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Amp help!

B

Bearstripes

Mar 16, 2013
19
0
#1
Hey everybody kinda in a bind here and am at a total loss.
For the longest time my bass amp as been a traynor bassmaster into an old hartke 4'10. This was my rug forever and it had head room for days and sounded great.

In more recent times the hartke has since left and I picked up an ampeg svt 4'10.
So here's my problem. The ampeg has only been used at bedroom volume, no louder than one except for like once or twice. So I get it to practice and give it a lil volume and the sound I get is like instant poopie. With the hartke I could compete with a cranked twin and an ac30 and never have to turn it up past 3 (10 o'clock). I had it above noon and it still wasn't loud enough and distorted as all hell.

Now I'm pretty sure that the traynor is eight ohms and I know that the hartke was 8 but the ampeg is 4 ohms but as far as I know that shouldn't hurt anything.

Any thoughts on what's wrong would be awesome.
Thanks
 
#2
Are the cones on the ampeg creased or ripped at all?? What specific amp model is that Traynor? I have a Yorkie Bassmaster 400 and I run it into a Bassman 410T (I think its a T) and it can bump quite a bit. The cabs crossover could also be jacked up. My Fenders crossover is messed up and at lower volumes, its totally fine. If I get any amount of heft into it, it will fart and sound horrid. Have you done the 9v test to the cab?? It will tell you if its out of whack.
 
#5
Sorry. The 9v test:

It's when you take a 9v and with the instrument cord coming out of the back of the cab, you touch the 1/4 inch connector to the positive and neg tips of the 9v. It's like you lay the tip of the 1/4' across the top of the 9v so both the tip and one of the little lines on it are touching the 9v tips. I can't remember which tip of the 9v goes to which sleeve on the 1/4' connector, so try it both ways (it will not hurt anything either way you do it) and you will see your speakers cones jump a little bit. If ALL 4 woofers come outward, you're good. If they do anything else but that, there's something wrong. As in if they go inward or do nothing you have a crossover or phase (I think that's the word I'm looking for) issue.

I'm sure someone could've explained this better than I, I still suck at tech talk, but that's the gist of it and I hope you understand what I'm saying and it helps you.


Killing gods
 
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#6
Bearstripes said:
The cones look fine as far as I can tell. Y
The traynor is a yba1.
Not sure what the 9v test is
Click to expand...
The 9V test is where you take a 9V battery and put it across the leads of a speaker or a cabinet. If you've got a 1/4" cable to the cab, it's super easy, as you can just touch the battery terminals to the tip and sleeve of the amp end of the cable. When you make contact, you should see all the speakers move in or out (depending on where you put the + and - terminals of the battery) some small distance, and stay there as long as current is flowing. If the speakers don't all go in the same directlon, there's a wiring error in the cabinet, such that some speakers are cancelling others. If some of the speakers don't move, it's because they're dead or disconnected.
 
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#9
The 410hlf that you have now goes very very low compared to the Hartke cab you used to have. Which is fine, but the tradeoff for going so low is that it won't be as loud at the same volume settings that you used for the Hartke. Hoffman's Iron Law of speaker cab construction tells us this. Basically it boils down to "Low, loud, small...pick any two." So if you want more out of the 410hlf, you're best to add some more wattage. Or switch to the 410he which is closer in low end response to the Hartke cab, or back to the Hartke cab.
 

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