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Most tonally neutral cab

Jrussblues

Jrussblues

Feb 10, 2012
1,584
2,631
Prairieville, LA
#1
Just lookin for some suggestions here. Wanting to get a new cab, my 410hlf has served me well but I'm looking to upgrade and retire the hlf to the practice space. I'm open to any ideas and please share your actual experience and thoughts.
Rules - about the size of a 410 or half stack is as big as I want to go and 500 or so watts handling power.
Outside of that - there are no rules, just what works, weight, size of speakers, number of speakers whatever else you can think of doesn't really matter.
 
#2
you are coming off a pretty baked in curve type cab with the HLF's, lot's of low end baked into those cabs.
are you asking about ruler flat reproduction from 20hz to 20mhz ? .. as far as I know, it does not exist in a current commercial bass cab.
are you asking about reasonably flat, studio monitor type cabs ? - maybe consider the Accugroove or fEARful range of 3 way cabs. Both of them will reproduce a very wide range of frequencies and are considered natively pretty flat/neutral.

Can you perhaps explain why you are seeking "tonally neutral" cabs after playing a decidedly not tonally neutral cab ?
It might help you get better answers to your question.

personally, I discovered several years ago, thru trial and error, that I actually liked some color in my cabs and neutral/flat cabs did not do it for me at all.

good luck
 
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#3
pfschim said:
you are coming off a pretty baked in curve type cab with the HLF's, lot's of low end baked into those cabs.
are you asking about ruler flat reproduction from 20hz t0 20mhz ? .. as far as I know, it does not exist in a current commercial bass cab.
are you asking about reasonably flat, studio monitor type cabs ? - maybe consider the Accugroove or fEARful range of 3 way cabs. Both of them will reproduce a very wide range of frequencies and are considered natively pretty flat/neutral.

Can you perhaps explain why you are seeking "tonally neutral" cabs after playing a decidedly not tonally neutral cab ?
It might help you get better answers to your question.

personally, I discovered several years ago, thru trial and error, that I actually liked some color in my cabs and neutral/flat cabs did not do it for me at all.

good luck
Click to expand...

Easy breezy, you are overthinking it. I recently switched from running in ears with the rest of the band in them to just running myself in my ears. I know that the ears will color the sound some but I would like to be able to tune my pedals so that they sound like my ears and everything is congruent.
I should point out that I don't want to build my own cab so fearful may be out. I just want a nice reproduction of my preamp. Foh handles the rest so accurate support would be nice.
 
#5
If you are after a flat response cabinet then you'll pretty much have to turn to the boutique world in my experience. If you don't want to build your own fEARful others will, there is also the fEARless line. I will also echo the suggestion that flat cabinets are not for everybody. It sounds like it would suit you based on your description but I totally get why people go back to the usual coloured cabinets.
 
#7
Jrussblues said:
Preamp is a Demeter hpb
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cool. not quite the same animal, but my daily gigging amp is the Demeter VTBP-M-800DJ. VTBP201 into a class D power section.
Great amp. And yes, to Zooberwerx's point .. it does make you work harder on your technique .. but it rewards that work with great tone :thumbsup:

as far as your goal, it may not be a neutral cab you are seeking at all, but one that sounds "like a nice reproduction" of your preamp.
So, now I would say you have opened up the options pretty well. Lots of cabs sound great with the Demeter pre.
I like the Bergantino cabs very much - I use a CN212 with my Demeter with very happy results. The Bergs do have some baked in sound depending on the model, but what's baked in is very nice.
AudioKinesis from TB very own Duke LeJeune has a line of cabs that are known for faithful reproduction
You could also consider the Barefaced cabs .. again, you would have to look at the Alex's product line and see what might work for you
As DiabloInMusic said, there is the fEARless line to consider too.
I'm also going to restate the Accugroove option and add Baer too.

all of these will be very clean/clear with wide frequency support (depending on the various models)

I'm sure others will join with additional suggestions.
good luck
 
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#8
Fearful/less boxes are some of the front runners in that genre.

AudioKinesis Thunder Child is supposedly smoothed but fairly neutral.

I've heard some of the Glockenklang boxes can be.

Some of the Bergantino models are reported to fit the uncolored description.

The Barefaced 12" cabs are designed to be neutral and transparent, and are my personal choice of the bunch.
 
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#9
Jrussblues said:
...I recently switched from running in ears with the rest of the band in them to just running myself in my ears. I know that the ears will color the sound some but I would like to be able to tune my pedals so that they sound like my ears and everything is congruent.
I should point out that I don't want to build my own cab so fearful may be out. I just want a nice reproduction of my preamp. Foh handles the rest so accurate support would be nice.
Click to expand...

Hello. Though I have not played all the contenders, I can recommend the Fearless F112 for meeting your criteria. My lightweight example weighs about 34 pounds. Among my first impressions of the F112:

Snaxster said:
[the] F112 truly let each [instrument] sound like itself. Likewise headroom: though I never pushed the F112, the more power I gave it, the more powerful it sounded; but its basic voice did not change, and it never lost composure.

The F112 sounds tight, present, and nuanced. And what nuance, particularly in harmonic content. Sustained chords on the Jazz Bass were tamboura- or harpsichord-like. Compared to itself or a conventional cabinet, the F112 sounds quite open in that there is no boxiness to its sound, none, either on or off axis. Excellent dispersion, too, speaking of off axis...

[The F112 and another cabinet I own are] quite revealing, leaving little for the player to hide behind sonically; but the F112 goes furthest in that direction.
Click to expand...
 
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#15
monsterthompson said:
AudioKinesis Thunder Child is supposedly smoothed but fairly neutral.
Click to expand...

^^^ this

Duke's cabs are about as "neutral" as you're going to find. Added benefit for the fact that his customer service is awesome, the cabs sound great, and he's a mad genius.

http://www.audiokinesis.com/thunderchild-115.html

I prefer the Hathor series as I like a bit more voiced/aggressive cabinet but gigged a TC112 for awhile, and at one point ran an H1203 on top of a TC112 to great effect.
 
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#16
I'll jump in on the Audio-Kinesis chorus here. I love my ThunderChild. Single hand carry it into gigs, super loud when I need it to be, and since I run a modeler (Axe-Fx II or AX8) that is doing amp and cab modeling, I require something that is pretty neutral, and not additionally coloring things. I stopped looking when I "found" @DukeLeJeune 's cabs - and this is coming from running a fEarful 15/6.
 
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