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Bass rigs should be a category

S

spode master

Jan 21, 2007
738
3
#1
Finaly Decided to join some Bass Player Forums. (So you may see this rant posted in other forums)

I want to talk a little bit about Rig Design. And the rig I am currently running.

I decided to design my own Bi-amped Bass rig since it became imediately obvious that there is really no comercially available, reasonably portable bass cab or subwoofer on the market that is capable of HIGH SPL output bellow 40 or 50Hz (Well not Many). And there certainly are no "full range" bass cabs capable of any High SPL sub bass.

here are some of the links that I have already posted regarding the system I've designed.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Link Removed

Link Removed

My rig as it stands now.

Amps:
Ampeg SVT 3 Pro (Everything above 80Hz)
Either 1 Alesis Matica 900 or a pair of Carvin DCM1500's (Everything Bellow 80Hz)

Carvin XC3000 2/3 way Xover

Speakers:

A pair of EVM 15L's in some TL606 cabs.

A pair of my custom BS-212 subwoofers.

My design goal was a bass rig that could compete with a Marshal stacks SPL down to and Bellow 30Hz. And keep it reasonalbly portable for something capable of of High SPL (124dB @ 30Hz).

I ended up with quite an impressive extreamly clean smooth sounding subwoofer. I'm not so sure I'm the biggest fan of the sound quality of the EVM15L's that I'm using as the top boxs. Their a little too flat responding from 80Hz-3kHz. Then they drop off a rock above 3kHz.

Anyhow I think I need something with a little more character for my Top box.

I was just wondering if anyone else here has taken a similar approach to bass rig design. I'm hoping to figure out how to get a little more character and growl out of my rig but preserve the Uber fundamental response.

I have the background of an electronic tech and am also working on a single integrator circuit sumed with a highpass filter to counteract my pickup placements 6dB per octave Bass roll off. If anyone in the forum understands what I'm talking about, and have any thoughts about such a circuit by all means let me know.

There just has to be someone else out there that is as obsesed with the uber 5 string bass rig!!!!

Nice to chat with ya'll

S'master
 
#2
Hmm your browser attachments don't seem to work

Lets see if this tag will work

BassRigredux.jpg

This is my rig before painting.

S'Master
 
#3
spode master said:
Hmm your browser attachments don't seem to work

Lets see if this tag will work

BassRigredux.jpg

This is my rig before painting.

S'Master
Click to expand...

Looks like my rig in the early 80's - triamped JBL 15 / 2x12 / horn system, with Ashley croossover and two BIG poweramps, including a Bryston 4B when they were the hot new item.

My advice - bend at the knees!

Happy groovin',
Cameron
 
#5
Not quite though. No compact horn systems of the 80's could reproduce 20Hz @ 118dB.
I don't think anything like the Lab 12 driver really existed then either (Lab 12 was designed to be horn loaded in a 10.6' long 30Hz horn Designed by Tom Danley).

Heres the rear shot

BassRigRear.gif


Does anyone here have any opinions on EVM15L's.

I find them a little dry myself. I was thinking of making top boxes with a juicyer tone.

S'master
 
#7
Todd Stanley said:
Just get an el whappo and el whappo grande, run them both with a Yamaha P7000S power amp with a lowpass on one channel. There's 1100w into each cab and you have a 21" for the lows, and a 15", 12" and 6 is it? for the mids and highs. Preamp of your choice.
Click to expand...

Yep. :)

And get TWO of those rigs... :eek: :eek: :hyper: :hyper: ...so you can run clean and effects... :D
 
#8
I'm not a beliver in most of the 21" drivers out there. From my experience with sub design I will take the El Wappo Grande specs with a grain of salt. Its simply to small for its +/- 3dB ratings to be accurate. Show me a half space measurement of the response and I bet I'm right.

An optimal cabinet for such a large driver starts becoming problematic and too hard to move also.

The 12" I use for lows, The EVM15L's are not suitable for sub bass and barely usefull for mid bass.

I've done quite a bit of homework and I can honestly say that there are possibly onyl two or three other subwoofer designs of ~ the same volume that have as much sub bass output.

The Servodrive Contra Bass (sorta fragile though but the smallest for its sub extension)

The Genelec 4X12 Studio and Home theater subs and

The Danlely sound labs DTS 20 (The undisputed king in the 20Hz region)
www.danleysoundlabs.com

My cab is probably neck and neck with the Genelec subs
The DTS 20 Dominates for output and efficiency. I can get 118 dB @ 20Hz 1600Watts.
DTS 20 gets 121 dB @ 20Hz with 500Watts But its 88"tall by 20" square so sorta funny to move.

I am not into a quad amped design. Triamp maybe.

I am currently running 2400 Watts not that the wattage really means anything.
 
