Carvin owners help!!
 

Hi everyone! My names Matt, and I play a carvin redline600 cyclops amp and I play a fender active jazz bass(9volt active electronics). Plugged into the active side. So my issue is the the dreaded clipping of the power amps with the power amps set to 5, and the volume at about 3. Input level turned down, (about 9 oclockish) My eq boosts a lot of every thing,For that's the tone I like. I tried the cleaning all the connectors inside and found these ribbons being bent to almost a crimp, and twisted all inside the case like this.--> Attachment 312064Attachment 312065, I've read about all these other posts and having no end to their story, what's the fix? Could this be an issue having them bent and twisted inside? Please help!

I doubt it, unless there's physical stress on the connector ends from not enough slack.

Run your Jazz passive, put its volumes and tone at full, set all amp eq to flat, run the amp master wide open, and control the volume with the amp input gain. See how loud you can get. The tone will suck, but this is just a test to establish a baseline.

Or... If your Jazz can't run passive, set the Carvin master wide open, set its input gain to halfway or higher, and control the volume from your Jazz.

If it sounds clean, the amp's a go.

The Ribbon cable is a BX issue.

The ribbon cable is also a Redline issue. Trust me.

I tried pugging into my brothers carvin bx1200 with my J-Bass, and it does the same thing..:( the power amps clip just seems to be randomly, I play a part of a song once, and it will clip both amps pretty hard,(it doesnt sound like its distorting at all)stop and play it again the same way and it will be fine. I will try the thing you said Craig, and report back. Could it be something with my j-bass? I made sure i put a new battery in it when started acting up. I really just don't want to blow anything up 1 week before my next show!

I owned a R600 and used my active jazz V and it never clipped. The R600 has a GAIN and Tube blend on the input. The Active Jazz has huge low end boost if you turn it all the way up. I would try reducing the bass boost on the Jazz and turn down the gain on the R600. I believe my settings were GAIN at 12 oclock and tube blend at 9 oclock.

At the power amp end I set amp1 and amp2 at #5 and the master at 2-3.

Believe me I like a lot of EQ myself but you have to be reasonable with the input of that amp and you can add EQ on the back end.

Well I tried everything I can think of, I usually run it all the knobs up and have never before had an issue. I've tried turning my j bass down, but it sounds like crap. And the power amps still freak out. Ugh this is frustrating!

Set everything flat, set your bass flat, then adjust one item at a time to the settings you like, when you see the amps clip you will know what is causing the problem.
I play G&L L2500s and had a R1000 with a Peavey 1810 cab.
I had the same problem until I did this.
Active basses push to hot of a signal and it over drives the amp.
Good Luck
ps
I switched to a Genz Benz 6.0 with 2 12T cabs, rewired my G&Ls removing the actives to give me coil tapping and have never been happier.
Peace & Love
let me know how this turns out.

This. And I bet it's the eq section. Boosting a lot of everything isn't really the right way to use eq. You're essentially using the eq as a second preamp, and I bet you're pushing something too hard in doing so.

Attachment 312142This is how I have had my brothers Bx amp set with my j bass last week. It was fine last week at practice, and this week it was freaking out. Lol I will try and Re-EQ it and let report back. Thanx everyone for your suggestions and help so far!

That's way too much boosting. Set it flat and CUT the frequencies you don't like as opposed to boosting the frequencies you do like.

Could you have been running this beast full-range in the past and somehow switched over to bi-amped? I believe the cab is 8+8 biamped. If that's true, you're only going to get about 175 watts to the 15 in that mode. Since you only need a few watts for the mids going to the 8s, half the amp would be wasted.

Bottom line, if you're running the lows boosted in bi-amp mode, yes, it's going to clip very easily.

If you're just going by the clip light and it sounds OK, stop worrying about it and play.

I see, Cus I've been running all the eq stuff way up to keep the master volume down. So roll everything back and run more master volume?

Also my brothers setup is a GK backline blx 8ohm 4x10 and 8ohm 1x15 and right now the amp is not in bridge mode and the x-over is off.

I run a Carvin IC6 bass and IC5 bass through a Carvin B2000 with a 4x10 cab (sometimes 2 4x10 cabs) and don't have any issues with clipping. Both basses are active or passive. The B2000 does have an active switch which I run engaged. I run the master volume higher and the pre gain lower. I also run the amp with the tube preamp bypassed for loud gigs. I engage the tube preamp for lower volume gigs to get a more "driven" sound.

I have a bx and it does seem to clip easily with active basses. Turn the power amp setting to 10 not 5 and adjust the input gain, you may have a very hot output from your bass so you might want to dial down the eq a bit. I usually set the drive at noon ass well. Try another bass, if that doesn't cause clipping at the same settings it may be bass specific

I too have the BX1500 and it does not clip with my G&L2500 which is hot on the output. I can play my active Jazz V in the BX with no problem. I'm starting to wonder if the preamp in your Jazz has gone wonky.

I run my PB-500 on the active channel with my passive basses for this very same reason. I use the active switch on my BR head with passive stuff too.

It has been my experience that preamps in Carvin heads are easy to overdrive.

There is no standard to indicator lights. Some are peak on the input signal, some are actually clip lights, some are just when the limiter kicks in. Random flashing now and again is normal and how it should be set up. Solid on may mean you need to adjust some levels.

If you're not hearing it. Don't worry about it.