LawrenceH

Use a DI box to sort out the impedance mismatch, those active Behringer ones are probably the most cost-effective solution

The ubiquity of Mustang Sally at pub gigs is a strange sociological phenomenon that, however it started, becomes self-perpetuating, like salt crystals growing in a cube or CFCs destroying the ozone layer. Will it ever go away? Who knows - the more bands play it the more punters expect bands to play it, the more bands feel they have to play it. It's just the same from the other perspective; the more women of a certain age dance around drunkenly waving handbangs to it, the more it becomes an essential rite of passage into that phase of womanhood, the more they will seek out venues to enact this tribal ritual. There are only two possible outcome scenarios, it'll either quietly and mysteriously subside, like an ebbing spring tide, or it'll rise up unstoppably and engulf us all in an apocalyptic musical tsunami of sh&*(e. Actually I quite like the Wilson Pickett version of Mustang Sally, but he did have better stuff, and I don't really feel the need to ever hear it again probably thanks to a million pub bands.

If the slap sounded weird then it's the TV mix, not Larry himself, live you can hear him just fine believe me! His voice is epically deep and powerful too, actually rumbles your bones through a sound system that's capable of reproducing it. I don't get what's wrong with the gooseneck - he can't use a fixed stand mic unless he stays still, which he never does, and he can't use a headset mic without losing the ability to use mic technique. His voice doesn't exactly make you think 'Madonna' after all...

[quote name='funkle' timestamp='1353168360' post='1872350'] Thanks for that! Interesting that the graphs only go down to 100hz. I'd like to know what's happening below that. I'll keep hunting. [/quote] At 100Hz and below it's far easier to look at the simulations, which are pretty accurate at these frequencies, often more than measurements done under non-ideal conditions

I have a 75RI jazz with 7.25", chunky (front-to-back) neck and an aerodyne jazz with a 9.5", slimmer-profile neck. Both are totally playable and adjusting between the two has never been an issue. There's something indefinably nice about the feel of the vintage profile neck, but the more modern neck might have the slight edge for preciseness. OTOH I could be imagining it. I would care a lot more about the balance of the instrument, so in a custom-build would want to make sure the neck wasn't too heavy if going for a chunkier vintage profile. If it was made of a nice lightweight piece of maple, I wouldn't care and would probably choose the vintage just for the old-school aesthetic.

Here's some for a 15" variant, I'm sure I've seen others though. They might be buried on old talkbass threads from when people were experimenting with different crossovers: http://greenboy.us/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=32&start=60

If you join the Greenboy forum there are broadband spl charts (measured, not theoretical). Bear in mind different crossover/mid-driver/tweeter combinations will give slightly different results.

Just looking at EQ is not the whole solution - the loudness curve by its nature means that dynamics are very important, the louder it is overall the better you can hear the quieter parts of a note. Bass guitar on records, designed to sound good at moderate volume, is very heavily compressed and limited, typically in a frequency-conscious manner.

1981 Gold-on-Gold jazz fior me, thanks

[quote name='fretmeister' timestamp='1352889282' post='1868785'] I have a Marleaux Consat Custom 5 I gave some serious thought to selling it as it doesn't quite sound how I want it to. BUT it has the only 5 string neck I have ever loved so I'd like to try and get it sounding different. This might be impossible given the construction (mahogany body with a ziricote top) but I want it to sound more like a Marcus jazz bass. It has Delano humbuckers in it at the moment. They are very humbuckery and lack the single coil sizzle. There are not many true single coils that are a direct replacement, size-wise, but the Nordstrand Big Singles appear to be a straight swap. Any idea if these will give me a push to the sound I'm looking for? I had a chat with Mark at Bass Direct and he thought the preamp was very neutral and wouldn't need changing at all, so that leaves the pickups. All suggestions for my impossible holy grail are welcome! [/quote] I put these in an Ibanez SR500, a similarly unsuitable bass for a Marcus Miller sound! They had a solid sounding bottom with a smooth top-end, freq response extended high as you'd expect from a single coil but didn't have the upper-mid 'bite' of Fender jazz pickups where a lot of the character is. I used them with 250k pots, with 500k pots I'd expect to get a little more out of them. But, looking at the Marleaux the pickup positioning is so far from a 70s jazz (looks close to my Ibanez actually) that it'll never sound like one regardless of other aspects of the construction. I sold my Ibanez and bought a jazz, it's the only way I'm afraid.

