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Acoustic 360

#41
bucephylus said:
Well, really gear is such a small part of that anyhow. I think Marcus Miller really summed it up when he said that a player has to spend a certain amount of time to get a decent sound together, but then you have to move on to work on the music. Ultimately your "sound" is really the accumulation of wisdom earned over the years of experience. IMO.
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+1 My gear doesn't sound that much different that what I was using 15 years ago. The big difference is that it sounds just as good (if not better) and is half the size and a quarter of the weight.

My 'gear obsession' has always been to 'keep my sound the same' while going smaller and lighter.

And let me tell you what, things continue to massively improve on that front every 6 months, most recently with the amazing new neo 112's and 115's that Eminence is producing, and the cab designers who are starting to build boxes around them.
 
#46
KJung said:
Yeah, Cerwin Vega had a similar design with their horn loaded 18 (with a single 8" driver front mounted so you could at least hear some note definition. That would still sound like mush compared to today's cabs, but back in the day, it was an impressive cab, and meshed will with the low end attenuated and mid grindy/distorted solid state heads of that day (Acoustic, GK, etc.).
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The Cerwin Vega I had, used an 18" mounted backwards and a 12" mounted forwards (B36MF). The 12" had an overload cutout on the back of the cab that kept tripping out! Also had a forward facing 1x18 cab.
 

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#47
I started in 1965 with a Sears amp with 1 15" in an open back cab. Next amp was Fender Bassman 10 amp pulled out of the combo cab, and put into a Formica box driving 2 JBL D 140s in a separate cab my friend and I built. Sounded great but when bands started carrying huge PAs, I went with a Kustom 200, then a Standel. The Standel sounded better than anything I had previously. Then I got in a 7-piece horn band and had to turn the Standel up to 8 to be heard. Bought the 360 at DiFiore Music in Cleveland -- $950 in 1971 dollars.

The 360 was the nearest thing to sounding great without tweaking. Any players looking for loud and clean without mush on the bottom end loved the 360. I'm certain the controls were boost only, and it had a five-position varitone knob that gave you some shaping possibilities. Also a cool fuzz circuit. The fuzz on Vanilla Fudge's "Near the Beginning" LP is Tim Bogert's 360. The so-called electronic tuning fork was infinitely bvariable and pretty useless for tuning, but fun to use with the fuzz as a primitive Theremin to get chicks to look at you during your solo.

The 360 me well till I temporarily retired and sold it. Got back into playing about three years alter and bought an Acoustic 450 with 406 cab. Liked that sound much better than the 360.

I cannot conceive of dragging around a 360 or an SVT these days. Unless I had roadies.
 
#49
The bass player I played in a band with back in 1970 had 2 x Acoustic 360s. They were louder than a Fender Dual Showman or Bassman, but not as loud as an SVT. He played a Gibson EB-0 so he had a big boomy sound.
If you know anything about acoustics or physics, you know that the "horn" of the Acoustic 360 was nowhere near large enough to have directional control of its output down into the bass region.
 
#50
Well if your looking for picturesof the back its prety unexciting at this point lol. once i get the speaker for it ill dissasemble the enclosure and let u guys see the inside. Me being only 15 its gunna take a little while to save up for the speaker but i shud be totaly done with this project in about a month or so. Ill post some more pictures comming up soon after i finish sealing it all and getting everything properly mounted
 
#52
'The so-called electronic tuning fork was infinitely bvariable and pretty useless for tuning, but fun to use with the fuzz as a primitive Theremin to get chicks to look at you during your solo."

That breaks me up. Same thing I used to do. I had one of the very first ones, before they were in the stores. Our band had an endorsement deal, due to our then manager's friendship with one of Acoustic's owners.

It sure was a loud amp for the time. I hated the sound but finally I could be heard. Of course, the guitarist had a really loud guitar model with 2x15s and a horn spreading these sonic death rays across the front of the stage. Pairing 2 of the bass bottoms, side by side, on stage filled out the bottom a bit and added some warmth but still not my idea of what a bass should sound like. We all got more powered bottoms with 2x15s and 2x12s eventually and were a properly loud group.

It was a good thing we had roadies. They were terrible to move around.

My first one wasn't very reliable. I blew the 18" very early on. Apparently the magnet shifted. Replaced that and then the output transistors burned up. Got that repaired and got an extra one for backup and it worked in its fashion just fine until we sold all our acoustic gear and got other stuff. The guitarists got Fender and Ampeg. I went with a new solid state 2x15 Ampeg setup. Solid state preamp with 120 watt powered Ampeg bottoms with 2x15" Altecs. I had 3 of the bottoms. Nice warm sound and pretty reliable. Not as loud as the Acoustic though but enough. I sounded like a bassist again instead of electric trombone.

Bass players have it a lot easier these days.
 
