Phil Starr

I've been doing a bit more planning for people who want to build this. The original as I've said was built to match the form of an Ashdown combo. There's no need to do that and by tweaking the shape a little I can get the panels cut out of a 1220x610 sheet of ply, the sort that are sold by the big sheds. B&Q in particular offer a cutting service at most of their stores. I can pretty much keep the same shape if I change to 12mm ply, a cute cube that will save a few pounds and a few grammes but the cab may need stiffening with some braces making it a slightly harder build. If I stick with 18mm ply I don't think it will need bracing and 18mm is what we've tried. It will however have to be 54mm taller. My instinct is to go for 18mm in the recommended design and let those who want to save weight work out the bracing for themselves. I think this should be the simplest design possible but with plenty of notes so you can modify if you wish. The good news is that the 18mm ply is £19.97, the batten is £7.37 the speaker £44.22 and the connector £12.50 if you go for the most expensive ready wired version so that is £84.06 for a basic box plus speaker. B&Q will make 5 cuts for free. I've found that if you are nice they don't really count the cuts if they are simple. Does anyone have strong feelings about 18mm v's 12 mm ply

I wonder if there is some manufacturing spread? I would describe my Gnome as whisper quiet and certainly quieter than any other amp I've owned, you should hear my Peavey taking off. At last years SW Bass Bash we looked at all three of the micro amps, we were looking at frequency responses and tone controls so not specifically the fans but I didn't notice any differences at the time.

So just for interest this is a comparison of the frequency response of the 8" cab (in green) with a much bigger cab. It's the 15" driver used in the original Barefaced Super Compact in a 50l cab (Blue). The 8" speaker is bassier than the 15 if you are looking at the fundamental frequencies at the bottom end of a four string bass. Mind you the 15 is a whole 5db louder for the same power

No

This may help you decide which is best for you. It's the bass response of both speakers as calculated by winISD @ 100W. Surprisingly both are equally loud but the 8" cab will handle another 100W at this point, adding an extra 3db, and whilst the 6 handles all of the second harmonic upwards equally well there is a lot of extra fundamental with the 8. In a small room at home the 6 sounds way better than you'd expect, light agile and crystal clear and not as bass light as you'd think. Perfect for not annoying neighbours and satisfying to play. The 8 has a more authoritative sound though and is comparable with a much bigger speaker..

Would it help if you made this your main practice speaker and could store everything else out of sight? If even this is too big there is a smaller alternative https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/455858-house-jam-micro-cab/

Have you tried driving the amp off the headphone out? I've still got the B1ON and I reckon that would provide 0.775V. FWIW we play back our recorded drumtracks from an iPad headphone out via an active DI. That has improved the sound and we are using balanced line at the earliest point in the chain.

It could be built with 12mm ply or 18mm MDF if you didn't mind the weight. I used 18mm ply because I was matching the Ashdown combo for @Chienmortbb I'd have made it a slightly more orthodox shape and out of 12mm ply if it had been for me. Bracing is always good but the simplest method is to pass lots of bass through the cab and feel for vibration and brace it where it is worst. 18mm and small panels meant this cab didn't need any more than the corner braces that are part of it's construction. I also had a stock of 18mm ply to hand and the original was built during lockdown. John provided the grille so I don't know where it came from. Yes it is plastic drainpipe. I always try to use something easy to obtain for these designs though I have stocks of cardboard tube for some of my own builds. The speaker is front mounted The advantage of building yourself is that you can adapt these designs. Keep the internal volume the same and the port and you should be fine.

I've swapped the pictures on the first post for something that shows the size a bit better, looks like the amp was made for it

Go for it, Some people have also gone for using a car amp module running off a 12V battery. You'd get about 110db which would be plenty for very loud home practice or playing along with acoustic instruments

The thing about a self build is that you can modify it as you wish. You are only limited by your carpentry skills and your imagination. Keep the internal volume and port the same and it's very unlikely you will go wrong. If you decide to go ahead I'll help all I can.

You are hooked If you'd rather do a 2x8 it's only a matter of recalculating the port and building a box double the size. Let me know if you fancy that.

