stevie

The answer to the question is, yes, you could upgrade your cab using a modern driver and achieve a worthwhile performance boost. As good as the EV driver was in its day, it's only rated at 200W and has a relatively modest xmax. You'll need to find out a bit more about the cabinet, however, such as its internal volume and tuning frequency, so that you're not working in the dark and can select the optimum replacement.

On 11/04/2023 at 17:46, jrixn1 said:

 

Sounds like you're happy with your Helix tone - and that goes 100% hand in hand with neutral amplification.

 

You could get separates, but really you can't beat powered speakers for this application:
E.g. RCF 732-A is £700 and 18kg.  (This is what I used to have.)
FBT ProMaxx 112a is £750 and 15kg. (This is what I have now.)
Or similar from QSC (K12.2) and Yamaha (DXR12).

 

As a comparison, if you were to buy separates: just looking at cabs, a Big Baby 3 is £1150 or a LFSys Monaco is £750.  I.e. already costs more even without buying a power amp yet.

 

The above RCF etc powered speakers all have DSP, one advantage of which is that it allows you to get the most out of the speaker physically if you did need to push it, but while also preventing it from damage.  Having said that, I play in a 10-piece function band, and a 12" powered speaker is more than enough - I've never been close to running out of volume.

 

Form factor is great as has tilt (wedge) ability built in.

 

Lots of different venues, some of which with poor stage acoustics - but I never have a problem hearing myself, due to the good dispersion and clarity of the powered speaker.  This was not always the case with my previous traditional bass cabs.
 

I agree with @jrixn1's post. As the OP already has a preamp, buying a powered speaker is definitely a sensible option.

But..........I must take issue with the cost comparison with the LFSys Monaco. Although the Monaco is an FRFR speaker and works well as a vocal or general-purpose PA and monitor, it was designed specifically to handle bass guitar. Most of the cost of the speaker has therefore gone into the bass driver and cabinet. The RCF, on the other hand, is a general-purpose PA cabinet whose main aim is to reproduce midrange frequencies, i.e. vocals. The manufacturer's money has therefore gone into the very nice midrange/HF driver and horn - which is perfectly understandable and good.

Now, if you take a close look at the 12" driver used in the RCF cab, you'll discover that it's a 300W, ceramic magnet speaker with a pressed steel chassis and relatively short voicecoil - good for midrange efficiency, but not for bass power handling. The driver in the LFSys, by contrast, not only has twice the power handling (same AES rating) but twice the excursion. This means that it would take *two* RCF cabinets to achieve the same excursion-limited SPL as the LFSys.

If you want a wooden cabinet, you'll have to spend £1200 on the NX 32a, which has the same driver complement (although its 12" woofer gets a cast chassis).You'd then be looking at spending £2,400 and you'd be carting over 40kg to your gigs. And if you don't have a Kemper or a preamp, you'd have to buy one.

So, while the RCF could be a good solution to the OP's specific problem as long as he's happy with the output levels available from the 732-A, it won't do what an LFSys Monaco with, say, a Veyron BC1001M will do for a total of about a grand. I thought I ought to mention that. 😊

The volume of the lockdown cab is about 30 percent less than the BC112. Some twelves will work in that volume but will be a bit bass light.

3 hours ago, Minininjarob said:

I’ve been looking at them but they aren’t cheap. Something to save up for I think. 
They don’t seem to be easily available though. 

There's no availability problem with LFSys cabs - at least at the moment.🙂

What about Homebase? https://store.homebase.co.uk/belfast/drumkeen-complex/wood-cutting

Looks great!

Bill's post highlights the dangers of choosing a cab based on the manufacturer's specs. Sensitivity and maximum SPL are certainly  not as simple as some people think. I note that nobody has mentioned power compression. Even if you have xmax and you understand the different ways of quoting it, without a figure for power compression, you can't calculate maximum SPL.

On 14/03/2023 at 07:16, Downunderwonder said:

Probably just unhooked the blown driver.

You cynic, you. Although you're probably right.😄

Phil's little practice cab is brilliant. If I weren't planning to do my own version, I'd have built one ages ago.

On 02/03/2023 at 11:46, Lozz196 said:

As much as I love my Ashdown set-up I`m slowly realising that my back is going to be making the choice on the gear I have moving forwards, have to say I think a Monaco might be the ideal cab for me going by the description of the sound, especially the tighter low end.

@Lozz196, there's a demo Monaco currently doing a tour of the country. If you'd like to be put on the list, just send me a pm and I'll arrange it.

They've now all been taken and will be on their way to good homes shortly.

