Phil Starr

First of all you shouldn't get burning smells from a speaker cab. I think you said their was some discolouration of the fibreglass. If it isn't actually fibreglass but polyester wadding then this will singe even with speakers working normally at high power levels. You will have at least explained the smell. Move it around until it no longer contacts with the speaker. Neo's have smaller magnets so less area to dissipate heat. The easies way to test the speakers is to push some recorded music through them and listen at low volumes with your ears right up to each speaker one at a time and then with the volume up at a high level. If there is no obvious distotrion or funny noises then the speakers are ok. Have the closest look at your tweeter as this takes the bashing if you use overdrive. I can't think of anything that would cause a loss of gain without causing other problems with a power amp though I suppose a component failure around an op-amp in the preamp stages might change the gain of a stage. Tricky to find without the amp and a circuit diagram in front of you. There are two possibilities if it is the amp, it is actually ok and you just need to turn it up or you need a better tech. Don't worry about the volume settings between the amps though, that's al about gain and sensitivity and a halfway position on one amps gain control need bear no relationship at all with halfway on any other amp. There is an excellent piece on this on this site but you could look at this too [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbVKWCpNFhY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbVKWCpNFhY[/url]. Again if you play recorded music through the amp you should hear any problems as distortion. If you get the chance to try this then let us know what you find

[quote name='offom' post='722642' date='Jan 23 2010, 09:54 PM']I have an Aria Ab-25 and i feels buzzy when forcing the top strength strokes. I'm about to get a new speaker for it. Are car sound system based bass-subwoofer speakers suitable for such an application ? Any ideas or suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks.[/quote] No they are not the wattage ratings are almost never RMS which means they won't handle the power and the frequency response isn't good for bass either. In addition their efficiency is lower than most instrument speakers.

[quote name='Geek99' post='687954' date='Dec 18 2009, 04:21 AM']On talkbass wiki there is an article about queitening a marcus miller jazz. In it he advocates a separate wire to earth for each connection rather then each pot being chained to the next as standatd. Also says to de solder the earth tag of each pot and wire that to earth too. Would this nake a difference ?[/quote] Traditionally the best way to earth things is to use a star earth with each earthed item being taken back to a single point. This avoids any currents flowing along the earth wires and causing hum and noise. it increases safety and means if a cable breaks the earth remains secure on all the other connections. If there is a problem with noise on this bass it might well help.

your 4x10 with 300W should be producing peaks of 124 dB and be able to play at an average level of over 100dB which is loud enough to cause hearing problems. Something doesn't seem quite right.

The amp will give at least 150W into the 8ohm cab which should make it really quite loud. When you say it was worse with the old cab do you mean that it is worse now or that it was never very loud with the PA cab? Either way there are not many things that could go wrong with an amp that would make it quiet without making it very distorted. since you liked the sound it doesn't seem as if much is wrong. Try gradually turning the amp up full and trying different inputs if you have them. Also try changing your lead and trying a different guitar. Let me know how you get on.

Just to say we have the same problem with a female vocalist and the sm58. We now use a cheaper Samson mic and it does a better job for our vocalist. The biggest problem with the shure is that you really need to get right up close. (there's a rude comment about putting things in your mouth there somewhere). we found that our vocalist has the mic closer when she hand holds it rather than leaving it in the stand meaning we can reduce the gain. Feedback is caused by resonance so moving the speakers around is always worth a try. lifting them off the ground means all the lower frequencies are radiating in free field rather than half space ( A posh way of saying that the sound isn't reflected off the floor in the same way) and this can clean up the sound and improve the intelligibility. Of course the main way of reducing feedback is to turn everybody else down and reduce sound levels on stage. Good luck with that!

you have had some good advice but no-one seems to have mentioned that a reflex cabinet has to be tuned to a particulat driver and that you need to march both the volume and the length of the tuning duct to match the drive unit. If you google thiele small and ported enclosures you should find plenty to read. Fane speakers in the UK are made in the same factory as Eminence and should be of a similar quality and cheaper though they changed the specs this year so they don't match exactly. I'd go for the 15/500 with a decent magnet and a good Xmax or excursion limit. Should be about £50-60 -try Blue Aran for about £20 extra you should be able to get the same speaker with a cast chassis which should be more reliable. Celestion do some reasonably priced speakers and also some expensive ones. I've not tried these but they are a well known firm. I have a black widow which I bought second hand. It is very bottom heavy, clean and deep but not much in the way of upper mids. Get the black widow with the metal centre if you go this route or plan on using it with a 4x10. They are pricey in the UK