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Bass cabs from the board?

B

BassTim

May 7, 2009
61
9
Northern CA
#1
I am in a rock/blues band. We are exploring sound mixing options. In the past, we ran off individual amps except the vocals and lead singers accoustic guitar (board and PA speakers). Now, we're starting to run more of our signals through the board. We have 2 PA speakers but I don't think they will really reproduce the bass signal (or bass drum for that matter) well.

Having previously found the rig set up I like, can I run my amp (line out) to the board and have the board power my bass cabs? How do you, or can you, run the bass signal through the board? I am a complete newby to the PA world - any help or advise is appreciated.
 
#2
A little bass drum and bass guitar won't hurt most speakers, but if they're not quality, you might do more harm to the sound of the band than beneft. That being said, the PA and your rig are two separate sources of sound, so no, you want nothing to do with powering your bass cab with the PA. What you can do is run your line out to a DI box, and send the signal to the board for running through the PA. Or if your amp has a DI built in, run that to the board. Leave your amp driving your cab.

Without more info on your gear, I can't offer much else.
 
#3
I think that we may do something similar to what you're contemplating. Everyone goes through some sort of preamp or modeling direct into the board. We have a pretty good PA and 2 monitors - good overall sound - you can hear the bass/kick drum, but not feel them. Since I have a big bass amp, I'm running a line out of the board into the return on the amp head. I also engaged the amp head biamp crossover to emphasize the low frequencies, and I shut off the horn on the cab. The PA speakers are up high and spread out pretty far while the bass amp sits up front, in the middle, on the ground, so there isn't much cancellation to deal with. This works pretty well, but it is a little tough to balance everything out in terms of volume because the PA speakers and the bass amp are independently powered with independent volume on each. They all get an appropriate unpowered signal, but we do have to get the volume on each unit right as well as getting the overall mix right. I haven't experienced any downside in doing this so far except that the lowest notes on the guitars also go through our "sub", which is sometimes unexpected.
 

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