Phil Starr

I know a lot of the Sennheiser IE range use the same shell so Snugs shouldn’t have any problems with your IE400’s. I spent a long time experimenting with off the shelf tips and was happy enough in the end but nothing has come close to the moulded tips for comfort, isolation and stability.

The human part of this is the bit you need to address first. What are your clients expectations and are they willing to pay for it? if they are paying your usual fee then they should expect no more than your usual service. If they want a bigger PA then they need to pay the hire fee plus something for your trouble in setting things up even if that is just booking a hire company for them. The strife comes when you have different expectations. The problem with events like this is that they are often organised by people with no experience of what’s involved. Ask what the budget is and be clear about what they should expect for that. Technically it’s fairly straightforward. Your high frequencies are relatively unaffected and will go as loud as indoors. your bass will be lost without reflective surfaces so you’ll need that extra 6db Bill mentioned. Probably a couple of 15” subs to go with your tops. You might need to go even louder though because you will be trying to get the sound out over a bigger area outdoors and you will need to factor in the wind and extraneous noise. The simplest thing would be to get in a hire company. They should have the expertise to accurately assess your needs and if they get it wrong they take the blame. Also you don’t want to set up an unfamiliar system for a one off gig.

As promised some pics. The first one shows the ZX10 Pros fully fitted to the tips. The second shows the bit that is moulded to my ear, hopefully you can see the bit that actually goes down my ear canal with the hole in the middle the other knobbly bit fits neatly into the folds in my ears and almost all of that surface is in contact with my ear achieving a better seal than non moulded tips. The third shot shows the mould of the ZX10's and the fourth the hedphone fitted. These tips are made from a moderately soft silicone which if you look carefully attracts the dust wonderfully well The zx10's are fairly bulky and the tips hold them a little further away from the ear so they do protrude 2-3mm clear of the ear and are not as discreet as proper fitted IEM's, I can't say it's much of an issue as they sit nice and comfortably. The Sennheisers being smaller sit very nicely in the ear and I don't think a punter would realise they weren't expensive fitted IEM's.

Dry assembly is something I'd recommend for inexperienced builders and something I still do from time to time with my prototypes. I still get a little enjoyment from seeing it look like a cab early on and it's far better than finding a problem after you've let the glue set The battens are often a problem with a nominally inch square batten measuring anything from 25mm to 19mm. For those who have never built a cab you need the screw to go at least 5mm into the plywood and probably a bit more but it mustn't reach the outer ply so It can't be too long either. 25mm+12mm+37mm so a 35mm screw is probably right so long as you don't over tighten, 19+12 is 31mm so a 30mm screw is pushing up too tight and riscs coming out the other side of the ply or distorting the outer veneer. I use an electric driver but start off with it set to the lowest torque then finish off by hand except the last few screws that are inside the cab and difficlt to access. and lead to bruised knuckles with a hand driver It's coming along nicely though

It's a function of your ears and brain not the technology so that's absolutely right The only bit I'd mention is for safety's sake. The volume at your ears from in-ears can reach the same level as huge speakers much futher away and can do the same damage so keep the levels reasonable.

It's probably not a practical proposition, technically you'd have to re-tune the cab and you might have a problem with the horn and crossover too which will be matching the horn to the 10's. It's all do-able but you might need to do some carpentry to the cab. Then there's cost, neo speakers are pricey and four of them will easily be in the region of £500. Add that to the cost of the cab and you'd have a lot of money sunk in the cab and you might get better by selling the cab adding in the cost of the neo's and starting again. Finally changing the drivers mean it wont be your Rumble any more, the sound will have changed and it'll be a new system in a Fender box. Changing the speakers even for an upgrade will reduce the re-sale value of your cab so it would be wise to make any changes reversible when the time comes to sell it on. Technically feasible and I'm happy to advise on re-tuning if you pm but practically there will be a lot for you to think about.

