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Bass Bombs, Ala Phil Lesh

flameworker

flameworker

Guest
Jun 15, 2014
1,842
344
52
Landenberg, Pennsylvania
Disclosures
one day....
#1
To sound person's especially. .

What note/range of frequency causes the best body thumping, vibration out front? Wether from an octaver, or a low b, or even lower, some sounds just go on forever, take control of the room and make people go "wow!!".

Irratatiing if someone did it all the time, but once or twice a night is cool.

Phil Lesh, working with Dan Healy achieved the best version of this, with Healy working the octave effect.
 
#2
In my experience, the 30 to 40Hz range works well and you can pull it off with just a standard five-string bass if you want to. A dbx 120XP can help also. You need to have a system capable of reproducing 30Hz to pull it off effectively. I used to work with one (home designed and built) and we got very good results playing Korn's early albums unprocessed.
 
#3
There is a system I play thru at a local club that has a row of huge bins loaded with jbl 18's, that is my favorite place to play, unfortunately it totally spoiled me, there is another sound guy Dave Muddiman (nothing muddy about his mix) in my area with a system that can do it as well. Unfortunately I have to roll off at around 40- 35 (using 610) or my speakers fart. I do have a full range practice setup with a 12"faital sub that hits 28 tho, so I can get it in my living room!
 
#4
Note - my remarks are for Phil-style (or Fieldy) bass bombs. I believe the human chest resonates at around 40 to 45 Hz so that range is good for the thump factor.

-edit- I was wrong. A search at google turned up a paper with this statement :

The results suggest that the chest resonant frequency is sensitive to the subject's mass and chest size, but is less dependent on height. Typical values found were 25 Hz for males and 33 Hz for females.
Click to expand...
 
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#5
In my experience, you NEED a FOH engineer who is on board with this kind of thing and will leave you enough headroom at the board to it. Phil's style/range has him typically playing higher than traditional bass playing so when he goes low it means something. From the times I've seen him, and in videos, he appears to play very light and relaxed and digs in only when it's time to rattle the walls.
 

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