I have over the years found it extremely handy to have bower birded the physics & chemistry books from school & added to them as I progressed & diverted into other fields. Quite a lot of the information in these books is not to be found anywhere else and is being lost.

I didn't keep text books from school as we didn't own them but 'hired' them which was cheaper for the parents. A levy was added to the school fees notice each year to cover the cost.

I still have all my textbooks from tech though, including a 1985 version of the SAA Wiring Rules. One day, I might dust them off and flick through them, even if only to recap everything I'm likely to have forgotten.

Thanks Harold I do appreciate the help and I realise that to explain a lot of what happens within a circuit things can get a bit complicated. I'm still wresting with fundamental principles so it takes me a while to pick things up. I'm happy for you to continue explaining things as they are and I'll just ask if I don't understand.

Thanks Marc for your comment. It was a very similar situation for me as a young fellow, you learnt how to do things around the house, car or they didn't get done!

Cheers
Pat

Electricity is an abstract, as for the most part you cannot see it, therefore it is hard to conceptualise. One may try to consider DC as water.
resistors slow it, capacitors block it, a diode is like a one way valve and Transistors and Valves can act like control valves, or taps.

Fred the Bass looks great!! It looks a bit Gene Simmons from Kiss with the bolt heads. Usually players use hollow bodied guitars to get a feedback effect, does the Bass do the same?

Pat

Pat, I would love to say I carefully designed the body on some scientific or musical basis.
But the truth is I just make things by eye and am actually quite surprised when they work!
The Bass plays like it is made from chunks of Bunnings wood fitted with cheap working strings.
It is light, set with a fairly low action, seems to be very stable in tune: I fluked the temperature expansion coefficients of the woods.
it plays well damped, the center beam is pretty dense, the inertia of that and the neck and fret offsets any bad ducking.
The cheap pickups really only translate the E and A strings, I have to tone correct with the amp to get overtones.
Only good for mucking about.
Fred.

Well it looks really good and being the prototype I reckon you're on a winner!
Pat

I happened across a Utube video last night where some possum was comparing 4 cables that connected his electric guitar to his amplifier.
Some were “smoother sound”, some had more bass, ——- I say no more!
JJ

They call them audiophools on the American forum & there is a site that caters for them audio leads & speaker boxed for thousands of dollars. Another P.T Barnum.

The reproducers are just as important & I have one speaker box with four speakers which I made to my specs & its bass is really good.

Resonance is important.

Marc

Recently installed a new surround sound system so as you do went online to see about setting it up, especially best placement of the subwoofer.

Well, advice varies from anywhere will do for a subwoofer given the low frequencies, to various procedures to find best placement to avoid unpleasant resonances. The oddest was to place the subwoofer in the chair where you listen from, and crawl around the floor to find the best sound, then move the subwoofer to that spot. I might try it if I find along enough signal lead. Then again, probably not as it sounds good enough conveniently located next to the right front speaker.

The woofer on this MMS-10 is in the base of it about 3/4" above the desktop. The amp is designed to have the monitor sit on top of it: Its speakers are rarely used. The better quality speaker info will tell you that corners are the better radiator and the angle that they face each other actually produce a lobe which penetrates deeper into the room, the more they face each other.

The desktop on the computer bench is MDF flooring & the bench was designed for weight. Mainly that of the printer. Its a home made design with six legs. Weight distribution is triangular at the ends for the maximum support there and the fifth & sixth legs are half a metre in on a centre bar: Forming that triangle. So I don't see it vibrating much. length 2m width 0.8m

I have a Nackamichi Sound Space 8 which has 2 quite small speakers for L & R and a downwards firing sub woofer which is built into a tower like unit that houses the main amplifier.
Into that plugs the control unit which has a 3 CD changer built in along with the AM/FM tuner and display plus switching for many audio inputs.

The 2 L & R speakers sit about 2m either side of the control unit and the amp/sub unit sits on the floor anywhere within the 3M control cable will allow.

