At first, I was using an Aguilar rig - AG 500s with 2 - GS210 cabinets. Those particular cabinets go pretty low for 10's. It's too bad that they no longer make them. I think those cabs were over engineered for the market/price. They sounded good for Roots Reggae & Dub but lacked low end. The keyboardist, drummer and rhythm guitarist in the band commented that my rig needed more low end on stage. It turned out I was finished saving up for a major purchase anyway - for my rig. So I told them, "oh yeah, I getting ready to get some new speakers to make more low end on stage..." I'm glad to have those guys in my corner. Well, for all of the difficulties that lows can cause on stage I decided to make a drastic addition to my Reggae bass rig. I had been reading about and trying out equipment at stores for about 4 months prior. I also use an old Ashley BP-41 bass preamp (solid state). It's quiet and clean. This preamp has a built in electronic crossover and a balance knob for the low and high sends. So my signal path is bass(passive)>Ashley low send jack>Aguilar AG500s to the 210 cabs and the Ashley high send jack>powered 18"sub. Overall, it's just a bi-amped system which is nothing fancy. But I went the whole 9 yards+ on the powered sub because it's a JBL PRX 18s XLF. I sold 2 basses to muster up the $ for it. It's got two voice coils with two corresponding built-in power amps on the same 18" neo speaker. This gives it great transient response and each voice coils run cooler. It weighs 80 pounds-my 210's each weigh 65 pounds. The 210 cabs give me the definition for the notes and the sub is really, and I mean really clean and full and punchy and warm and etc. The band members are all happy-actually the soundmen like it too. It's not loud, it's clean and clear. The shaping of the lows is fully adjustable. And there are no doubt other configurations for a powered sub too. I can use one or two of my Aguilar GS 210's. It's not a particularly tall rig - but the sub cab is quite deep in size. The quality of this particular powered sub is absolutely excellent. JBL really knows what they are doing when it comes to designing enclosures and low freq. drivers. I wish I would have done this years ago for my Roots sound. Naturally, this set up requires management of both the extent and the amount of lows but that's adjustable in several places in the signal path. It's never easy to manage extended lows from a bass rig ANYWAY for all of the reasons that we already understand. This rig can present extra challenges for the overall sound though but what else is new. For my part, I've pretty much found my own perfect rig for Roots music. For me, it's been a seemingly endless quest for the low end in my rig. JBL did all of the hard work when they designed this powered sub. I just had to connect the patch cables and fork out the $. The sound of the bass through the rig is very clean and very clear and beautiful. I wanted to get this idea out to you all. It's not the be-all, end-all to bass rigs. It's subject to improvement like everything else. It's Irie.
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