*New Extension Cab*, What do You Guys Think??

[Selta]

In all likelihood, the 4x10 reproduces lows better than the 1x15. Sending lows to it and mids/highs to 4x10 might end up in a very bad void in the lows. You shouldn't cross two full range speakers. The only thing his BX1200 buys him is the less likely chance of blowing the 1x15. Otherwise, all of the other issues with combining those cabs are still present.

 

[will33]

and then why you were all pounding the poor guy in your 4x10 and 1x15 glory.

No body seemed to notice he has a BX1200

which comes with 2 output sections, with individual volume control.........and wait for it.............

Adjustable Crossover.

So hey he can use a 4x10 and 1x15.

downside, the 15 is limited to overall output compared to a 4x10.
good thing you can adjust that with a 1200

still yes 2 matching 4x10's would be ideal for fullrange.

And yes updating to a better 4x10 (good idea) wont match his current lower cost 4x10.

So hey man not having money is understandable, upgrade what you can, and realize it might not be ideal for now. But will be more awesome when you have 2 upgraded matching cabinets

otherwise since you do have a crossover. To get the 15 up to the same level as the 4x10. all you would have to do is add another 15. So 2x15 and 1 4x10.

4x10 on the high freq crossover 2 1x15 on the low crossover.
and yes the 1200 is 2ohm stable

adjust crossover to taste, and balance with the volumes.

Carvin might not be considered amazing to some, but they are still smarter than most here.

Yes, the power imbalance can easily corrected with his Carvin amp. Still, if biamping, 410's is 3 more than you need to carry mids and highs over a 15.

 

[Whiskeyzipper]

I’m a little confused after reading this thread? I have a Genz/Benz 6.0 Shuttle 1x12 combo (8ohm’s rated at 375 watts). I recently purchased a Genz/Benz Shuttle 2x10 extension cab which is also 8ohm’s and rated at 375 watts. I run both the 1x12 cab and the 2x10 cab into the 6.0 Shuttle head for a total 4ohm load and take advantage of the amps 600 watt rated power at 4ohm’s. The way I understood it is that Genz/Benz designed their shuttle 6.0 amps/cabs to be used with each other, i.e. 1x12 with 2x10 or 1x10 etc. etc. But after reading this thread it sounds like running the 1x12 cab with the 2x10 cab is bad? If someone could tell me if I have this right I would appreciate it or if it’s ok to run my rig the way I described and not hurt anything. Thanks in advance for any info.

 

[will33]

I’m a little confused after reading this thread? I have a Genz/Benz 6.0 Shuttle 1x12 combo (8ohm’s rated at 375 watts). I recently purchased a Genz/Benz Shuttle 2x10 extension cab which is also 8ohm’s and rated at 375 watts. I run both the 1x12 cab and the 2x10 cab into the 6.0 Shuttle head for a total 4ohm load and take advantage of the amps 600 watt rated power at 4ohm’s. The way I understood it is that Genz/Benz designed their shuttle 6.0 amps/cabs to be used with each other, i.e. 1x12 with 2x10 or 1x10 etc. etc. But after reading this thread it sounds like running the 1x12 cab with the 2x10 cab is bad? If someone could tell me if I have this right I would appreciate it or if it’s ok to run my rig the way I described and not hurt anything. Thanks in advance for any info.

Unless you've compared that sound to the sound of identical 10's or 12's, not just in your one little listening spot but throughout the entire venue, you have no way of knowing which sounds best. Some companies take phase response into account when designing their speakers so the different models don't fight each other so much. Barefaced and the fEARful designs do this, I don't know if Genz does or not. Best practice is to always match your speakers, then there's no question. Anything else is a crapshoot....sometimes you get lucky, most times you don't. Add to that the fact that most any 2 speakers will seem to sound better than 1 simply because we percieve louder to be better. If you don't have a matched set to compare that to....you don't know.

 

[RickenBoogie]

That would be so completely awesome, with the adjustable crossover and what-not, but the cabs in question are still "full range" cabs. The 15's are not optimized for use as a sub, any more than the 410's are optimized as mid-drivers.

 

[jungleheat]

It's funny to me how all the "science crusaders" in these threads almost universally manage to miss the forest through the trees. Funnily enough, the same usual suspects usually pop in and focus on one or 2 issues a piece, and being adamant that these things mean you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT EVER take a particular course of action, while neglecting many other factors that don't support what they are saying.

I'm all about the science, but music making is a mix of art and science, and you have to know how to balance the 2.

1) If you're going to use "full range" cabs either way, there isn't really any downside to using 1 for lows and one for highs.

