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chords and additional stress on cabs

T

tony_clifton

Nov 14, 2009
240
1
#1
Hi,

Quick question - does playing chords stress speakers more than single notes?

For a particular song of my band I play some kind of A chord with notes on the A, D and G string. Not arpeggiated but like a guitar chord.

I don't remember a huge increase of volume, so I think the cone excursion had to be similar to playing the open A string (the lowest note in the chord), but maybe the cabs had to deal with a lot more heat?
Maybe something risky for the tweeter/crossover? Out of the two, only one cab has a tweeter with the attenuator set at noon and without boosting treble on the amp.

Reason why I am asking is that our drummer thought he smelled something, and I (thought I) noticed it too but it went away as soon as it came. Played something with my nose next to the ports but nothing...

The amp is a Terror Bass into 2 Aguilar GS112 cabs, but I had volume not really higher than 9 o'clock (which is reasonably loud).
Everything seems to be working but I'm asking this also for in case we play gigs. Will 3 note chords for a couple of measures make some cabs go into the red when just playing notes is going fine?
 
#4
Schlyder said:
hahahahaha a smelly 4th
Click to expand...

:hyper:



But really, it wasn't a prank (unless he can 4th acryl). Even if he could, the question remains.



I've been thinking about it - a 500 watt amp can damage/destroy 600 watts of cab because of cone excursion and clipping, but not melt them, right?

Another possibility is to blow the tweeter when you don't attentuate it, or melt the attenuator when you turn the volume to zero. Since I don't use distortion/fuzz/overdrive and use 1 cab without an attenuator as well I don't have to worry about the tweeter dial.

So yeah, I guess it will be fine indeed.

Guess he dropped a sigarette on his drumheads/carpet/whatever :)
 
#5
tony_clifton said:
I've been thinking about it - a 500 watt amp can damage/destroy 600 watts of cab because of cone excursion and clipping, but not melt them, right?
Click to expand...
yeah but it's usually because of playing way too loud to begin with and/or cranking the bass knob really loud. if you don't hear any cab rattling or sputtering when you do it, you're fine. lots of bass players play chords.
 
#7
JimmyM said:
yeah but it's usually because of playing way too loud to begin with and/or cranking the bass knob really loud. if you don't hear any cab rattling or sputtering when you do it, you're fine. lots of bass players play chords.
Click to expand...

Alright, thanks. Usually have mids flat and back off on bass so that's ok.


Implosion said:
Have you turned your tweeter all the way down? That can cause the crossover to overheat.
Click to expand...

Tweeter at 50%, while the other cab has none so I guess the crossover should not get too warm.
 
#8
Two strings vibrating at once can produce extremely low resultant pitches (the difference in hz between two strings). Unchecked, these low signals could do some damage, especially of you're liberal with the bass and volume knobs and your amp doesn't have a subsonic filter.

An easy way to test for said subsonic filtration is to grab the lowest string and yank it to and from the pickup as quickly as you can. If the cones in you rig follow the motion, those cone flapping, coil melting frequencies are getting to your speakers.
 
#9
The only negative thing about playing chords is that your bass amplification system (cabinets + amp) might not do a very good job at reproducing the cluster of notes. I found that some amps -- e.g., TecAmp and Glockenklang -- are considerably better at projecting defined chordal notes than others -- e.g., DB750.
 
#10
PunkSweeper said:
Two strings vibrating at once can produce extremely low resultant pitches (the difference in hz between two strings). Unchecked, these low signals could do some damage, especially of you're liberal with the bass and volume knobs and your amp doesn't have a subsonic filter.
Click to expand...
not that i don't believe this, but i have a hard time believing this. do you have proof from a reputable source?
 
#11
naturalkinds said:
The only negative thing about playing chords is that your bass amplification system (cabinets + amp) might not do a very good job at reproducing the cluster of notes. I found that some amps -- e.g., TecAmp and Glockenklang -- are considerably better at projecting defined chordal notes than others -- e.g., DB750.
Click to expand...

Probably true (I can't compare a lot of amps), but it might be more of a guitar thing than amplification I think? Powerchords on the E string (for example A5, played 577x) will always sound bad, even unamplified. The same notes played x079 sound way better.
 
#13
Playing two or more notes can cause beating at a low frequency. This could theoretically be an issue without a low-pass filter in the amplifier. Realistically, though, I've never heard of any issues. Next gig I'm going to play minor seconds all night and test it out.....
 
#14
tony_clifton said:
:hyper:



But really, it wasn't a prank (unless he can 4th acryl). Even if he could, the question remains.



I've been thinking about it - a 500 watt amp can damage/destroy 600 watts of cab because of cone excursion and clipping, but not melt them, right?

Another possibility is to blow the tweeter when you don't attentuate it, or melt the attenuator when you turn the volume to zero. Since I don't use distortion/fuzz/overdrive and use 1 cab without an attenuator as well I don't have to worry about the tweeter dial.

So yeah, I guess it will be fine indeed.

Guess he dropped a sigarette on his drumheads/carpet/whatever :)
Click to expand...

A sigarette? Ceriously?
 
#15
tony_clifton said:
A5, played 577x) will always sound bad, even unamplified. The same notes played x079 sound way better.
Click to expand...

That's simply a factor of taking the fifth and moving it up an octave, thereby "thinning" out the chord voice.

I don't disagree with what you're saying in that it will likely sound more clear doing that (1-8-12 rather than 1-5-8), but it's not warranted in some cases as that voicing might not be what you're after.
 
#17
thanks ps, but i was referring to it being potentially more damaging to cabs. i guess anything's possible if you're up loud enough but it seems like a lot of worrying over nothing to me.
 
#18
PunkSweeper said:
Two strings vibrating at once can produce extremely low resultant pitches (the difference in hz between two strings). Unchecked, these low signals could do some damage, especially of you're liberal with the bass and volume knobs and your amp doesn't have a subsonic filter.

An easy way to test for said subsonic filtration is to grab the lowest string and yank it to and from the pickup as quickly as you can. If the cones in you rig follow the motion, those cone flapping, coil melting frequencies are getting to your speakers.
Click to expand...

would pickups realy recognize a change in magnetic field of 1-3 hz? I would think that it'd be pretty freakin sweet, if not totally imaginary, to be able to bend the string closer and farther from the pickup and watch the speakers move in and out.
 
#19
bassk81976 said:
would pickups realy recognize a change in magnetic field of 1-3 hz? I would think that it'd be pretty freakin sweet, if not totally imaginary, to be able to bend the string closer and farther from the pickup and watch the speakers move in and out.
Click to expand...


If your equipment is good enough. I could make a video of 2 18's doing the very thing, if you'd like.
 

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