This is a back-of-the-envelope job. Try a cab with an internal volume of 70 litres and use either two 100mm or one 150mm ports, 160mm long. Most commercial ports are a bit shorter than that - so you may have to extend them with some cardboard. The drivers themselves look pretty good to me.

Thanks to the generosity of Basschatters, I may have a very small number of PH-170 horns available shortly. I know some folks have been pulling their hair out trying to locate these. Send me a PM.

You don't actually need the specs of the driver to calculate the tuning frequency of the cab. Just the internal volume and port size.

The P.Audio horn has been problematic for a while. Blue Aran appear to have distribution rights for Europe and their stockholdings are not particularly reliable. I think this is because they have to import a container at a time, which means just once or twice a year. Current availability is July.

It's a shame because it's a really nice, cheap horn, comparable with the more expensive Faital Pro horn that Barefaced uses. For a comparison, <https://www.diy-hifi-forum.eu/forum/showthread.php?17872-Faital-STH-100-vs-P-Audio-PH-170-am-BMS-4524>. [In German, use Google translate]. Fitting an alternative means changing the crossover, as a crossover designed specifically for the P-170 won't work properly with anything else. The Celestion horn, for example, is physically deeper and also louder, which means that the phase will be wrong at the crossover point and it will sound harsh. That's also what I'm hearing from the video.

Having the music at the top of the screen is a nice touch. Very useful.

I can hear the fizz of the needle on the Dansette as I listen to this. I hope you'll be playing NIvram. That's a fun tune to play.

How do you find the Burns?

I had a Weller soldering station for several decades. It worked and lasted well but you will need spares if you're a heavy user - and you can now buy a quality soldering station for the cost of their replacement heating element. Which is what I did.

I'd expect the 2x10 to be stacked horizontally - most people do it that way. But stacking it vertically will certainly help. Getting the hearing aid sorted would probably be the most useful course of action here.

It could be useful to consider what’s actually going on here and why the OP can’t hear his backline properly. It’s a common problem directly related to the dispersion of the speaker cabinet. It’s been covered here many times, but it’s worth repeating.

The speakers used in bass cabinets start to become directional at about 1kHz. This means that if you’re standing above or to the side of your cab, you won’t hear those frequencies very well. The higher you go, the worse it becomes as those mid/high frequencies start to form a very tight directional beam that goes right past your ears.

The frequency band between 1 and 4kHz is critical to audibility. It’s the area where consonants occur in speech. When you’re unable to hear them properly, you can’t understand what people are saying. It’s just as important for the bass, as that’s where you get your information on tonality, and more importantly, pitch. So if you can’t hear those frequencies, you’re going to struggle.

The usual solution is to point the cab at your ears, either by tilting it up or standing it on another cab. That works – until you move to the side of the cab.  Also, because of its directionality, the average  bass guitar cabinet is incapable of ‘throwing’ midrange/high frequencies very far. So the muffled sound that the player hears when standing off-axis is generally what the audience hears too.
 
This is why the ideal bass guitar cab needs to combine the characteristics of a PA with those of a stage monitor, with a coverage pattern capable of directing the full frequency range of the bass both to the player and to the audience.

Found this right away. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144194452700

And this: Ebay item no. 374282855101

1 hour ago, warwickhunt said:

 

Might sound like a daft question but why is the T12-942 not supplied with a power supply?  

 

Surely it is a necessity and can't be 'that' expensive?

 You can order it with the recommended power supply if you want one - they're about twelve pounds. But it uses a fairly common type of power supply and many people already have something suitable. There's also a mains-powered version with a built-in power supply.

Everything is ready to go, @tubbybloke68. I'm just waiting for the woodwork. I'll post pics as soon as I have a production model finished, but it's basically a scaled-down version of the Monaco. So the appearance and cosmetics are the same - it's just smaller.

If you want a professional quality iron, check out the Quicko T12-942. It's a copy of the Hakko and uses the same bits. They're available on Ebay, although you can buy them for less on Ali Express. You'll need to add a power supply - anything from 15 to 24V is OK. You might have an old laptop power supply in a drawer that would work. That's what I use. I've been using two of these for the past 12 months and they've been great. They replaced a Weller soldering station.

15 hours ago, KevL said:

What model are the speakers?

Have you removed the tweeter to see what make and model it is? Most speaker manufacturers use third-party drivers e.g. Scanspeak, Vifa and replacements are often readily available. 

+1  I believe Mordaunt-Short used a lot of Audax tweeters. As Matt P says, take a photo of the tweeter from a few angles and post it up here. Alternatively, search Ebay for parts for your specific model.