Phil Starr

I ran the shootout at the SW Bass Bash. Also included were the Barefaced BB2, GR bass 2x12 and an RCF745. It wasn't a scientific double blind test but to make it a fair test I ran all but the RCF off identical PA amps tone controls flat and tried to adjust the volumes to be equal. I deliberately didn't say anything about the speakers so as not to influence the comments.

We looked into a variety of sizes for this design. 20 litres hit the sweet spot and makes this cab work well. You could potentially tune your Laney lower with a smaller diameter port, or swap your 8" speaker for a 6" like the Fane 6-100 as we did in the original House Jam Combo. https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/442331-a-house-jam-combo/ This is something @Pea Turgh did with his 15W combo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fp00Cwc9Q8&t=1s adding proper ports would have brough the bass up even more. If you'd rather re-visit your Laney I'm happy to make suggestions as to port sizes that would work. If you only have 15W on tap then port noises aren't likely to be an issue and that is the only problem with a small port diameter.

We had a display of the various Bass Chat designs and other builds at the South West Bass Bash this Sunday. The biggest interest was around the tiny cabs. My House Jam 6 created the usual stir but this little fella created the most interest. It's a single 8" speaker I designed and built with @Chienmortbb to match his souped up Ashdown After 8. The size and shape is a copy of their dimensions but this little chap will handle 200W and produces a very significant amount of bass and sounds like a much bigger cab. People at the bash generally loved the sound and I'm contemplating doing this as another Bass Chat design. It did work really well with double bass as well, many thanks to @TheRev for trying it out for me I was amazed at the interest in the little cabs (nobody paid any attention at all to the lightweight 15 I'd taken along) but I guess other people have the same needs as me. Something small to practice with at home and portable enough to use for semi acoustic work and to drag along to open mic nights and even the odd rehearsal. There aren't a lot of options of commercial cabs this small that sound grown up. This one is roughly a 30cm cube. For home practice this sounds like a much bigger speaker and it would take you easily up to the volume of the average jazz band or a drummer with a compact kit. If there is a load of interest I'll build a second one and put it here with a set of plans for anyone to copy. It's probably a weekend build and would cost you maybe £100. I'd welcome comments from anyone at the bash who tried it or listened to it.

Ha ha, he wishes

Sorry it was @Mottlefeeder and very nice it sounded too.

It looks that way, odd that they should both choose to have that rising response. The midrange suck out is fairly typical and shared by the Elf and filtering the bass probably good in protecting the sort of small speakers they are likely to be used with. Yeah, I preferred the colour of the BAM but it was out of stock when I wanted one. Nice little amp though, you can get a great sound out of them with a little eq tweaking..

We were running late, partly because we wanted to check the responses weren't an artifact of our measuring equipment. By the time I came to look for you you'd just left.

Coincidentally we were trying to measure amp responses at the South West Bass Bash yesterday. We didn't gather as much data as we'd like and the BAM was one we missed. We'll put up some results when we have them. The response of the Gnome however we captured. It is really odd and similar to what you have for the BAM. The Trace Elf was a 'traditional smiley face' response with some healthy HPF going on. I didn't spend long doing this but here is a pic of the controls giving an approximately flat response on the Gnome

Thanks so much for a lovely, lovely day. So many friends I didn't get a chance to talk to and so many I did. My apologies to both Special thanks to Mike for organising things and his wife (who must have a name other than Mrs Scrumpy) for the wonderful food.

If anybody is interested I've a couple of empty 1x12 cabs far from new and well used but free to anyone interested. If you are a lazy DIY'er They would suit a wide variety of 12" drivers. Let me know and you can take them away from the bash saving a lot of hassle with postage.

It's all good

@Chienmortbb how long will it take to take a measurement including the wiring/connecting up time? It might be quite quick in which case the more the merrier. BUT this is the first time we've tried this

me too

This

I've been really happy with mine, I can get the same accuracy as I do on my table saw and sizing large sheets is a whole lot easier. Scoring first is just so easy and makes the finished edge much cleaner.

Plywood isn't a nice material to work with a lot of the time unless it is really good quality, you have my sympathy. The first question is how are you intending to finish this? If you are sanding and painting then fairly ordinary fillers will work well. I use Toupret from screwfix and mix it up with a little white glue added to the water, about 1:5. To stop the edges splintering I score the cut first, Easy if you have machine tools or a plunge saw. You can also apply tape along the cutting line which reduces lifting. Using really sharp blades helps a lot, worn teeth which are all slightly different thicknesses will guarantee splintering If you check most ply has a good side and a poor side, make sure the good veneer is on the outside.

I'd love you to try the DB with our basschat designs and to have the chance to chat to you about a possible future speaker design specifically for a proper bass. I love a challenge

Actually it would be interesting to campare some older designs with newer ones. This is just frequency response though

Thanks that will be really interesting to compare to the Warwick

On a cheerier note @Chienmortbband I are hoping to carry out some measurement of amplifier frequency responses. We'd like to settle some of the debates we've been having this year such as where is flat on the eq and do all amps have built in HPF/deep bass filtering. It would be interesting to see which amps colour the sound and which ones just amplify. One burning question is are the TC BAM and the Warwick Gnome identical and does the Elf have Trace magic? I have a Gnome but if you have one of the others it would be good to test them. If you have anything else it would all be interesting and hopefully we can tell you for certain your amps response and even what response you are setting when you eq. Should be interesting. Personally I'm bringing an RCF ART745, I'm trying to bring all the BC home build designs to try: the Mk1 12 and the 'easy build 12', other people are bringing the MK2 and Mk3. I'll have the 110T and the House Jam micro cab, a new 1x8 and a 1x15 prototype.

Thanks for saying this Mike, my wife is currently very ill and as a result is vulnerable. I'm going to have to isolate from her and test every day after the bash until I can be confident I haven't picked anything up. I was thinking of dropping out but this gives me confidence. It's a big airy room and there is no reason we can't all keep each other safe. Thankyou everyone else too.

You're a bass player what are you doing up there!!!!!

One thing we haven't mentioned is that the Gnome is very sensitive/has high gain. My very ordinary passive J drives it perfectly well with gain and volume at 10 o'clock . You can't really judge how many watts you are driving into the speakers from the gain positions. All you really need is enough gain to drive the amp flat out once you are doing that there is no advantage in extra gain or turning the volume knob any further. There is no real disadvantage in having too much gain but in a shop people often start with the knobs in the same low position, extra gain will make that amp appear to be louder so high gain amps might have a sales advantage

Expect a rash of people searching your posts to see what that was

10's with 15" subs are a fine combination and you don't need huge tops if you use subs. I've got 12's plus Subs which I'd use for outside gigs but the RCF 745's were my Swiss Army Knife purchase to be compact enough to do small gigs and with enough bass response that I could leave backline at home and have all the band using in ears for the gigs we do. The few times we play to more than 1-200 people we have always had a hired PA . Everyone is different but for our covers band, pub gigs with the occasional function 15" tops covers everything and lets us have a fully mixed sound without having to drag subs around and carry them into tiny spaces in 200 year old boozers. The really good tops worked out cheaper than small tops and subs so that was a bonus. I've never used the 15's as a bass speaker though they sound good with bass at home (you have to try them ) I also have a couple of RCF 310's and i have used them for bass, either as floor monitors or for small gigs just one as my bass 'rig'. They work fine but the problem is the floor reinforcement. On poles the bass sounds great but the extra bass reflected on the floor makes them very boomy and you have to roll the bass right off. I'd expect the same problem with the 15's as bass speakers but hey ho, you do have tone controls. We are moving using in-ears however and hope to lose the backline soon.