Good Luck with this, it soonds like fun but just a bit too far away for me. I joined a band like this a few years back and learned their set only for them to all fall out with each other before my first gig with them. Family row as the drummer was the guitarist/bandleader's son. For me it's an itch I'd like to scratch but for me 25miles is far enough to travel for rehearsals. Hope you find someone

This but one thing that might help is the Behringer MA400 micromon, It allows you to give a little 'more me' for any vocalists They insert it into their mic line and then they get the band mix in their monitor they can then mix the two so their vocals are a bit louder than the main mix which is what most people prefer. You could do this for instruments as well though it might take a little juggling. People would have to buy and run their own so it's less for you to worry about. They are on offer at the moment https://www.andertons.co.uk/behringer-ma400-headphone-amplifier/ That's a crazy low price

I ran a PA with a couple of Titans and some JBL subs which had no crossovers for a while. this was for an open mic/jam session which didn't really merit my taking my 'big' PA which at the time wouldn't fit in my car anyway. The way I set up was to roll the bass off from the Titans which have a tone control, I notice the bass is actually boosted on yours but that may not be your gig setting. That gave a fairly thin sound from the tops but a 6db cut below 100Hz (bass control at 3 o'clock will give roughly that. I then brought in the subs gradually until I got a balanced sound from a bass and the kick drum without making the bass overblown. Tuning by ear like this isn't ideal but you can make it work, none of the bands noticed anything 'wrong' with the PA and the overall band sound was great. Rolling off the bass from the tops will reduce the cone excursion which is one of the advantages using subs gives you. -6db is 1/4 the power going to your tops freeing them to go louder and less distorted for the rest of the frequency range. Buying a crossover before the signal reaches the amps would be better but it might be more cost effective to sell your subs and amp and save the cost of a crossover to buy a sub. A single wharfedale 15" sub would probably match your two Peaveys and has a stereo crossover built in so you can run the PA in mono or stereo with a single sub. The Wharfedale EVP15 sub weighs a ton but is relatively cheap on the used market and will be good with your Titans. I've used that exact set up in the past and still have two EVP15 subs. Other makes would probably work well as well. The Wharfedale T-sub AX is the same speaker as the EVP but has a plywood box and class D amplification reducing the weight from 43kg to 27kg so if you see one of those used then go for it

So back in Dec I had moulds made of my ears and today I received two sets of custom IEM tips back from Snugs. For those of you who haven't followed this these are custom made moulds that are made to fit your ears one side and to fit your own headphones the other side with the idea that you get all the benefits of custom IEM's and a proper seal but at a fraction of the price. In my case I've been using in-ears for monitoring with my band and no back line for a couple of years successfully and had the usual journey towards them that so many people have experienced. I now have custom tips for my KZ ZS10 Pros which is probably the most popular choice for bassists here and also my Sennheiser IE100's another popular choice. OK they have arrived today and this is an initial impression, I'll do something with a proper write up after I've gigged them, all I've done today is try them out in my studio playing bass and singing along to recorded music. Let me say I'm blown away by how good they are and for £160 for two lumps of plastic they are absolutely worth it. The sound through both headphones is improved but one now just blows me away. More later about that. So I started with my Sennheiser IE100's They have to be mounted in the tips before putting the tips in your ears, a bit fiddly but get everything lined up and the buds just snap into place. Conveniently the right tip was marked in red as is the right bud from Sennheiser. The next thing is to push the tips into your ears, that wasn't easy they are a perfect fit when in place which means nothing fits until you get them there and they feel too bulky to fit. Eventually I wiggled them into place and they felt comfortable, really comfortable, like 'I could wear these all day' comfortable. Sound isolation was good but no better than the triple flange tips I'd been using whch are great but feel like a surgeon is enthusiatically probing up to my eardrum with a metal probe. The thing was that ten minutes later (looking for something that has a headphone socket) the isolation hadn't changed and didn't change until I took the plugs out. The sound when I finally found an adaptor and connected to my mixer was just stunning, bass was full and deep but just there not artificially enhanced, vocals were gorgeous and cymbals lovely and clean but with no jarring from over-presentation. I was hearing things I only get from my £200 open backed Sennheier over ears. Having that perfect fit to my ears meant all frequencies were there in the correct balance and it sounded lovely. Singing along with the music gave me a painfully honest reflection of my voice with a little bit of a peak from my old EV microphone, bass just sits in the mix where you put it. The volume goes to painful without distortion. The real glory though is that the IEM's stay put so the bass doesn't change and outside noises never intruded because whatever i did the seal remained intact. When the time came to remove them you need a real tug and a wiggle to get the plugs out. I replaced the Sennheisers with the ZS10's, this time I read the instructions and found Snugs had provided some 'IEM Balm' to apply to the tips which made fitting a little easier. IEM balm looks ly KY-Jelly to me I didn't like the ZS10's as much Having a perfect seal underlined the exagerrated frequency resonse of the KZ's Bass was a little overpowering as was the top end and the mids have a couple of resonances which make my voice slightly more unpleasant than it actually is (honest) . I'd bought the Sennheisers to get a better vocal sound which I've never got on with from the KZ's I suppose I'd hoped that the customs would cure the midrange issues but they didn't. Nothing bad happened, the KZ's just sounded like KZ's not exagerrated or toned down. So initial conclusions, custom tips will get the best out of your off the shelf IEM's I can't see them ever coming out during a performance and you don't lose the bass as happens when the seal is imperfect. I'd hoped for exceptionl isolation and maybe expected too much, these are as good as the better ear plugs but there is some ambient noise coming through, You wont hear normal speech if any music is coming through but a loud drummer would be audible. The big difference is that it doesn't make a difference what you are doing these customs just sit there. Custom tips v's custom IEM's? I can't tell you how close the custom tips get to the real thing but Custom IEM's seem to go up from £500 plus fitting. On a special offer I paid £125 for the tips and the Sennheisers cost me £85 so that's £210 overall. On top of that I've seen people unhappy with the quality of the built in speakers in £500-1,000 IEM's, that's a lot to pay for something you might not get on with. I'll get some picsup next week