2) Considering a decent single 15 (rated say 300w or higher) is enough for a wide variety of applications all by itself, using it JUST for lows, while using another cab for mids and highs is JUST FINE. The other side of this is that if you have a 1x15 and a 4x10 and you want to do this (bi-amping), you most likely should use whichever cab has the lowest frequency response. So if you had a modern, high power 4x10 that went down to say 38Hz and an older vintage 15 that only went down to say 60 and had much lower power handling, it would make more sense to "flip" the traditional roles. However if the 4x10 has a tweeter and the 1x15 doesnt and is also modern and high power handling, the high end may end up being more important than the last few Hz of response in the overall sound if that is the case. You just have to experiment and see what works best.

3) There's nothing wrong with "under" using a cab. In fact, that should be the normal mode of operation. If you have a 400w cab and you only put 100w to it most of the time, that's great and the cab will probably last you forever and a half.

4) If you can't hear when a speaker (ANY of your speakers) is having trouble keeping up, you need to spend more time with each piece of gear individually, getting familiar with it's limits, so that you can recognize when to back off.

5) While a 4x10 will often have higher power handling than a 15, with 2 cabs, your power output gets split in half anyway, so it may not even be an issue, it might just mean that your 4x10 has a bit more headroom than the 15, but who cares? It only matters if you frequently find yourself running balls out and not having enough volume. But in most situations with a modestly powered amp (300-500w or so) and a couple of modern spec'd cabs, this is fairly unlikely unless you play in an exceptionally loud band.

For the OP, it really depends on what you are trying to get out of your rig that you aren't now for what you should do to move forward. Since you have a certain set of gear now, I would try all the different options available with it before jumping straight to purchasing new stuff.

THEN, if that does not yield a satisfactory result, I would probably just sell both cabs and get 2 that pair well together (whatever that may mean to your ears). 2 cabs of the same series is usually a safe bet. Different manufacturers will tend to have different "voices" so certainly combining them could be unpredictable. But who knows, right now my practice setup is a modern Trace head, vintage Trace 2x10 (no tweeter), and a vintage Carvin 1x15 from the 80s with a "vintage modern" JBL driver (M-151, primarily used in the Ampeg Gene Simmons cab I think). And it all sounds pretty damn awesome together, either with my Kramer aluminum neck, or the Carvin LB70P that I'm borrowing.

So the moral of the story is, listen to the advice you get here, but take all/most of it with a grain of salt and go out and try things for yourself.

 

[will33]

"Crusader"?......no.

"ABSOLUTELY CANNOT EVER"?......no.

"Trying to get the best sound you can without dragging around a bunch of extra crap you don't need"?......yes.


"Trying to keep people from damaging expensive equipment through misinformation and foolishly throwing money down the toilet when a little bit of education could've prevented it"?.......yes.

 

[agedhorse]

I’m a little confused after reading this thread? I have a Genz/Benz 6.0 Shuttle 1x12 combo (8ohm’s rated at 375 watts). I recently purchased a Genz/Benz Shuttle 2x10 extension cab which is also 8ohm’s and rated at 375 watts. I run both the 1x12 cab and the 2x10 cab into the 6.0 Shuttle head for a total 4ohm load and take advantage of the amps 600 watt rated power at 4ohm’s. The way I understood it is that Genz/Benz designed their shuttle 6.0 amps/cabs to be used with each other, i.e. 1x12 with 2x10 or 1x10 etc. etc. But after reading this thread it sounds like running the 1x12 cab with the 2x10 cab is bad? If someone could tell me if I have this right I would appreciate it or if it’s ok to run my rig the way I described and not hurt anything. Thanks in advance for any info.

Good grief, after reading this whole thread you would think all manufacturers who design speaker cabinets are complete idiots.

There is nothing at all wrong with combining different speaker sizes (within reason) provided... and this is the important part... the cabinet types are the same and the relative tunings are reasonably similar. IME, this applies for most bass cabinets that we are discussing. If you look at the phase response (which is related to tuning of the bass reflex parameters in addition to the driver), they are all going to be quite similar until you go into a different class or type of cabinet like a folded horn, or a bandpass, or a sealed box.

Now combining say a folded horn with a bass reflex speaker will generally result in poor performance because of significant delay and multiple phase rotations worth of equiv. phase shift. So you will have both amplitude versus frequency issues as well as gross delay cancellation issues at some frequencies (related problems). The difference in delay between these 2 cabinets may be as much as 10msec, which is not a good thing unless you have the ability to delay the bass reflex to the folded horn AND are willing to deal with the throat geometry issues of a FH box run at higher frequencies.

Combine away, if it sounds good to you and your application, there is no practical reason not to do so.

 

[will33]

Good grief, after reading this whole thread you would think all manufacturers who design speaker cabinets are complete idiots.

