LawrenceH

[quote name='barklama' timestamp='1369867739' post='2093858'] how do people rate these cabs for the sort of music i am doing? [/quote] A good friend of mine uses the Markbass cabs in quite a funky/souly functions band, with a Marcus Miller bass 5 - he gets an excellent sound that fits well with the band and genre. In fact, any time I've heard Markbass cabs used, and when I've tried them myself, they've sounded good to my ears particularly with a jazz bass.

[quote name='lefrash' timestamp='1369756329' post='2092376'] This was my other thought. Why not get myself a class D head, which isnt a big deal to carry about all the time, and just get a small 8" cab for the gigs I dont need my full amp. Although I love my LH500, I more or less use it as a power amp these days. Money is an issue for this route, and I cant be without an amp for any length of time. [/quote] Almost anything is lighter than an LH500! But the MB200 is especially small even for a Class D amp,and has a nice clear sound which I think would help you hear it onstage. I was very keen on getting a bus-friendly setup and ended up pairing a Markbass F1 with a DIY 10" neo cab - it works really well and I have indeed taken it on the bus on numerous occasions, together with bass, however I could definitely manage happily with even less than this for the purpose you describe. Only issue is that there aren't many good lightweight 8" cabs on the market, the Genz might be worth a look but for maximum value I'd definitely be inclined to make my own - plus that way you could make it a combo with the head, if preferred. There are a couple of excellent 8" drivers out there, can point you in the right direction if you're interested. This route wouldn't save you money compared to a small monitor, but it would give you excellent sound quality and portability for a relatively modest outlay.

If you want adequate volume from a smaller speaker, then it's best to compensate for lack of size with more watts, especially as watts are now cheap and weigh virtually nothing. Pairing something like a GK MB200 with an 8 or perhaps even a 6" driver would give you the power needed in a ridiculously small footprint.

I've done both ends as well - fairly common amongst bassists it seems, perhaps you could make the case that bassists naturally develop an ear for the whole band sound! I think it's interesting and useful to consider the sound of bass guitar on records. First, it's always, always very heavily compressed. Even bass that sounds open, natural and dynamic will have a lot of 'transparent' dynamic control happening. Second, it's unusual to have a lot of actual bass in the sound - all those discussions about the need for high-power, high-excursion woofers etc etc, well hifis don't have them, by and large, and radio stations won't broadcast stuff that's too bass-heavy without squashing it back anyway. Even dub bass, on commercial records, typically gets that dubby tone around the 100 to 300ish Hz region. Yes live sound is different from recording and I'd mix much more bass-heavy live, but to my ears a lot of live sound engineers are far too keen on the sound of their subs (crossed somewhere around 80-130Hz) and don't understand where the critical frequencies are for 'tone', ie the upper-bass through the midrange. This also afflicts the drum kit, especially at festivals - makes me wince hearing that 'rock' thump/click kick drum stamping all over a gentle acoustic ballad! Or hearing the snare through the subs... Btw I am coming to realise recently just how much, if you want an up-front, growly sound that still sits in the mix nicely and is 'SE friendly', then a well set-up fast compressor is a very useful tool indeed - even better if it's multiband, or perhaps two in series! You do need to know how to set them though - a live SE should but quite possibly doesn't, and unruly spikes from the stage sound can still mess up his mix. That applies to guitar too, especially when there's substantial overlap with the bass.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1369050749' post='2084208'] Do you think "Mr. Landlord" will sound good through that? [/quote] Haha, it will so long as you play it better than I managed on the recording! That was about 5 days in after loading a van up with gear in Devon, driving to Edinburgh, setting up the recording 'studio' in the cottage and then playing for hours and hours each day. Brain frazzled, fingers destroyed - my timing in the little break bits is about as atrocious as it could possibly be despite simplifying the line...I cringed a bit when I listened back when setting up for mixing shame because I think it's a nice line overall

Signal:noise ratio matters most when taking a very quiet input, like a mic or instrument out - I wouldn't worry about it at all for things at line level, it's more important that you don't clip them and it's usual to run things on inserts at unity gain - I definitely wouldn't go boosting the GEQ output, if it has been designed properly then it will have been designed to use in this manner. If your desk has main inserts, I'd use them for the main GEQ/compressor etc, they can be very quickly unplugged in an emergency

I have used Celestions with similar extension and overall capability (older, K12-300B, also a PA driver) for a bass cab in the past tuned somewhere around 50-55 litres IIRC. Still use them sometimes, they sound great, and go nice and loud with an old 300w TE powering them. They wouldn't match something using high-excursion drivers and a bigger power amp for maximum volume, but they've never needed to! Really depends what you want from them, but I personally like the sound of flattish-response PA woofers.

