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Mesa Subway D-800+

#521
agedhorse said:
If you set the HPF higher (within reason) you decrease the mechanical excursion at the point that the cabinet begins to unload acoustically and thus increase the effective power handling. The mechanical limitations occur within (typically) the bottom octave of reproduction. This would result in a little bit more effective SPL average.
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I always associated what I characterized as improved system output/performance (especially headroom) to the HPF's impact on the amp. However, this post makes me realize that there is a potentially concomitant benefit on the speaker/cab side of the equation as well in terms of "optimizing performance for higher output". I always knew the HPF helped me be kinder to the speaker, but I never really thought about it in terms of creating "mechanical and/or thermal" headroom/reserve capacity.
 
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#522
Well, yeah--but jacking up the cutoff frequency of the HPF is also gonna make the cab sound like it has puny low end response.

I've had a few cabs like that, actually. They could put out a lot of volume, but at the expense of the bottom register. I cut them loose, because they couldn't do what I wanted my cabs to do in a real world performance situation: create a tight, but muscular, low end. I want to _own_ the bottom end in a mix--and sometimes I gotta throw a few elbows at guitars or keyboards to do it.

Always comes down to trade-offs, I figure. And always comes down to one's tone goals, likewise.
 
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#523
Ewo said:
Well, yeah--but jacking up the cutoff frequency of the HPF is also gonna make the cab sound like it has puny low end response.

I've had a few cabs like that, actually. They could put out a lot of volume, but at the expense of the bottom register. I cut them loose, because they couldn't do what I wanted my cabs to do in a real world performance situation: create a tight, but muscular, low end. I want to _own_ the bottom end in a mix.

Always comes down to trade-offs, I figure. And always comes down to one's tone goals, likewise.
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Only kind of true... there are some cabinets that when used indoors, against a boundary, (and especially with an all tube amp) tend to become really boomy and lose any distinction or articulation in the low end. sliding the HPF up a bit can often make a dramatic improvement in the perceived tightness and articulation of the low end without sacrificing anything except the mud. In this kind of example, it could make a cabinet that sounds pretty awful in such an environment into a usable cabinet. We are not talking about jacking the cut-off frequency up to 200Hz, but say to 50Hz or 60Hz. It's a tool, and like any tool, it has its place in the tool box.

Sure, everything is a trade-off. The art of successfully managing trade-offs is what makes one player perform more like a pro than another player (assuming equal playing skill).
 
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#524
agedhorse said:
Only kind of true... there are some cabinets that when used indoors, against a boundary, (and especially with an all tube amp) tend to become really boomy and lose any distinction or articulation in the low end. sliding the HPF up a bit can often make a dramatic improvement in the perceived tightness and articulation of the low end without sacrificing anything except the mud. In this kind of example, it could make a cabinet that sounds pretty awful in such an environment into a usable cabinet. We are not talking about jacking the cut-off frequency up to 200Hz, but say to 50Hz or 60Hz. It's a tool, and like any tool, it has its place in the tool box.

Sure, everything is a trade-off. The art of successfully managing trade-offs is what makes one player perform more like a pro than another player (assuming equal playing skill).
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Whelp, I'll def take being _kinda_ true... ;)

But I don't count 50-60 Hz as _jacking_ the cutoff freq, by any means! I'm talking about dumping the signal content below about 100 or so. I think that's pretty much what's going in some cabs I've heard.

When I'm using an Fdeck HPF or the 800+, I set the HPF to ~ 60 or so. (My best guess, based on knob position.) Yup--tightens things up, without gutting the lowest register.
 
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#525
Ewo said:
Whelp, I'll def take being _kinda_ true... ;)

But I don't count 50-60 Hz as _jacking_ the cutoff freq, by any means! I'm talking about dumping the signal content below about 100 or so. I think that's pretty much what's going in some cabs I've heard.
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Right, I'm talking about cleaning up around the area where the driver begins to unload (this all interacts with the cabinet's damping or Q) which can also greatly improve power handling. Going from 30Hz to 60Hz is a full octave which under the right circumstances could reduce the power load to the driver in it's most critical band by a factor of between 2 and 4. This is significant, not in total power but by reducing the effects of overloading on the driver's excursion.
 