From that setup the stereo is VG and the bass if pumped up is also VG and you really cannot tell where the bass is coming from wherever you sit in the room. The room is carpeted which may also alter the sounds of things.

At quiet listening levels the sound is VG and turn up the wick and it really rocks until the boss tells me to turn it down or OFF!!

I do not think it matters much where you place the sub as low freqs tend to "ooze" around but the highs are VERY directional.

My past experiences with cinema sound in an outdoor cinema I had the bass bin with a pair of 15" bass drivers immediately below the screen and the sub for security sitting inside the rather large W shaped bass bin. The crossover was mounted inside that big bin and fed a 12 throat multicellular pressure horn on top of the screen aimed into the audience and that took everything above 2kHz.

L & R speakers mounted on the L & R sides of the steel screen were 4 x Redback 50W weather proof Outdoor speakers each side one above the other as speaker column again aimed into the audience.

Surrounds were 4 down each side fence of the same Redback units and each channel had a 200W amp driving C, L, R, & S.

Sound was awesome and some CD's I had picked up the hidden S signal in most L&R sound sources and you had this almost concert hall ambience when those were played as the processor picked up that surround source and sent it out. Other CD's were just flat as compared to the others.

The venue seated 300 and at times we had 600 in there sitting around everywhere on the grass or wherever they could find a spot to perch.

The Sub and Bass bin just rumbled away and you really could NOT pick where it was coming from. The only poor areas were alongside the bio box as the structure tended to block the surround feed from one side or the other.

It was 35M from bio box to screen and 18M wide and you could walk back into the scrub behind so you were at least 100M away from the screen and hear every word spoken but by then the bass had dropped off being absorbed by gardens and grassed areas.

If during a windy night with the wind coming from behind I just cranked the audio up 3dB on the VU meters and no worries hearing everything.

Re #23, Johnny I spent quite a few years making Amps and speakers and working in a recording studio and was continually surprised at players perception of what attribute made a difference to the sound that they could hear.
Without any technical background or understanding of physics (or anything really) totally unrelated things would be praised or blamed as the "thing" that they wanted changed.
One learnt to smile and nod, turns a few controls back and forth, swap over a cable for an identical one, shift a mic 2.568 cm to the left and be rewarded with "that's it"! The psycological well being was what a good technician learnt to adjust!

Re#21, Pat what really makes a difference to a small Bass player set up is using a speaker that will work at low frequencies. On an electric guitar as long as the strings are supple enough, the neck does not flex and the pickups can translate it does not matter what shape the body is. The bit between the guitar and the speaker really does not matter that much so long as it is linear. You don't want any extra "un musical" additional noises from the guitar or the amp. ( Heavy metal excepted!) The best speaker cabinets I have made used sub bass drivers mounted in tuned vented boxes. The drivers almost always have rigid cast frames, stiff cones, supple suspensions and dome dust covers that promote overtone radiation from the center of the cone.
Even as an incompetent player (no music sense, lack of rhythm) I can change the tonal output of strings over a huge range simply by different fingering. It is amazing the spectrum changes a good player can make as well as attack and decay by finger damping. Way above my head!

Fred.

Hank Marvin, forever!
JJ

It is actually where, & what the speaker is in a console that makes it so different. That area behind it and its size is significant. In the box I made for one workshop where there was little permanent noise. The Woofer was in its own vented chamber & the midrange in another. The tweeter was of a type that does not need a chamber.

The box size was based on requirements not whim. Most of the time on an AM radio when they played music, rather than the monotone of some one out of touch, generating hot air, It was powered by an Astor JJ. That I found to have one of the best audio ranges for the job.

Really, to me, the musical instrument is just the frequency generator. Ideally and irrespective of technology in between. The Amps job is to make the inputted signal louder without distorting it.

Speakers & speaker boxes are a bit of a black art: But they too need to accurately reproduce sound & as above, their positioning can be significant.

Marc