To be fair, any modern 2x15 set up should roughly match or outperform a typical 6x10 - a 15" driver has more than 3x the cone area of a 10" and will usually have more excursion, too. 10s only really make sense in multiples if you want a slim form factor.

The upper end of the response really won't change much putting the speakers in a different box, assuming you are listening on-axis. If the bottom end is overpowering at one point in the frequency range, then changing the box could help and potentially re-balance the low end against the mids/treble, but it's not going to magically make them sound bright and modern. The reason for the 2 boxes is that a 4x10 in a square really does have issues that will manifest in the mids/treble as very uneven sound. It might be worth checking if you like the sound of these drivers better when you're facing them directly, in which case stacking them vertically would bring you more on-axis. Otherwise, if you've got the power available you can probably get close to the same overall volume from 2 high-end 10" PA drivers. If not you can get the same volume or even exceed it with the right pair of 12s.

IMO a lot more people would like Markbass when trying them out for the first time if they just changed how they stuck the VLE/VPF knobs on in the factory, (and adjusted the graphic on the front panel toi match), so that zero was at 12 o clock! The number of times this appears to confuse people, so they walk away thinking you can't get a good sound out of the amps, must be massive.

Celestion have supplied specs for older speakers when I've contacted them in the past. Block up the ports, see what it sounds like, if it's ok then it's a fair bet in a sealed cab. If it sounds horrible then these are not the drivers for you! You can build from 12mm ply with lots of bracing to stiffen panels and it'll be a lot lighter, especially if you use poplar/birch-faced poplar/pine or basically anything but solid baltic birch. The 2x 2x10 cabs really is a better idea though, if you like the sound from the 4x10 then keep the internal dimensions about the same - it'll sound the same and it won't take up hardly any extra space.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1368296519' post='2075458'] It's a tricky thing, playing what other played before. [/quote] Yup, definitely agree with this - the nice thing about this band is that people are quite open to experimenting even with old stuff (the band has quite an anarchic approach in a more literal, political sense of the word). I found myself keeping the bits I thought worked best, but changing where I felt the drums/bass weren't locking or the bass wasn't contributing much to the overall picture, and it just naturally evolved over time - no doubt Mr Beer et al will tell you about my annoying-never-the-same-line-twice style! I especially enjoyed experimenting with new parts at gigs, heheh. Anyway I always felt 'my' bass lines were a work in progress so I'm sure you'll have your own take - as long as it fits with what the rest of the band are doing, I say go with it. As to the other bassists, well the band let me live, the others, it's not for me to say...

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1368275632' post='2075194'] If you have any recordings besides the EPs I already have, I'd be extremely interested, so that I get to learn as much of the repertoire as possible and quickly. It would be nice to get to play live soon. [/quote] Aye, last thing we did before we left was de-camp to a holiday cottage for a week with a load of recording gear. There's a whole album's worth of new recordings sitting on mine and Frank's computers! I'm sure he'll pass on the tracks in various states of mix pretty soon, and as I say I'll be doing my best to get them finished over the next few weeks; there's some new material but also some of the old songs were re-recorded and may have changed quite a bit - I half-learned them from the same EPs you've been given, but have probably changed a lot of what the previous bassists played (there've been a few ). What you do with 'my' versions, of course, will be up to you - I'll look forward to hearing at a gig whenever I'm next back in Edinburgh! The drummer's great fun to play with, as are the rest, and yes they listen to the bass a lot in this band... previous to this one I'd have said my default style was old-school funk but in the process of locking together better I found it best to really strip that back and rebuild. The irony is that I'm now in more of a 'funk' band again and am having to re-learn to play that way,

PS, yes, NUF auditions, strange things.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1368224767' post='2074781'] Well... I guess it wasn't all so bad, as I got offered the position by txt as I was going home from the second jam/audition thing... The New Urban Frontier have a new bass player! (and the guitarist is a really good bass player and a member of BC!) [/quote] Congrats! I'll miss this band, glad the search is finally over though! Look foward to hearing where you guys take it next Now I really need to get my arse in gear and finish mixing the old recordings...

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1368113564' post='2073393'] No I cant explain it either, but I would bet an sfx thumpinator would sort that out, and have wondered in the past whether there isnt a similar filter built into Jim's crossovers.... [/quote] That would require very big, heavy and expensive passive components, I'm certain they don't. Passive speaker-level filtering is just not practical below a certain frequency, especially using higher order filters. Different speaker voicings and tunings will give quite a wide variation in excursion, but in any case it's hard to see clear oscillations at 40-100 cycles a second with the naked eye! Different loudspeaker surrounds and cone stiffness probably make a big difference in how obvious excursion is too.

