Are the big amps history?

[phillybass101]

I for one am not impressed with all the new "little stuff" when it comes to Cabs. Sure the Bass can be heard but I come from an era where Bass was seen, heard and felt. Bass has been infiltrated with other types who have in essence taken the Bass out of Bass. Bass used to rock the stage, the floor, the house. Now it's a much nicer, kinder, more gentle world. One where a rig is not even seen onstage. Granted as you move up and FOH becomes more important the need for a Big Rig Decreases but I still don't get 2 mini 12" speaker cabs or two mini 10's unless you're playing a coffee house. And yes I'm just being a wise-a.

 

[Gaolee]

I love the feel and sound and attitude of a decent size rig on a big stage. I don't have to worry about who the sound man is and if he even understands what the band is going for. There are more bad sound men who seem to be leftovers from the Disco era than I knew existed.

And, from your avatar, I can guess what that decent sized rig might be or was at one point. I still use those. Nothing like that big blue stripe or the sound that comes out of it. Not everyone agrees. I don't care.

I also don't play out more than a couple times a month and don't use a 360 even that much, so there's that.

This whole thread is full of outstanding wisdom and philosophy.

 

[rodv66]

Just get one of these
View attachment 1172085
and equip your audience with these
View attachment 1172087
and BOOM!!!!!!!!
View attachment 1172088

Excellent post sir, I salute you. Have some puppies

 

[J-Bassomatic]

I think big tube amps will be around for a while, that's my vote.
I also think when you get down to the atomic level it's neither 'digital' nor 'analog', it's reality.

 

[Xandrell]

I bring a Subway head and a Berg 610. A 810E is easier to move than the 610 because of the balance points.

It's easier for me to move the heavier 810 w/ wheels than the SVT 2 Pro. If I didn't have people helping me, I wouldn't use it. You can't get that sound from anything else. The smaller you go the more you compromise. I think it can still end up sounding good though. Just not as good as an all tube SVT through an 810.

 

[Razman]

In this day of PA support that works down to 30 or 40 Hz, why would anyone need a big amp on stage?

It's not about the reproduction of 30 or 40 Hz - I'm with @JimmyM on this - there's no replacement for displacement.

However, my situation is a unique one. I play exclusively for my church, and in our theater we set up our gear and it seldom moves. When our old bass amp fried, my pastor bought my entire rig - a Mesa 400 and a PR810h cab (I think it's the heaviest 810 in existence - 220 lbs!) So, without a good place to store the cab, I added it to the stack (quite literally) and powered the Hartke cabs with a power amp we had.

My pastor is an old rock-n'-roller and as such is old-school. Our guitarists play through full Marshall stacks. The drum kit is ginormous. He likes good stage presence, and he was a bassist himself. That said, the rig 'is what it is'. For shows we travel to, I take the 400 and the fridge, which is plenty for any venue really - but even bigger road shows get the full treatment. And it helps when we're outdoors.

I'll admit we have a stage volume much louder than required, but we try to balance our volumes to match without frying the folks on the front row of seats. I do use earplugs (mainly for the drum kit next to me) but the full rig idles most of the time. Sounds awesome though!

(Please refrain from mixed-cab flame posts! )

 

[Orpheus55]

I'm 66 and play in a ten piece horn/soul band, and we always have a dedicated sound man on our payroll. I play through a Peavey Minimax and Avatar SB112, run through the FOH and have no problem being heard. Our sound guy once said to me, "you need less up there than you think." Just my two cents.

 

[Mark Reccord]

I don't have to explain it. It's been done.

Here's one starting point:
Signals and Systems (2nd Edition): Alan V. Oppenheim, Alan S. Willsky, with S. Hamid: 9780138147570: Amazon.com: Books

In the event the link changes, it's Signals and Systems by Oppenheim and Willsky.

I am looking at that very book on the shelf in my cube. It gets referenced fairly often but at least I have MATLAB to do the heavy math lifting for me.

Man, I think that was the 2nd hardest course I did in my degree. The hardest being Antennas.

Sonically, I prefer vinyl to digital formats but it's not because it's a superior technology. It sounds good because it is actually distorting the input signal (quite a bit in many cases) and that low order distortion is pleasing to the ear.

The problem with CDs in the early days wasn't so much the sample rate, rather the reconstruction filters. In order to prevent aliasing they had to use high order analog "brick wall" filters just above the audio passband that of course had an effect on phase and amplitude of the signal below the cutoff frequency. It was either that or live with aliasing and the intermodulation caused by that. That problem was solved a long time ago with oversampling and upsampling which allows the use of a lower order reconstruction filter with a cutoff frequency well out of the passband.

 

[Clef_de_fa]

I see the no-amp as the future. I gave up on amp earlier this year and never been happier about it.

Playing live it always sounds crappy, for the audiance and for myself unless playing direct or into a mixing board... it also save my hearing.

 

[Buster Brown]

I guess if you have to rely on the visual aspect of your gear to impress the audience.

I've seen guys with all kinds of fancy gear, a plethora of FX pedals, etc. that didn't know what to do with it all, versus the guy with a beat up bass and simple combo amp that can play circles around the average poser. The gear doesn't make music; it's the musician.

