and stuck down with very ordinary adhesives. The coils heat up like an old fashioned light bulb and the paper literally caught fire. I saw a lot of smoke in 1970 coming out of cabs. In those days rating a cab by thermal limits made sense. Times change and modern speakers are wound on fireproof materials and it's pretty hard to physically set them alight any more giving speakers a thermal rating makes no sense but it is the standard and nobody wants to see their 200W speaker de-rated to 50W If you want to use an amp rated above the thermal rating of the speakers then you need to manage the frequencies below 100Hz. That means using a high pass filter (HPF) and shaping rather than just boosing your bass response. Every 3db of bass boost increases the power to your speaker by doubling the power. If you turn the boost up by 12db (usually the maximum) that's 16 times the power at the very lowest frequencies wher all the damage is done. You talk about it not being loud enough, is that for you or the audience. You may be blasting out the audience and almost forcing the guitarists to turn up but still not hearing yourself

You will be fine, I used the K12-2 for a couple of years and they are widely used by a host of other FRFR fans and are widely recommended fot that use. They are built to last and have a decent bass driver but are also really well protected so you'd be hard pushed to overload them to the point of damage so that won't be a worry. The other recommendation would be to look at RCF tops, the 912 would be a decent bet and is £100 cheaper than the K12-2 One word of caution, they are designed to give a flat response on a pole, On the ground the bass frequencies will be lifted by 6db and they will sound muddy if you dont roll the bass back a bit. Be prepared to have to fiddle a bit to get that right

I would personally be very reluctant to start butchering a commercial cab, if you come to sell it you'll lose a lot of value. How about a floor monitor, you wouldn't need any bass frequencies as you can hear them already so it could be quite small, even something like a Behringer B205 might do it at a pinch.

To answer your question, I dont think anyone makes such a system. The DIY solution of a top hat in the bottom of one cab and the top of the other is probably the only way if you don't mind modding your cabs. Someone will have a broken speaker stand to provide a length of pole you could use. Tilting one of the cabs with a stand will point the cab upwards so that could work without taking power tools to your precious speakers. You could put a small monitor amp on a stand at ear level, it's more common with drummers but there's no reason why bassists couldn't do this. The next step is in-ears Seriously worth considering if you value your hearing. Small speaker stands are available https://www.thomann.co.uk/km_21454.htm I've four of these that I use for lighting but they weigh very little, pack up small and take a lot less stage space than conventional stands. You'd then only have to mod one of your cabs and on the bottom where it otherwise wouldn't show.

You beg the question of: what are you trying to achieve by sitting this cab on top of your Ampeg cab? If you are simply trying for more volume then a second ampeg 15 would be a better bet. It may also be that the Peavey cab on it's own would be louder than the Ampeg. Have you tried the Peavey with the Ampeg? The results of merging cabs is a bit unpredictable for good technical reasons. If you are trying to aim for a particular tone this isn't the way to get it. The probability is that there is no way you can run these two cabs together. You could try running them in parallel (both cabs simply plugged into your amp) this will mean both of the 12's and the 15 will each share the power equally.The problem then is the amp will be driving into 2.67ohms and not all amps will do this. The extra current demand may well overheat the amp leading it to shut down if it is well protected or to burn out if it isn't. If you re-wire the two 10's to make a 16ohm cab then this will reduce the output of your tweeter and your crossover to the horn will be all wrong as it is designed to work with the 4ohm speakers. in any case the two tens will be getting a lot less signal than the 15 which will mean they won't be as loud and your sound will be dominated by the 15 . Dozens of people have asked how to mix an 8 ohm cab with a 4 ohm cab and the answer remains the same. If you want to change your set up then the minimum you need to do is to buy another 8 ohm cab. Don't buy this one, it just doesn't match.

For anyone who doesn’t know them the Wharfedale Titans are little gems. 12” tops that only weigh 10kg, go as loud as anything and with a lovely clear vocal sound. They use the same horn driver across the range so this bargain basement speaker benefits. They make a great vocal PA but the lightweight cabs aren’t good with high bass levels. Not a problem with a sub. You’d expect to ‘hear’ the bass apparently coming from the tops. Your brain takes the information from your ears and creates the picture of a band playing. You can pick instruments out of the mix and with stereo even place them in space but it’s all illusion. The brain takes the signals from all four speakers and ‘tells’ you there is a bass guitar just to the left of the drums. It’s wonderful when you are listening to music but the brain constantly confuses you when you are trying to be objective about sound.