We're (noisy duo) regularly using RCF 310's for FOH and a second pair as floor monitors. Guitar, Bass and Vox plus programmed drums. You'll need to roll off the bass from the floor monitors as putting them on the floor gives you a 6db bass boost compared to having them on poles but they make great monitors. We've run the 310's pretty hard for FOH and so far so good we were playing in a big village hall on NYE and to maybe 100 people last Sat with plenty in reserve. I'm still impressed when I wander out to listen how good the equipment sounds for what is a fairly modest layout. With my four piece band we'd normally use our 15" RCF cabs but I've done gigs with just the 10's when space is limited and no problems so far. Thats with both bass and edrums going through the PA with no backline

I suspect you already knew this but it's a spot on observation, though I think you meant to say increase the mids

Fair comment, ought to know was a bit blanket. No-one needs all the details but it's really useful to bear in mind at gigs that its the mids that really determine how loud you are and that it's not just about adding watts and speaker cabs.

What a great question and the answer is actually quite subtle and probably something we all ought to know if we are playing amplified music. Now the first thing is how do we measure loudness? Most people would say 'in decibels' but that's not quite right. The actual measurement of loudness is the phon. More of that later. The decibel is actually a slightly difficult concept and is used to describe slightly different things, it can be used to describe the electrical gain in an amplifier or preamplifier or the sound energy level at a particular point, they are of course closely related but not the same thing. For that reason the decibel (more accurately the Bel isn't accepted as a SI unit though it is regulated and recognised by ISO and IEC). It was initially invented by Bell (the telephone company)for measuring the loss along a mile of standard telegraph cable with one decibel being the smallest loss that anyone would notice and 1dB remains the smallest change in volume that anyone will notice. The other way the decibel reflects our hearing is that it is a logarythmic scale. For us to hear a doubling of volume it takes 10x more power. It's a brilliant piece of organic/evolutionary engineering which lets us hear a leaf blowing across a forest floor several meters away but still cope with a herd of elephants charging or even a volcano or landslide. It's not so good when you are buying an amplifier, a 10W amp will give you 10dB over a 1W amp but that will only double the sound level. If you want it four times louder then you need to increase the amp to 100W to get your extra 10dB. Then if you want it eight times louder you will need 1000W. Sorry to tell you this but moving out your 500W bass amp for an 800W monster gives you just over 1dB extra headroom, only just noticeable and not really worth the expense. Now this is all about gain so far and in and the concept of the db. It so happens that in their telegraph cables at the time you got 1dB loss for each mile mile of cable and in amps doubling the power gives you an extra 3dB of sound. Go back and have a look at BFM's excellent explanation of what happens with 2x10's and 4x10's and you can see what a good deal an extra 6db from more speakers is compared with the puny 1dB gained by buying an 800W amp So this is where we move from sound levels to actual loudness, how it sounds to us and the reason why some amps sound louder than others, the mystery or Trace watts if you like. Sound is frequency dependent humans can't hear bass very well, we feel bass when it's loud, our ears aren't much better at picking up bass than the stretch receptors in our guts and on our skin, Similarly we don't hear bats very well or anything much above a few thousand Hz, our hearing is much more sensitive at around 1,000Hz quite high in the midrange and the quietest sounds we can only detect here, the rustle of that leaf blown through the forest. When we remove the measuring microphone and pressure measurements we start again with a new decibel scale. One decibel is now defined differently as the quietest sound we can hear at 1,000Hz, something twice as loud (still at 1,000hz) is 10dB and your bass speaker producing 90db is 1,000,000,000 times louder than that at 1khz with just one watt or less! but at bottom E our hearing has lost most of that energy, deliberately filtered out by the working of the ear and then by the brain. You've lost 30dB or three of those noughts or in terms of hearing the 1.000Hz noise if 8x louder than the fundamental of bottom E. This is where the Phon comes in, it compares all the sound with the 1kHz sounds and allows for all the trickery of the ear/brain interface. Very few people use Phon's, we use decibels because we can measure them and anyone using measuring equipment will know about Phons and equal loudness, but there's one big practical thing about knowing all this for musicians who don't regularly get the ossciloscope and measuring mic out. I terms of perception any aplification systen that emphasises the midrange is going to sound louder and for a long time speakers in particular have tended to have huge peaks in the midrange to make them sound louder. A 6db boost isn't unusual and this can make a cheap 100W amp sound as loud as a 400W amp with a more honest speaker. Actually the whole of rock'n'roll was founded on that peaky miidrange sound so I shouldnt use words like honest, people love this artificial boost and it sounds good to them. The thing for you when buying an amp is to realise that Trace, Orange and many others are made to sound loud by some tricks engineers all know and if your tone rolls off those frequencies you might not be as loud. If you've read all this I apologise, I'm such a nerd As a final treat these are the equal loudness curves ISO version