#54
KJung said:
I owned the forward facing 18 for a while. What a muddy mess. Amazing how much better things are now!
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I was just browsing through some magazines this morning and found a copy of a book put out by Fane loudspeakers some years ago with building plans for a lot of different musical equipment cabinets. While they are tuned for specific Fane drivers, it's a very useful book. There is a plan in there for a 1x18 version of a bass horn very much similar to the Acoustic 1x18. There is a response graph in there that shows what the cabinet's performance looks like. Not much going on below 80 hz or so and a rapid rising hump right in the really annoying area of midrange. Pretty much what my ears tell me about that cabinet. Things sure are better now.

This Fane book is very handy, by the way. I believe it's out of print now but there are some nice looking designs for some 1x12, 2x12, 1 and 2x15, 1x15 with 1x10 plus horn reflex enclosures along with some other rather weird cabinets. There are graphs in there on how to tune the cabinets to suit the resonance of the drivers, construction tips, etc. Of course, now you can get much more precise results using one of the computer programs to do it for you. But this book can come in handy for those who don't get along with computers programs too well. A number of other bass horns in there too including a 1x15 scoop horn that I'd love to try just for fun.

Like I said, it's probably out of print by now but it's possibly available in a library. (For you younger guys, a library is this building where they let you come in and read any of their books and even borrow them to take home for a while)

If anyone has any specific questions PM me and I'll see if I can find anything.
 
#55
62bass said:
(For you younger guys, a library is this building where they let you come in and read any of their books and even borrow them to take home for a while)
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:D

Per your post above, it is amazing how little real low end some of those huge cabs back in the day put out. I have a little 112 with a massive neo low freq driver that is darn near flat down to 50hz with virtually no upper bass hump at all, with a nice roll-off below that, and the capability of huge max SPL, and it isn't much bigger than an Acoustic head, much less the cab.:bassist:

Of course, that cab sounds wide and smooth and even, and there is something to be said about mid distortion and a bright, punchy, mid grindy sound in some playing contexts. However, you can get that also in a relatively small, lightweight cab these days.
 
#56
The 360 had an output on the back to hookup a cab for your mids and highs. Only did it at practice with a 4x12+horn 70's Carvin cab. Looked like a dual Showman cab. It was way to clean. Should have used a Marshall 4x12 for a little soft distortion they could do.

Anyway my fave of the big pro amps was the Sunn 2000s with one or two cabs. It's funny though how a 4x12 Marshall bass cab or 100 watt cab with a Major 200 w or SuperBass 100 could give musically usable bass tone. All bets were off if you switched from a Fender Bass to a Gibson cause then you could bring on the mud if not careful.:)
 
#58
KJung said:
:D

Per your post above, it is amazing how little real low end some of those huge cabs back in the day put out. I have a little 112 with a massive neo low freq driver that is darn near flat down to 50hz with virtually no upper bass hump at all, with a nice roll-off below that, and the capability of huge max SPL, and it isn't much bigger than an Acoustic head, much less the cab.:bassist:

Of course, that cab sounds wide and smooth and even, and there is something to be said about mid distortion and a bright, punchy, mid grindy sound in some playing contexts. However, you can get that also in a relatively small, lightweight cab these days.
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Yes, there is a lot of great stuff coming out these days. The young guys today don't know how good they have it.
 
#60
chadds said:
...my fave of the big pro amps was the Sunn 2000s with one or two cabs. It's funny though how a 4x12 [edit: two of them—Dr. Jim] Marshall bass cab or 100 watt cab with a Major 200 w or SuperBass 100 could give musically usable bass tone...
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+1
But the 2000s totally creamed the Marshall stack for bottom.

chadds said:
It's safe to say here but the SVT wasn't everyone's cup of tea. While loud and punchy it's absence of low end and it's propensity to grunt could turn into a midrangey, dirty burp. That bark was a long way from the smooth full fat bass the Company had based it's rep on, the B-15.
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+1
Wise words—I could not agree more. A B-15 capable of stage volume is now called an Epifani UL410, LOL!

62bass said:
Yes, there is a lot of great stuff coming out these days. The young guys today don't know how good they have it.
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+1

It is somehow the natural order of things that the old complain about the ingratitude of the young.

Yet, you are right. One could not (and cannot) be heard with a B-15, Bassman 212 Blackface, 215 Dual Showman, or even a 215 Kustom 200 when the two guitarists are sporting a 212 TwinReverb or a 410 SuperReverb—and have to overdrive them for "tone." For that matter, one could not be heard with two 4x12 Marshall cabs and a 200 Marshall Major tube head when the guitarist had a 100 watt 8x12 Marshall. For bass, they were the bad old days. The Sunns, Acoustic 118 (360, 370, and 301) and Ampeg 1610 (!) SVT were the first steps.

I feel improved guitar pedals made a huge difference when they started to appear, i.e., Tube Screamers, etc. by lowering the levels that guitarists typically used. The demise of live music venues due to MADD and DISCO were part of it too. The culture moved on—idiotic loudness levels also probably helped kill live venues, increasing motivation for saner guitar volume. All IMHO.

Yet, by 1990 or earlier, the performance of David Eden designed ported 410 cabs (Goliaths, et al), hybrid amps, pre/power rigs, and good PAs finally made the live "balance of power" approach studio levels. :cool:
 

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