The speakers Ashdown use have really varied over the years. My old and very humble entry-level Electric Blue model (150 watt, made in UK) had a very respectable large heavy magnet Sica 12" driver that was rated at 250 watt RMS and had quite a reasonable excursion capability. Not the brightest speaker, probably started dropping off above 2k, but it was overspecced compared to most entry level combos. I am sure they don't use the same model on the modern Chinese versions.

The guy you were talking to is wrong, but it's a poorly-understood topic and there is an element of truth in the idea that clipping can be dangerous. As has been said, in a system employing passive crossovers it is a particular issue. But something that's often overlooked is that speaker thermal power handling is rated in watts RMS, an average power value. A sensible measure for a driver where heat dissipation is a limiting factor. Amplifier outputs are also rated in watts RMS, however this will be to a rated or derived distortion value. Amps are often limited by peak voltage output. By driving an amplified into clipping, you can (if the amp's power supply is good enough) push out an average power value beyond its clean RMS capability. If you get really extreme, this could allow an amp to fry a speaker despite the RMS rating suggesting otherwise. The solution assuming you need more volume isn't a more powerful amp though - that'd allow you to push out a cleaner signal but the average power to get to similar perceived level would still be too high -you need more speakers.

Anything old-ish, that was mastered to CD later than it was mastered to vinyl, has a good chance of sounding better on the vinyl just because the tapes it came from were in better nick when the first (vinyl) master was done. Plus, there are plenty of remasters where the signal has been clipped to boost perceived loudness, which will sound worse than the vinyl on a decent hifi. I also think most cheap CD players still have pretty rubbish filters. My Marantz still sounds better than the output on my laptop, for example. Digital can sound amazing, but for various reasons it often doesn't.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1352634453' post='1865314'] You're paying for the sound. [/quote] And the weight - that finish is a lot lighter than some of the 'prettier' alternatives while still being durable.