Thanks for this, I will take it as a prod to get me moving on fitting a pair I've had laying around for a few years, I picked them up cheap and loved the idea of neo but the fitting got lost in the hundres and one other things I waste my time with

the idea is to help people by meeting them where they are. Mic cable doesn't mean mic level. I didn't say always lower quality sound, I used the word generally, it's practial advice aimed to helpsomeone struggling to maem head or tail of setting up a PA system for live music who will wonder why the sound engineer would prefer a balanced line. I'm not disagreeing with your comments but sometimes it's good to keep things simple if you want to be helpful. If maybe you read the words you'd have realised I'd allowed for exceptions but decidednot to make it more complex than it need be.

I don't think you can use @stevie's crossover design as it was specifically designed for the two drivers he used. Without giving too much detail he desings by having a target frequency response for each driver so they can be integrated smoothly. Having designed them using theory he then measures to response and repeatedly modifies the high and low pass filters until both do exactly what he wants. He then runs more tests to see that they integrate the way he wants. The Eminence 3012HO has a very different response around the crossover frequency to the Faital driver he designed for. Having said that very few if any manufactured musical instrument cabs go to such trouble so you acn get a workable result by using a proprietry crossover or by building a crossover based upon classical theory. There are online crossover design programs which will calculate the values for you. I've been happy with the results of these designs in the past

OK balanced is usually connected by a mic cable with three connections, it's noise cancelling so you can run long cables without picking up any electrical noise in the room. It feeds into a mic input on the mixing desk. unbalanced has only two connections and is usually connected by a jack to jack instrument lead, if you run long cables then it will pick up electrical noises and generally you'd expect lower quality sound. Your DI in the amp is effectively just another Aux out or FX out and probably the sound engineer would take this output and use a DI box to convert it to a balanced mic level signal. Depending upon their skill set and how long they have for a set up that is. It's probably important to know whether this DI is a pre or post signal. The pre signal is straight out of your bass with no processing by the amp. A post signal will have the tone you set up but crucially means any change in volume you make will also change the volume in the PA and mess up the FOH mix. There may also be a switch so you can change between a pre and post output. I think you probably are going to have to trust your sound engineer to get on with things. You can't really have one band member being able to change the front of house sound even if it is the bassist Just show them your DI and let them choose whether to use it or their own gear.

I'd imagine that any decent sound engineer who is going to be sniffy about feeds will have a box full of their favourite DI's and will split the signal for you. If the Di on your GK is a jack then you need to know if it is a balanced output TRS or an unbalanced TS connection which will probably be too noisy to be ideal

I think going forward in stages is the best strategy. If you like the sound then why undertake surgery on the cab. If you do want to port it then I'd port the back not the front. The cab was originally 'ported' by those cutouts in the back of the cab and personally I'd go for building ports based on extending them if I wanted a reflex cab. You can make ports of any shape with papier-mache I'm conservative with projects like this, a bit like The Repair Shop I don't mind the 'unfashionable' mid century look of the old cutout and I'd be thinking in terms of how I might be finishing the cab before taking a saw to the front. Perhaps ironically it's the look Bugera were going for in your other amp there. The colours of the Bell and Howell and even the grille cloth are a bit reminiscient of the old WEM Dominator amps. What a fun little project!