Quick update, the drawings have gone off to be done properly. One day I need to get to grips with something better than pencil and paper, but that would mean less time with sawdust Fane have been fiddling with their speaker designs again but this time an improvement to the Sovereign 8-225. WinISD calculates sensitivity at 94db but there are some peaks in the mids which is how they measure 97db. The speaker should be capable of 116db continuous across the pass band, so very good for a little speaker. No doubt most manufacturers would claim 122db peak but that is ridiculous and I don't need to sell anything. However two of these would give you 122db which easily passes my threshold for a gigging speaker. A 2x8 version would be interesting.

Many thanks to James @Bassybert for the drawings. This is the new shape design adapted to be cut out of a 1220x610 piece of plywood readily available from DIY stores. Basschat-8-DIY-Cabinet-Plans-3.pdf

This is based upon the Fane Sovereign 8-225 8ohm, a nice little driver for bass, not least because it only costs £45. It has a good sized magnet for a little speaker so they manage to have good excursion and power handling plus high efficiency. the deepest bass is a bit limited but not by as much as you would expect and this gives a really satisfying sound in a small to medium sized room. The frequency response is 55-5,000Hz which pretty much covers the whole output from your bass without needing a horn. Red line is on axis and blue is 45degrees off axis Power handling 225W AES Excursion 5.5mm Efficiency 97db/W Response 55-5,000Hz Impedance 8ohms

This is going to be a design for an 8" 200W cab for loud home use/practice or use a pair for a lightweight portable gigging rig. It's clean sounding with a rich bass for such a small cab and I will get the design up over the next few weeks. This is just a taster. For those of you who play upright we have tried the cab and this cab pairs really well with a 'proper' bass. This was a covid/lockdown project and was meant to be a one off for @Chienmortbb to physically match his souped up Ashdown After Eight Combo. It was never meant for publication in this form. It's an unusual shape for a cab, almost a cube which is all 'wrong' acoustically but it looks really cute and sounds great so I'm publishing it like that. I may build another as a conventional shaped cab and put up both designs. The cab is 33x33x30cm and will probably cost you less than £100 to build. It uses the simplest construction method possible. I've added a couple of pics so you can see just how bijou this little cab is. @RichardH has kindly offered to do some proper drawings.

Well I've looked and can't find any pics, notes or sketches but I saved the file on WINisd and I have the dimensions of the Ashdown in a pm from John who I built the cab for. I'll be able to re-engineer the design though I think I built it out of 18mm ply off-cuts as it was a one off. TBH that didn't add an awful lot to the weight in a 20l cab. John still has the cab so we should be able to take a couple of shots. I'll start a new thread when I have it ready and tag you when it goes up. I'm feeling this is a bit of a thread hi-jack

I'll see what I have from the process, I think I took a few pics and John @Chienmortbb still has the cab somewhere. As he says it is an odd shape for a cab (almost a cube) and both shape and size were dictated by the need to match the dimensions of the Ashdown. I didn't break all the rules though, I'd had my eye on the driver for a potential 2x8 for a while and it is properly tuned and optimised.

How small do you want to go and what is your budget? For this very purpose I use a pair of RCF Ayra Pro5 studio monitors around £350 new. They are bookshelf sized 5" speakers but quite deep. They go up to 107db and in my 3.5x4m study that is too loud to be comfortable without plugs. I rehearse with my duo here, two vocals, guitar and bass +programmed drum tracks and get nowhere near the limits of these speakers. Other speakers are available but check the rated output. I note that the Yamaha HS5 and the Rokits only rate at 101db though Genelec make a 5" monitor rated at 110db. The sound is impeccable, way better than our PA and of course they will do as studio monitors If you want to do a bit of DIY then for around £70 you could build one of these https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/455858-house-jam-micro-cab/ Combined with a micro amp (Elf/Gnome/BAM) it will blow you away in a domestic setting if you want