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1352331194' post='1861962'] Hi Lawrence, the difference in Xmax isn't that great with the different measuring techniques, I've been developing some cabs for 15" deltalites with 4.2mm Xmax and with some cabs I'm getting excursion limiting at 35W at some frequencies. I'm kind of with BFM on this one, With only two 10" speakers Xmax of 2mm is a potential problem, even if it is 2,6mm in real money. The high resonance is also an issue, though not necessarily a deal breaker. If Fs is 73 then in a cab it will be higher, probably a whole octave over E or more. There will be a hump between 100-150Hz somewhere to compensate but this will give the speaker that sound which so many commercial cabs have. If what you want is that particular colour to your sound then it isn't a problem, in many ways it is the old-school sound [/quote] Hi Phil, The 'old school sound' is a pretty good compromise for a smallish cab that won't be fed hundreds of watts IMO, presumably that's why it's so common! Lots of the Deltalite-based cabs that people like have precisely this boosted response in the upper bass/low mids. Bill's own Jack 10s that I've built, played through and tested sound very 'loud and low' yet most of the output is in the low mids there is very little below 100Hz in comparison. Actually, simming those Celestions in various boxes they don't behave too badly either, the hump is pretty gentle. After playing through various DIY and commercial cabs I've come to the conclusion that for many purposes the mid-range response say between 200 and 4k has far more effect on perception of tone than the true bass register - room responses are so variable and it contains so comparatively little pitch info that we just 'edit' a fair amount of this out at gigs! Chest thump is nice of course but comes at a significant price - let's not forget the OP is trying to reach the sound of a current Ashdown MAG, it's not exactly going to be something only achievable with £300 B&C drivers. Although xmax is undoubtedly important I think it is a much mis-referenced quantity in relation to bass guitar. The power distribution in 'typical' (passive) bass guitar low note signals when you analyse it has surprisingly little below 80Hz, even on peaks where the nature of the attack envelope means the signal contains a fair degree of HF transient too. It's really, really hard to drive e.g. a 500w bass amp to produce anything near 500 watts pure bass signal with actual bass guitar*. String thump can get far closer but IMO xmax is not the massive issue you might imagine, because it is not a musical signal. What matters most there is behaviour beyond xmax and that's where speakers can really differ. Depending on the xlim failure mode, once suspension braking kicks in it starts to sound really mid-range nasty before you hit xlim, with others I think eg the voice-coil can bottom out first so failure is far more sudden. If either of those happen then the thump makes it sound awful. The Celestion NTRs I've used have xmax (old-fashioned) of 4mm but xlim is 13mm! Braking kicks in around 10 though and according to Celestion themselves, that's when it starts to sound nasty. The Deltalite 10s have xmax 4.2mm (THD-based I think?) but xlim of 8. I don't know what the failure mode is on these but with a 500 watt amp driving really hard I can get them to sound quite nasty. I can't get there with the Celestions they just keep going with the amp on 11! A much under-rated range. Of course a very linear long-excursion woofer sounds much 'tighter' but you're not going to pick one of those up for £20 that has a useable midrange response and sensitivity. Buff's Orange labels have a similar high Fs and ~2mm xmax, these are/were the speakers loaded in to Warwick's neo range and despite all the doom-mongering the mid-range response makes them sound nice and clear. In terms of actually measuring xmax, don't forget from an engineering perspective it's a somewhat arbitrary quantity by any other method than the old-fashioned one (and even by that one if the manufacturer is using technologies designed to manipulate the Bl curve). There's methods based on acceptable THD with pure or multiple tones and then there's methods based on specifying a given value for acceptable deviation from small signal parameters. Either way the thresholds for what's acceptable are set for convenience - audibility will always vary on application and user. Xlim is a far more robust quantity in that sense. The 'modern' standard arithmetic method of adding on 1/4 of the gap height can give good agreement with other measuring methods and makes intuitive sense - for many of those 2mm Celestions it's an extra 2mm 'magically gained' like other (even respectable) manufacturers do. Those Celestion ceramics I mentioned are K12-300Bs, sold as bass woofers in the late 90s. Used as actual subs we've driven them hard and they can't hack it nearly as well as a modern driver, but for bass guitar it's just never been a limiting factor - there's always been enough volume on tap with a 300 watt head. The 410 configuration I'd assume the OP will end up with is going to be similarly ear-breaking if not louder. *I would say that active EQs change the equation somewhat since they can incorporate such massive boosts at ridiculously low frequencies, but then you run into real issue with amp power and gain structure before the signal even reaches the speaker. Anyway this is all very off-topic and perhaps I should start a separate thread, apologies to the original poster for cluttering it up. You could always ask Celestion what xmax on the 16ohm drivers you linked to actually is rather than my speculation(!), they've always been very helpful to me in the past. But ultimately, if you try it and it sounds good, then it is good.

I'm with Happy Jack on this - the current (old) format with plenty of chat does let you suss out what's what with a lot of sales and, I've felt, gives me more confidence in purchasing e.g. by post which is a real trust thing. This new format seems much too open to gumtree-style scams in comparison

Put a blanket over the cab!