Nice one @David Morison just the information the OP needs. @Bone Idol The graphs show the advantagesof porting the cab. Crucially the -3db point reduces to around 70Hz which means all the second harmonic down to E is reproduced strongly. You've also got an extra 3db from around 110Hz which is significant. The mixed blessing is that you have roughly a 1db hump in response centred around 120Hz. This will give an artificial warmth to the bass sound which many bassists like and a roughtly half of us don't. The long and short of it is that you are going to get more bass if you port it and it's more than enough for you to hear a real difference. Whether you will prefer the lighter sound of the sealed cab or the fuller sound of the ported version is to an extent a matter of taste.

Hi, from what you are saying you want a pretty competent PA with nothing weighing more than 30lb/13.6kg and the budget is limited. That's a fairly difficult thing to do Your only advantage is that you don't need it immediately so you can take your time and wait for the right bargains to come along. I've run my Behringer amp with a couple of passive Yamaha speakers and it was perfectly competent. I don't know of your Sampsons but there are loads of cheap and good used passive speakers out there so swapping your amp might be the best idea the Behringer might be a good choice. There are loads of other cheap class D PA amps out there too so you may not just be limited to the NX3000.The Thomann amp is not completely undesirable so you might get most of the cost of a used NX3000 back anyway. It might be worth seeing if you can sell it with the Samsons too as a complete PA. People buying their first PA quite like a package if it has leads and stands thrown in Do you want advice on lightening the load. Getting a competent PA speaker at under 30lbs is pretty difficult at any price. The old passive ones tended to have wooden cabs, often heavy Chipboard or MDF so that is difficult and for a 12" system to be loud and have good power handling usually means a fairly hefty magnet again making 30lbs a difficult target. They exist but usually at a price. The other approach to problems lifting is to use a sub or two. they are heavy but stay on the floor and smaller lighter tops become possible. Long term it might be worth looking into a digital mixing desk, you can then ditch the outboard gear. Basically though I wouldn't rush into swapping things around until you have a clear plan of what you are trying to achieve.

I didn't save the simulations but you are of course correct, excursion is greater in a larger cab, directly in proportion to the extra bass. I think 'tears itself apart' might be a little too strong The power handling is reduced might be a bit fairer and of course this is true universally for all speakers in over-sized cabs. The thermal power ratings remain the same of course and since we haven't specified an amp or what the signal looks like the speaker might be perfectly happy. The actual reduction in power handling is dependent upon the mechanics of the speaker itself too and may or may not be significant. I was aiming for something simple to understand without saying anything that wasn't misleading. The truth but not the whole truth maybe

What do you use your PA for? Is it just or mainly vocals or are you putting more through it. Specifically kick drum, bass and keys which is more demanding? Also how loud is your band? That makes a huge difference as to your options. For anyone buying new nowadays I'd say the practical solution is pretty much always active speakers, quick and simple to set up and with DSP almost impossible to destroy in normal use, even the cheap stuff is reliable. With built in class D amps they can be pretty light too. Unless you really cut corners they are probably going to sound better than your Samsons, which you are happy with anyway. I've got the Behringer iNuke whic I think is the NX3000 in a really ugly case, same electronics. From memory it is 250W a side into 8 ohms 350W a side into 4ohms and 700W+ bridged. The same amp as is in the Bugera Veyron I suspect. Anyway it's a perfectly decent amp and not far off my Peavey IPR1600 amps

Without going into the maths the bigger the box the more bass you get from any given speaker. This isn't just offset by the additional problem of transporting something big and heavy; the 'wrong' sized box brings problems withgettinga flat response. Typically an over large box gives a droop in the bass response and is difficult to make flat, a too small from ideal cab will have a much higher resonance and less deep bassbut will give some bass boost around this raised resonant frequency. This happens with all cone speakers and in both reflex (ported) cabs and sealed cabs though the details differ. These are the calculated bass responses of a 10" bass driver in a 40l cab (blue) 20l cab (green) and a 5l cab (red). The medium sized cab in green gives the flattest response and a practical size. The red cab is way too small and -3db (the lower dotted line ) is 150Hz ish way to high to be useful. The large cab in blue has the response gradually falling from 500Hz and clearly isn't flat but crosses the -3db line way lower than the smaller cabs. Generally speaking cheap speakers with weaker magnets work better in huge boxes. A lot of old cabs tend to be large because speaker magnets in the day were weaker and powerful magnet systems were extremely expensive. Cheaper manufacture and better manetic materials have allowed box sizes to be reduced but big old boxes can still be fun and have a sound of their own.