There is nothing at all wrong with combining different speaker sizes (within reason) provided... and this is the important part... the cabinet types are the same and the relative tunings are reasonably similar. IME, this applies for most bass cabinets that we are discussing. If you look at the phase response (which is related to tuning of the bass reflex parameters in addition to the driver), they are all going to be quite similar until you go into a different class or type of cabinet like a folded horn, or a bandpass, or a sealed box.

Now combining say a folded horn with a bass reflex speaker will generally result in poor performance because of significant delay and multiple phase rotations worth of equiv. phase shift. So you will have both amplitude versus frequency issues as well as gross delay cancellation issues at some frequencies (related problems). The difference in delay between these 2 cabinets may be as much as 10msec, which is not a good thing unless you have the ability to delay the bass reflex to the folded horn AND are willing to deal with the throat geometry issues of a FH box run at higher frequencies.

Combine away, if it sounds good to you and your application, there is no practical reason not to do so.

With all due respect sir, that's a pretty loose way of handling it.

Combine away if it sounds good to you....can be a pretty expensive proposotion considering the fact that you don't know if it sounds good to you until you own it. And if it doesn't, you must then sell it (undoubtedly at a loss), and buy option #2, and if that doesn't sound good to you, you repeat the process, and on and on and on......you get the idea.

It's not like everybody can just afford that, or have the luxury of trying said combination at multiple different venues in multiple different situations, then coming back a month later and saying, "ok, I'll buy it now".


Moral is, find one speaker you like, need louder?, buy more of the same.

 

[searchfunction]

To the OP- In all honesty I would get rid of both cabs and get 2 BRX10.2's. Stack them vertically and you won't believe the sound you get! I've used the BR210's, BR410's, BRX10.4's and the BRX10.2's and nothing beats the BRX10.2's stacked vertically. You can hear yourself better and the audience can hear you better. I think I saw a BRX10.2 in the TB classifieds for under $250.00

 

[Woodsbass]

To the OP- In all honesty I would get rid of both cabs and get 2 BRX10.2's. Stack them vertically and you won't believe the sound you get! I've used the BR210's, BR410's, BRX10.4's and the BRX10.2's and nothing beats the BRX10.2's stacked vertically. You can hear yourself better and the audience can hear you better. I think I saw a BRX10.2 in the TB classifieds for under $250.00

Thank you sir, for finally answering my question. I considered doing this too, is it really that much better?

 

[BassGen]

there's nothing wrong with pairing a 4x10 with a 1x15

if so, then Victor Wooten must not know what he's doing cuz I recently saw him with not one, but 2 410 and 115 stacks. hmmm

Willing to bet he's running a bi-amp (or more) set-up to drive all that.

 

[agedhorse]

With all due respect sir, that's a pretty loose way of handling it.

Combine away if it sounds good to you....can be a pretty expensive proposotion considering the fact that you don't know if it sounds good to you until you own it. And if it doesn't, you must then sell it (undoubtedly at a loss), and buy option #2, and if that doesn't sound good to you, you repeat the process, and on and on and on......you get the idea.

It's not like everybody can just afford that, or have the luxury of trying said combination at multiple different venues in multiple different situations, then coming back a month later and saying, "ok, I'll buy it now".


Moral is, find one speaker you like, need louder?, buy more of the same.

There are so many folks (perhaps 40-50% of the market) that are perfectly happy with a combination of speakers and get exactly what they like that I feel obligated to point out to the majority of folks who read through these threads that the sky is not falling, the sky hasn't already fallen and the sky is not likely to fall in the future.

IMO, some of the posts here are looking WAY too far to the right of the decimal point to be misleading to an awful lot of players who may in fact benefit from a combination of cabinet configurations.

 

[jungleheat]

THANK YOU agedhorse. I feel like there are a handful of VERY vocal people here (led by BFM) that myopically seem to consider ONLY phase response when talking about having multiple cabs, and I've always felt their view is severely overstated at best, but of course, since they yell the loudest (while ALWAYS leaving out pieces of the puzzle that are inconvenient to their worldview) more and more people are following their lead instead of "daring" to experiment on their own and find the best solution for their personal need. So it's nice to see someone with some "cred" speak against that point of view.

 

[will33]

There are so many folks (perhaps 40-50% of the market) that are perfectly happy with a combination of speakers and get exactly what they like that I feel obligated to point out to the majority of folks who read through these threads that the sky is not falling, the sky hasn't already fallen and the sky is not likely to fall in the future.

IMO, some of the posts here are looking WAY too far to the right of the decimal point to be misleading to an awful lot of players who may in fact benefit from a combination of cabinet configurations.

That much of the market needs serving, I understand that. And yes, within reasonable limits, the sky won't fall and they might not even hurt anything....say a sturdy 112 and an average 210 or something.

