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1x18 Cabinet
- Thread starter noisenoisenoise
- Start date
Love the scientific design process!
As for me I wouldn't have an 18 in the house let alone attached to my rig. Luckily your taste is different from mine.
Paul
I don't know the specifics. I bought the cab second hand from a friend of my dad's who builds cabs on a regular basis... his explanation for the design was much more coherent and well-founded -- I know more about basses than I do about amps and cabs. In this case though, my ears told me all that I needed to know.
Missing frequencies or not, it sounds fantastic to me, as well as pretty much everyone else who has had the pleasure of hearing it.
Here's an example of just how groovalicious this cab can sound:
I use to use my 18" Big Ben with an EV PA cab 15" with a horn that sounded great but I wanted a real bass cab and sold the EV. After that I never could get that sound again. You must have some good power to push that 18". Alone it's a pretty dull sound but it depends on what you are looking for in tone. It can always be EQ'd. I was only using 307 watts so it was just giving the 18" a good little push. Wish you the best!
Where your going to lose that tone is when you crank up the volume to get over a loud drummer and a guitar player running a 300 watt tube head half stack. My 1x18/2x10 rig sounded fantastic in the house....on stage you couldn't hear anything unless I turned it up to the point it sounded like crap.
+1 Bedroom tone and stage tone are 2 entirely different animals when you have to cut through the mix.
Here's my question guys, i'm sure all of you are giving him responses based on playing in standard.
My band plays in drop G#, so i've been thinking of getting an 18 cabinet or maybe building a 2x18.
I'm currently running a hartke 3500C 350W head with a 2x15 cabinet that i reloaded with 2 600W eminence KappaPRO LF-2 woofers. They def have helped, but i like ******** ammounts of feel in my tone and i have my treble boosted to compensate for the accent notes.
So would i benefit from getting an 18 cabinet?
Here's a pic of me and my setup XD
Link Removed (ignore that amp to the left, it was just being "backlined" to the side so my cab didn't roll away haha)
My band plays in drop G#, so i've been thinking of getting an 18 cabinet or maybe building a 2x18.
I'm currently running a hartke 3500C 350W head with a 2x15 cabinet that i reloaded with 2 600W eminence KappaPRO LF-2 woofers. They def have helped, but i like ******** ammounts of feel in my tone and i have my treble boosted to compensate for the accent notes.
So would i benefit from getting an 18 cabinet?
Here's a pic of me and my setup XD
Link Removed (ignore that amp to the left, it was just being "backlined" to the side so my cab didn't roll away haha)
Its not as simple as "getting an 18" cab" to get more visceral feel to the bass. You can have a top of the line 18", but if the enclosure is the same size as the dual-15's you already have, you won't get any more bass extension with the same amount of wattage. To feel the open fundamental of a 5-string tuned to G#, you need to move a lot of air in mid-20Hz range----no easy feat, even for a pro-audio 18"! Without knowing it (or maybe you do), you're calling for a very tall order---super deep bass extension and with enough volume to feel it on an outdoor stage; you'd need a multi-thousand dollar setup for something like this! Are you truly prepared to shell out the big bux?
At bare minimum, you'd need a 2x18" loaded with very high-excursion drivers, vented to the correct frequency, with correctly sized venting, loads of bracing, and a lot of amplifier power with headroom to spare.
When one of our active mains was out, our substitute drummer brought his pa mains... Don't recall the exact model, but they were JBL 3-ways with an 18, a 10" mid (I think - maybe 8) and a horn. I loved the way my bass sounded. One cab would be an absolutely killer full-range cab that would have the 18 visceral feel but no holes in the spectrum. I run a Warwick Corvette $$ 5 with lots of low... And it sounded great. Heavy speaker, though.
I'm
You really ought to look into acme cabs... Tuned to handle the low end down there and stay clean and tight and fast. The 410 is a great sound... If your band tunes that low I can't think of a better cab for tight bass tone beneath them. Way more articulate than 18's can be.
That said, it won't project outdoors like a serious pa sub... What you're after is what good FOH systems provide. Hard to haul that around as a cab. Get your tone, get enough cab to handle clubs and stage monitoring, and get playing places with good foh. Once you have pa support your rig will start shrinking..
You really ought to look into acme cabs... Tuned to handle the low end down there and stay clean and tight and fast. The 410 is a great sound... If your band tunes that low I can't think of a better cab for tight bass tone beneath them. Way more articulate than 18's can be.
That said, it won't project outdoors like a serious pa sub... What you're after is what good FOH systems provide. Hard to haul that around as a cab. Get your tone, get enough cab to handle clubs and stage monitoring, and get playing places with good foh. Once you have pa support your rig will start shrinking..
I was thinking even bigger than acme cabs. They are tuned to get you -6dB down @ 31Hz (based on the specs on their website). While this is still very good, Indremafan tunes to G#, which is in the 20's. An acme cab will likely be -12dB down by the time you get to the frequency of a fundamental G# downtuned from a low B. Not only would it more than half as loud (10dB required to double/half apparent loudness), the naturally lower sensitivity of the human ear to very low-frequencies makes it even "softer". For response in the 20s, especially on-stage, LOTS of air needs to be moved. There's only so much that 10s and 12s, and even 15s, can do. I do agree with you, that his stated "needs" are more in-line with what a serious PA system offers, not so much as a standard, portable bass rig.
Two thoughts from a relative newbie playing for a little over a year and with worse GAS than most.
One, since you prefer lows and low mids, you might want to borrow a Precision bass and plug it in to your existing, most excellent rig. Maybe it isn't the cab, it's the inherent tone of the Jazz that isn't the sound in your head.
Two, a second GK 115 stacked on the existing one would get you some serious oomph. I have two GK 115 cabs at 8 ohms each, in parallel that is a 4 ohm load. Bottom end that shakes the house. JMHO!
Oh trust me i realize I'm asking for a tall order XD
I just wanted to learn more info cause that's an idea that has been floating around in my head for awhile, and people on here are really knowledgeable ^_^
I am ready to shell out some big bucks someday, i just want to know if i can achieve this somehow so that i can set a goal money wise.
Is there even anyone that makes a 2x18? Or would i be better off just using 2 1x18s? I once saw someone play with an acoustic 1x18 that was the size of an 8x10!
Also, would buying a more powerful amp help my situation? Because they make the 350W amp im playing in a 500W version. I just sold my amp was thinking about getting that one.
Why even bother with 18's at all? For that low of tuning I would be looking to run a fEARful cab and big power amp. fEARful 1515/66 with a bridged Crest ProLite 2.0 or some other big boy amp.
