Barefaced Owners: What Genres Do You Play?

I have a both a Super Compact and a Big Twin II. The Big Twin II is overkill in most places I play but it's always better to have too much cab rather than not enough. Ever since I got a Super Compact, I mostly have been using the SC rather than the BT2, simply for convenience. There's one place I've been playing where load in/out can either be hand-carry equipment up and down a single flight of stairs right next to the street OR make a two-hundred-yard detour to the back of the building to pull everything up a ramp with no stairs. The SC is my go-to cab here for the time-savings.

But without a high-frequency horn, the SC might not be perfect for everything. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend that you send email to Alex Claber at Barefaced and ask his opinion. He has an uncanny ability to get you the right cab for YOU, even though you might not realize it at first.

 

I play different music with different groups. Some original fusion, funk, and jazz with one group; with another, a lot of cover tunes with a female singer. I also play EUB, sometimes for a few tunes, occasionally for an entire gig or session.

The Barefaced cabs are basically FRFR. Whatever you put in will be reproduced with great dispersion and clarity. So in my view, your bass, strings, and amp will be the most important factors here, not the cab. A guitarist friend of mine has a recording studio in his house. We've played a lot of two-hour sessions there, using his equipment because it's all set up and DI'ed, a plug-and-play environment. It's not always the same personnel. So one day a few months ago, I took my EUB, Super Compact (small footprint) and Mesa D800 to his studio for a session. There was a second guitarist there that day, a guy with whom I had played several times there in the past, but on BG. He said, "Oh, my gosh, now I can really hear what you're playing; I couldn't hear you this clearly in the sessions before." It was because of the great dispersion and sound reproduction of the Super Compact. Because of space limitations (I set up next to the already set-up bass equipment stack), I had to stand next to rather than in front of my gear, but I could hear the bass much better through my rig than through the gear that we usually use.

 

I agree completely with P_Robyn, I also play EUB w SC and feel I get a great flat headphone type sound, no coloration.

 

If you want that tweeter twinkle, get a tweeter. I play flats, and the SC rolls off on the highs just like flats would sound through a tweeter cab (which I personally don't need or like), so the SC is perfect for me (plus it's flat response as I don't want anything added to or subtracted from my bass output), but perhaps not for you as I think you will need the tweeter (or horn as the case may be) - maybe the BB2 would be better to your liking.

 

The SC is supposed to roll off around 4K. It has had some clever engineering with the dust cap's shape, and it appears to be attached not to the woofer itself but to the voice coil tube, which I would imagine has something to do with extending the range and dispersion of the higher frequencies of the 12 inch driver. In any case, my strings are pretty petered out by the time 4K rolls around so it works great for me. I think new round wounds will have some info above 4K that you may want. Alex has some very recent demos of the 10 no tweet, 12 no tweet, and 12 with tweet that he has done on YouTube with some different strings that I think would be very useful for you to watch and may help you decide! And the BF tweeter cabs are not supposed to be a harsh sounding tweeter, more of a some type of horn I believe (except for the SM which has a conventional cone tweeter), but I haven't honestly paid much attention to them as my interest was in a tweeter-less 12 inch cab with a flat response, which the SC fits the bill.

 

FYI, I play old school real book jazz stuff in a trio, small venues seating size 100-200 or so just guessing. We are old and we don't play too loud! But the SC can get loud if you need it and have the horsepower to drive it.

 

Metal.
Super Twin and Big Twin. I wanted that SVT power without all the BS that goes along with those monsters. Barefaced cabs are light, convenient, and work with whatever amp you connect to them.

 

I play everything except Metal, Jazz and Classical. For a few years I was using 2 SC's, then I replaced an SC with a Super Midget. A great tone got even better. I then bought a BB2 which I could only run with the SM for 2 gigs before the lockdown. Only 2 gigs but my 5 string Jazz bass now sounds huge. I'm a bit of an old Soul man, trying to keep up with bass developments in the 21st century, but I mainly use the BB2/SM with my Jazz and the SC does sound special with my P bass.

 

I play classic rock and covers and use two BB2’s for medium sized bars to larger venues. I use one BB2 in a small club.

 

I try to play the first 10 pages of "Electric Bass Composite". As a newbee (again) I am working on it. (^:

 

So, you want a bass cabinet which can twinkle in the upper frequencies like a guitar speaker can?

 

Out of interest, do you mean you play one Super Twin and one Big Twin at the same time, or either/or depending on what you feel like? If both, what sort of amp do you use, regarding impedance?

 

What genres do I play. Let's see... classic rock, pop covers, r&b, old school soul, funk, neo-soul, jazz-funk, old school jazz, country (classic & contemporary), using a variety of electric basses and an upright. (I do not play: metal, doom, or electronica-type.) My Super Compact covers it all like a champ. It seems to play better with a solid state amp, YMMV. Great flexibilty is the hallmark of this cabinet. The driver is magic. Enough top end to manage everything I want to do. The rest of the sound is in the strings, the bass, the fx, and (as always) your hands. Peace out!

edit p.s.: usual venues are (were) bars and small clubs; for larger venues I'd use more cabs or PA support. Such as, for an outdoor rock gig, I'd usually go to the Sunn 215; for something more subtle, I'd add another 12 to the BF (such as a generic 12/6). If I could afford it, I'd get a larger BF, but I already have a lot of cabs and can mix and match pretty well.

 

I currently own both, and have actually played them both together once.
I had purchased the Super Twin about 4 years ago, thinking I didn't need the tweeter. I changed genres and decided I wanted the Big Twin. There is a small, but noticeable difference in the tone between the two. I am trying (not too hard) to sell the Super Twin.
I have a Mesa D800 and a Darkglass MT900 V2. Both are capable of 2ohms.