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fEARFUL the solution to everything

#222
The thing is, the fEARful itselgf is a disruptive application of thechnology. GB did not invent the 3-way cab, nor did he design the 3015LF or the 18Sound mid. He didn't even invent the crossover.

The dude is a bass player, who took the time to research and experiment and came up with pretty darn good design. Then gave it away. For free. Mostly to DIYers, at the beginning.

Anyway, it's a cab designed by a bass player, built by bass players and mostly loved by bass players. Oh, and while most of the country is struggling with an economic crisis, some motivated builders have sprung up to build these cabs, to spec. You can call, email, chat with any of them. On multiple forums. And they mnake a little money doing it.

There's more to the fEARful thing than just the cab. There are the other cabs, from the crazy 8 to F112. The Authorized Builders, dedicated forum, and a sense of community.

All of this is disruptive to the status quo, which is where the big company TELLS you what you want, or the salesperson tells you, you buy it and that's pretty much the end of the interaction. Your money gets divided up with the various interests involved in telling you what you want, from here to whatever 3rd world country has the cheapest labor.

Greenboy and the other boutique designers have given us something special: an actual, real, informed and competitive choice. How dare they!

And then they have the nerve to go to other threads, and explain, give examples, post waterfal plots, graphs, specs, rationale for the design decisions, options, flavors, colors, alternative drivers, crossover choices, weight considerations, height and width options and a really cool badge.

What jackasses!
 
#223
ChuckTrucks said:
Which ones?

Im guessing Peavey, Marshall, Mesa, Orange, Ampeg, Ashdown, Eden? But thats seven. Im figuring in guitar and bass though. Just curious.
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Well you got two ;)

Ampeg, GK, Hartke, SWR, Eden. This might vary in countries where there is a major amp manufacturer, for example, maybe in the UK and Europe I'd have an easier time getting Ashdown and Orange...I don't know. But in America, those 5 brands rule backline companies, with Aguilar and Mesa starting to make some headway, but not to the level of those other 5 brands.
 
#224
jnewmark said:
Great idea , and something I've been doing for quite awhile. I thought Bill F was going to have a heart attack when I posted that I still use JBL K140's in a 215 cab, and thought it was the best bass tone I have ever had in 40 years of playing. I think he referred to me as a "Luddite ", yet, one of the most popular fEARful builders agrees with me ! Go figure, huh!
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Hmmmm..........yeah........
 
#225
makohund said:
Dude. :eek:

Screw everything else... I hope your boy is OK!
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He is fine. Decided to bounce his head off the concrete at recess. He is 5 and thinks he looks like Indiana Jones after a fight, so when we got home from the ER he put on his Dr. Jones costume, for Halloween, and ran around the house fighting Nazis and yelling at an imaginary Short Round. All is normal at my house. LOL
 
#226
RNV said:
He is fine. Decided to bounce his head off the concrete at recess. He is 5 and thinks he looks like Indiana Jones after a fight, so when we got home from the ER he put on his Dr. Jones costume, for Halloween, and ran around the house fighting Nazis and yelling at an imaginary Short Round. All is normal at my house. LOL
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Best thing I've heard all day. Not much better than a kids imagination. What's the wait time for a kid with a head wound in south Florida?
 
#227
jnewmark said:
Great idea , and something I've been doing for quite awhile. I thought Bill F was going to have a heart attack when I posted that I still use JBL K140's in a 215 cab, and thought it was the best bass tone I have ever had in 40 years of playing. I think he referred to me as a "Luddite ", yet, one of the most popular fEARful builders agrees with me ! Go figure, huh!
Click to expand...

this is why I ask you since I too agree because I'm using two D140Fs in a 2-15 configuration and really like it. It's my current gold standard at least as far as my passive Fenders go. Yes, tubes (Fender) and ss (GK) for amplification.

I'm open to what else is out there, though, since they're not the only basses I use.
 