You can fairly easily make the Akai mess up the tracking IIRC, whether the presets are plug and play or not really depends on what you plug in - but once you've set it right it behaves very well, however I suspect that's true of most of these units, certainly didn't notice the Boss I've tried in a friend's set-up (syb3?) misbehaving

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1368100465' post='2073145'] +1. Regulations say that commercials cannot be louder than the program. By using compression the maximum dB level isn't higher, but the content has higher density due to the loss of dynamic range, so it sounds louder. Not because the peaks are any higher, but because the valleys have been filled in. [/quote] Rather off topic, but in Europe at least there have been recent recommendations and defined standards using perceived loudness-based metering that are changing this, and will have knock-on effects for music production intended for commercial broadcast - if anyone's interested look up ITU BS.1770-3 and the earlier EBU R128. The old trick of overcompressing will potentially be quite counterproductive as the level will get dropped anyway.

[quote name='machinehead' timestamp='1368037744' post='2072426'] Just as a matter of interest - what sort of tweaks are possible, practical and cost efficient for a cab manufacturer like Bergantino to have done to a loudspeaker by say, Eminence? Frank. [/quote] That's an interesting question - someone like BFM or Alex would be able to give a better answer, but from what I understand you could swap out the various components of a driver like the cone, surround, voice coil, spider and dust cap. Developing a custom chassis would be really (prohibitively) expensive because of the tooling involved, and I'd guess changing the magnet options would be pretty limited? Several of the apparent OEM Deltalite-alikes, like the Genz as well as this Bergantino, claim greater power handling with the same magnet weight. Reduced sensitivity compared to the 'stock' speaker suggests they've changed the voicecoil, probably made it a bit longer so I wouldn't be surprised if xmax were a bit bigger on these, though xmech is most likely the same or reduced. Changing the stiffness of the cone by altering material, suspension and dustcap as well as having a big effect on TS parameters, can change the mid/high frequency output a lot, so you could change the perceived voicing quite radically e.g. to attenuate the massive upper-mid peak on the stock speakers. I'm pretty sure you could say to Eminence that you wanted a speaker that sounded like 'x' and as far as frequency goes, they'd come up with one. But like before, it's all a trade-off.

I meant also to say, the off-the-shelf deltalite is a very far from 'neutral'-sounding speaker (I should know, I own some! ) which may be why a lot of people don't get on with the various iterations available and presumably why there's mileage in the OEM-tweaked variants such as these.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1368020002' post='2072108'] People do.... I've got no idea what "next generation" means in relation to bass cabs, but I've been using Bergantino cabs for 5 years and they are the best sounding cabs I've heard in that time. [/quote] I mean more potential usable output for footprint/weight, plus to an extent reducing the inherent distortion of the drivers used (eg using demodulation rings etc) which might give pleasing colour to a sound but limits versatility. I've heard so many people get great sounds with such different gear, there's so many ways of getting there - if the cab is a big part of that then that's cool, but even so a lot of that is relatively easily tweakable in the crossover. Size and weight for a given output level/quality are much harder to reduce. Now decent amps of modest size pushing out up to 1000 watts are fairly commonplace, the drivers are again the limiting factor.

Personally I love para/semi-para EQs, but then I've used a fair number of consoles. There is a modest learning curve, but being able to put a name/number to the frequency regions you're hearing is a great, timesaving tool. A nice simple compromise semi-para for me would have two sweepable mid bands, one a bit narrower than the other (say, q=1 the other between q=0.5-0.7). That'd let me deal with low-mid room mud where necessary and still leave the broader band for shaping the sound more generally. Drawback of fixed frequency EQ for me is that the optimal centres vary so much from one instrument and musical context to the next. Graphics are ok but a bit ragged for altering character, rather than notching out problems

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1368029773' post='2072277'] Ah, so the VLE does boost some low mids as well as rolling off the treble [/quote] Not on my F1 it doesn't! I had thought they were the same throughout the range. The manual shows the filter graphs, the VLE's 'just' a variable frequency HPF that shelves at about -20dB. I find a shade of VPF can often help tighten up a flabby sound, but a little goes a long way.

[quote name='One Drop' timestamp='1367965843' post='2071842'] Speakers are tweaked to his spec, excellent crossover, good tweeter, his ears. I guess the devil is in the details but hs cabs do sound marvelous no matter what they look like on paper. [/quote] A good crossover is important...but the fundamental limitations of that tweeter and the deltalite chassis are presumably the same as all the other reflex cabs based on that set-up. Not to knock it, I'm sure it's very capable, but unless I'm missing something it's not 'next-generation' stuff, but another flavour variant.

If you think about it, speaker polarity reversal in the context of the bass guitar/pickup stringed instrument is more or less equivalent to either changing the magnet poarity in the pickups, or plucking the string identically but in the other direction (up-down as opposed to down-up).