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Help to achieve stereo sound

benchpress11782

benchpress11782

May 23, 2007
881
657
#1
Hello friends. I wonder if you can help me with some ideas on what i can do. I play solo bass using reverbs,delays, etc. I have one Markbass CMD 102P combo amp and wondering if I should get the same? Can I get away with maybe just a cabinet using combo head? Or how about a different markbass cabinet but with a 12" instead of the 10" any ideas will help. Thanks as always.
 
#2
Well there are several bass guitars that offer a stereo out. Rick O Sound was one of the first attempts.
Just connecting each pickup to each Amp.
It wasn't effective really so it kind of died out.
What has stuck however is a clean dirty rig.
Both cabs are stacked but one has a dry signal and the other contains the distortion or other effects you might want to use.
The trouble with wide spaced bass cabs is they are destructive of time alignment and coupling efficiency. therefore you will be finding holes in the frequency response and lower SPL by about 3dB against standing the cabs close to each other.
And that's the equivalent effect of halving the output of your amps in watts.:-(
 
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#3
Bassmec said:
Well there are several bass guitars that offer a stereo out. Rick O Sound was one of the first attempts.
Just connecting each pickup to each Amp.
It wasn't effective really so it kind of died out.
What has stuck however is a clean dirty rig.
Both cabs are stacked but one has a dry signal and the other contains the distortion or other effects you might want to use.
The trouble with wide spaced bass cabs is they are destructive of time alignment and coupling efficiency. therefore you will be finding holes in the frequency response and lower SPL by about 3dB against standing the cabs close to each other.
And that's the equivalent effect of halving the output of your amps in watts.:-(
Click to expand...
Forgive me but I am confused. If I get 2 combo amps, and go through my pedal chain, and left out goes to left amp and right out goes to right amp. That is bad idea?
 
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#5
benchpress11782 said:
Forgive me but I am confused. If I get 2 combo amps, and go through my pedal chain, and left out goes to left amp and right out goes to right amp. That is bad idea?[/QUOT
benchpress11782 said:
Forgive me but I am confused. If I get 2 combo amps, and go through my pedal chain, and left out goes to left amp and right out goes to right amp. That is bad idea?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
JRA said:
i'm thinking that you may not really want 'stereo' so much as 'two-channel', right? one for regular, one for soloing?
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Assume that I set up one amp at 2:00 and other at 10:00 to achieve full stereo. Just for practicing.
 
#8
images.jpg
 
#14
benchpress11782 said:
I am coming out of my strymon reverb pedal. Has a left and right output.
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benchpress11782 said:
Signal chain. Tuner, strymon timeline, strymon blue sky, ditto looper w/stereo outs as well.
Click to expand...

I guess it depends on what kind of shows you're playing. This could work for small scale stuff, but as you get in to bigger rooms, this kind of distance in sound source can just make a mess of your sound.
 
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#18
Sound fun. An identical amp will be easy to set up and predictable. Different amps might need some heavy eq'ing to normalize the sound unless that's what you want. If you're happy with the 102P get another.
If it were me, I'd use another 102P so that the stereo spread is accurate to the L&R outputs. I have a stereo setup for guitar using either a 1w Marshall & AC4 or through a Swart stereo head & cab. The different amps sound like two different amps in stereo while the Swart sounds like 2 separate tracks panned L&R.
You may encounter phase issues where the amps are out of phase with each other but a simple A/B/Y box with a phase switch will deal with that.
 
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#19
benchpress11782 said:
View attachment 1116454
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I've seen Michael use wider spacing (IIRC) and it still sounded fantastic. I've also used vertically stacked stereo cabs myself and it worked very well. One possibly counterintuitive tip I can give you is to try using a variable high pass filter on just one side. Even if you do that just for educational purposes, it'll give you a better understanding of how destructive interference works. You'll often find that as you cut bass on one side, overall bass increases. As far as combing, I embrace that and stereo chorusing or flanging moves the higher frequency nulls and peaks around the room and creates a nice ambience in many rooms IME.

I love stereo rigs, but as Bassmec says, you may want to keep in mind that overall volume may not be any greater than just using one side of the rig. I don't care, loud is not what I'm shooting for at all. YMMV.
 
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#20
I too think two of the same would work best. One of my bass buddies from back home had this setup (two Fender Bassman 150s) and it worked well. He also used them in tandem with mono signal, just for extra power (stacked on top of each-other). I don't think any amp can drive two speakers or cabs in stereo the way you want.

Of course, the more common stereo application in bass is to have one dirty amp (w. effects) and one clean. Some answers seem to reflect that approach. I think you can do that with two of the same amp, but that approach may be better served with two different amps (e.g. a distorted tube guitar amp + clean bass amp).
 
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