ampeg fear...

[chadds]

I had a 200 watt marshall major for a while. It through an SWR Goliath III made me deaf in 15 min. All mids none of the great low end we like these days or the highs. It was really loud. Same cab with a contemporary bass head had full lows, big bottom, balanced mids and highs.

 

[Kael]

Probably a silly question....

You don't have your SABDDI set with the blend all the way up do you? That will kill your mids and make you disappear in the mix quick. Kinda like turning your mids down to -10 db or so. If you do have the blend knob dimed, try backing it off to 11:00 or so.

I only quickly scanned this thread so I apologize if you have already mentioned your blend settings.

 

[Daytona955i]

Take your sansamp out of the equation and see if you still have the problem.

Definitely don't use the active input.

Also, just because the knob is turned to say 5, doesn't mean you're getting 50% of the power. Turn your gain up til it clips with peaks, and then turn the master up more until you hear yourself. If the poweramp is clipping, then you have a problem.

Also, check the tone or EQ knobs on your bass.

 

[MakiSupaStar]

You didn't mention the "ultra-low".... is it on or off?

If the cable is messed up, you could have been using only one amp.......

As for the bass thing, nope, not ridiculous.........

Low end doesn't carry well.
Low end takes relatively way more power to get as loud as mids.
You don't HEAR low end as well as mids
Lows leak out of the room everywhere, thru wood floors, walls, ceilings, doors...

So, cranking the lows ends up using most of your power to try to fill the place with fundamental, which is a losing proposition anyway since they leak out of the room all over.

Having all that EQ on the lows may be trying to get 12 or 15 dB more out in the lows than the mids. That means you are putting maybe 16 times more power into the low lows than into the rest of the sound.....

It should be pretty obvious that will re-balance your sound well into the harder-to-hear "mud range".

The -15 dB isn't helping any either, it just lowers your volume and forces you to dime everything.

If everything is correct, you should have guitarists weeping and small animals dropping dead out in front of you with that setup.

Engage "mono". Use a cable wired 1+2+ at the amp end and 1+ 1- at the speaker end, plugged into the mono output. plug cable into 4 ohm cabinet...... result 1200W (rms) capability.

As far as "liberal ratings", if that means we "add a few watts for luck", I happen to know that ain't quite right.... if we say it, it does it.

I think we just give you too many EQ options.......

Yeah.... What he said! Personally I'm stoked on my Ampeg. Not stoked on that -15db pad though. Always have that thing off. Recent, I played a gig, and walked off the stage totally bummed on my sound. It was only my second show with my Ampeg SVT-BSP pre > 1000W Mono Carver Power Amp. I could barely hear myself, and though my volume was totally lacking. In the audience, was the opening band, and the bass player (a ripping slap player) said my sound was awesome, and was seriously thinking about getting himself an Ampeg. Moral of the story... Sound on the stage is totally a different animal from what the audience hears. A taper played back our show for me, and sure enough, the sound was really good.