GK RBH lighting up, literally!

[Epac]

What's good Bass kings,

Been noticing this the last few months: sometimes when I play parts with high treble material, i.e. playing up on the fretboard, popping, etc, particularly when playing with distortion, into my GK Goldline 500 Watt head going into a GK RBH 410, the back of the cabinet literally LIGHTS UP. My drummer pointed this out to me while we were jamming; you can see lights flashing in the back of the cabinet around the ported-sides behind the speaker.

I told my mechanic about this and he didn't seem to think it was a problem, made it seem like it was part of the design.

I'm going to feel like a real idiot when the cab blows up and sets our rehearsal space on fire

Any idea what the problem could be? I know I'm underpowering the cab by alot at 500 watts 4 ohms going into a cab listed at 800 watts 8 ohms...but I almost never have the amp going above 3-4 oclock volume-wise...

 

[ehque]

That's probably a tweeter protection lamp for your amp. It lights up when some of the current you're sending your tweeter passes through it, by design, this is supposed to prevent blowing up your tweeter.

This is more likely to happen in high volume situations if you're agressive on the high end, using a lot of distortion, or driving a power amp that's too weak into distortion to get the volume you need (no such thing as "underpowering" the cab, though).

Time to get bigger and/or more cab(s) if you want to do stuff like that.

 

[JimWasHere]

That's probably a tweeter protection lamp for your amp. It lights up when some of the current you're sending your tweeter passes through it, by design, this is supposed to prevent blowing up your tweeter.

No way dood, it's the magic bass dwarfs inside rocking out like there's no tomorrow!

 

[Epac]

Hmmmm....so I guess my first question is, which piece of equipment is most in danger? Am I more likely to blow out the tweeter, or blow out the amp?

I'm assuming the safest thing would be to upgrade the amp at this point? I'm assuming getting more cabs would just make the problem worse?

 

[T-Bird]

Hi.

I told my mechanic about this and he didn't seem to think it was a problem, made it seem like it was part of the design.

He's correct, just like ehque above said, it's just the tweeter protection bulb.
Nothing more nothing less.

What will fail eventually is the bulb if it lights up constantly, but nothing will be permanently damaged.

I know I'm underpowering the cab by alot at 500 watts 4 ohms going into a cab listed at 800 watts 8 ohms...

Better to quit while You're behind.

As for the upgrade ideas, perhaps a "real" cab with a real high frequency transducer would make things easier.
In any case, more/better cabs is what You need. Unless Your cab points at your legs and you have to boost highs for that reason. Then just raising the cab will do the trick .


Regards
Sam

 

[mouthmw]

GK RBH are excellent top of the line cabs so better is very subjective. Make sure your tweeter attenuator is set to zero (all the way left) when you play with distortion.

 

[craig.p]

Most tweeters start working way too high frequency-wise to add any significant value to slap/distortion work; and besides, there typically aren't enough of them to be able to keep up with what a big bass cab can put out at the bottom end. What you need is some good midrange coverage. There's more than one way to get there. Each method has its own level of a) investment ($$$ and complexity), b) payback, and c) real-world, in-the-field (as opposed to technical) merit. Some methods might be only interim solutions, others longer-term.

You could biamp, which would mean moving to a rack rig.

You could drop the 410RBH and replace it with a cab that has proper midrange coverage. Think fEarful, Avatar, etc.

You could add a guitar combo to your system, roll its bass all the way down, cut back on your existing amp's treble, and "Y out" from your bass to both the combo and your existing amp. Dirty but workable.

*IF* your 410 is 8 ohms, you could add another 8 ohm cab, say a 210 or a 212, but a GUITAR cab this time, and put a high-pass filter between your amp head and that cab so the guitar cab doesn't "see" anything [DEL]above[/DEL] below, say, 1-2 KHz. You could even mount a heavy duty mid horn+driver in a separate cab, as a substitute for the 210 or 212, again using a suitable crossover, but I'd actually prefer the 210 or 212 cone solution because we're after distortion here, not fidelity. Lots of Celestions can go a great job of that. Dirty but (again) workable.

Hope this helps.

 

[ehque]

Hmmmm....so I guess my first question is, which piece of equipment is most in danger? Am I more likely to blow out the tweeter, or blow out the amp?

I'm assuming the safest thing would be to upgrade the amp at this point? I'm assuming getting more cabs would just make the problem worse?

If you have your amp at the 3 o clock or 4 o clock setting, it's likely neither your cab nor your amp are loud enough for what you want to do. Your cab is already at its limits if the lamp is lighting up, and you're cranking your amp to get the volume you need, also.

Multiple cabs / bigger, more efficient cabs are louder than a single cab even with the same amp and amp settings. Perhaps it's time to upgrade, or learn how to turn down your highs or your over all volume.