Phil Starr

so this is what effect the extra 2litres make. I've tuned the cabs a little lower to give the nearest to flat response you can get with these speakers and the extra cab volume does give more flexibility. I don't mind a coloured cab but for me that peak is a little too big and a little too high with the current speaker. Actually the volume change has moved the peak and the -3db point down roughly 10Hz which is quite nice. The Fane will give quite a grown up tone for such a small speaker, a 4x6 might be quite interesting. However if sheer volume is the thing then there is no point in changing. If you send me the port dimensions Michael I can optimise them for you.

Hi, I've just run some modelling but this is based on the 9l volume of my cab. The Fane I mentioned and used myself comes out better slightly than the Beyma so if you want to go ahead I'd buy that. The blue is your current speaker in a ported cab and the purple is the same speaker in a sealed cab of the same volume. as you can see they all meet at the higher frequencies but low down the ported cab gives a lot more bass than the sealed cab down to about 70Hz where they cross over. As you can see there is a huge +4dB peak at around 160Hz in the low mids. Your speaker is underdamped (Americans use this term differently I think) and normally this much of a hump would be undesirable distortion. In practice this will be extra volume and a warmer sound which might be the fun factor you like about the way it is set up at the moment. Your speaker models better in a much larger sealed box, you can see the sealed box response is flatter but rolling off at 200Hz isn't any good for a bass player. For comparison the green response is the Fane, as you can see the volume peak is lower, just under 2db, and at a lower frequency around 110Hz, quite a good place to have a peak for a bass especially if it is bass light. there is also an extra 2db of bass below this point. All this means is that you have struck lucky with the speaker you have in terms of volume, that huge hump is giving you a lot of extra sound in the low mids. The other speakers will be subjectively quieter. In terms of sound quality the Fane will sound better for bass guitar. It has a flatter response and a touch more deep bass below 100Hz, the 2db boost at 110Hz is well controlled and in a nice place to give a subjective impression of real bass. All this is in a 9litre box yours may be a bit different.

OK it looks like we have a fun lockdown project to find how far the envelope can be pushed. Having had a lot of fun with my version I've ended up with a usable practice amp in a tiny practical box with very little effort. Actually it's better than that; it's good enough that I can get enough volume from my electric bass to do what other people do with double bass, play with other acoustic instruments and singers. That Beyma is just slightly better than the Fane 6-100 that I used too. I had the Fane kicking around from another project so I didn't have to spend anything which was a bonus but £33 for a weekends entertainment and the possibility of something satisfying to play with your family sounds like it's worth a try.

It's an OK speaker but designed for car use, the specs are bit dubious as they quote sensitivity as both 98dB which is high and 91.5 in the T/S parameters which is what you'd expect from this sort of unit. It probably has higher output at higher frequencies which is where they get the 98db figure from. They quote Fo as 114Hz which is well above bottom E at 41Hz so this is going to be well down on bass output but as Bill says it's not all that bad. You aren't going to get something that matches your double bass in terms of volume out of a 15W amp in a small box like this. You could get a little more output and slightly better bass response out of the Beyma I linked you to. The beyma would be suitable for a ported cab which would also help a little. None of this is going to be dramatic though. I think at this point you need to decide if you are driven enough by curiosity and the need for a project to want to see how good this little amp can be and then decide if £33 is worth it to satisfy the question. This is a bit like adding a second carburetor to a Morris Minor, it will go faster but it'll still be a Morris Minor

just to keep the conversation going I had a quick look. The Beyma 6cmv2 Beyma : Beyma 606CMV28 :: £33.29 IN STOCK (24 Jan 2021) (bluearan.co.uk) at £33 looks about as good as you can do in terms of value for money, unless you want to really spend, in which case there's a BMS driver you could buy at £110. I can't imagine why you would do that though you'd still be limited by the size of the cab and the 15W maximum output from the amp. If you want to do some irreversible surgery then you might be able to squeeze in an 8" speaker. As @Balcro says what do you have now? Are there any ports? There may be marginal gains here but don't expect miracles.