#228
About 20 minutes to see the triage nurse, and 2 hours total with X-rays on his noggen. He was fine when we got there. What sucked the most was how we were laughing and joking around and walked into the rest room and he saw himself in the mirror. His eyes welled up and he asked if that is what he really looked like? It broke my heart. He has a baseball size not in the middle of his forehead.
 
#230
SactoBass said:
An all-time classic configuration! :bassist:
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great for the Fenders, but I've heard my Renaissance and old ABG through a friend's very large hi fi (VMPS/Carver) system and realize there's something else again for more modern sounding basses.

Not that those don't sound great through the old stuff, and the Fenders do sound good through something more "hi fi" (all go through some Oz tube mic preamp, don't know what it is). But not for most of what I'm doing w/the Fenders, need that something special the older cabs/drivers provide.

Caveat: I've modded my cabs to take advantages of things like T/S parameters and the like that were discovered since the 60s :D

And I use a different rig for my double bass, so everything in its right place, yes? ;)
 
#231
RNV said:
About 20 minutes to see the triage nurse, and 2 hours total with X-rays on his noggen. He was fine when we got there. What sucked the most was how we were laughing and joking around and walked into the rest room and he saw himself in the mirror. His eyes welled up and he asked if that is what he really looked like? It broke my heart. He has a baseball size not in the middle of his forehead.
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I know it breaks your heart, but at least it'll prepare him for marriage ;)

Glad your boy's OK.
 
#233
Warwick Qc418 said:
There's an expression for this in French: "C'est comme pisser dans un violoncelle"

fEARful isn't a bad thing, just don't get where a bass sound became a fact and not a matter of taste and how everything can be crap except one thing in that state of mind.
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Dispersion and frequency response are factual things. They may not be important things to some, but for others they are.
 
#235
I'm not sure which authorized builder applauded your choice of JBL _140's, but I like him more already :)

A new friend and recent customer of ours spent hours with me on email and in person recalling our shared love for the first cabs that really got us closer to 'our sound.' In this case it was EV 15L's, but the awesome JBL's came into play as well. For the record, greenboy lists JBL as the primary innovator for bass cabs, PA cabs and studio monitors.

There's a reason studios keep those two speakers around for recording...they are highly efficient and sound very thick and full at low volume with smaller amps, which tends to translate better to recordings.

This shared love of vintage designs/speakers is what led gb to come out with the Bassic and Dually. The Faital 15PR400, though not 'quite' as efficient is still very efficient, and gives one the ability to get 'that' sound, with deeper lows, higher SPL and great dispersion.

Sorry for the derail! If I had a point, it was to say that there are many ways to skin a (musical) cat. Some of us feel that greenboy is the best at meeting those needs. I certainly hope I've never come off as smug or judgmental of others gear preferences :)
 
#239
These debates have been going on for longer than the fE's have existed. I remember, going all the way back to the days of The Bottom Line, that there has been a small cadre of bassists who are interested in exploring the use of mainstream engineering practices to design bass speakers. When I first joined TB, experts like Bill F and Bruce G were trying to educate the rest of us about things like Xmax and dispersion.

And we're still fighting the same misconceptions, such as Ears Versus Graphs. The point of analytical design is not to eliminate the human element, but to compliment it. Tone quality is still the ultimate destination. The only difference is how we get there.

Granted, a challenge for the bass community is that relatively few of us know how the new high-performance speakers sound, because they are not efficiently distributed through retailers such as GC. But thanks to Greenboy and a few others, the new designs are now finding their way onto the bandstand. We are already learning from a growing number of bassists how these speakers behave under a wide variety of conditions.

Is everybody going to adopt the new thing? I don't think that's the point. The electric bass was invented 60+ years ago, yet there are still some hold-outs clinging to the upright. ;) But I'll bet that even if classic designs like the 4x10 remain popular, new entries in that market will be designed using the same techniques as the fE's, but with different goals and thus different outcomes. I doubt that any contemporary maker of a 4x10 would admit to being ignorant of the basic analytical design principles.

I find it fascinating that thanks to forums -- predominantly TB -- we are now able to crowd-source a remarkably high level of design knowledge and playing experience, on par with some of the best commercial speaker designers.
 

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