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AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

#8,002
DukeLeJeune said:
What will help significantly is when I can get boards cut on a CNC machine again. Unfortunately that is on hold for a while. I was going to finance the first batch (ten sheets's worth) from the second and final installment on a custom, highly specialized, six-piece home audio speaker system. When the system was finished I was unable to contact the buyer so I did a search on the internet. Found his obituary. He had been in a motorcycle accident. So let's just say things are now complicated. Anyway that put the CNC deal on hold.
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That’s the saddest story I’ve heard today (that wasn’t on the news).
I feel for the fella’s Family. As a lifelong motorcyclist, and an industry insider, it hits doubly home.
If only I could afford to get you that CNC unit.
 
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#8,003
Lowendtech said:
That’s the saddest story I’ve heard today (that wasn’t on the news).
I feel for the fella’s Family. As a lifelong motorcyclist, and an industry insider, it hits doubly home.
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We had become friends eighteen years ago over our common home audio interest, though at the time he lived in New York and I lived in New Orleans. Then I moved to south-eastern Idaho and he retired to Jackson Wyoming, within driving distance. I built four different speaker systems for him over the years, for different rooms. He was one of these insanely successful people (his nearest neighbor in Jackson was Sandra Bullock, to give you an idea), but he never lost touch with the rest of us. He treated everyone as an equal, and used his powers for good. He retired to Jackson because his idea of relaxation was hiking up a mountain at 5 AM after a fresh snow so he could ski down it.

Unfortunately he was not a lifelong motorcyclist. When he discovered motorcycles, in his early 60's, he had the means to buy way more bike than he should have.

Lowendtech said:
If only I could afford to get you that CNC unit.
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Ah, lemme clarify... the "CNC deal" I mentioned was "having boards cut", NOT "buying the machine"!!

But thank you very much for the thought!!
 
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#8,004
Tonight was the first chance I had to use the cheater-circuit-disabled Birdhaus 48 at band practice. It was definitely softer in the top end and upper mids, to my ear, which makes it sound less like a tweeter-equipped cabinet but is--I think, so far--a step in the right direction for me and my "tonal ears." More to come on this as I have chances to tweak it further, but taking the cheater out of the circuit did enable me to do less subtractive EQ up above 3-4 kHz. I had a P-bassy rock thing going on that sounded a lot like the tone on a song I just happened to hear on the way to band practice: Dio's "Holy Diver."

Now, I'm not a big early 80s Dio-type music fan, or anything, and I think the lyrics to Holy Diver, and Dio's generally over-enunciated delivery--"Ride the Ti-GAH!"--are pretty ridiculous and overblown...but to my ear, that is a slammin, badass rock bass sound that is UP in the mix and suits the rest of the mix really well. Same thing for the song "Last in Line." That is the kind of lowbrow fun I was bringing tonight. It's probably not what AK cabs were created for. But they can do it, even when fed with such a dumpster-dive of a rig as what I use (pawnshop Squier P with D'Addario chrome flats--string pack cost over half what the bass cost, used Zoom B2, used Peavey M-3000 power amp). I had room to turn up on my Zoom pre and my 210-watt power amp and even at that power level the Birdhaus' four 8s were quite present alongside a pretty loud drummer and a guitarist wrestling with feedback from an Epiphone Dot and a 100-watt Marshall DSL head and 4 x 12 cab. The DSL wasn't turned way up, but it was pretty loud.

AK cabs can do bonehead rock, as well as all the other genres and experimental 15-string sonic sculpture. Ride the Ti-GAH!!!
 
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#8,005
mexicanyella said:
Tonight was the first chance I had to use the cheater-circuit-disabled Birdhaus 48 at band practice. It was definitely softer in the top end and upper mids, to my ear, which makes it sound less like a tweeter-equipped cabinet but is--I think, so far--a step in the right direction for me and my "tonal ears." More to come on this as I have chances to tweak it further, but taking the cheater out of the circuit did enable me to do less subtractive EQ up above 3-4 kHz. I had a P-bassy rock thing going on that sounded a lot like the tone on a song I just happened to hear on the way to band practice: Dio's "Holy Diver."