It needs to be practical and to achieve your aim of being loud enough. Firstly you'll get an extra 3db from the extra power but you'll have to make sure the impedance matches your amps with a valve drive stage. That's an audible increase in volume but not dramatic. A second amp is quite an expensive way of doing this but has the advantage that you will keep the same tone, just louder. It may still not be enough, touch and go I would say. You may not need a splitter though. You could bypass the pre amp in the second amp and go straight in to the fx return. You might just be able to take the fx drive from amp one to do this but often it disconnects the pre amp from the amp so you'd need a splitter lead there. Ask Ashdown or check the manual. The second method would be to drive amp two with the DI out from amp one, you'd probably need to go through the pre amp in amp two but again the manual should tell you what level the DI out is. The advantage over an ABY pedal is that both amps will be controlled by the same tone controls and you wouldn't need to adjust them both each time.

At the SouthWest Bass Bash we tried out a few speakers with double bass. I'm quite keen to investigate the design challenges involved. I thought the BassChat 110T would be a good starting point, a clean but not extended or overblown bass and no nasties in the upper range and fair enough it sounded OK. My six inch 'House Jam' cab scored really well for note definition but the lack of deeper bass meant it was a bit unexciting. The surprise package was a one off 8" cab I'd designed with @Chienmortbb which did sound really good in a very compact package but the star of the show was the LFSys Monaco which shares the same horn and driver as the Monza. The notes really sang. Crucially the Monza and Monaco share a similarly tight bass response. They both have incredibly powerful magnet systems and as a result a highly damped bass response. There's an extended but lightly falling response that goes down a long way. The bass is really punchy and tight and that damped response should and did reduce bass feedback in an upright. Obviously the proof is in trying it out but I would think the Monza would be just as good in a much more compact package and with the proviso that I haven't heard it used this way it looks like it could be the perfect speaker for an upright player. Why not pm @stevie and see if you can organise to try one?

Has it ever been free of muddiness or is this a recent thing? There are two probable causes of this muddiness. Poor eq or a resonance of some sort possibly even giving you a bit of bass feedback. It's probably a bit of both. Floor monitors are often designed to have a flat response and few bass speakers are flat. Having any speaker on the floor reinforces the bass so floor monitors need to have the bass rolled back a fair bit just to get them back to the sound from the stack behind you. An HPF taking out the deepest bass will help too and boosting the mids will increase intelligibility enabling you to turn down a little. In this situation mids are your friends and bass your enemy. You'll also be hearing a lot of bass from the PA/FOH adding to the mush. Bass is omni-directional and the higher frequencies point in the direction of the speakers. Bill's example of the drumsticks is a good one. There are all sorts of resonances on stage and your riser may have it's own resonant frequency, the whole stage a different one if it is a wooden suspended stage and the air will also resonate. I doubt for example that you would have the sort corner traps to kill bass resonances that you get on a recording studio. Just moving your cab might shift these resonances so they are less troublesome or pointing it at a slightly different angle.

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Politely, because I just don't get it. Don't you think she knows her voice isn't what it was? What I found interesting is all the changes she has made to work round her current issues in that video, a few years ago on a previous tour I saw some video where she hadn't made those adjustments and was really struggling. I think that what I saw in that performance was somebody who'd worked hard to make it as good as it could be for the audience in front of her. Over and over again I've seen interviews with huge stars where they reveal they are just musicians with the same insecurities as we all have about performing. Pushing yourself on when, lets face it, she doesn't need the money is kind of admirable. Live music has always been more about the people than perfection. Of course people go to see old bands because of who they are, they are all consenting adults who choose to be there. Isn't a performer keeping going and doing their best more admirable than one who can't be bothered. Should old people give up sex because they can't do it as well as they used to. I certainly can't

I don't get all the criticism of Debbie Harry. At the heart of it you have a musician who does her best for people who really really want to see her. Is the sub text that old people should give up and just crawl away or just people thinking 'I'm so much better than that'? Thousands of people were there having a great time watching someone who had given them a lot of pleasure over the years who they wanted to see live, no-one forced them to be there. Few of us will be as good at things we did when we were younger when we reach the age of 78 but if you have the energy and bottle to keep going and people keep coming good luck to you. I didn't think it was that awful either, I've heard a lot worse down at the Dog and Duck. I've played a lot worse at the Dog and Duck come to that