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Bi-amping

tooley

tooley

May 12, 2010
234
26
Wellington,New Zealand
www.facebook.com
#1
So I tried Bi-amping the other night & I gotta admit I'm pretty surprised how good It sounds. I've heard of people doing this when they use a bit of distortion in order to not kill the low frequencies. Which I was finding abit I still had lows but they were not as clear as I would of liked. Does anyone on here do this for gig's? If so what are the pros and con's? Id like to do this at gig's but think it'll be overkill. unless I made my cab into a stereo cab. But again that'll be overkill. So I'm gonna save it for practice and recording at this time.

I used my '74 Marshall Superbass Into a DIY detuned cab My mate made. I think it has a 12' SWR speaker not sure on the model thoe. that covered my highs/distortion and for lows I used a Marshall JCM800 bass series Into an Ampeg 6x10hlf. Yes I like Marshall amp heads.

Sorry about the image quality
temporary_zps946006ea.jpg
 
#4
Basically the same thing. Be careful, its easy to trash a nice speaker that way. Without proper porting, that speaker is acting like its not mounted in a cab and speaker excursion is not controlled in the same way that it would be in a normal 'ported' cab or sealed cab.

Also, unless you're using a dedicated cross-over to split your signal into two amp setups, you're using a multi-amp setup rather than bi-amped, which as a specific technical meaning.

Not that that matters, as long as you enjoy. Be careful with that open cab and don't crank it too loud. :)
 
#7
Hold on: if the wet-dry thing is done correctly the OP shouldn't need to worry about the half-loaded cab, right? It's something like an open-back guitar cab, and if those can handle frequencies from, say, 150/200 hz up, a cab without a driver should too.
tooley said:
I used my '74 Marshall Superbass Into a DIY detuned cab My mate made. I think it has a 12' SWR speaker not sure on the model thoe. that covered my highs/distortion
Click to expand...
tooley: how are you dividing the signal? Are you using an active crossover (i.e. bi-amping proper), or just cutting the lows on the Superbass, the highs on the JCM?
 
#8
I did that quite a time
Traynor YBA300 into Ashdown ABM410 for the basic sound
Trace Elliot GP11 150W head into a GK BLX210 for effects like bassballs, flanger, octaver etc

Worked quite well but it was too much to schlepp around - especially with the small stages we played on.
I figured that any FOH guy would mix both mono signals into his PA, so I basically built the very same thing - I have two channels on my FX board, both are mixed together in my rack and fed into the power amp - two fEARful 12/6 cabinets do the rest. Incredible small footprint and HUGE sound.
What I love about this is that no effect I use can damage the basic sound but only adds something.
 
#9
At the moment im just splitting the siginal using an old pedal (boss flanger) & cutting the lows on the superbass & the highs on the jcm. But sounds like thats bad. In terms of volume the jcm is just over two & the superbass is nearly on 1. Never needed much volume in my band as my guitartests leave the lows too me. So could you guys teach me about a proper cross over. Im interested in not breaking my gear.
 
#10
I did actual biamping for years. I also ran a full bass rig, with a 300Hz highpass added, through guitar effects into a distortion/effects guitar rig.

With a 500+ watt bass rig, I found I didn't need much for the guitar/effects rig. 10-20 watts was plenty, so I usually used a practice amp. My Deluxe Reverb was overkill.

The advantage to using the highpassed rig was I could get my basic full range bass tone, and then add effects without messing with the basic bass tone. Effects that didn't work well with the bass rig (reverb, delay, upper pitch shift, and distortion) worked great in this manner.

I used that setup for years, but these days, my amp is all I need. As much as I loved it, it was for my pleasure and didn't really help the band much.

But I'm working on a new rig, so we'll see.
 
#11
The key to truly biamping starts by understanding the component pieces. For instance, while that is a 610 'bass cab' it is really what would be considered a 'full range' cab.

To clarify there's nothing wrong with having multiple amp setups, but technically its not a bi-amp.

Bi amp looks like this:


Your bass->
Preamp ->
crossover(splits lows from highs in a specific way and place) ->

amp for mids/highs->
Speakers designed for mids/highs only


Amp for lows->
Speakers designed for lows only.

^^^^That's where biamping has benefits because speakers are best when they're not trying to cover ALL the territory...just a portion of the 'waterfront'. They're designed and spec'ed differently.
 
#13
tooley said:
Im trying bi-amping or whatever you wanna call it. To try to get clarity between the lows & highs. Would speaker choice matter too much if im not after a bass heavy tone thoe? Could I split my 610 into stereo to get that clarity?
Click to expand...

That won't be biamping. If you want clarity and not much bass, one amp is the best way to do it, more adds more mess, it is just nice if you want lots of bottom and clarity and good full range cabs have not been invented yet. Only thing is its not the 80s any more, and those cabs have been invented now.
 
#15
Try an experiment : turn on your fuzz box or whatever you use to get distortion and turn your highs or treble all the way off. Then turn off the distortion and see if you can hear a difference.

This will show you how much the distortion affects the lows. I have not heard a fuzz box or built-in overdrive that has any affect on the lows. Maybe some of them do but I haven't heard one.
 
#16
I use my amp for distortion not a pedal. I kinda got the idea of doing this from billy sheehan & roger glover. As I know they split there siginal & run one clean while distorting the other. I usually blend the channels on the superbass to do this. But tried running both amps for fun the other night & found I could hear the lows better & the highs better.
 
#20
tooley said:
So I tried Bi-amping the other night & I gotta admit I'm pretty surprised how good It sounds. I've heard of people doing this when they use a bit of distortion in order to not kill the low frequencies. Which I was finding abit I still had lows but they were not as clear as I would of liked. Does anyone on here do this for gig's? If so what are the pros and con's? Id like to do this at gig's but think it'll be overkill. unless I made my cab into a stereo cab. But again that'll be overkill. So I'm gonna save it for practice and recording at this time.

I used my '74 Marshall Superbass Into a DIY detuned cab My mate made. I think it has a 12' SWR speaker not sure on the model thoe. that covered my highs/distortion and for lows I used a Marshall JCM800 bass series Into an Ampeg 6x10hlf. Yes I like Marshall amp heads.
Click to expand...

I haven't read the thread - but FWIW: True bi-amping requires a crossover.
 

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