New Rig Day, Crown/Alembic/Avatar edition

[EdwardofHuncote]

Well... really, New Rig Day was this past weekend when I finally got to try it out at a gig, but I have been piecing this pre-amp/power-amp setup together for a couple months now. All but one piece of it is used, however lightly. I'll preface the rest of the post by declaring I had really no firsthand experience with this kind of thing. Reading both here at TalkBass and one other forum I began to hatch plans for a kinda' old-school but kinda' not way of amplifying.

Essentially, the journey began as a quest for amplifying my bass(es) with very little eq'ing, ultra-clear sound, (meaning no distortion) with an obscene amount of clean headroom. I'd been using a Mesa Walkabout and various combinations of cabs, and liked certain things about it, (still do) but I have never felt like the lows or low-mids were as clear as the rest of the spectrum *at higher volume. Not knocking the Mesa by any stretch here... I think it's inherent tonal voice is exactly what an awful lot of bass players want. Heck, they wouldn't have made so many if that weren't so. I decided to keep the single Scout 15 cab, and leave the Walkabout head docked in it for practice or quick load-in gigs, but I put all the other cabs up for sale, and built this.


The components are;

Crown XLS 2000 "DriveCore" Series power amp. (bridged in mono = 2100w) Very lightweight, extremely versatile, 2-space rack mount.

Alembic F-1X preamp. Nothing complicated here... one 12ax7 tube, volume/bass/mid/treble, deep/bright toggles. DI out, pre/post switch, and a built-in crossover. Rather than use the F-1X's crossover, I use the full-range output into channel 1 of the power amp. (hat-tip to TB'r Chef for the 3-space Gator bag!)

The cabs are Avatar, a mirrored-baffle pair of 8 ohm SB126'S loaded with 500w speakers, with optional 1.6Khz crossover, and a B115 cab fitted with a Kappalite 3015LF driver rated at 450w at 4 ohms. (hat-tip to TB'r Dave at Avatar... I ordered a new cab on a Thursday, and eight days later it was on my porch, 2000 miles away!)

I'm using the Crown's integrated crossover setpoints to send only low frequencies to the channel with the B115, although I think there's a way to program low or high pass points for each channel. Still playing with the preset default setpoints, but 118 hz seems to work well...

So how does it sound? Well, for starters, it's violently powerful, and yet it's the purest sound I've ever heard from my basses. It surpassed my expectations by maybe 25%. Best part after that is, none of the components are prohibitively heavy or bulky, the heaviest is something like 45 lbs. The whole thing fits in the back of my smallish suv, and that's only if I need to use the whole thing... just the two SB126's piggy-backed on one channel are plenty by themselves for most jobs. But that sub... now that's worth the extra trip to the car.

So there it is fellas... hopefully this is enough (((BOOM))) for a while.

 

[BasturdBlaster]

I'm jealous! That is one sweet rig!!

 

[rufus.K]

Commanding setup indeed. Mi gusta!

 

[pbass6811]

I really dig the rig, my man! I'm thinking about a similar setup. What type of music do you play?

 

[EdwardofHuncote]

I really dig the rig, my man! I'm thinking about a similar setup. What type of music do you play?

Thanks pbass.

I really like it a lot, just with the limited time I've spent with it. I play all different kinds of gigs, even upright bluegrass and oldtyme, but mostly I play with a 'party' band. They do kinda' loud indie-folk-rock, with some pop covers thrown in... corporate and private funtions, wedding receptions, etc. I didn't really need the extra power, though having the available headroom is nice. The goal was amplifying my basses in the purest, unaltered, uncolored, raw sound possible. In that, it's exactly what I was looking for.

 

[MTN.bass72]

Thanks pbass.

I really like it a lot, just with the limited time I've spent with it. I play all different kinds of gigs, even upright bluegrass and oldtyme, but mostly I play with a 'party' band. They do kinda' loud indie-folk-rock, with some pop covers thrown in... corporate and private funtions, wedding receptions, etc. I didn't really need the extra power, though having the available headroom is nice. The goal was amplifying my basses in the purest, unaltered, uncolored, raw sound possible. In that, it's exactly what I was looking for.

Hi!,
First off, AMAZING looking rig. I can't begin to imagine how sweet it sounds.
Second, asking for an opinion... I recently acquired a GK MB800, I've been eyeballing the same Avatar SB126 cabs... The same configuration as you... 500w driver, same crossover too...
I was thinking to first try one cab to see if I like the pairing with my GK, and if so add the second cab later to benefit from the full 800 watts this tiny beast has.
Do you feel this would be a decent pairing? Any thoughts, opinions, advice is greatly appreciated.
For conversation sake, I'm coming from two David Eden d112xlt cabs with a wtx500.
Thanks in advance.

 

[EdwardofHuncote]

Hey, somebody else found my thread! Thought I had lost this one...

PM'd you some info.