Celestion and I think Sica report Xmax the old way - if it was a Faital or 18Sound, the xmax value would probably be double for the 2mm ones! I wouldn't be fussed about it. I also don't think the high Fs is going to be such an issue, compared to many 10" cabs on the market it models well enough and a lot better than the OEM Sica. I have used 12" Celestion ceramics with a stated 2mm xmax for bass and they sound very nice and go damn loud driven by a 300w Trace Elliot. I haven't noticed any underperformance compared to eg Eminence-loaded cabs either, which I've also owned. You can undoubtedly go a lot louder with premium drivers and high power, but with 150 watts spread right across the spectrum you aren't going to run into trouble below 100Hz unless the signal is very heavily EQed either at the amp or with an active pre. If you want a lot of the low E fundamental then it's not realistic in a cheap 210 with only 150 watts, however most cheaper/medium cabs sound ok because they reproduce the harmonics above 80Hz well enough, which gives a subjective impression of bass. With all the chat on here about speaker 'minimum requirements' I sometimes wonder if everyone else plays extended range doom, or everywhere I've lived in the UK has totally atypical venues. I've got a Markbass F1 and a pair of 1x10 cabs each loaded with a premium Celestion neo PA unit - I've just been leaving the second cab at home recently because I get enough clean volume with the one. That's playing quite bass-heavy dub/ska/hip-hop too...of course even the smaller venues have subs half the time.

I have some of the Celestion NTRs and some of the Eminence Deltalites, roughly equivalent. Both are excellent. Bear in mind Celestion spec their Xmax value differently to Eminence so it's hard to compare directly. Eminence seem to worry less about a flat freq response than some other manufacturers which matters or not depending on how you're implementing crossovers. Faital, an Italian brand, are also making some well regarded stuff at the moment which supposedly has excellent linearity at high spl

[quote name='Stompbox' timestamp='1352157605' post='1859615'] Hey thanks for that LawrenceH - I would be putting around 150/175 watts in - not the max total rating of 400, that's for sure. Celestion also do a 100watt version, I've just found, so that may be better, running them at around 2/3 of their rating, rather then under driving them? The existing 10's have had a lot of use for quite a long period of time, and may be" tired", or the new r MAG 210T cabinet may just have better spec speakers.... [/quote] You can't really 'under-drive' a speaker so definitely don't drop down on that basis. Reasons to do so would be if the lower wattage speakers had higher excursion capability and/or higher sensitivity - or for the weight. If you mean the BL10-100X then that probably does have a little more excursion capability but, with 150 watts total, I'd personally not be too worried about that. If the weight/cash is an issue then the 100 is a good cheap option IMO

You can open them using acrobat if you tell it to directly. The Sica looks crazy, like it's designed to give a booming one note mid-bass response and f&*% all else. Despite the high resonant frequency I think the Celestion would sound ok in most vented cabs, as long as they're not tuned too low. People could tell you more if you knew the internal dimensions and tuning of the cabinet. It should sound reasonably detailed and balanced. Main drawback is the lack of info on the maximum excursion capability. Given that it's only a 2" voice coil and looking at the freq chart I'd guess, based on other Celestion speakers, that it's not so high. This means you won't be able to feed a lot of low end in before you reach the limits of the cab - certainly if you had 400 watts of real low bass it would be more than the speakers could handle. In reality, it's not going to be any worse than most other cheap speakers so if the price is something like the £25 per speaker with the Blue Aran JAM club and you are realistic about the amount of bass a 210 loaded with cheap drivers can manage, it will be fine. I'd bank on it sounding a lot better than the speakers in there!

This is really useful, thanks. Can I ask what you're driving them with? I'd like some good, robust in-ears for my ipod nano, I break cheap ones within about a month thanks to the crappy ipod design of being long and thin with the output jack right on the corner

That's great to hear! Glad it worked out.

I haven't heard a better sounding 210 than the Redhead. Weigh a ton. The Markbass are lighter and probably louder but IMO though they're good, soundwise the SWR is better.

Cheers guys! I'm not really into the chained FX thing, I want the flexibility of different oscillators and find that approach much more intuitive. Thinking along the lines of some of the classic 70s/80s synth bass lines that were really input off moogs and the like. Mxm, the Sonuus device looks very cool but the Sound on Sound review of the i2m talks about latency figures for bass that are IME unuseable for live performance. I wonder if the B2m is much improved in this regard? xgsjx, I'm off to check out Shep's interview that you mention as well. Keep it coming, this has all been really useful.