Now, I'm not a big early 80s Dio-type music fan, or anything, and I think the lyrics to Holy Diver, and Dio's generally over-enunciated delivery--"Ride the Ti-GAH!"--are pretty ridiculous and overblown...but to my ear, that is a slammin, badass rock bass sound that is UP in the mix and suits the rest of the mix really well. Same thing for the song "Last in Line." That is the kind of lowbrow fun I was bringing tonight. It's probably not what AK cabs were created for. But they can do it, even when fed with such a dumpster-dive of a rig as what I use (pawnshop Squier P with D'Addario chrome flats--string pack cost over half what the bass cost, used Zoom B2, used Peavey M-3000 power amp). I had room to turn up on my Zoom pre and my 210-watt power amp and even at that power level the Birdhaus' four 8s were quite present alongside a pretty loud drummer and a guitarist wrestling with feedback from an Epiphone Dot and a 100-watt Marshall DSL head and 4 x 12 cab. The DSL wasn't turned way up, but it was pretty loud.

AK cabs can do bonehead rock, as well as all the other genres and experimental 15-string sonic sculpture. Ride the Ti-GAH!!!
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Jebus, man, that's a lot of effort you put in to justify and at the same time distance yourself from what's ultimately a form of entertainment as legitimate as anything.
Mick and Keef said it best, on the other Mick's swan anthem with the band. ;)
I say more pleasure, less guilt! :)
 
#8,007
HaphAsSard said:
Jebus, man, that's a lot of effort you put in to justify and at the same time distance yourself from what's ultimately a form of entertainment as legitimate as anything.
Mick and Keef said it best, on the other Mick's swan anthem with the band. ;)
I say more pleasure, less guilt! :)
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Effort!?! It was nothing.

While I was trying to be funny when I wrote that and hadn't thought of it as justifying/distancing myself, now that you point that out I see what you mean. I guess I should own the mëtäl and not speak as if I am embarrassed by it. I have enough fun playing it, and while I didn't expect playing it to become part of my bass-playing learning curve, all that fast 8th-note business has sped up my right hand and increased its stamina and accuracy.

Snaxster said:
C'mon, yella... you're not foolin' anyone! You know you love that stuff.
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I love to make fun of the metal, even if Jack Black and others beat me to it by years, and I'd love to know how to type an umlaut over any letter of my choosing, like the "n" and the "t" in Spinal Tap. But I have come to enjoy playing the metal alongside my utterly unironic, unrepentant metal-horn-gesturing bandmates. I went to see Steel Panther with them and everything.

Self-image struggles aside, I'm støked to use eee-vil looking letters and also to get such rock sounds out of my Bïrdhäus cab! Looking forward to having more time to mess with that EQ. Big practice night coming up Friday...
 
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#8,008
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Duke, just read about your shoulder injury and hope it heals fast! Looking in the Birdhaus to disable the cheater gave me an appreciation for how physical a process cutting and assembling these things is, and having to do it while worrying about delivery times and trying to focus on not bending yourself to THAT angle while you reach for the ___ must be exhausting.

Speaking of the cheater circuit, would it be possible to substitute some other capacitance and/or inductance value to shift the peak down from the 3-5 kHz range to maybe 1-3 kHz, or 700 Hz-1.something kHz? Initial experiments with the capacitor pair out of the circuit but the inductor still in the circuit were encouraging; 3-5 kHz levels aside, the "shape" of the upper mids and highs seemed to suit our band mix better even after applying less subtractive EQ (via preamp settings) in the highs. More tweaking and listening with the current configuration is needed...but of course that's got me thinking about pushing the effect further until I pass the point of metal EQ badassery and into the realm of suckage, at which point I would of course have discovered some helpful parameters and limits for EQing the metal.

Also, I have not had a chance to try the cheaterless Birdhaus with my guitar or lap steel. I might find that the cheater was enough of a help with achieving sufficient presence on those instruments that it's preferable to leave it functional and just EQ for it with my bass tone goals. I'll bring it home from the practice space after Friday and put some steel and guitar through it and see...
 
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#8,009
mexicanyella said:
Speaking of the cheater circuit, would it be possible to substitute some other capacitance and/or inductance value to shift the peak down from the 3-5 kHz range to maybe 1-3 kHz, or 700 Hz-1.something kHz?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately that's not possible. The cheater circuit has downsides to it that are minimized when used where I did, but down lower those downsides are really bad.
 
#8,010
So here's one of Duke's cabs doing double duty at the Seattle BassCon on Monday. That's Marco Cortes and his bass has a built in EFX/Aux jack arrangement allowing the little drum machine to patch right into the instrument output signal. At one point there were five bassists playing and somehow everyone was still leaving space for everyone else. I mostly went for tortured penguin voicings on bowed EUB, while another guy used synth patches via a MIDI bass...good times!

Marco_drummer.jpg
 
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