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Anybody using a subwoofer cab in their live rig?

#5
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#6
joe vegas said:
Giving some thought to either a 15" or an 18" subwoofer to compliment a solid 2x12" cab in live smallish-venue jazz/electric-chamber settings.

not so much for volume, but for low deeeep body-rumbling Anthony Jackson-esque "orchestral B-string" moments.

Curious if it's being done out there. thx!
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I am and it definitely moves some air, punches and goes deep. Greenboy fEARless F112 on top of a 12” sub.
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#7
back in the 80s, I ran a Carvin PB300 with the crossover set for lows to the internal 300 watts going into a 1x18" Yamaha PA Sub and the highs into a Kustom 4x12 that I loaded with 4x EVM-12L when they were new & cutting edge powered by a 100 watt amp that was mounted in the back of the cab.

Currently using an all tube 200 watt head into a pair of Bag End D12-B and considering a custom Bag End powered Infra 2x12" made to match my other pair... I keep riding the fence between "I don't need it" & "but OMG that would be soooooo cool"




(pictures of similar from the interwebz)
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#8
Biamping was somewhat of a thing in the 80s and 90s. So yes it has been done.

It's addictive as a player. It sounds and feels great close to the rig. However, IME it frequently doesn't translate well to the audience. Basically the sound of bass gets darker and more diffuse as it travels over distance. So it's often beneficial to start with the sound a bit lean and mid-rangy up close to the rig.

In particular Anthony Jackson has run rigs composed of Meyer Sound PA gear, which is very high-end. Some references mention USW-1P subs. Here is the spec sheet: https://tcfurlong.com/wp-content/uploads/Meyer-Sound-USW-1P-Rental-Spec-Sheet.pdf

I remember reading multiple threads on TB where people commented that AJ's live sound with the Meyer subs was a rumbly incoherent mess.

A related conversation is bedroom tone VS the type of tone the works life. Bedroom tone tends to get lost in the mix. However, with a powerful high fidelity rig, you can get bedroom tone at whatever volume is necessary to hear clearly. However, doing this means you will probably blow out the room; I.E. be way too loud.
 
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#10
Wasnex said:
I remember reading multiple threads on TB where people commented that AJ's live sound with the Meyer subs was a rumbly incoherent mess.
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Anthony went through some different iterations of his rig with the subwoofer. It was a rumbly incoherent mess when I heard him around 1990 at the Ventura Theatre with Lee Ritenour - the room was boomy and not at all sympathetic to that type of rig. If i remember correctly, the signal chain was:
Bass> volume pedal> Klark-Teknik 1/3 octave eq> crossover> high end went to wedges on stage, low end was sent to Phase Linear power amp and to the sub.

I had a couple of friends that were also in the band, and they (and Lee) had difficulty with the volume and massiveness of Anthony’s sound over the course of the tour. They were playing a venue somewhere in Europe, and during sound check Anthony whomped on a low C and a huge pile of chairs stacked in adjoining room came tumbling down (I’ve always aspired to that but never succeeded).

I heard Anthony some years later with Wayne Krantz at the 55 Bar in NYC, and he had a similar rig but with a small Vox guitar amp for the high end. That was the opposite experience and probably one of the best live bass sounds I’ve ever heard - massive and authoritative in the low end, but with incredible definition and a bit of sparkle on the top end. Of course his playing was just beautiful, like the low end of an orchestra.
 
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#11
Venturing back to the dinosaur era, I used a Bullfrog 18’ cab for a sub for a little while in the early ‘80’s. My rig was something like this:
Alembic F-2B> Biamp crossover> Crown DC150 into EV B115M cab, QSC power amp (don’t remember the exact model) bridged into 18” cab. Crossover freq. was usually 200-250. No pics, unfortunately. It sounded great in some venues, but was hard to dial in in others, and you really had to hear how the sound was forming some distance away to really gauge how it was working. I do have a recording of one gig with that setup, and the bass sound is killer.

It was really just an experiment, and it worked for the most part but not well enough to justify carting around all that gear.

Of course the technology has improved immensely since those days. I’m not familiar with the Bag End system but it sounds cool. I would recommend trying a sub if you have access to the gear - it might just get you what you’re looking for.
 
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#12
joe vegas said:
Giving some thought to either a 15" or an 18" subwoofer to compliment a solid 2x12" cab in live smallish-venue jazz/electric-chamber settings.

not so much for volume, but for low deeeep body-rumbling Anthony Jackson-esque "orchestral B-string" moments.

Curious if it's being done out there. thx!
Click to expand...
Bass guitar's don't sound better if the low B0 is solidly reproduced on stage, it just mucks up the sound for band members, and possibly the whole room.

That is the job of a PA and soundperson.

If there's no decent PA, then be careful and either use a wireless or a very long instrument cable to check the sound out in the room.

Something like this could work, but your tone would need to come from your bass guitar &/or pedals &/or modeler, unless you like it very clean:

Electro-Voice Evolve 70 Column PA Speaker
 
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#14
ad9000 said:
...high end went to wedges on stage, low end was sent to Phase Linear power amp and to the sub.
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This really is a recipe for a 'rumbly incoherent mess'. It doesn't matter which way the sub is pointed, but running the high-side signal only through the floor monitors means that the audience hears it from 180 degrees off-axis -- the worst case for conveying HF information. Using a sub doesn't have to muddy things up, but one needs to use one's noggin for something other than a hatrack.
 
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#15
I did it for a while w/ an Ashdown rig, powered (500w) 15 sub and 6x10 w/ 600w head in a freak-beat group that was over-loud. The end result was great sound but scrambled guts. There was one particularly booze-soaked evening that was being filmed and the camera was vibrated toward the ceiling. The resulting artifact is this hyper-psychedelic wiggly looking purple/brown ceiling shot w/ freak-out sounds. Most everyone that CAN recall the night says their bowels and minds went on the Tilt-a-Whirl but the sounds were FAB!
 
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#18
Only for outdoor venues or other very large venues like a wedding hall.

I have a 1000W QSC 181 (18") and my keyboardist has a 1500W Yorkville 2x15" sub, whoever has room in the vehicle takes theirs (they're both painfully heavy but weirdly the QSC is easier to load just because of its handle positions). We're going to try both subs at an outdoor venue sometime, using both his Yorkville and my Peavey top speakers, since we have found that we need a bit more oomph for 300+ person events. Running just his tops @ full power for 5 hours is doable, but it does probably mean an advanced rebuild schedule.

For a smaller venue, big subs are overkill and may actually muddy up the sound just from the amount of air they move and the way that non-directional sound seems to sit in hot zones. We've experimented with them and found that it didn't add to the experience in those cases.

Now, that said, one of the venues we play at has two (two!) 10KW subs that they use. The sound guy (James Atkinson) is a wizard and we don't sound better anywhere we go. Obviously it can be done if you have the sound crew to make it work.
 
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#20
joe vegas said:
Giving some thought to either a 15" or an 18" subwoofer to compliment a solid 2x12" cab in live smallish-venue jazz/electric-chamber settings.

not so much for volume, but for low deeeep body-rumbling Anthony Jackson-esque "orchestral B-string" moments.

Curious if it's being done out there. thx!
Click to expand...
I suppose, but not here. I’ve not been in a commercial setting where this would be useful. Truth be told, I’ve have done a fair bout of bi-amping in the past but that was back before cabs were full range and powered with amps with much better tone controls. Then now with the advent of FOH support and IEMs, I really don’t see the need.
 
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