Head with most powerful EQ?

[John D Harris]

Just for grins.....what cabs do you use with your iAmp 600? I'm running a pair of CxL-112s and I find that I get a TON more volume out of mine if I crank the knobs up equally to about +5 instead of 0. Mostly active basses as well.


dcr

A CX-310 (JDong says it's an 8ohm load after the voice coil warms up, plus I play with a fairly light touch).

Also, the tone of the amp just sounds meatier to me with the gain cranked.

 

[4Mal]

Kinda falls into the Knowledge Is Power category. Understanding EQ principles and a good ear and you can pretty much get any decent head's EQ section sounding - surprise - decent, or great even. I've seen a lot of people ready to trash a head because they themselves do bad EQ, and a couple/few knob twists could change things. But knowing which twists, well, that's voodoo ; }

Doesn't help that there's often a lot of hidden EQ "voicing" built into a lot of products that confuses some people. If that default voicing isn't in the ballpark their ears and cabs do well with, it stands in the way of making sense of it all.

Actually - I pretty much know what I'm doing ... I've spent serious time out front mixing and on stage playing. My paradigm these days is to be able to be ready with the minimum amount of fuss. This isn't voodoo to me in other words ... If you're playing the same rooms over and over again. Particularly if you're playing clubs in a 1 band per night scenario - then you have the time to come at this from a completely other viewpoint. From Spetember to January - I never played a room more than once and all the room's I played were fro the first time for me. 1 night it was up for the night - everything else was 2 bands with us as an opening act or 3 bands in the typical Indie Rock showcase... set up and break down in the minmum possible amount of time so you can maximize the length of your played set. Dinking about with parametric EQ's for the bass rig - EQ'ing a new room, from stage - whatta ya nutz ?

I'm kidding about the nutz part of course ... I'm a huge fan of the surgical parametric EQ. It is often the best tool for the job. In general though - I see it as part of my PA rig rather than part of my bass rig. (I'm also of the opinion that the bass rig is best viewed as a monitor and let the FOH do the heavy lifting...) My thing with the PEQ is that it doesn't really lend itself to the quick up and down environment I've been playing in.

I did actually run a 5 band Parametric and a decent compressor as my preamp for a while. Just those and a Crown power amp. These days though. All I have to do is use the GK's contour to get near my sound and dial the room from the 4 band fixed point - the head and cab agree in native mode. And for practicality - that rocks! If I really need a surgical slice - I'll use the Floor EQ if I have to. I almost never do though. One of the reason's I'm high on the GK head is for that the voicing of that head seems to be set with live use in mind. It's a really easy thing to dial in assuming you like the overall character or GK famlial sound.

 

[greenboy]

Actually - I pretty much know what I'm doing ... I've spent serious time out front mixing and on stage playing.

Naw, I know, 4Mal. Your post was a good launching pad for the subject of power really being what we know, and what we have comes in second.

My paradigm these days is to be able to be ready with the minimum amount of fuss.

Likewise, though my V-Bass presets have variant "characters" EQ built into them, I'm pretty much plug-and-play with little or no tweaking on stage or at a jam. I just turn the key and let it rip.

Dinking about with parametric EQ's for the bass rig - EQ'ing a new room, from stage - whatta ya nutz ?

I'm kidding. I'm a huge fan of the surgical parametric EQ. It is often the best tool for the job. I think Passinwind would be just as happy to use a dual 5 band PEQ for monitors most of the time. It's just that it doesn't really lend itself to the quick up and down environment I've been playing in.

I used to believe a little more in using rig EQ to do the room, but the stark truth is that other than where you are standing you will have so little knowledge of what the room sounds like anywhere else; you could as easily be messing stuff up for a majority of the space. If there is FOH I leav it alone save for maybe rolling out some general midrange onstage or rolling back some bass. If no FOH support, but me running PA from stage, I get some first-set time on the floor in small/medium clubs, and more often than not the picture is different enough from my stage area to say to tweakers, "get your sound together in general on your own time - and leave it alone on other people's!" ; }