#9
spode master said:
Not quite though. No compact horn systems of the 80's could reproduce 20Hz @ 118dB.
I don't think anything like the Lab 12 driver really existed then either (Lab 12 was designed to be horn loaded in a 10.6' long 30Hz horn Designed by Tom Danley).

Heres the rear shot

BassRigRear.gif


Does anyone here have any opinions on EVM15L's.

I find them a little dry myself. I was thinking of making top boxes with a juicyer tone.

S'master
Click to expand...

"a little dry" Perhaps it's because you have knocked all of the moisture out of the air, your skin and your ears because of the volume.:)
 
#10
spode master said:
I'm not a beliver in most of the 21" drivers out there. From my experience with sub design I will take the El Wappo Grande specs with a grain of salt. Its simply to small for its +/- 3dB ratings to be accurate. Show me a half space measurement of the response and I bet I'm right.

An optimal cabinet for such a large driver starts becoming problematic and too hard to move also.

The 12" I use for lows, The EVM15L's are not suitable for sub bass and barely usefull for mid bass.

I've done quite a bit of homework and I can honestly say that there are possibly onyl two or three other subwoofer designs of ~ the same volume that have as much sub bass output.

The Servodrive Contra Bass (sorta fragile though but the smallest for its sub extension)

The Genelec 4X12 Studio and Home theater subs and

The Danlely sound labs DTS 20 (The undisputed king in the 20Hz region)
www.danleysoundlabs.com

My cab is probably neck and neck with the Genelec subs
The DTS 20 Dominates for output and efficiency. I can get 118 dB @ 20Hz 1600Watts.
DTS 20 gets 121 dB @ 20Hz with 500Watts But its 88"tall by 20" square so sorta funny to move.

I am not into a quad amped design. Triamp maybe.

I am currently running 2400 Watts not that the wattage really means anything.
Click to expand...



I've read a lot on the Genelec and Servodrive, as my other interest is Home Theater. You're talking about some serious low end bass there. What size venues are you playing? Seems like overkill for most applications.
 
#12
Over kill??? Maybe if you don't want to have that kind of extension.

But if you want your Low B (Or lower) To even have Proportional SPL to some cheesy rock guitarest that likes to turn his/her martial stack up to 11 to get that tone. Then thats what it takes.

Not only that to get relatively flat response down to 30Hz and bellow it takes a physically large cab regardless of how loud you play.

You can go with ELF type of cabs using dual integrators or linkwitz transform circuits to get flat response, but to keep your flat response relation ship intact you need too.

A: Run 12dB per octave more power bellow box tunning to acheive the same spl. That SPL is limited by speakers thermal power handling and xmax.

B: Limit your total spl to max SPL at low cut which are determined by above.

As an example:

4 of the Lab 12 drivers I used im my cabs in a sealed box with a Q of .707, roll off starts at around 50Hz. Will have a max SPL @ 1600watts 50Hz of 124dB
Max SPL @ 30Hz of 117dB @ 1600watts
Max SPL @ 20Hz of 110dB @ 1600watts

(I may build this for a compact bass rig)

This would be very compact ~ 4cu'. and is fairly optimistic results. But is one of the most cost effective compact subs I think one could build. For an ELF style subwoofer (like bagend). Onstage electric guitar SPL's can exceed 116dB easily depending on the player and style of music or how full of themselves the guitarist is.

So my rig is built to compete with A-hole guitarists with true bass fundamental extention. Also our ears are less sensitive to Sub bass so having headroom more in that lower register is sometimes what it takes to actually hear it and feel it. Clean sub bass doesn't compete with the rest of the ranges either. You can really emphasise it without it obscuring everything else.

I guess the argument would be is having the sub bass available overkill. Not the size of the cabinets it takes. Something cabable of displacing a lot of air and a lot of power to reproduce sub bass at any useful or proportional SPL is by nature has to be fairly large.

Oh and to answere your question, where ever I can. The only problem with using them is Most PA's in larger venues CANNOT reproduce much bellow 40Hz so you have all the sub bass fun on stage but the audience doesn't get much. I like to use them in bars and what not. That way people can marvel at how low my bass really goes.

Of course I play most gigs with earplugs, which is a little funny sometimes since plugs even the etymotics can't really block bass so I hear lots of fundamental while I'm playing and not much of the rest of the tone. But I blame my need to wear plugs on the drummers and guitarists who don't understand how to play dynamically.

S'Master
 
#14
Oh yah for the same price as the Wappo Grande you could get a Danley Sound Labs DTS 20.

I gaurantee you will get more 20-30Hz out of it than the Wappo with less power.

Though it isn't usefull up past ~ 120Hz
The Wappo Claims up to 400Hz (Not very sub woofer range if you aske me)

Its not about how big your cone is, its how you use it!

S'master
 
#16
spode master said:
I want to talk a little bit about Rig Design. And the rig I am currently running.

