Big Cabs

[cjac9]

Hey Everyone-
I've noticed the trend is to use mostly small cabs with big upright basses. I've been thinking of getting a small, portable amp and 12" but I'm wondering if anyone has tried the opposite approach...

Has anyone used a Cerwin-Vega folded horn cab or something massive like that to faithfully reproduce their upright and it's lowend? Thoughts?

Try to keep this mainly sound quality focused...I have back problems too!

cjac9

[kwd]

In my experience big cabs create kind of a S-E-N-S-O-R-O-U-N-D effect or LFE as it's now called. By that I mean that big cabs put out a lot of infrasonics. I think that rock/slab playing works with the 'wall of sound' vibe that you get with big cabs. I think all that low frequency distracts from the 'my bass only louder' thing. That energy has to go somewhere and it usually ends up getting absorbed back into your bass. Sometimes it can be cool because it sort of charges your bass but most often it creates problems. This depends largely on how closely your aligned with the phase.

Everybody has different tastes. If you want to go for a 'wall of sound', a big cab might be your thing but be prepared to deal with the issues.

[Gearhead43]

Originally Posted by cjac9

Hey Everyone-
I've noticed the trend is to use mostly small cabs with big upright basses. cjac9

That trend is only amongst the Jazz bassist crowd that populates this forum. In other types of louder music, large rigs are more common. There's some difference in prefered tone also, and yes is it harder to get the "my bass only louder" tone (which only exists using a mic anyway) when you play loud.

Rock, Rockabilly, Country, and other Roots Music types use a variety of large rigs.

Having a big rig with mucho overhead actually helps fend off feedback, believe it or not. Pushing a small-wattage head hard will result in feedback 99% of the time.

I am somewhere in the middle with my volume needs, and use a 300 watt head into two 2-10 cabs. With a High-pass filter and phase switch I can get a nice fat, loud sound with little feedback issues depending on the venue.