I don't know if this will be helpful but I recently knocked my old practice amp about in just the way you are proposing, the details are here A House Jam Combo - Build Diaries - Basschat I'm coincidentally currently eyeing up my Harke Kickback with the intention of seeing what can be squeezed out of that, mainly to see if I can save some weight as it's a heavy little thing for it's performance. It has a 100w amp though and a 10" speaker. I swapped the internal speaker for a Fane 6-100 which I had bought as a mid range driver. 6" 100W. You have two problems; using a 6" speaker means limited cone area so bass output and efficiency are traded and a tiny cab volume. Using a low power amp means you need very high efficiency to get adequate volume. I think I've got close to the limits with my build and so will you. The tone I've got is very bass light, much better than I started with but much less than my live rig, the volume is adequate for practice with an acoustic jumbo guitar and unamplified singing indoors. With a bit of compression of the signal and some fierce bass filtering below 80Hz you can get some extra volume and you might do an open mic night with it but that's it really. you might be able to get an extra couple of db from a better speaker but you'd be into something esoteric and costly to do that. As a practice amp though it's now great, enough bass not to sound tinny but loads of low mids and plenty of detail to show up every error I make with quite an aggressive but satisfying sound. It just won't go loud enough. With a double bass, I'm not sure if you'd add anything to the acoustic sound, probably a subtle enhancement of the mids but that would be it. It was fun to do but not for the uses you want to put it to.

just been on the phone with my friend who is a doctor in A&E. She's just treated a 55 year old in difficulties who contracted COVID by sharing a car with someone. 'We only shared a journey for 15 minutes so we didn't think masks would be necessary'!!! You can't make it up.

Wait until he adds the x32 We did get some great sounds out of a borrowed X32 though

The base of this is really very simple and always has been. This is a respiratory virus basically spread by breathing in viral particles that someone else has breathed out. It isn't safe to breathe in the air someone else has already shared. Of course washing hands and surfaces makes sense but you can't 'clean' the air. The public have been misled by politicians spreading the concept of Covid secure areas. Going into an enclosed space with an infected person is how we spread the disease however otherwise clean the area is. You can't have a pissing area in the corner of a swimming pool or a smoking corner of a crowded pub without sharing something unpleasant. Outdoors the air dilutes smells and viruses fairly quickly and the evidence is that there is little transmission. It has never been Covid safe to be indoors with other people and the more people and the smaller the space the more dangerous it is. The most dangerous thing is to be with young people who are more likely to be asymptomatically infectious. Your risk of spreading the disease increases logarythmically with the number of contacts you have. Schools, hospitality/mass indoor entertainment, shopping, public transport and indoor work are the biggest spreaders and you can't make them totally safe. The other myth is that disease is mainly spread at home, you can only spread disease at home if someone takes it home, these things aren't independent events. Our government policy of trying to keep the economy going by managing an 'acceptable' death rate has failed as it always would have and has merely prolonged the emergency and led to an increased death rate. to be fair most of the 'Western' countries have followed the same policies with similar results. Eastern and Australasian countries have made different decisions with better outcomes. It finally seems that with hospitals on their knees and death rates soaring that governments in Europe including our own are starting to 'get' it. Our media, democracy and our personal levels of education have let us down and collectively we have failed to show the political will to deal with this. All we can do now is to keep restrictions in place and monitor the infection rates as we gradually relax them. If we keep the infection rate below one then the disease will have a halving time, the better we behave and the tighter the restrictions the sooner we will be free of this thing. The economy and any mental health issues aren't helped by prolonging this or increasing the death toll.

Yeah the router is what's putting me off the Behringer. It's the sort of stupid short cut that would bug me even if the solution is cheap and obvious. I love things that are well designed and just work, and am stupidly irritated by a foolish short cut. The question is how irritated I'd be if I move on and want to mic up the drums or want to do some live recording.