Anyhow I think I need something with a little more character for my Top box.
Click to expand...

I've used TL606s plenty, loaded with EVM15L, EVM15B, and SP-15 (the one with the whizzer cone). From my perspective, you've designed a pretty killer system up to 800 Hz, at which point the 15s are totally beaming and doing nothing off-axis at all. You may get 3K right on-axis, but...a TL606 doesn't begin to qualify as a "top box" in my world.;)

Welcome to Talkbass. I'm sure some of the other DIY cab guys will be along shortly. I used to run a triamped system with a fairly big 18" loaded folded horn, a pair of JBL E145s, and a pair of E110s on top. Eventually I went to the 18 plus a JBL Cabaret 12 w/ring radiator cab. I've embraced the newer paradigm now though (see my profile), and I let the subs at the venue do the heavy lifting for me. I mainly play 4 string electric upright, which makes plenty of fundamental, but neither the styles I play nor the venues and sound guys I work with want anything to do with the deep bass you're chasing. But good on you for going after what you want!
 
#18
giglawyer said:
I am terribly intrigued to read what Bill Fitzmaurice has to say about all this...
Click to expand...

He has some interesting designs. Not the most refined most of his small subs are designed for corner loading or need to be used in clusters to achieve desirable horn path length and or horn mouth area.

I own 8 Servodrive Bastech 7's designed to be used in a cluster of 4 The mouth of the bass horn is 90"X45" and 45"deep. In this configuration they are truly Flat to 30Hz in a halfspace environment and can reproduce 30Hz @ 142dB RMS in a cluster of 4. That weighs ~ 1000lbs but only requires 1600Watts. This is the most compact portable rig you can have that produces that kind of Sub bass SPL Down to ~28Hz.

Invalid Link Removed

The Designer of the BT7 is still inovating in the field of seismic disruption

www.danleysoundlabs.com

For some reason I've only seen response graphs of 1 Bill Fitz subs at a time. They don't look all that impressive I'd like to see some graphs of an optimal cluster of BF subs. I don't like anything he does with HF horn arrays so far. Very bad compromise HF designs.

S'master
 
#19
Passinwind said:
I've used TL606s plenty, loaded with EVM15L, EVM15B, and SP-15 (the one with the whizzer cone). From my perspective, you've designed a pretty killer system up to 800 Hz, at which point the 15s are totally beaming and doing nothing off-axis at all. You may get 3K right on-axis, but...a TL606 doesn't begin to qualify as a "top box" in my world.;)

Welcome to Talkbass. I'm sure some of the other DIY cab guys will be along shortly. I used to run a triamped system with a fairly big 18" loaded folded horn, a pair of JBL E145s, and a pair of E110s on top. Eventually I went to the 18 plus a JBL Cabaret 12 w/ring radiator cab. I've embraced the newer paradigm now though (see my profile), and I let the subs at the venue do the heavy lifting for me. I mainly play 4 string electric upright, which makes plenty of fundamental, but neither the styles I play nor the venues and sound guys I work with want anything to do with the deep bass you're chasing. But good on you for going after what you want!
Click to expand...

Yah the beaming probably gets even worse since I have a pair something more like 600Hz. With some really nice blooming patterns.

I need to find a driver 10 or an 8 maybe that has strong output down to 80Hz. And a good Tweeter the only problem is that most of them aren't usefull untill about 3kHz, so polar patern is all bad. High output tweeters that are useful down to 1k????

My big question is do I want to go with a "music" or "musical" sounding midrange driver that has its own characteristic tonality (like a celestion). Or do I wan't an acurate driver?

Really you use the Caberet/Hardtrucker series!?

Before JBL had that as a product line, those where their factory recomended enclosures. The only people I know that used them in force before it was a product line was the Greatfull dead in their Maxis/Wall of sound system.

Speaker technology has com a long way since those days.

Thanks for the welcome.

S'master
 
#20
Yeah, I can think of top cab designs I'd rather have, for smoother extended response in that direction, end with better dispersion characteristics.

But yeah, there's been a lot of hype about low end in the bass guitar cab world that's totally malarkey. So it's fresh to see that another person is aware of that and what solutions may be for those who really want to hear true low end.

But using such a rig with a well-spec'd PA/subs is a double-edged sword - you end up with all kind of cancellation/phasing issues with another source for the low frequencies that is (unless your stage is very very deep or very very shallow) not ideally located relative to the hopefully well-placed PA subs (mutual coupling through their audio band and on the same timeline being considered desirable).

Then too, on many stages a lot of real low end is problematic for mic/mic-stand isolation, especially as concerns kick drum. So perhaps using cabs with less SPL at the lower frequencies but having more going on with the PA is still a good way to go. Of course, that supposes that good PA is available in the first place. When one isn't I've put my bass-rig subwoofer section on the floor instead of the stage...
 

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