Well, I'm not that good of a player......so anything helps...

 

[Mark Reccord]

And I love big amps. My 70s SVT and Berg NV610 aren't going away any time soon, though there are also plenty of gigs I play with my GK MB500 and a 112. There's just something about having a powerful amp behind you that can't be replicated with IEMs and the like.

 

[aborgman]

Here's the deal...bigger is better for bass...always. Notice I didn't say "sometimes"...I said "always." It is physics.

More powerful and more able to push air is better for bass. While that often correlates with size - it ain't causal.

A Crown XTi6002 weighs 1/3 and is considerably smaller in footprint than an SVT - but in terms of power before distortion, it will eat an SVT alive.

A Barefaced Big Twin II weighs about 1/3 of an Ampeg 8x10 and is considerably smaller - but it'll give you just as much volume.

 

[aborgman]

Analog technology by definition reproduce all the information and subtleties of the original source, in theory at least a 1:1 relationship, only limited by quality of the hardware, digital technology on the other hand will always be an approximation or emulation basically made up of 0's and 1's.

At its base - even analog data of all sorts is quantized. NOTHING has infinite resolution.

...and real world, non-theoretical, analog equipment doesn't even come close.

As for "digital technology on the other hand will always be an approximation or emulation basically made up of 0's and 1's." - that shows a distinct lack of understanding of the works of Shannon and Nyquist.

 

[JimmyM]

Only partially true. Once you've got enough rig to cover the gig *with the volume and tone you want*, going bigger is usually worse.

Even though it's not the biggest rig, an SVT + 810 still sounds—and feels—pretty good, and multiple SVT/810s aren't always better than one. And there are a lot of gigs for which going smaller than an SVT/810 for the stage rig is a better fit—tonally, aesthetically, and/or practically.

Well yeah, bringing an SVT and 810 to a jazz casual in a 60 seat restaurant is overkill But having just bought a second SVT/810 recently and paired them up, even though it's highly unlikely I will ever use both of them at the same time, I stand by my statement about "bigger is always better." Remember that "bigger" does not always mean "louder."

 

[Son of Wobble]

It's not about the reproduction of 30 or 40 Hz - I'm with @JimmyM on this - there's no replacement for displacement.



However, my situation is a unique one. I play exclusively for my church, and in our theater we set up our gear and it seldom moves. When our old bass amp fried, my pastor bought my entire rig - a Mesa 400 and a PR810h cab (I think it's the heaviest 810 in existence - 220 lbs!) So, without a good place to store the cab, I added it to the stack (quite literally) and powered the Hartke cabs with a power amp we had.

My pastor is an old rock-n'-roller and as such is old-school. Our guitarists play through full Marshall stacks. The drum kit is ginormous. He likes good stage presence, and he was a bassist himself. That said, the rig 'is what it is'. For shows we travel to, I take the 400 and the fridge, which is plenty for any venue really - but even bigger road shows get the full treatment. And it helps when we're outdoors.

I'll admit we have a stage volume much louder than required, but we try to balance our volumes to match without frying the folks on the front row of seats. I do use earplugs (mainly for the drum kit next to me) but the full rig idles most of the time. Sounds awesome though!

(Please refrain from mixed-cab flame posts! )
View attachment 1172148

That rig should put the fear of god in them!

And I love big amps. My 70s SVT and Berg NV610 aren't going away any time soon, though there are also plenty of gigs I play with my GK MB500 and a 112. There's just something about having a powerful amp behind you that can't be replicated with IEMs and the like.

IEMs give me tinnitus. A. 8x10 give the OTHERS tinnitus. No contest.

 

[Altitude]

This is a religious discussion.

Pragmatically, I value the ability to get to and from the car in one trip before and after the gig. That was never possible before these tiny 4 pound amps and 30-pound 12" cabinets louder than a 90s SWR 410.

I love the sound of an SVT through an 810, but I'm not carrying one around when that other stuff is there.

 

[aborgman]

I would like to know how it work then.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

 

[JimmyM]

I ain't got no big league band contract. I did get sick of hauling around a MusicMan HD-150 and a 4x12 cabinet though. So I use a Class D Micro Amp with Neo loaded cabinet, and nobody has ever said squat to me about how I ought to have a bigger rig for better tone.

This may be true, and it's true in my case as well, but the only time I ever have lay people comment on the sound of my rig is when I bring the big stuff, and it's been overwhelmingly positive.

 

[aborgman]

I'm not saying that poorly made optics photographers and people who lags skills in developing a negative doesn't exist, what I am saying is that our finest fully analog photo equipment is still better at reproducing information based on visible light than our finest fully digital systems specialized in doing that.

In the commercial camera realm... possibly true. In the scientific camera realm (say custom built super CCDs for telescope photography), nope.

 

[aborgman]

Also if digital systems are so perfect why do they rely 100% on imperfect analog systems to work?

Ummm... in the end, the opposite is true.

Analog, at the lowest possible levels - IS digital. Light for example has discrete quanta, called photons.