#526
agedhorse said:
Right, I'm talking about cleaning up around the area where the driver begins to unload (this all interacts with the cabinet's damping or Q) which can also greatly improve power handling. Going from 30Hz to 60Hz is a full octave which under the right circumstances could reduce the power load to the driver in it's most critical band by a factor of between 2 and 4. This is significant, not in total power but by reducing the effects of overloading on the driver's excursion.
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Roger that. No question, IME.

Added: now, if only I could convince some guitarists I work with that they really don't need all that stuff around 100 Hz to get "their sound," the world would certainly be a better place...
 
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#527
Ewo said:
Roger that. No question, IME.

Added: now, if only I could convince some guitarists I work with that they really don't need all that stuff around 100 Hz to get "their sound," the world would certainly be a better place...
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Agreed, though I am (shamelessly) guilty of fostering some of this in a previous guitar based product (G-Flex that we developed for George Lynch of Dokken) that was kind of the gold standard for that genre's sound.
 
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#528
Ewo said:
Roger that. No question, IME.

Added: now, if only I could convince some guitarists I work with that they really don't need all that stuff around 100 Hz to get "their sound," the world would certainly be a better place...
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that and smash the keyboard player's left hand with a ball peen hammer...

not that I'm bitter
 
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#529
nostatic said:
that and smash the keyboard player's left hand with a ball peen hammer...

not that I'm bitter
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LOL.

The obvious remedy, when working with a keys player who insists on laying down bass parts, is to bring a six string, completely abandon any effort to play bass lines, and channel your inner Bill Evans playing shell voicings of the chords.

Using an octave pedal to generate the octave _up_ will help, as will chorus and slap echo.

Added: no, I haven't actually done that. But then again, not all fantasies are sexual in nature...
 
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#533
Clouz said:
our keyboard player is constantly telling me to turn down because he feels my low end is cancelling his. I'm like, dude...listen to what you just told me. I caught him turning down my gain once and I freaked. I don't think he'll be doing that again. :D
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I agree with you completely. I good piano player doesn't need to use the bass pedal when a bass player is in the mix.
 
#536
RoadRanger said:
Machete or chainsaw?
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Clouz said:
baseball bat :D
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nostatic said:
ball peen hammer...
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The bat is no doubt effective, but really you just want to especially limit the ability to play left hand octaves. With the ball peen you can just smash the left part of the left hand leaving the thumb intact. That way they can help haul gear at the end of the night. If you smash the whole hand, then they can't carry anything.

Not that I've thought a lot about this...
 
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#537
kaiji-25.jpg


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Not that I'm sadistically violent or anything....
 
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#539
agedhorse said:
This is not true, there are 3 octaves between the ultimate SHELF of the treble and the peak (or dip) of the mid, but no filter is a brick wall and if you look in the specs the specification for the treble filter (and what many manufacturers use when specifying the performance of a shelving filter) it states 1 octave from the knee, so the -3dB point of the shelf is actually only 2 octaves from the peak or dip of the high mid band. Now the high mid band has a slope as well (between 6 & 9dB/octave depending on the interaction of other filters), which puts significant adjustment less than 1 octave away.

This is why specifications can be misleading unless read carefully and the details understood. Years ago I routinely got "thumbed into the ground" by my good friend Roger (Hasbeen) for providing too much information. While I disagree with him somewhat, I also totally get where he was coming from because coming from the marketing side he better understood the potential for misunderstanding too much data. There are clearly 2 sides to every coin, and I appreciate Roger's view more than he might have thought ;)
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we did indeed have some good engineering vs. marketing debates. :-)
 
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