Rehearsal report #1.
Note: I've been playing exclusively through 10" speakers for the last few of years, minus a brief affair with a 12" cab a couple of years back. This is my first 15".
I took the PF-115LF and PF-500 to their first rehearsal together last night [see crappy cellphone pic below]. 6 piece Blues/Rock outfit, 2 guitars, keys, drummer singer. Fairly hefty volume at times. I took my brightest and darkest basses, both 5 string as are all my basses. As you can see in the background, the band is used to hearing the 810e.
The tone I'm after is one that is more bottom heavy, that is as much felt as heard. It's all finger-style with no slap or distortion/OD effects or any of that. One thing I can not stand is mid-honk and that awful ganky sound that often goes with it. But there needs to be some clarity as well. There are always at least 2 basses in my set up, one set up with flats for the Blues stuff, and one set up with nickels for the Rock stuff. I don't fiddle with amp settings other than the mute button.
The amp was set with the drive at noon, the tone controls at ~1 o'clock (freq at 3) and the volume never went above noon. I removed the rear casters to tilt it up a little for better monitoring and neither Neither I nor the band had any problem at all hearing it. The low end was huge and thick, with the 15 seeming to handle the low B with no issues whatsoever, even when I just thumped on the open string of the Dark Bass for no reason other than to hear it fart out. It mocked me instead and just kept thumping.
With the bright bass on some rock tunes, it sounded amazing. So much growl and tone without brittle highs or gank. It was definitely within millimeters of the tone in my head. There is
plenty of brightness available (IMHO) if you're not a slapper.
As usual, in low volume situations, the combo sounds great w/ Ultra Hi and Ultra Low turned on. And as usual, they are pretty worthless when cranked up.
I was evaluating this cab to see how it did on it's own so that I could decide whether to add a 210he or a 115he for bi amping, or to just get another of these and have the bionic 2x15 that fits in the back seat of my 4 door import. The reality is that this cab did really well on it's own, and I'll not need more for any gig w/ FOH support. I'll only add another cab if we start doing more non-PA supported gigs. A nice bonus there is that these cabs will also handle my SVT4-Pro (except for Mono Bridged).
Other comments:
- If you are a slapper, or need a bright trebly tone, this is likely not your cab.
- The really cool checkered patterned material marks up easily. Best to accept it, get over it and move on with your life.
- The really cool checkered patterned material is dead sexy looking.
- Tone vs. portability is very, very high. Great tone, super easy to move around.
Here's a pic as tested. Excuse the clutter in front of the amp. The tonebone power supply cable broke and I had to patch manually. Things were a little frantic at the time the picture was taken...