To me, it seems there are a huge amount of people who not only think it's ok but are under the impression that you almost must in order for one to "make up" for what the other lacks. It's their default position.

In the majority of questions on here about what to add to their rigs or what cabs to get, many of the people asking the question, in the original post, default to the thought that they should get a cab other than what they already have. Getting another one of the same does not pop up as tbeir first tbought, (top of mind awareness).

If you like your tone now, there's really no reason not to get more of the same. If it's missing something, why try to "make up" for it? There's too much "I want a 15 for bass", or "I need some 10's for punch". It's parroting what they've seen and heard. It's not thinking as openly or as practically as one could.

 

[searchfunction]

Thank you sir, for finally answering my question. I considered doing this too, is it really that much better?

Yep. That much better. I'm using the 2 10.2's with a Genz Benz Shuttle 9.0 and it screams. It's more convenient too. You can take 1 cab or 2 and with Carvin's 10 day return policy and them shipping to Canada, you really can't go wrong.

 

[Woodsbass]

Yep. That much better. I'm using the 2 10.2's with a Genz Benz Shuttle 9.0 and it screams. It's more convenient too. You can take 1 cab or 2 and with Carvin's 10 day return policy and them shipping to Canada, you really can't go wrong.

Whats even better is that I live right on the border and get it shipped to a friend in the states to save the 100$ on shipping costs!

 

[jungleheat]

If it's missing something, why try to "make up" for it?

Uhm, because that's what people that don't have unlimited budgets and/or unlimited access to try out (or sometimes even to buy) gear have to do sometimes.

Especially with the economy completely in the toilet as it's been for 3+ years. It is truly a buyer's market. I own an entire Trace stack (new head, vintage cabs), that cost me a total of $525. That's freakin UNHEARD of, and in a normal market, that stuff would have cost me at least $1k or more (got the cabs in August and the head a couple weeks ago).

So selling off stuff to fund other stuff is just not realistic and probably won't be at LEAST for another year or 2. In other words, you might have to "hold what you've got" unless you just don't care about selling your current gear at an almost certain loss.

Not to mention, because Carvin only sells direct, and therefore people outside of SoCal don't generally get to try their products, all their stuff has extremely low resale values, much lower than the actual quality of the items in most cases. If you look on ebay and craigslist, you can find basses that would be $1500+ new from Carvin, that are as good as $2200+ basses from other brands, selling for $400-600 used in great shape. And their cabs are even more of an unknown for most people so they probably go for even less.

And in a lot of cases, having 2 different types of cabs (ie 1x15 with 2x10, etc...) WILL make up for the deficiencies in each other. Not even just in terms of going lower or higher, but with all the little various bumps and dips in response curve that every speaker has. Since they're bound to be in different places, often they will line up to balance each other out.

 

[JimmyM]

THANK YOU agedhorse. I feel like there are a handful of VERY vocal people here (led by BFM) that myopically seem to consider ONLY phase response when talking about having multiple cabs, and I've always felt their view is severely overstated at best, but of course, since they yell the loudest (while ALWAYS leaving out pieces of the puzzle that are inconvenient to their worldview) more and more people are following their lead instead of "daring" to experiment on their own and find the best solution for their personal need. So it's nice to see someone with some "cred" speak against that point of view.

Maybe I'd buy into it if two things happened:

1. Someone could come up with a good reason for mixing full range bass cabs other than "15"s go lower and 10"s go higher," which is entirely based on looks.

2. I ever heard a mixed cab rig that sounded as good as a matched cab rig.

Yeah, I'm sure everyone who uses mixed cab rigs will say, "But you never heard MY mixed cab rig!" Don't care...I've heard plenty enough mixed cab rigs to know that I don't like them and I don't think they work nearly as well as matched cab rigs.

With one exception...if you use separate amps for each cab, you can dial complimentary tones into each separate rig, like a clean/dirty or what I call the poor man's biamp. But since I only bring one rig to every gig, I see no good reason to mix cabs when matching cabs that you like are a sure thing.

 

[BogeyBass]

Thank you sir, for finally answering my question. I considered doing this too, is it really that much better?

bingo yep, and my only 2 cents to that is take it up to a decent
2x12 instead of 2x10.
good 12's are more efficient.

the cost is higher but in the end you have a single powerful rig or 2 very portable rigs. all matching.

Basically taking the well accepted 4x10 and the cutting it in half and making a vertical version.

you can put dispersion magic into that because it does exist. but basically to you as the player it brings the speakers to ear level. and the only way to do that before was to add another 4x10 and all that time 2 other speakers were just dead weight.
now you get the height with half the weight.

but now you can bring 12's into the situation for better performance without having to say 4x12 and hear all the screams...thats for guitar wah wah wah.

its ok it a bass 2x12 x 2 what ev....