I'd spotted the Zoom Livetrack-20 and it was on my list but it's a pricy solution for my bands needs, thomann are listing the L-12 for £400 which is well within budget but of course who knows what we will be paying with duties added. that's an attractive proposition though. I'm pretty ham fisted with touch screens so physical sliders are definitely a big bonus. I had considered the x32 but the physical size and cost had put me off. I've kind of set a £500 target unless there is very good reason to go bigger. Thanks so much, that's a nice thing and so Zoom, it's a big step forward from their old 8 channel recorders. I've been through the manual and also looked back at the L-20 which has a few more features. I think for me it's just a little too limited. The eq and other shaping on the individual channels is pretty restricted and it's still only 8 mic channels. There's also no chance for the rest of the band to do their own monitor mixes. I love the simplicity and the analogue like nature of the controls. It'd be perfect for a lot of bands, but not for me.

Which one ?

Yeah, as ever i want all the features for the same price The biggest attractions of the RCF are a router that works and the simplicity. I'm going to be playing bass if I need to tweak it and set up times are important too. a simple screen, large sliders and the ability to tap the screen for a 1dB change in the channel volume looks really enticing. If anyone else needs to touch it then again simplicity is king. Multi track recording is something which would be great to have though and 8 mic channels leaves nothing to spare unless I use a separate drum mixer. That's OK but then I'm in the same position as using an external router with extra boxes and cables. 18mics versus 8 is a huge difference. With your help I'd settled on the Behringer just before COVID struck. Now I can see limited gigging (outdoors probably, but we do a lot of that) it makes sense to purchase again and learn to drive it before we start gigging. The MR18 looks made for our band and isn't expensive, I think I'm struggling with heart v's head. I can see me ending up with both or having to upgrade in a year or two.

I've found a review if anyone else is having the same thoughts. Bullet points are The RCF is 'flawless', the router works, the app is really well executed and the learning curve is simple and short. It sounds great. The Behringer offers so much more in terms of flexibility, the app is glitchy but not catastrophically so and the learning curve is steep, but no more than other digital mixers. The router is awful to the point of unusability. Behringer XR18 vs RCF M18 Digital Mixers - YouTube also this Digital Mixer Showdown : RCF M18 v Behringer XR18 review - Which should you buy ? Soundcraft Ui24r - YouTube

is this a viable alternative to the behringer XR18? Any pro's or Con's? Anybody used one? We're a 4 piece band playing smallish venues ( in normal times) mainly pubs. Guitar, bass and drums with three vocals. QSC K12's for mains and a mix of in ears and floor monitors. We rarely if ever have a sound engineer. The mixer will be mine but I'm unlikely to play in anything bigger than a 5-piece band so a bit of redundancy on channels might be nice but eight mic channels is probably just enough for the foreseeable. At the moment drums are rarely miked and if so it tends to be just the kick.

Exactly my first thought, power supply caps. The other thing to look for is leakage from them any sticky goo is terminal and they need to be replaced. Second thought is the same too. Electric shocks from the caps are DC not AC and believe me are worse to experience than mains shocks. They can stop your heart so really, really be careful and if you have any doubts leave it to someone who has more knowledge.

I had a 115BW and a 215 I still have the 115 driver. Hmmmn maybe a lockdown project. Peavey BXBW in a lightweight cab...

