Double Bass 8 inch Bass speaker recommendations

[DoubleMIDI]

Fender Rumble 10 or 12 inexpensive, good tone quality, usefully EQ, lightweight. Often available used.

I assume you mean a Fender Rumble with a 10“ or 12“ speaker.
The number usually means the wattage of the amp. And I don’t think a Rumble 10 or 12 (wattage) exists.

A friend of mine bought a Rumble 40 and it is OK for a smaller room (up to 100 listeners fitting in) and a quartet that doesn‘t play too loud. It‘s also the smallest one with a built-in DI, so easy to plug in for FOH.

I think similar in volume to a Polytone Mini-Brute I. I assume the cab of the Rumble is a bit more efficient than the Polytone cab but the Polytone is 60 watts whereas the Rumble 40 is 40 watts.

I played it a bit with a Stagg EDB. Not bad if the subfreq-boost on the Stagg is turned down completely and the low freq eq on the Rumble mostly.

 

[Jay Mendoza]

Anyway, it went well today at church using a Carvin BX-1 preamp, however the speaker definitely will benefit from an upgrade as testing and playing live concluded. It has seen better days and is basically kaput at anyything over 4.
I only had the amp volume at 25%, so just a stiffer speaker will do just fine as I'm not looking for more volume, just more clean tone. The paper cone on the 1992 Crate Bx-15 15 watt amp 8" speaker cone is thin, dry, and brittle, and it has a tiny 1 inch voice coil. I'm going to put an 8" 50 watt woofer, 2 " coil
neo-magnet speaker in the amp and rock on. I f I have to play with the baffle shape/size on the back of the open back Crate combo amp cabinet to tune it, well its a simple chore to make a custom new baffle from 1/4" mahogany/poplar ply. .
But at the volumes we play at church, which are pretty tame considering the excellent acoustics, I will probably get away with just replacing the old dried out brittle speaker.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

I once replaced the weak 70 watts at 8 ohms 15” speaker in an old Fender cab with something cheap and higher wattage (400 at 8 ohms too, but no-name brand from a consumer electronics retailer in Germany) and for the money I paid it is so much better than the old one. But a later cab with 12 inch is so much better.
The 10” in the GB Shuttle 3.0 combo is a bit of a compromise. Acceptable for DB gigs with a smaller group (low to medium volume), but better sounding with the 12” cab.
But a good transportability compromise for rehearsals or jam sessions.

The problem with smaller speakers is that they have to move more in and out to get the same volume which means that at ports the high air movement from lower frequencies can result in noise.

I tried the small 8” Behringer BD208A PA-speakers with DB and there is a lot of noise generated at the ports at the low frequencies. Works great with piano at medium levels and slightly reduced bass eq.

BTW, I once got a loud rattle in the 10T cab after a bike trailer transport through the woods. The capacitor cable to the tweeter got in contact with the 10” driver which resulted in the loud rattle. Unmounted the grill and the speaker, shortened the effective cable length by bounding it in a loop and reinstalled driver and grill. The rattle was gone. Just in case that ever happens to you.

 

[Jay Mendoza]

Thanks Double Midi. Fortunately, the Crate amp is a combo with a semi tuned open back, so no issues with port noises, plenty of opening to allow all the air it could move and then some. We play on the altar at church which has a bowl shaped wall that projects really well, the chapel has excellent acoustics, as it was designed that way. I have played my double bass through a Fender Deluxe reverb, and although it is a guitar amp, the Jensen C12 12'' speaker gives a really lush sound with the tone controls set to about 3. If I need more power I have a Hot Rod Deville, which is basically a modern version of the legendary Bassman, 4x10 combo, with a 2nd distortion channel. It can easily be re-voiced using the tone controls for use with a bass on the clean channel.

Tube amps typically have pretty high input impedance, but I still like to use some sort of a pre-amp that has an FET type amplifier for the 1st stage to get over 2 meg input impedance.

BTW, I have chickens, four different breeds and get blue, green, rose and brown eggs!

 

[DoubleMIDI]

BTW, I have chickens, four different breeds and get blue, green, rose and brown eggs!

Easter eggs the whole year. That‘s nice.