I thought I'd share this discovery with you guys. Apologies if I'm retreading familiar ground. Sorry if this sounds like a get rich quick scheme from Nigeria, but I found a way to make good sounding bass speakers out of cheap car speakers. Believe it or not...
I searching for a bass amp - the criteria being that it was supposed to sound natural, be easy to carry around, be loud enough to let me be heard over a loud drummer, and be very cheap. I thought this was going to be a tough ask, but if you don't ask you never find out.
So I went into a local music store and came out with a cheap-ish 60W Ashdown AAA bass guitar combo that I could evaluate. It was an epic fail in terms of sound (although it was easy to carry around), so I returned it. But at least I knew what did not work. I started thinking about what else I had.
I had made a pair of cheap PA columns out of a bunch of cheap car speakers. There are two columns with four "Response" brand speakers rated at 25w RMS each. I have a little Nady PM-200A personal monitor - it sounds terrible, but it allows me to hear myself when playing sax in some rooms where the PA is lousy. The Nady has a switch to mute the internal speakers, and can drive two external speakers. It claims 150w RMS.
So I plugged the bass's KNB DB-1 pickup into my Behringer V-Tone ADI21 acoustic guitar DI (to match the impedance), then the DI's XLR output into the Nady's mic input, and one column plugged into each of the Nady's external speaker outputs. Result...
Really, really good. The sound is pretty natural - I've never heard a bass through a pickup that was perfectly natural, but this is about as good as it gets.
There is a problem in the lowest notes though - it seems that the car speakers suffer from "one-note bass" - a resonance peak around 40Hz that muddies low notes in favour of giving a thumping bass. This means that from low G down the notes don't sound as clear as I would like - more like a big thump. However if I play gently down there it's not too bad. But the rest of the instrument sounds great.
Cons - it's a big system, and ugly as sin, but I can live with that for a good sound that's loud.
Pros - very, very cheap (well, I already had the bits, but even cheap if you had to buy eight cheap car speakers). Quite loud. Great sound except for lowest notes. Also, because the system is made of two columns there is great horizontal dispersion - I can hear the bass well when standing at the side, and I expect that an audience will be able to hear clearly at the back of the room as well.
I'm sure a well made amp by one of the recognised makers of amps for upright bass would do a better job, and be easier to carry around - but it would also be well out of range of my pocket.
Anyone else experiment with car audio for bass? Anyone think of any unforeseen problems I might get with this set up (other than big and ugly)?
I searching for a bass amp - the criteria being that it was supposed to sound natural, be easy to carry around, be loud enough to let me be heard over a loud drummer, and be very cheap. I thought this was going to be a tough ask, but if you don't ask you never find out.
So I went into a local music store and came out with a cheap-ish 60W Ashdown AAA bass guitar combo that I could evaluate. It was an epic fail in terms of sound (although it was easy to carry around), so I returned it. But at least I knew what did not work. I started thinking about what else I had.
I had made a pair of cheap PA columns out of a bunch of cheap car speakers. There are two columns with four "Response" brand speakers rated at 25w RMS each. I have a little Nady PM-200A personal monitor - it sounds terrible, but it allows me to hear myself when playing sax in some rooms where the PA is lousy. The Nady has a switch to mute the internal speakers, and can drive two external speakers. It claims 150w RMS.
So I plugged the bass's KNB DB-1 pickup into my Behringer V-Tone ADI21 acoustic guitar DI (to match the impedance), then the DI's XLR output into the Nady's mic input, and one column plugged into each of the Nady's external speaker outputs. Result...
Really, really good. The sound is pretty natural - I've never heard a bass through a pickup that was perfectly natural, but this is about as good as it gets.
There is a problem in the lowest notes though - it seems that the car speakers suffer from "one-note bass" - a resonance peak around 40Hz that muddies low notes in favour of giving a thumping bass. This means that from low G down the notes don't sound as clear as I would like - more like a big thump. However if I play gently down there it's not too bad. But the rest of the instrument sounds great.
Cons - it's a big system, and ugly as sin, but I can live with that for a good sound that's loud.
Pros - very, very cheap (well, I already had the bits, but even cheap if you had to buy eight cheap car speakers). Quite loud. Great sound except for lowest notes. Also, because the system is made of two columns there is great horizontal dispersion - I can hear the bass well when standing at the side, and I expect that an audience will be able to hear clearly at the back of the room as well.
I'm sure a well made amp by one of the recognised makers of amps for upright bass would do a better job, and be easier to carry around - but it would also be well out of range of my pocket.
Anyone else experiment with car audio for bass? Anyone think of any unforeseen problems I might get with this set up (other than big and ugly)?