Oh go on, I'm sure the ban is on politics and party politics rather than economics. So long as we refer to the decisions made by government in terms of macro-economics and their consequences we can surely have a grown up conversation. In terms of musical instruments and amplification there is an opportunity here. Since most of the stuff is actually made in the far east, not just China there is no reason it can't be imported directly and there is an opportunity for some increased design work and branding taking place with a more isolated home market. People like Studiospares already directly import and brand Chinese sourced gear for example, and the removal even if temporarily of competitors like Thomann will create all sorts of opportunities for UK based middlemen. There is a chance for a revival of old British brands or the development of new ones, Barefaced China anyone? I can see that for European brands like RCF, Markbass and the like that this could be challenging but there is no real reason why they shouldn't set up UK based subsidiaries. As you point out this is a medium sized market this means you won't necessarily get the full savings of a Europe wide purchasing train but it will still be a market big enough for most brands to want a presence. Eventually I think there will be either more negotiated deals or maybe a genuine Thomann UK shipping directly for the domestic market as we find ways around the bindings we have wrapped ourselves up in. It's unlikely to be better than EU membership but it won't stay as uncertain as it is now. My thoughts are that the steady erosion of the pound will be more significant in the long run. The other thing is that with the shutdown of the entertainments industry nobody is buying now or will be for at least another six months, if i was a European seller I'd hang fire on implementing changes whilst the market is quiet.

Sometimes we just have to make the best of what we have to hand, I think this is the best solution for the moment. One day, perhaps once gigging starts again, you might want to revisit this but it is sensible in the meantime to just try and squeeze as much as possible out of what you have.

It does help, many thanks. So for example one of the parts I need is just that, a gear wheel. It's one of a pair in a John Deere mower for which parts are no longer available and weren't distributed in the UK anyway. The gear is about 10cm in diameter and drives the wheels of a mower that probably weighs 30kg. It's made of some sort of hard plastic. There are a few used ones in the States but they would cost anything from £10-50 and the list price was in the $20 region when they were available. If i could get one for say £20 it would make the repair worthwhile.

I haven't checked but it looks like I could be well over that in 13 years with maybe 10 in covers bands. Remembering is a problem, though most return fairly quickly with a couple of run-throughs so long as they were originally gigged a few times. I wondered where the saturation point comes and it is pretty severe for me at around 100 songs (down to having three bands on the go at one time). I lose them fairly quickly once I stop gigging them and always mean to keep the ones that cost most to learn going, but I don't think I could make much of a stab at Fool For Your Loving for example. I don't play from notes though due to an inability to play and read at the same time For me memory is the lazy way out and it's a skill I've never learned.

Slight derail here but how much would this have cost if done commercially? I've needed a few plastic parts recently which are not available and aren't bass related; like a pinion for a CD transport for example. Have we reached a point where parts can be scanned, replicated and sold at prices which make them economically sensible to use?

Sympathy with you from me, I too have a broken Markbass and have come across the problem with Real Electronics. They aren't unpleasant or anything but you get a fairly inflexible response and estimate from them. The 'estimate' is around £200 whatever the fault is and they talk about it being as good as new on the phone, ie they are simply taking boards out and replacing them. As the used value is about £300 that's a huge chunk of the value and it makes MB an unviable purchase IMO. You might just as well purchase Behringer for all the aftersales support you get from MB, in fact to be fair the UK supplies of Behringer spares are very reasonably priced and with better availability. I bought the Peavey Minimax for £180 on the offer above as a stopgap as i had a load of gigs at the time. It sounds way better out of the box than the MB Tube and has noticeably more heft, if i can use that word. I ought to fix the MB and pass it on really. I won't be going back to it but the absence of gigs has removed any urgency.

Ha ha I should have said that the only time I've used these was with a hand brace, you need really slow speeds and decent torque to get a good cut and I've never used power tools to drive this sort of bit. I'd also cut the whole half way and turn the board round to cut the other face . I actually use a router to cut my own holes. Hi, I used a different and higher tuning to get the best out of the smaller cab and i was looking for a good hump around 100Hz rather than extending the lower end response. This emphasizes the second harmonic of the lowest notes rather than the fundamental but gives a pleasant warmth. It was never conceived of as having an extended flat bass but as something usable in the small pub venues I regularly play in with my covers band. I checked your tuning on WinISD and it was very close to the tuning I intended. Old school bass rather than FRFR if you like.

Here you go Hardwood Plywood Poplar Core FSC 2440 x 1220 x 12mm (jewson.co.uk)